#also also butchering of real world politics

[girlfromthecrypt]

Note: This is merely a pitch introduction post. Work on this IF will only properly start once Such Happy Campers is complete. A demo is not imminent. The working title is Reggie on the Run, but will most likely be changed.*

Story: You, an individual only known as Reggie Reese, are a criminal in the late 1800s. You find yourself stuck in a jail in Yellowhill, Letitia, where you are to be tried for your transgressions. Fortunately for you, a member of a prolific and feared local gang is brought in the same day. When the outlaw’s associates swoop in to rescue them, you too are given another chance at freedom. Before you know it, you are inducted into the strange and unusual band, most of whom appear to possess supernatural abilities.

Only, you were never exactly normal either…

Play as Reggie Reese (based on your choice of gender, this can either be “Regina”, “Reginald”, or simply “Reggie”, if you’re not one for the binaries)

Choose from four possible backgrounds that also determine the cause for your arrest! Play as a violent drunk, a highwayman or thief. More backgrounds may be added later

You have telepathic powers! Yay! Now, how to use that to get money…

Pick and name a horse from a selection of various breeds and personalities, bond with and care for it!

Face horrors beyond comprehension, and possibly end up saving the world

redeem yourself or become worse

Inspirations: Blood Meridian, Butcher’s Crossing, Red Dead Redemption 2, Lonesome Dove, and of course the actual Old West.

The Cast:

“Doc” — The Leader: You don’t know his real name. You don’t know where he came from. There are whispers about him having escaped from an exploitative freak show, though he’s certainly not forthcoming with any information. The one thing you do know is that he saved your life.

Age: 42

Power: Healing

Personality: Polite and kind (at least at first glance). Well-read and highly intelligent, idealistic.

Romanceable: Yes, for MCs of all genders.

Horse: Silksong, a palomino Mustang.

Isaiah Wilder — The Berserker: A behemoth of a man who’s draw is as quick and deadly as his fists. You have never encountered anyone as bloodthirsty or as dogged as him. He ensures people fear the gang, and should intimidation prove insufficient, he’ll delight in mending that. 

Age: 37

Power: Superhuman strength and zombie-like constitution

Personality: Caring to the gang, absolutely heartless to everyone else. Brutal, cunning.

Romanceable: Yes, for female MCs (why you’d want to romance a literal monster is your deal)

Horse: Black Phillip, a black Missouri Foxtrotter.

Margaret Malloy — The Black Widow: Thrice married, thrice widowed. Her husbands have a tendency to throw themselves off of cliffs, it seems. What exactly she’s hiding behind her ready smile is for her to know and you to find out… at your own peril, that is. She often acts as a decoy for the gang.

Age: 33

Power: Persuasion

Personality: Harmoniously cheerful and sweet, with a love for all things shiny. 

Romanceable: Yes, for male and male-presenting MCs (you’ve been warned)

Horse: Freckle, a Leopard Appaloosa.

Hilda Heinrichs — The One Who Dances in the Creek: She’s a strange, strange woman. Perhaps the strangest you’ve ever met. A former prostitute, she fell in with Doc after he treated a gunshot wound she sustained after attempting to steal from a suitor. Oftentimes, she’s off in another world— literally.

Age: 30

Power: Spectral awareness

Personality: Hard to grasp. Her temper changes at the drop of a hat, like she’s a force of nature. But she’ll happily entertain the others by playing her banjo.

Romanceable: Yes, for MCs of all genders

Horse: Virginia, a white Shire.

Francisco “Fran” Perez — The Gambler: He doesn’t talk much, barely at all, really. Maybe he doesn’t like you… or maybe he simply prefers the quiet. He’s eerily good at gambling, and even better at cheating people out of their money. His abilities are invaluable to the gang; he sniffs out most of their jobs for them.

Age: 26, the youngest of the gang

Power: Precognition

Personality: Calm, quiet, wary of strangers. Funny guy, once you get to know him.

Romanceable: Yes, for MCs of all genders

Horse: Cielo, a brown and white Pinto with striking blue eyes.

The Strange Lady— ??: She hangs around a lot. You don’t know what to make of her.

Age: ??

Power: ??

Personality: Confusing.

Romanceable: No

*MC is gender-selectable, but has a locked-in name. The canon reason for this is that MC’s name, Reggie Reese, is an alias, and that MC keeps their true name a secret (at least from the public). The game is set in a largely fictionalized version of the Wild West. There are a great many parallels to actual historical events, but to avoid writing about still-existent locations and organizations (among other things), I have taken some liberties with worldbuilding. Also, it’s fun to pick fictional town and state names, for example Letitia and Yellowhill. 

TW: gore, discussions of trauma, ptsd, c-ptsd, mentions of SA and related trauma, mentions of period-typical prejudice and sexism, morally gray characters depending on how you play, downright homicidal characters, sex work. 

Dividers by @plum98

So. What y'all think?

[wispforever]

Some thoughts on Itachi

So, I've seen a lot of comments circulating about my tags on this post, and I'm intrigued at the interest. I didn't expect it, as I see much more pigeonholing of Itachi's character than honest to god analysis. No hate- I'm no stranger to Kishimoto's writing. Some of his characters were unfortunately butchered or never given the chance to be developed properly, and Itachi is most certainly no exception. That said, I like to grant him a bit more nuance than I see on most blogs. I think people get a little wrapped up in the supposed "moral implications" of exploring how Itachi was also a victim of the system, as well as someone who victimized many people. But it's silly to equate character analysis and context consideration with condoning genocide.

I have a good laugh every once and a while at the metaphorical gymnastics people do in order to stay in the good graces of a bunch of internet trolls who are just Waiting for any opportunity to tell you you love murder and think it's delicious just because you made a post exploring a character's background. Media is grey; it's layered and wonderfully complex. There are many wrongs and rights in every story, and many wrongs and rights within those wrongs and rights. That's what I love about Naruto. Often times it's really too much like real life. Instead of people being black and white, right or wrong, bad or good- they're usually in a tough situation, trying their best and falling short, don't have all of the information, acting with good intentions or acting on what they believe will bring about a lesser evil, and then end up hurting others.

But it is much easier to assign blame and move on. A so-called bad person will always be the perfect scapegoat for issues bigger than them. In Itachi's case, the fascist government in the Leaf. It's easier to say Itachi could have just refused and decided not to be involved, than to recognize that like almost every other character in the narrative, he was under extreme duress, living in a military state. He was a child whose existence, along with all the other children and adults in the Leaf, was only valuable as long as he could serve as a tool for the war machine in the shinobi world's fucked up political system. And saying this is not the same as saying he was not capable of better decisions or that everything that he did thereafter or in general should not be read critically or subject to hypothetical consequences. It is the same as a saying his actions cannot be fully understood without complete context, and the themes of Naruto will never come through if every villain is just "evil" with no further nuance. And it would be boring too LOL

That said, I love to think about Itachi's situation back then. The ages in Naruto are a bit muddled, a little inconsistent, subject to change and interpretation, but Itachi was a child when he murdered everyone in the Uchiha compound. Most sources say he was 13. It should go without saying that someone so young isn't capable of the same decision-making or critical thinking as say, a 30-year-old, someone whose brain is finished developing and has much more experience on Earth.

Itachi's experience at this point in his life is informed by his age, and it's obviously informed by his childhood, as he has no other place from which to draw conclusions. Itachi grew up in a warring state. He saw people die and was subject to extreme violence in his formative years. To make matters worse, he was taught that war was inevitable and the only thing he could do to guard against it was kill others before they got the chance to kill him (threaten the village). Thusly, Itachi internalized at a very young age that what was in his power was to minimize damage (to himself, to his village, and to the world). What was not in his power was to stop this violence entirely (by adopting a critical mindset and going against fascist powers).

A part of this I think people often forget is that Itachi has absolutely nowhere to adopt this mindset FROM, as even though his father and the other members of the Uchiha clan seek equity in the Leaf, if they were to overthrow the Hokage and create a new system, it would still presumably center around the same ideals (minus, of course, the oppression of the Uchiha as a group). Fugaku is the head of the Uchiha clan at this time. As someone who imposed near impossible performance-related expectations on both of his sons, and withheld love and affection whenever they came up short (so often that it was at the cost of having any considerable emotional bond with either of them), there is absolutely no good reason to believe that Fugaku would reform the Leaf using a non-fascist ideology. And if he did, there is no good reason to believe that he would be some kind of visionary LMAO

This is important to remember because when it comes down to Itachi's decision to either kill everyone in the Uchiha compound and his family, or be part of the coup that would overthrow the Leaf, some people treat it as though it's a choice between fascism and non-fascism, which it most certainly is not. And if it was, Itachi, as a child who had grown up immersed in this ideology, would not be able to appreciate the difference. This context allows us to understand further what Itachi was really weighing in that moment. Accounting for his young age and limited worldview, the only valuable difference in this moment to Itachi was the amount of bloodshed that he would "allow" to happen. Essentially, he sees the options as follows:

Either give in to Danzo and kill everyone in the Uchiha compound, or facilitate a coup where the current government is (hopefully) overthrown and risk starting another war.

Here, Itachi pauses. He has known war. He knows how it affects children, adults, families, and whole nations. The peace he's living in currently is bought with blood, but it's the only peace he's ever known. The alternative is horrifying. And a war in this context, Itachi likely thinks, would be his fault, as he has now been put in the position to "prevent" it. Danzo and the whole shinobi system have groomed him into thinking so. Itachi, at age 13, cannot understand that there would be no war; it exists only as leverage for Danzo's argument at this point. His sensitivities are being played on.

Fugaku, though he is not the same as Danzo, offers about as much help as he does (that being none). Fugaku has no interest in avoiding war; if a war breaks out, it's justified because it will still mean his clan will no longer be living in oppression. This idea is valid, as fascist systems and discrimination can only cease to exist when we rise up against them; unfortunately, this most often calls for righteous violence, as the oppressive powers will not be moved with peaceful shows (not to mention they are willing to go to extreme lengths to avoid losing their hold on the people they have crushing power over, i.e. the Uchiha massacre). But Fugaku has no words to explain this to Itachi, who fears the worst and further fears being responsible for the worst. All he does is act as if it's a moral failing that his 13-year-old son is unwilling to stage a coup, which he believes could mark the abrupt end of a peace that's only just begun.

That said, let it be known that Itachi does appreciate this situation with SOME nuance, though it isn't of the kind that might have enabled him to see he was being manipulated. He at the very least understands that Danzo is a warmonger and oppresses those he fears (the Uchiha). He understands that the rights of his clan have been sorely disrespected, and that the issue needs correction. He understands the anger of his friends and family. This is why it takes him much deliberation before he can even come close to making a decision. He plays both sides right up until the end, listening to Danzo, as well as Fugaku and Shisui, paying attention to the current atmosphere in the Leaf as he tries to decide.

It is something he doesn't want to do. Here's where I get to the part I put in the tags of my drawing.

In this situation, it's almost worthless to write an analysis about Itachi's feelings at this time, his understanding of what was actually going on, his loyalty to his clan or his loyalty to the Leaf, because really, he could not grasp it. He was never prepared for this. He never knew he would be asked to make a decision he could only understand as "your family or the world?"

Itachi was put in a position that had no happy ending. There was no decision he could make that would not hurt. That could not result in a cataclysm that split him right down the middle. There was no version of this story that a 13-year-old could carry out thinking "I have done the right thing."

And that's the important part. Both sides asked him to make this decision, and so both sides are guilty of placing an immeasurable pressure on a child who should never have been put in such a position. Regardless of ideology, regardless of price, regardless of oppression or loyalty or devotion or any other thing- someone else should have made this decision for Itachi. Someone else should have been responsible. An adult, at the very least. Someone who COULD understand the implications of both options. Someone who COULD go forward and appreciate the evil of fascism and know that a coup was necessary. Itachi was never capable of such a thing. If he made the "wrong" decision, than every child who can't explain to you what a fascist government in a military state looks like and explain what the difference is between a hate crime and resisting a hateful power, is also wrong. Here is the nuance. These are things a 13-year-old in this universe cannot be expected to understand unless they are taught. And Itachi had no teacher. Quite the opposite. There were only forces pressing him from both sides, saying "choose."

Had his father done this for him, had Shisui been in this position, had any other adult Uchiha acting as a spy been put to this task, it would be a much different narrative. But of course, it had to be Itachi, who Danzo knew he could manipulate. It had to be a child, someone skilled enough to do the job, but inexperienced enough, afraid enough, to be willing to sacrifice everything they had to see the mission through. Someone you could whisper "greater good" to and have them hand over their well being on a plate. Someone who didn't understand they had the power and strength to destroy the system threatening them.

On a narrative level, Itachi exists to illustrate this point. How young people are systematically indoctrinated to serve a greater purpose, be it under a specific government, religion, or otherwise. We see it in real life fascism, in real life cults. There's no mistake. It isn't an accident that Itachi's story begins like this.

Which brings me to the rest of his life. The reason I drew the picture in the post referenced at the top. Itachi's character is a bit of a mystery the rest of the anime. Be that because of bad writing or an intentional omission, his motives, thoughts, and opinions are largely left ambiguous. However, there are still a few moments that interest me as far as the implications of his development.

When Itachi first comes back to the Leaf village, he faces Kakashi. On the one hand, this could simply be a narrative tool- the big bad meets the big good. He takes Kakashi out of commission! The first rogue shinobi we see who is able to defeat the pillar of the Leaf, the Copy Ninja, and without even breaking a sweat!

On the other hand, I find the brutality of Itachi's attack very intriguing. Again, it could be the tough guy act, but he's able to keep three jonin busy easily using standard genjutsu (with the help of Kisame). It wouldn't be a stretch to say that using the tsukuyomi is overkill, and at a considerable price, we learn later.

Why then would Itachi, who has been shown to have excellent battle intelligence, who is strategic to a fault, be willing to jeopardize his health among other things just to... scare the Leaf? Make sure Kakashi wouldn't be a nuisance in the future? Sure, the last one would make collecting Naruto less complicated, but they dispatched Kakashi easily enough, and surely Jiraiya, who Naruto was with at the time, would pose a bigger problem than Kakashi.

It doesn't make strategic sense, which makes me wonder if Itachi has a special animosity toward Kakashi. Being his superior in the ANBU before the Uchiha massacre, someone who was willing to conduct surveillance of the Uchiha compound without question, Kakashi could have become a symbol of the indifference of the Leaf for Itachi. He could very well have been a reminder of the inoperable position Itachi was put in when he was still a child, and Kakashi, of course, was an adult. Another adult who did nothing. Noticed nothing. Did not help Itachi.

And while I'm certain that Kakashi would have taken severe issue with the goings on in the Leaf at that time, judging by his reaction when he finds out the truth in Shippuden, Itachi knows him only by what he did then. Facilitated surveillance of the Uchiha compound, was a supportive superior, but nothing greater. A bystander whose compassion, while well meaning, was entirely unhelpful.

I don't think it's far fetched that Itachi fucking crucified Kakashi because he was so angry at what being in the Leaf did to him. At some point, as he got older, he realized how terrible it was. He realized there were people like him. Children who were "born killers". Pawns in the game of the shinobi powers.

After leaving the village, Itachi joins the Akatsuki, who are also seeking peace through war (another story). He is supposed to spy for them, but doesn't follow through in any enthusiastic way (that we're shown). He works alone for quite some time, or else with a group (briefly he was shown with Conan and Kakuzu). He is partners with Orochimaru before he's expelled from the Akatsuki. He is partners with one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist. He grows up and meets many people, sees lots of stories unfold. He learns that he isn't in a minority. Many shinobi are just like him.

And then, as an adult, he is partnered with Kisame, who he finds excellent camaraderie with because of their similar backgrounds. We see in this relationship that he understands what happened to him and what he did enough to acknowledge that, while neither of them are monsters, as many people say, they are human. And humans make mistakes. Humans are complicated. Wrong and right and wrong and right. They understand each other, and Itachi understands more clearly what the world puts these children up to. What it forces shinobi to become. That it isn't all his fault, but he still did it. And so he is responsible. He appears to be able to live with that.

But when he returns to the Leaf, those feelings bubble up. He hates the Leaf. He hates that system. He hates what he did. Maybe he even hates being a shinobi, how his excellence was weaponized, how being an Uchiha doomed him and his clan. And for what?

Itachi is played as a character who is only sensible, only logical, only interested in practical things, has nothing to express. But the way he behaves toward Kakashi in that moment bares all his grief and anger. I just like to think about it. We have so few moments where we get to see Itachi genuinely. The fight with Kakashi, the Sasuke/Deidara fight, his thoughtful moments with Kisame. Just makes me wonder what could've been if Itachi's story had gone a little differently.

Anyway, if anyone would like me to expand on any points or has additional thoughts, feel free to hop in my ask box or leave a comment. Thanks for the interest, I love to talk.

[vivianwine]

"If Rhaenyra comes into power…your very life could be forfeit. Aemond's as well. She could move to cut off any challenge to her succession."

"Then I won't challenge..."

"You are the challenge! You are the challenge, Aegon! Simply by living and breathing! You are the King's firstborn son and what they know,

what everyone in the realm knows, in their blood and in their bones is that one day, you will be our king."

Do you remember these lines? These exact lines are the one of the reason for Aegon to usurp the iron throne. Because whether he usurps the throne or not his, his brothers and their bloodline is the most dangerous treat to Rhaenyra’s bloodline.

If you have a little understanding of medieval politics, you would know that no matter what the green kids do, they wouldn’t be able change the their status as potential treats.

It is truly an unfortunate thing to realm wanting to have a male ruler instead of a women but at that time period no one wasn’t ready for such a drastic change. They first tried that with Rhaenys and that was a big fat NO

And then they had Rhaenyra. People have sworn to her. And she was accepted even after she had brothers. Which is a good improvement on the society’s view of women being on the power.

So as we can see realm would eventually get there but for that to happen in this generation, Viserys should’ve stopped having kids. Even though realm was getting there, it wasn’t “exactly there”

So having her 3 dragon riders silver haired brothers(one of them has the Vhagar) has made things complicated cause just like I said realm wasn’t exactly there (again,unfortunately but again, these things take time) eventually resulted as a civil war.

And also expecting realm them to be there is kinda foolish. Since GRRM is writing his stories rather realistic (people can write fantasy and be realistic) also his writing is actually quite based on the real world’s dynasties and their systems. So in real life these changes took time, it is expected them to take time in also HOTD since Writer is kinda taking examples from real life.

Back to the story: If he were to stop having children and put Rhaenyra on the throne without any challenge in the next or two to three generations later people could’ve accepted their first born as their heir without giving care to their sex.

These kind of things take time. And Dance of the Dragon’s timeline wasn’t ready to accept a women as their queen(unfortunately)

Therefore Aegon had to take to throne because he literally didn’t have a choice. Cause since realm is not ready for this huge change, they would eventually push Aegon or any of his brothers to throne and Rhaenyra would’ve to kill her brothers(rightfully)

So I really don’t understand this hate ontowards to green kids. They were trying to survive.

And I am not being misogynistic just by pointing out this sequence.

I am aware that Aegon being on throne is basically erasing the women’s standing as a ruler HOWEVER him not being on throne also means that he and his almost entire family being butchered. (I empathize with green kids’ POV just like i do with Rhaenyra’s.) So just because Aegon wanted to save himself and his family, this doesn’t mean that he is a bad person (I know he is rumored rapist in the book and I know he is a bad person but not because of him wanting survive. He has so much things to make him a more a bad, I KNOW)

[remusjohnslupin]

@elerrinacrownedwithstars: Your responses are very interesting, and responding to them under another post (with a character limit) is difficult, so I thought I would make a separate post about it to convey my thoughts more thoroughly. I hope you don't mind ❤️ Please don't feel like you have to answer or anything. Following up on your previous message:

Of course, it’s possible I’m wrong, as this is only the impression I’ve gathered from some posts. And yeah, the writers of this show are laughably bad at their job but it doesn’t dismiss the idea that this is their attempt of ‘nuance’. Tolkien is fairly clear about how orcs are his idea of “what if Satan made people”, but even so, it’s notable - and he seemed to realise this too - that it had some problems within his cosmogony. In my bubble, I see discourse about how describing an entire race evil is problematic and I can’t say that I don’t see where they come from. But on the other hand, you’re right to point out that Tolkien wasn’t writing an allegory, and fantasy worlds are allowed to work differently than real worlds. After all, Tolkien is also clear that his Elves and Men can be at the different points of the spectrum of good and evil, whether they are Valinorean or Númenorean etc.

If I can backtrack a little to our previous messages, everything you said earlier about J.R.R Tolkien's observations about war and human nature are 100% accurate. I hope it did not seem like I brushed off your point. However, I would like to underline that just because he uses the word 'orc' or 'orcish' to describe the horrors of war, does not mean that he is directly referencing Orcs™ in his books.

I genuinely think if people are insisting Orcs™ have to be nuanced, otherwise it's racist... that's WILD. Because the point is, orcs are, as you so creatively put in, 'What if Satan made people.' They are not of any particular race like we understand. Any differential groups they might have between them is based on who 'bred' them, so to speak, and where. Unlike humans, they have no cultural and historical differences as we understand it. To copy/paste my previous point directly:

"Tolkien famously HATED allegory and never assigned any of his races to real-life ones. I mean, if there are people out there who think portraying orcs as purely evil is racist, then THEY must have a real-life race/ethnicity in mind when they think of orcs. Which says a lot about THEM, not Tolkien himself or those of us who rightly point out the butchering of the lore and poor writing in the show."

So no, I will never, ever see or agree with the idea that the discourse about orcs and race have validity. Like, no. If I start writing my story and create this bright green, goo-like race of blobs who are all evil and their entire agenda is to latch on to humans and feed on them.... and someone just came out and said that was also problematic and racist... how does it make sense?

You know what, this is Tumblr, so someone actually WOULD say that. Nevermind.

But that's what Orcs™ are. They are an extension of the evil (Morgoth) that marred the world even when it was first formed. Nothing more, nothing less.

In your last point, I think you inadvertently addressed part of the problem. This whole discourse about how pure fantasy evil existing is somehow offensive stems from the strange need to make everything relatable. I sincerely believe that people who think this way (including the writers of the Rings of Power) actually have a disdain for the fantasy genre, whether they recognise it or not.

"What if orcs were misunderstood?" ... "What if Galadriel was a cut-out cliche warrior?" .... "What if elven rings were also actually evil because power corrupts anyway even if they are wielded by super wise beings and those Rings were untouched by Sauron?"

They think they are being sophisticated doing these things. And I have no doubt there is some unnecessary political pandering there, too. But instead of elevating the characters and the show, they are hollowing out all the meaning behind Tolkien's themes.

Making orcs misunderstood essentially destroys how Tolkien showed the Marring of the World was permanent and would not be Healed until Dagor Dagorath.

Making Galadriel a copy-paste generic warrior who goes on adventures cheapened her character so much, I can't even. Sauron (when he was Annatar) did not go near Galadriel's kingdom because he was 92837647289% sure that she would recognise him on sight. Because she is probably THE most perceptive elf. She is also described as one of the kindest people alive, sooner moved to pity than anger. But they made her a vengeful asshole on a quest to find Sauron when he was THREE FEET AWAY from her face. But that's empowering because sHE hAS A SworD nOW!

I could go on, and on, and on...

The whole 'sympathetic orcs' debacle, along with the entirety of the Rings of Power, is what you get when you put a few idiots together, have them read Tolkiengateway, and ask 'Okay, so how would YOU write the story?'

As opposed to:

"We made a promise to ourselves at the beginning of the process that we weren’t going to put any of our own politics, our own messages or our own themes into these movies. What we were trying to do was to analyze what was important to Tolkien and to try to honor that. In a way, we were trying to make these films for him, not for ourselves.” — Peter Jackson

[jewish-sideblog]

Wild that this post has 11,000 likes when it’s spreading such blatant fucking disinformation.

“Sabra” is word Israelis use to refer to an Israeli Jew. The "longer statement" attempts to refute the idea that Sabra was named after the Hebrew term by saying that the massacre happened in the 1980s, and the character didn't exist until the 1990s. Clearly, this person didn't do the world's most minimal amount of research. Let's get into it real quick--

Sabra's first full appearance was in Incredible Hulk #256, published in February 1981. She had a named cameo from the same run six issues earlier, in February 1980. So she was a planned and named character in development at least as early as 1979. The Sabra and Shatila massacre began on 16 September 1982, two years after Sabra made her debut in the comics.

Given her name and original design, Marvel's Sabra is likely influenced by the character named "Sabraman" by Uri Fink, an Israeli comic book creator. Sabraman's origins date back to 1978-- four full years before the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

This is a nitpicky point, but why are you following a Jewish discourse blog if not for nitpicky points? The Israeli Defence Forces were involved in the Sabra and Shatila massacres. There's no question about that. They authorized it, provided funds for it, and offered logistical support for it. But they did not carry it out. A Lebanese Christian Nationalist militia carried it out. Why lie about that? Israeli forces supported the murder of civilians! They lit up the sky for days so that the massacre could continue into the night! Why do you need to lie and say they were holding the guns? Is what they did not bad enough for you? This is what I mean when I say that you guys would rather resort to conspiracy theories and misinformation than actually accurately criticize Israel for once.

So where did I get all these facts? Did I have to do some deep dive into comics of the 1970s and 80s? Pull up niche and obscure military journals about the Lebanese Civil War? Nope! I got all that information by... looking at Wikipedia pages. I did double-check Incredible Hulk #250 to ensure that she was already named Sabra in 1980. She was. I also looked around for any articles that backed up the claim that fetuses were cut out of women's wombs during the Sabra and Shatila massacre and... I didn't find any. Al Jazeera doesn't even mention it. If you can find a reputable source for that, please send it to me! Until then, I'm gonna rule this as flat-out blood libel.

You may be asking yourself, why didn't Marvel change Sabra's name in 1982 when the tragedy occurred? Aren't they at least responsible for that? And personally, I think you'd be right. But Marvel didn't budge on Black Panther (named July 1966) when the Black Panther Party (named October 1966) was founded. It doesn't seem like they were interested in making character changes due to political pressures back then. Whether that's a good thing or not is a different story.

And finally, no, this post is not anything close to an endorsement of the new Captain America movie. I'd been planning on boycotting the movie named after an antisemitic conspiracy theory, from the company that butchers any Jewish representation they don't completely ignore, since before y'all found out about Sabra's existence. I just honestly thought the antisemitic nonsense about this character would be coming from the right, not the left.

Edit: Fixed formatting mistakes. Tumblr does not fucking like Hebrew text.

[stackslip]

you're inspiring me to rewatch 2003, it was my favorite between the two when i watched them but I forgot most of it in the decade since. also you're good at highlighting exactly how mangahood doesn't work. I actually watch 2003 before reading the manga and I remember thinking the ending of

it's really fucking frustrating to me that people basically closed ranks around Brotherhood as the 'real one' and dismiss 2003 as a regrettable mistake/error in the One True Canon. I've always really loved that 2003 and Brotherhood diverge it's such a unique collection of art

also I want to rewatch the two sequel movies (Milo's and conquerer of Shamballah) god I love bleak writing

i have never watched the second movie but i remember really enjoying conquerors of shamballah. granted, i was like, 14 then lol. there was a lot that i didn't catch in fma 2003's themes at the time, but same as you, i watched it before i read the manga (and i finished the manga before watching brotherhood) and i remember even then i was disappointed by some of its aspects. then in my early 20s i was like well manga/brotherhood is better bc it's better executed (as like. a mid shounen lmao) and bc it has greedling (i do still love greedling, if only bc i looove body sharing as a trope), but i still thought 2003 had lots of good aspects and couldn't understand how people went from "fullmetal alchemist is one of the best animes ever" to "fma 2003 was a mistake and all bad and stupid actually and its female characters suck compared to mangahood which has MUCH better female characters" (i was thoroughly unimpressed by fma's base female characters. loved mei and lan fan but come on they were hardly given so much depth). not to mention how disappointed the manga version of the homonculi were. like i remember when sloth in the manga was first introduced being SO disappointed.

in retrospect, i think mangahood's status as The Best Animanga Of All Time when even at the time i liked it most i found it..... decent to good at best, and quite overrated, has made me sour on it quite a lot. like it felt impossible to talk about anything i disliked about it bc despite having such a highly praised status, people get irrationally angry and defensive over any criticism of the manga or brotherhood's themes and story. they'll either claim its depiction of genocide and fascism is really good, or when you criticize it they'll go "well it's a shounen, why are you criticizing it for being a shounen!" (i think shounen can do and engage with these themes thoughtfully! and i think if you're gonna use these themes and depict genocide so viscerally you got a duty to do it right to the end or at least TRY to do so). it's when i started rewatching clips of 2003 and being really impressed by the clips, and how much they held up if not actually blew brotherhood out of the water. and it's also my own maturing in terms of politics and understanding of fiction that made me even more open to what 2003 was doing even though i remembered it did fail in some aspects! like, i don't think as a 14 year old i much understood the nazi thing, and as a young adult i was like "eh that was a bit weird" but it's in the past few years in my criticizing of what brotherhood and the manga fuck up that i suddenly realized "oh. 2003 was actually saying the quiet part out loud instead of using this as an aesthetic for its world!"

i was unsure how much 2003 would hold up on a rewatch tbh, and there ARE clunky if not bad parts. making human barry the butcher a serial killer who dresses as a woman to get his victims is............ a choice. it's very typical 90s/2000s transmisogyny and even though it's only one episode it left a real bitter taste in my mouth. the anime filler episodes are not nearly as strong as the main plot episodes (even when they have anime-only content!), though i appreciate the effort to make them thematically relevant to the series and make many of the anime-only characters direct parallels to ed and al. they clearly saved the animation budget for important parts, and it suffers in some episodes (i am fine with that, i watched lots of mid 2000s anime who had the same issue. not everyone can use its budget allocation and limitations like rgu). i don't like the end of the one episode where the tomboy kid suddenly becomes feminine at the end bc she's happy now lmao.

but from episode 1, it's already so much more committed to some of the themes and ideas that harakawa evoked as flavour or background but barely dug into. she was making a fun action shounen with a large, lovable cast, and that's..... fine. it's just not interesting to me, at least outside of greedling's whole thing. it's got SUCH a melancholy feeling to it, it feels like it's digging into the literal guts of arakawa's world and characters. i also actually really appreciate that while it keeps touches of humor, it wayyyyy tones down the gags that are there every four pages or so--arakawa can make it work in the manga, but in brotherhood it's near unbearable how you can't one one serious scene without someone doing something goofy.

i will say, a little thing that i REALLY in 2003 like that's pretty personal is the way the alchemical circles are drawn and used. this might sound weird, but the way i learned about fma's existence was when i was i think 9-10 years old and bought a french anime magazine, and it had a whole part on fma 2003 including a two page spreader detailing the alchemical circles and their uses. it was my first ever impression of fma and i loved the look and feeling of them. there was something occult and dark about the way they were presented in that magazine that coloured my experiences when i watched the anime on a fan page in 244p max with terrible fansubs

[knickynoo]

Hi there! Me again.

I’ve been rewatching Family Ties (thanks again for showing me where!) and noticed something about Alex’s character that i don’t care for/think you have touched upon.

What are your thoughts on his views of women?The advice he gave Jeff on his date with Mallory appalled me. Do you think it’s just a product of the time- how right leaning people were expected/did to treat women? Or is it something deeper? I don’t understand how he thinks this way after seeing how amazing Steven and Elyse are toward each other. (Even if the kids are disgusted every time they kiss lol)

I would love to hear your opinion!

Hello! Nice to hear from you again :)

Yeah, so, a lot of the words that come out of Alex's mouth regarding women are 😬😬😬

I can't recall the exact advice you're referring to, but I do know it's bonkers. Something about how women want a man to make all her decisions or something? Boss her around and take charge? It's honestly not only some of his worst advice, but I also think it's one of the more outrageous things he says in regards to women out of the whole series.

It's especially weird considering he's giving advice on how his sister should be treated by Jeff! And we know that, while Alex isn't always the nicest to Mallory, he loves her very much and wants to protect her. I mean, there's an entire first season episode centered around Alex losing his mind over Mallory going out with a guy who Alex doesn't like or trust. He's so worried about this guy taking advantage of Mallory and not treating her right, then he goes and gives bananas advice to Jeff. So...what's the deal?

Honestly, I don't know, lol. If I had to guess, there are probably several different factors at play that contribute to those moments Alex says Horrible Things.

1. He operates with a set of standards and values from way before his time. The thing is that Alex isn't even a product of his time—a lot of the opinions he holds would be considered outdated in the 80s by the majority of people, regardless of political leaning.

I can't for the life of me remember the episode or the exact quote, so I'm going to butcher it I'm sure, but there's a scene where Alex is lamenting how no one holds the same values he does, and he and Steven have an exchange like this:

Alex: "I should have been born in the 40s."

Steven: "Even then, you'd be a little conservative."

Alex: "The 1740s."

Steven: "....Even then, you'd be a little conservative."

It's something like that. If anyone knows what episode this is from or what the exact line is, lmk because it's one of my favorites.

2. Alex is an extreme black and white thinker. I think this is the number one trait of his that impacts him the most across the board. So many of his problems boil down to him just not seeing nuance. It's not that he's unwilling to. The guy just can't.

It makes Alex very rigid in his thoughts on things, and that absolutely spills over into situations like when he gives advice to Jeff or voices any other wild opinion. He's going to automatically go to the extremes because that's all he can wrap his head around. In a relationship, men should have all the control. They should make the decisions and say specific things and so on. It then leads him to make generalizations about women and their roles.

I think he also finds some security in these thoughts, honestly. Alex clings to facts and things that he feels are concrete and reliable. We also know that he has a very hard time processing and acknowledging his emotions. Putting people into two neat piles is comfortable for him, and anything that doesn't fit into either of those piles is too overwhelming. Alex's world needs rules for it to feel stable to him. Unfortunately, a lot of those rules are...not so great.

3. Shock-value: This is more about Alex the TV show character rather than the "real life" in-universe Alex Keaton, but still. A good deal of his character, especially in the earlier seasons, hinged on him saying or doing things that got a reaction from the audience. You can't have a show about ex-hippy, progressive parents without someone for them to knock heads against. The early episodes in particular seemed to really lean into this, and I feel like he gets toned down slightly as the series goes on? Don't get me wrong, it doesn't go away, but he does grow.

• The "Ladies Man" episode has him realizing that, while he may not support a particular movement, he absolutely respects the rights of the women in the movement. Him jumping up to defend the woman being heckled by a guy, and then his little speech to the women at the end are two of my favorite Alex moments.

• After a very difficult adjustment period when he gets a new job and learns his boss is a woman, Alex ends up really respecting her and becoming friends with her. (Wow, this ep is uncomfortable for the first half, though!)

• Ellen in particular has an impact on helping Alex to see those "in-between" areas, in my opinion. Some heart to hearts with Elyse help as well, and it's clear through the series that Alex loves and respects his mother a great deal.

Idk if this response was coherent, but there you go, haha. Alex is such a complicated character, and whenever I write about him, I feel like I'm trying to untangle a gigantic mess of yarn. But I do love him! Sometimes he is a menace, though!! He should, perhaps, simply keep his mouth shut a lot of the time.

(Also, Steven and Elyse don't discipline him ever, so it's partly their fault if we're being real here)

What? Who said that?

Thanks for the ask!

[mommalosthermind]

you’re braindead if you think that the existence of glorified incest and child pornography doesn’t affect real life children

Hello, anon. I’m assuming this is about the censorship post that’s making the rounds again?

Fiction is fiction.

It is, by nature, not incest, because the characters are not real people. They cannot be committing incest. They don’t have a body. Or a family. Or genitals. They’re words.

Fiction is also not child pornography because there are no actual real living human children being abused by words written on a page. Fiction does not hurt anyone. Actual child porn hurts the children involved. There are no children involved in fiction. At best, I’d say that’s a false equivalency. At worst, I’d say thinking like that runs the risk of trivializing the actual crime.

When someone writes a story, it has no bearing on the real world. At all.

Your discomfort with something does not make it evil or hurtful. It also, in no way, gives you the right or the ability to control what anyone else does with their free time.

Humor me for a moment, Anon. Do you also write letters like this to the folks who helped create media like the movie Scream? Or the people involved in Game of Thrones? Or, perhaps, do you recognize that watching a movie about killing a bunch of teenagers isn’t going to make someone go find a butcher knife and turn on their friends? That it isn’t glorifying murder, that no murders actually took place because the characters aren’t real? Do you recognize that the incest that is front and center in GoT isn’t, in fact, incest? That no one is going to watch that and go knock on their sibling’s door?

I don’t know about you, Anon, but I’ve never watched Scream and felt the need to go on a murder spree.

The child pornography shown in The Butterfly Effect didn’t hurt real kids, either. It didn’t encourage or inspire that kind of abuse.

And I’ve never watched GoT at all, because I can’t stand that kind of pointed violence against women in my stories. But I’m not trying to tell anyone else they can’t watch it either.

And I know it wasn’t the point of your comment but that’s the second best part of a place like AO3– I can filter out what I don’t want to see.

The first, of course, is that it is a place created to give creatives a safe haven from censorship born out of your discomfort.

Fiction isn’t hurting real people. People hurt people. Censorship hurts people.

Hiding behind high-emotion phrases like ‘child porn’ doesn’t change that censorship’s sole aim is to control what other people have access to, and I don’t have any time for that kind of holier-than-thou puritanical nonsense.

Name-calling sure isn’t going to help you any, either.

I’m breaking my don’t-feed-the-trolls rule by replying to this as it is, surprisingly, the sole negative response I’ve gotten about that post out of hundreds of others, and it’s far more polite than I’d anticipated. But remember y’all, the easiest way to handle upset anons is to starve them.

[ae-neon]

ACOMAF works and doesn't work because of Feyre's POV

It's been so long since I've read the ACOTAR books but going back to ACOMAF idk if it's hearing the audiobook or what but the whole trilogy would have been better in 3rd person pov but also probably wouldn't work outside of Feyre's 1st person pov.

Feyre's narration is so weird because she constantly fails to describe significant things saying "X was so beautiful I wouldn't know how to paint it" Which is actually okay in my opinion since her vocabulary should be limited given her character background.

But then her monologuing is also overly dramatic like "I was the butcher of innocents and the saviour of a land" is such a weirdly poetic way for a poor illiterate 19 yo hunter with PTSD to think of herself.

But "she was the butcher of innocents and the saviour of a land" doesn't have as much dissonance.

The reality is that the narration isn't Feyre, it's just SJM dictating to the audience in constant hyperbole which is somehow meant to be the literal and objective truth of Prythian and it's people from someone who has only spent a few months there.

Had we also been in Lucien's pov, I would have been more inclined to buy into what SJM was trying to shove down our throats, purely based on him being more experienced in the world.

Also the time? Feyre spends 3 months UTM (after maybe 6 months in the Spring Court) but also spends only 3 months getting married, falling out of love, recovering from PTSD, falling in love, learning how to read and fight, going on McGuffin missions, dragging her sisters into Fae politics, telling Lucien and Tamlin to fuck off, becoming a "dreamer", mating Rhysand, fighting Hybern and marrying Rhysand.

Like the whole of ACOMAF takes place over 5 months but by the end of it we're supposed to believably go from traumatized, illiterate 19 yo who died for Tamlin to girlboss genius mated and married to Rhysand? How? Because of the narration and the sheer length of the book.

But sitting back and taking the timeline into account: Isn't it love bombing? Like she gets swept up into Rhysand's life and family and schemes and view of the world with no real chance to think or breathe or be. It's almost cleverly written to make it look like Rhysand is the one who falls stupidly, blindly in love but in reality SJM makes Feyre a puppet and uses her POV to tell the audience how great her favourite character is.

The constant comparisons are nauseating - they wouldn't be if we were genuinely in the head of a confused girl but - because it's just Sarah undoing the first book and bootlicking for a man she literally made up.

Also the way SJM can't portray Feyre becoming confident without making her arrogant and condescending. She spent 3 months UTM but hears half an account from Rhysand and then "knows" her and (more importantly) his experiences trump EVERYONE ELSE'S.

Alis spent more time cleaning in the Spring Court than Feyre has been alive nevermind aware of the realities of life in Prythian but because SJM is again dictating to us through her POV were forced to accept Feyre's views as truth.

Rhysand had suffered more.

vs

Rhys, Feyre thought, had suffered more.

It's a small thing but I think it makes a significant difference.

***

Also, once you step back and look at the timeline it makes it painfully obvious that Feyre probably inserts herself into the IC way more than they consider her to fully be one of them.

They've known each other for 500 years and have deeply layered, complicated drama between them. And then like 2 months into knowing Feyre as Rhys' mate, she's poking her nose in their business. Idk it makes me cringe, maybe that's just me.

[tortoisesshells]

As I'm someone who hasn't seen Mercy Street yet, can I ask if you would recommend it and if so why?

Depending on what you're looking for in a period drama, but generally: yes! With some caveats?

Pros:

It's a show that tends to signpost Big Historical Moments (the Battle of Antietam, President Lincoln's visit) in the middle of the US Civil War for ease of keeping track of the context, even as it dabbles in speculative history (a fairly ridiculous assassination plot)- there really was a Union Army Hospital in the former Mansion House Hotel in Alexandria, Virginia; many of the named characters (Mary Phinney von Olnhausen, Henry Hopkins, the Green family, Frank Stringfellow) are based on real people mostly.

There are so genuinely great (and genuinely, bafflingly bad) costumes, so you'll have something to look at - and even laugh at.

The cast is largely very good even when some of the writing decisions are. hmm. a lot. Seriously - half of the cast are established actors who just get to go ham. There's a fair amount of scenery chewing on the way to Performances.

Mary Phinney von Olnhausen is a great outsider character who is thrown/throws herself headfirst into the butcher's shop of a Union Army Hospital in the US Civil War, and purely in the sense of having a narrative thru-line, she's a great POV character on the chaos (medical and moral) she finds there. Also, she's played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead (who is entertainingly described as 'sufficiently plain'. which. okay. I wish I were as plain as MEW.) She has a belligerent into romantic dynamic with surgeon Jed Foster (Josh Radnor, proving he can act) who is an absolute tire-fire of a human being, but who tends to follow her pretending very ardently that he would not lie down in a puddle if Mary asked him to, because he can afford to have his fancy waistcoats laundered while she's living out of a carpet bag. He's an ass and cannot help but stick his foot in his mouth constantly, but he gets Character Development and enjoys very little of it.

I personally really enjoy the soundtrack, especially this cover of "Johnny Has Gone For A Soldier". If you're doing something about the US Civil War there's got to be at least one haunting camp song, dammit.

Cons:

If you're more squeamish than not, you'll be at least a little uncomfortable - any way that someone could die in a mid-19th century war, they will. The sound design for amputation and trepanning is weirdly good, for whatever that's worth. I'm not sure that last is a con, but it seems worth mentioning.

The writing is breakneck. Nothing gets to breathe. Jed gets over a morphine addiction in the space of two episodes. Chaplain Hopkins has a crisis of faith that's resolved in two episodes. Emma Green, the oldest daughter of the Confederate owners of the hotel, pulls a near total about-face on her politics in - you guessed it - the space of about two episodes. And this is what gets screentime! Offscreen, we have allusions to major fights over Charlotte Jenkins' school run in the freedman's camp adjacent to the hospital, Mary Phinney von Olnhausen's tragic widowing, Jed Foster's Divorce Plot, Samuel Diggs' application to attend medical school ... there's always something world-ending going on, but there is not time to dwell when the fate of a nation and certainly the fate of whatever poor soul who caught a minie ball/typhoid/gonorrhea hang in balance for the episode.

At best, the show dabbles in the political/cultural dimensions of the US Civil War: it's primarily concerned with the Case(s) of the Week and the relationships between the main and minor characters - in a world where US popular cultural depictions of the US Civil War have been largely dominated by Confederate apologia from the late 19th century through to the late 20th, it left me wishing that Mercy Street (while being the first period drama I'm aware of where the romantic lead almost certainly voted for the Constitutional Union party in 1860) had been more interested in discussing race and slavery and the US Civil War. It suffers by comparison to other series which were explicitly about race and slavery and the coming war (Underground, for example).

Pursuant to these last two points: I think, sometimes, the show doesn't know what it wants to be - or isn't allowed to be what it wants to be. Is it a straight hospital drama complicated by no one knowing what antibiotics are? Is it a romantic drama? Is it a political thriller? An espionage thriller? Is it a War Is Hell war story? Is it a coming of age story? Is it a treatise on 19th century masculinity (and, conversely, womanhood) as determined by race, class, and region? It's got a runtime of less than 12 hours total and it tries very hard to be all of these things. Stuff falls to the wayside.

Mercy Street put Patina Miller, Norbert Leo Butz, Donna Murphy, & Bryce Pinkham in one lousy hospital and there was no musical episode.

I'm not really much of a Mercy Street authority, though - I hope no one minds if I tag in @jomiddlemarch, @sagiow, @fericita-s, & @mercurygray? who are all longer-standing fans of the show than me.

i just run around in the background with absolutely batshit crossovers.

[quirkthieves]

Ibara Shiozaki is a girl with an iron-fisted grip on reality. Her grasp on reality is as deeply embedded as her barbed thorns are into unfortunate flesh. Yes, Ibara considers herself very much a realist; she knows what she knows, and is confident in this. Fear and uncertainty had no place in the tangible world or in the light of the Lord, and so she knows herself to be quite fearless indeed. She also knows that to be awake at 3 AM will invite devils unless you pray three times, and that when walking on the sidewalk, you have to avoid the cracks, because otherwise they might get bigger, and that noxious smells are often wicked miasmas that invite disease, so they must be cleared out quickly and replaced with a good smell. All of these are things she knows are real, and work, because she always prays thrice on those rare late nights and she has had no devils come, and because she has never caused the sidewalk to crumble, and because she has never let any miasma fester into a disease. And she sees this, and it is good.

One cannot fault her for not knowing what she doesn't know. Ibara doesn't know that she is actually quite preoccupied with anxiety, and that almost everything she's done for a very long time has been motivated by a deep and restless fear, so she does not consider it. Ibara also doesn't know that most people do not know the angels that speak in her ear, nor does she know that most people do not know that plants actually quite like flesh and bone, and so she is often asked about how she gets the garden to be so lush, and the answer is typically the leftover scraps from the butcher. She also doesn't know that what "is" and what "ought to be" are rarely the same, nor does she know that she is a girl who is quite a bit preoccupied with "ought" more than anything.

There are also things that Ibara knows she doesn't know, which form what she calls "mysteries", some of which she believes may never be solved. For example, Ibara does not know why her roommates at home insist on putting soil in her bed when she has explained that she does not need soil for her quirk. Ibara also doesn't know why her classmates sometimes gape quizzically and ask her to repeat herself, because she knows they are very learned individuals, and she knows that she speaks very clearly. She also doesn't know why imaginary numbers exist, because they don't, because they're imaginary, or why she has to learn how to use them in equations despite this. In fact, there are an infinite amount of mysteries Ibara knows, and so she must remind herself to stay humble in her truths, and never forget that there is much she is too small and too slow to have the answer for. (Because one of the things she does know is that she's a bit slow; she has been told as much many times over, and it is only natural that one of a floral persuasion would be this way, so she has accepted it as truth.) Ibara also does not know why, when things do not go as they ought to, that she is so easily and readily moved to tears; but Ibara theorizes that this is because she is a gentle and humble soul, who mourns for all those who will be impacted by the inevitable disaster. She does not know, however, why she is also so often embarrassed by this.

Ibara looks at her life with the understanding of knowing and not knowing, and so she feels she understands it quite well. Her reality is a kind one, one with rules, certainly, but rules are a kindness from God, who would not leave His children to flounder alone in chaos. That is why it is so shameful to break these rules, because it is an insult to the kindness offered, and Ibara likes to think of herself as someone who tries to be polite and kind and thankful every day of her life. And she knows that God is the only person who could love her in totality, and who has already seen and known so deeply all the terrible sins she could ever commit, so she would like to try and match such kindness and graciousness as best as she can, as small and simple and slow as she is. That is all anyone can do, and it is exactly what everyone ought to do, although she is often distressed by the fact that this is not the case.

This is also because Ibara knows it is terribly easy to follow the rules, and that if the rules are broken, it is because of ignorance or idiocy or malice, and that ignorance is the only one that is truly forgivable, and only for so long. Sometimes she has tested that grace far too much to feel worthy of being ignorant, and so she considers herself by-and-large an idiot for such mistakes, and she prays fervently every day that her heart may not ever harden into malice. Because Ibara also knows that sometimes there is a little angry beast in her heart that is too proud and too indignant to bow its head, and she is very worried that one day that beast may take over her entire body and she may do something truly terrible. It is a reasonable thing to worry about, she thinks, because so many men are so consumed by their little hate-beasts, that it must be some sort of condition. Sometimes she wonders if it is contagious, but Ibara knows also that Christ would not reject the lepers, so she tries not to isolate from such contagion and instead let her soul shine through with the knowledge that God will guide her through it safely.

Ibara is very good at following rules. Ibara is very good at doing as she is told. Ibara is very good at being self-disciplined, Ibara is very strong, and Ibara has the iron will of someone with great understanding. She knows this, and she is proud of it, because it serves her well. And she knows that to have these talents means she must use them in service of her fellow man, who seem to have a much harder time with such things, and who must be guided and protected, and this is her calling. She cannot help but pity them sometimes, although one of her greatest mysteries is that sometimes when she meets their eyes, she finds pity looking back at her.

[sharonisthebettercarter]

butchlander idea i can not stop fuckin' thinkin' about

*fake omega* alpha lady homelander and *fake alpha* omega man butcher, both complete aberrations to society (their real dynamics) and mad at the world, cause bitch they got needs and secret desires that aren't being met (and their dynamics are publicly listed as reverse of what they really are because of course they are, and hidden, whose up for illegal suppressants for billy y'all~<3 billy sure is)

hear me out (and of course gotta mention the translady homie and transman butcher option, cause that option is cute too if a little different. mayhaps with some logical workings cause vought, but honestly who the fuck would be able to stop a former dysphoric man homie from getting things to transition into lady homie if she wanted to??? nobody, that's fuckin' who, not even a fucking republican legislator, she would def need enhanced possibly with compound v?? hormones tho)

for lady alpha homelander logics (and why vought wouldn't start over for a boy) the genetics behind abo could fuck up and make it harder to tell between alphas prior to birth (plus limited genetic material to make her) or someone fucked up real bad in the process~

anywho~<3

the point is, i want a gorgeous goddess lady homelander (MUST) with a massive, well and neatly managed lady schlong to rail a grumpy and forever adorable man butcher (or lady billy because also yes) with a swampy, smelly, ripe, untrimmed jungle of a man cunt down south (MUST, i could not tell you why i need butcher with a pussy so bad. i just do, butt secret butt cunt as per typical of omegaverse is always an option too)

i want to divinely punish him for his obsessive use of the word cunt because i'm petty and thats my thing bitch but also BITCH butcher with a swampy cunt

and this can run three ways for both physically i guess at least how i imagine it. mentally, there's def a slightly more specific picture though i guess, what with the hang ups and their fake dynamics~<3<3<3

for ladylander, she can be rockin' that amazonian blonde goddess look and mommy please step on me muscle and skull crushing thighs. because... YES PLEASE GOTDAMN (personal fave here, i really fuckin' like muscle)?? kinda comic accurate i guess?? she is absolutely an alpha and people question her fake (omega) dynamic, but she's just so beautiful (and obviously a superhero), she slips on by~<3 and yes, she absolutely fucking breasts boobily down those fucking stairs, boob window required... because i wish homelander had a dick tease window

she could be more akin to the show, medium/leaner build, still very much goddess with a bit more subtlety and *perfect* model height just under 6 ft for the 'perfect woman' image vought could build around this version (little less larger than life than the glamazon ladylander) dynamic is easier to hide

OR, to fit the 'babygirl' aesthetic people like to joke about, we have a small, cutesy, demure, and sweetie pie polite short girl ladylander~<3 who is the *perfect* image of her *fake* dynamic (omega) that absolutely no one is aware of the raging pussy splitting monster in her pants. she is VERY good at tucking and just the prettiest little thing... but probably absolutely the most dangerous of the 3 options (some inbetween and tweakidge is perfectly fine if ya want any of these ideas, even if i hate it, these are just my horny night ramblin's free to take)

and~ she'd be an absolute DEVIL in disguise, literally lookin' like a goddamn angel regardless of sexy form. she would absolutely bully the shit out of men to fuckin' tears and step on them, always finding them pathetic because they just don't have that drive or fight that makes them the perfect tsun tsun~ firecracker she is secretly longing for. ;))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) with the potential to dial up yandere tendencies<3 she'd love a good hole is a hole~<3 much to vought's dismay, but certain elements like vought frequently telling her to 'hold back' and 'not be an alpha (literal in this sense) take on a WHOLE different set a connotations with a lady~<3 (especially a gal who's very misaligned with the expectations for her) and the potential for chaos is just... lemme tell ya...

lemme not, feel free to imagine because this will derail if i go into that~<3

suit options for world building might go opposite direction in which her outfit *hides* muscle to make her look less strong, especially if shes supposed to be that sweet and demure 'omega' (ripped and compact always makes me so fucking happy) but her lady relationships would also become even more complicated than they already are (the possibility of that is damn near scary) and she'd be hella jealous and upset looking at pregnant women/omegas because she'd probably desperately want a child more specifically to pump one into an omega (yay for vought dismay~<3)

for billy boo~<3? oh, his daddy issues would deepen to high hell, but good god, butcher, you crusty ass burnt ass fuckin' marshmallow~<3, that sweet n' fluffy goodness in him that he tries so desperately to hide could definitely be played with~<3! billy being an omega when his piece of shit father wanted a strong alpha son could deepen the layers there between what billy really wanted and what he's been made into (we know what a nurturing mama bear sweetie he can be on his loved ones<3 especially lenny<3<3<3... and what a goddamn twink he was as a young adult LMAO) but it'd also explain the constant need to reassure himself of the toxic machismo to the point of (will never fucking let this shit go, lost all interest in you potentially topping with this, billy~<3<3<3) *unironically* calling himself an *alpha male*...

bitch i cannot get over that, no i don't care if he was trying to land an inappropriate joke, we all know he meant it. and raynor IS more alpha than him<3

but anywho~<3

image wise, billy can be struggling with not being the typical alpha (obviously), being a smol but angry thing that gets by working his ass off for muscle, using blockers and fake alpha scent, think he pairs well with that glamazon~<3 but smol togetherness is cute too, harder to prove fake dynamic

he can also be a big buff boi who meets all the standards for an alpha on the outside, height, muscle, whatever it may be~<3 except of course for that swampy cunt<3<3<3 and deep seeded desire to get railed and knotted so damn hard. and i'd say smol 'babygirl' sweetie ladylander would be the perfect one to give him what he needs~<3<3<3 but i love me a sexy buff couple too~<3! no question to the faked alpha status

course, show option middle a the road toned but not extreme butcher is there. skinny little ankles and all~<3... i saw a picture of urban shirtless the other day with this beautiful pudgy little belly (shut up) and it TOOK my mind PLACES (SHUT UP). i'm not saying it was absolutely the perfect image for mpreg just starting that second trimester. butt. (shut up~<3) i am absolutely saying that

story options actually offer some roads here, especially if infertility/sterility (yes i am absolutely thinking of billy being ryan's 'mum' and mpreg being involved, hwy do you ask~<3?) are explored. i'd imagine female alphas/male omegas are both deemed infertile/sterile in this kinda world build (where both are considered aberrations) but it could be one or the other (and in their case, sorry not sorry billy, i love it when that shit's wrong~<3)

could also be *neither*<3 but they're still considered aberrations because people are absolute sexist foreskins and because kindred souls~<3

i will say that if becca is billy's wife and that christmas party does happen for them to meet, ladylander would absolutely take interest in *billy* and billy alone immediately and definitely know what he was behind all the chemical shit with her super senses~<3 and if they meet before billy's with becca, there's not a chance he isn't spreading his legs for ladylander with absolute enthusiasm

do i even have enough self awareness i do to understand why i want a ladylander with a massive but also appropriately pretty schlong shut the fuck up to completely destroy shut and impregnate the fuck a very swampy needs a goddamn lawnmower up belonging to one william butcher SHUT THE FUCK UP and why i find it... so fucking hawt? no, i absolutely do i do not yes i fucking do this question is rhetorical don't you dare try to fucking answer it but i still fucking want it. I JUST NEED THE SWAMPY CUNT BUTCHER IF NOTHING ELSE SATAN PLEASE

also, her name is joan/joanie because MOTHERFUCK YES. but she's shy about it~<3

okay, i'm done... good god these ideas... well brain, it's out there now.

[whatisonthemoon]

Hitler’s Shadow Reaches toward Today

https://consortiumnews.com/2014/05/14/hitlers-shadow-reaches-toward-today-2/

From the Archive: The key role of neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s U.S.-backed coup is denied by the mainstream U.S. press, which can’t believe the U.S. government would collaborate with such unsavory characters, but that isn’t the real history, as Robert Parry reported in 2010.

By Robert Parry (Originally published on Dec. 17, 2010)

The U.S. government protected Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie in the years after World War II and later unleashed the infamous Butcher of Lyon on South America by aiding his escape from French war-crimes prosecutors, according to a report issued by the National Archives in 2010.

The report, entitled “Hitler’s Shadow,” concentrates on the decisions by the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps to use Barbie and other ex-Nazis for early Cold War operations, but other work by investigative journalists and government investigators has shown how Barbie’s continued allegiance to Nazi ideology contributed to the spread of right-wing extremism in Latin America.

▲ Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie.

With his skills as an intelligence operative and his expertise in state terror, Barbie helped shape the particularly vicious style of anti-communism that dominated South America for most of the Cold War. He also played a role in building a conduit for drug proceeds to fund right-wing paramilitary operations, including Ronald Reagan’s beloved Nicaraguan Contra rebels.

In 1980, Barbie used his perch in Bolivian intelligence to organize an alliance of military leaders and cocaine barons to overthrow Bolivia’s democratically elected leftist government in a bloody coup. Though fitting with Washington’s distrust of left-wing populist governments in South America, the so-called Cocaine Coup had other long-term consequences for the United States.

Bolivia’s coup regime ensured a reliable flow of coca to Colombia’s Medellin cartel, which quickly grew into a sophisticated conglomerate for smuggling cocaine into the United States. Some of those drug profits then went to finance right-wing paramilitary operations, including the CIA-backed Contras, according to other U.S. government investigations.

Barbie reportedly collaborated, too, with representatives of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church as they worked with Bolivia’s Cocaine Coup regime to organize anti-communist operations in South America. By then, the region had become a center for Moon’s global money-laundering operations. In 1982, Moon began pouring hundreds of millions of his mysterious dollars into the right-wing Washington Times newspaper to influence U.S. politics.

Eventually, as Bolivia’s corrupt Cocaine Coup government crumbled and Barbie’s identity became well known, French authorities finally secured Barbie’s return to France to face a war-crimes trial in 1983. (He died in 1991.)

The Butcher of Lyon’s role in these South American anti-communist activities caused brief embarrassment for Moon’s church and some right-wing Americans. But the Nazi collaboration didn’t draw much attention from the U.S. news media, which was already shying away from critical reporting on the Reagan administration’s unsavory alliances in Central and South America.

A Long Continuum

Indeed, the Right’s growing dominance of Washington opinion circles can be viewed as a continuum dating back to those days right after World War II, when U.S. priorities switched quickly from prosecuting Axis war criminals to seeking their help in crushing leftist political influence in Western Europe and Asia.

Suddenly, U.S. intelligence agencies were freeing Nazi and Japanese war criminals from prison and exploiting their talents to neutralize labor unions, student groups and other left-wing organizations.

Though the National Archives report deals with ex-Nazis in Europe, a similar program was underway in Japan where war criminals such as right-wing yakuza gangsters Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa were freed and allowed to become important political figures in Japan and later internationally by supporting a global crusade against communism.

In the 1960s, Kodama and Sasakawa joined with Rev. Moon and two right-wing dictators, Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-shek and South Korea’s Park Chung Hee, to create the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), which also brought in right-wing leaders from Latin America and Europe, including ex-Nazis and neo-Nazis, according to authors Scott and Jon Lee Anderson in their landmark 1986 book, Inside the League.

So, with the Cocaine Coup in 1980, Barbie not only closed the circle, bringing together death-squad commanders, ex-Nazis, neo-Nazis and various sociopaths from around the globe, but he helped ensure that drug proceeds would be available to fund right-wing causes in the future.

“Hitler’s Shadow,” in effect, tells the first chapter of this right-wing restoration as U.S. intelligence agencies turned to former Nazi officials and SS officers to counter the perceived greater threat from the Soviet Union and Communist groups in Europe.

“Gestapo officers, who also held ranks in the SS, were in the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps’s automatic arrest category after the war,” the report said. “Later, CIC used former Gestapo officers to garner useful intelligence for the postwar period on everything from German right-wing movements to underground communist organizations. Intelligence officers often overlooked the significant role Gestapo officers played in the murder of Jews, POWs, and the political enemies of the Nazis.”

The report notes that “approximately 1,200 newly released files relate to the penetration of German Communist activities and specifically to ‘Project Happiness,’ the CIC’s codename for counterintelligence operations against the KPD,” the German Communist Party.

Though Barbie notorious for personally torturing French partisans during the war may be the best known ex-Gestapo officer recruited by the CIC, others had similar histories.

For instance, Anton Mahler was the chief interrogator of Hans Scholl, a leader of the White Rose, a Munich-based student organization that secretly passed out leaflets urging Adolf Hitler’s overthrow and decrying German apathy in the face of Hitler’s crimes. Hans and his sister Sophie Scholl were convicted of high treason and beheaded in February 1943.

Mahler also served in Einsatzgruppe B in occupied Belarus as the group slaughtered more than 45,000 people, most of them Jews, the report said. Nevertheless, CIC deployed Mahler as an informant starting in February 1949 and soon made him a full-time employee.

Regarding Barbie, the report builds on a 1983 investigation by a Justice Department investigator who confirmed suspicions that U.S. intelligence had worked with and protected this hunted war criminal who was accused of executing 4,000 people and shipping 7,000 Jews to concentration camps.

“In the spring of 1947 a CIC agent named Robert S. Taylor from CIC Region IV (Munich) recruited Klaus Barbie, the one-time Gestapo Chief of Lyon (194244),” the new report said. “Barbie helped run a counterintelligence net named ‘Büro Petersen’ which monitored French intelligence.

“In 1948 Barbie helped the CIC locate former Gestapo informants. In 194950, he penetrated German Communist Party (KPD) activities in CIC Region XII (Augsburg). He continued to work for the CIC in return for protection against French war crimes charges.”

Ratline to Bolivia

The story of Barbie’s escape to South America with the CIC’s collaboration was addressed in the 1983 report by Allan A. Ryan Jr., head of the Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations. Ryan’s 218-page report said that in 1951, the CIC helped Barbie evade French authorities and flee over a “ratline” to Bolivia.

Ryan said that a half dozen CIC officers participated in the cover-up of Barbie’s identity and excused their actions by claiming that the French arrest of Barbie could jeopardize the security of other CIC operations. To get Barbie to Bolivia, the CIC officers used a ratline run by a Croatian priest, Father Krunoslav Draganovich, Ryan wrote.

Ryan said the Central Intelligence Agency later rebuffed suggestions that Barbie be reactivated in the 1960s, but Barbie using the name Altmann held an official position with a state-owned shipping company that allowed him to move freely and even to travel to the United States. [For more on Ryan’s report, see Time magainzse, Time magazine, Aug. 29, 1983]

More significantly, Barbie became a figure in Bolivian intelligence and used that perch to coordinate with other right-wing intelligence services around the continent that were engaged in Operation Condor, a program of assassinating suspected subversives and other dissidents.

In the 1970s, these intelligence agencies had teamed up to give their assassination squads regional and even global reach, including the murder of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker on the streets of Washington in 1976.

For the Cocaine Coup in 1980, Barbie recruited Argentina’s feared intelligence service along with young neo-Nazis from Europe. The World Anti-Communist League arranged support from Moon and other Asian rightists.

For years, Moon had been sinking down roots in South America, especially in Uruguay after right-wing military dictators seized power there in 1973. Moon also cultivated close ties with dictators in Argentina, Paraguay and Chile, reportedly ingratiating himself with the juntas by helping the regimes buy weapons and by channeling money to allied right-wing organizations.

“Relationships nurtured with right-wing Latin Americans in the [World Anti-Communist] League led to acceptance of the [Unification] Church’s political and propaganda operations throughout Latin America,” the Andersons wrote in Inside the League.

“As an international money laundry, the Church tapped into the capital flight havens of Latin America. Escaping the scrutiny of American and European investigators, the Church could now funnel money into banks in Honduras, Uruguay and Brazil, where official oversight was lax or nonexistent.”

Moon expanded his network of friends when Barbie helped pull together a right-wing alliance of Bolivian military officers and drug dealers for the Cocaine Coup. WACL associates, such as Alfredo Candia, coordinated the arrival of some of the paramilitary operatives from Argentina and Europe who would help out in the violent putsch.

Barbie, then better known as Altmann, was in charge of drawing up plans for the coup and coordinating with Argentine intelligence. One of the first Argentine intelligence officers to arrive was Lt. Alfred Mario Mingolla.

“Before our departure, we received a dossier on” Barbie, Mingolla later told German investigative reporter Kai Hermann. “There it stated that he was of great use to Argentina because he played an important role in all of Latin America in the fight against communism. From the dossier, it was also clear that Altmann worked for the Americans.”

The Cocaine Motive

As the coup took shape, Bolivian Col. Luis Arce-Gomez, the cousin of cocaine kingpin Roberto Suarez, also brought onboard neo-fascist terrorists such as Italian Stefano della Chiaie who had been working with the Argentine death squads. [See Cocaine Politics by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall]

Still a committed fascist, Barbie started a secret lodge, called Thule. During meetings, he lectured to his followers underneath swastikas by candlelight.

On June 17, 1980, in nearly public planning for the coup, six of Bolivia’s biggest traffickers met with the military conspirators to hammer out a financial deal for future protection of the cocaine trade. A La Paz businessman said the coming putsch should be called the “Cocaine Coup,” a name that would stick. [See Cocaine Politics]

Less than three weeks later, on July 6 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, U.S. undercover drug enforcement agent Michael Levine said he met with a Bolivian trafficker named Hugo Hurtado-Candia. Over drinks, Hurtado outlined plans for the “new government” in which his niece Sonia Atala, a major cocaine supplier, will “be in a very strong position.” [See Levine’s Big White Lie]

On July 17, the Cocaine Coup began, spearheaded by Barbie and his neo-fascist goon squad which was dubbed the “Fiancés of Death.”

“The masked thugs were not Bolivians; they spoke Spanish with German, French and Italian accents,” Levine wrote. “Their uniforms bore neither national identification nor any markings, although many of them wore Nazi swastika armbands and insignias.”

The slaughter was fierce. When the putschists stormed the national labor headquarters, they wounded labor leader Marcelo Quiroga, who had led the effort to indict former military dictator Hugo Banzer on drug and corruption charges. Quiroga “was dragged off to police headquarters to be the object of a game played by some of the torture experts imported from Argentina’s dreaded Mechanic School of the Navy,” Levine wrote.

“These experts applied their ‘science’ to Quiroga as a lesson to the Bolivians, who were a little backward in such matters. They kept Quiroga alive and suffering for hours. His castrated, tortured body was found days later in a place called ‘The valley of the Moon’ in southern La Paz.”

To DEA agent Levine back in Buenos Aires, it was soon clear “that the primary goal of the revolution was the protection and control of Bolivia’s cocaine industry. All major drug traffickers in prison were released, after which they joined the neo-Nazis in their rampage.

“Government buildings were invaded and trafficker files were either carried off or burned. Government employees were tortured and shot, the women tied and repeatedly raped by the paramilitaries and the freed traffickers.”

The fascists celebrated with swastikas and shouts of “Heil Hitler!” Hermann reported. Col. Arce-Gomez, a central-casting image of a bemedaled, pot-bellied Latin dictator, grabbed broad powers as Interior Minister. Gen. Luis Garcia Meza was installed as Bolivia’s new president.

The victory put into power a right-wing military dictatorship indebted to the drug lords. Bolivia became South America’s first narco-state.

Moon’s Throne

One of the first well-wishers arriving in La Paz to congratulate the new government was Moon’s top lieutenant (and former KCIA officer) Bo Hi Pak. The Moon organization published a photo of Pak meeting with the new strongman, General Garcia Meza. After the visit to the mountainous capital, Pak declared, “I have erected a throne for Father Moon in the world’s highest city.”

According to later Bolivian government and newspaper reports, a Moon representative invested about $4 million in preparations for the coup. Bolivia’s WACL representatives also played key roles, and CAUSA, one of Moon’s anti-communist organizations, listed as members nearly all the leading Bolivian coup-makers.

Soon, Colonel Luis Arce-Gomez, a coup organizer and the cousin of cocaine kingpin Roberto Suarez, went into partnership with big narco-traffickers, including Cuban-American smugglers based in Miami. Nazi war criminal Barbie and his young neo-fascist followers found new work protecting Bolivia’s major cocaine barons and transporting drugs to the Colombian border.

“The paramilitary units conceived by Barbie as a new type of SS sold themselves to the cocaine barons,” German journalist Hermann wrote. “The attraction of fast money in the cocaine trade was stronger than the idea of a national socialist revolution in Latin America.”

A month after the Cocaine Coup, General Garcia Meza participated in the Fourth Congress of the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation, an arm of the World Anti-Communist League. Also attending that Fourth Congress was WACL president Woo Jae Sung, a leading Moon disciple.

As the drug lords consolidated their power in Bolivia, the Moon organization expanded its presence, too. Hermann reported that in early 1981, war criminal Barbie and Moon leader Thomas Ward were seen together in apparent prayer.

On May 31, 1981, Moon representatives sponsored a CAUSA reception at the Sheraton Hotel’s Hall of Freedom in La Paz. Moon’s lieutenant Bo Hi Pak and Bolivian strongman Garcia Meza led a prayer for President Ronald Reagan’s recovery from an assassination attempt.

In his speech, Bo Hi Pak declared, “God had chosen the Bolivian people in the heart of South America as the ones to conquer communism.”

Flush with Cash

In the early 1980s, cocaine kingpin Suarez his coffers now overflowing with cash invested more than $30 million in various right-wing paramilitary operations, including the Contra forces in Central America, according to U.S. Senate testimony in 1987 by an Argentine intelligence officer, Leonardo Sanchez-Reisse.

Sanchez-Reisse testified that the Suarez drug money was laundered through front companies in Miami before going to Central America. There, Argentine intelligence officers, including Sanchez-Reisse and other veterans of the Cocaine Coup, trained the fledgling Contra forces.

But by late 1981, the cocaine taint of Bolivia’s military junta was so deep and the corruption so pervasive that U.S.-Bolivian relations were stretched to the breaking point. “The Moon sect disappeared overnight from Bolivia as clandestinely as they had arrived,” Hermann reported.

The Cocaine Coup leaders soon found themselves on the run, too. Interior Minister Arce-Gomez was extradited to Miami and was sentenced to 30 years in prison for drug trafficking. Drug lord Suarez got a 15-year prison term. General Garcia Meza became a fugitive from a 30-year sentence imposed on him in Bolivia for abuse of power, corruption and murder.

SS veteran Barbie was returned to France to face a life sentence for war crimes. He died in 1991 at the age of 77.

But Moon’s organization suffered few negative repercussions from its role in the Cocaine Coup. By the early 1980s, flush with seemingly unlimited funds, Moon had moved on to promoting himself as a key friend of the new Republican administration in Washington.

A guest at Reagan’s First Inauguration, Moon made his organization useful to the new President and to Vice President George H.W. Bush, who would later become a paid speaker for Moon’s organization. Where Moon got his cash was not a mystery that American conservatives were eager to solve.

“Some Moonie-watchers even believe that some of the business enterprises are actually covers for drug trafficking,” wrote Scott and Jon Lee Anderson.

While Moon’s representatives have refused to detail how they’ve sustained their far-flung activities including many businesses that insiders say lose money Moon’s spokesmen have denied recurring allegations about profiteering off illegal trafficking in weapons and drugs.

In a typical response to a gun-running question by the Argentine newspaper, Clarin, Moon’s representative Ricardo DeSena responded, “I deny categorically these accusations and also the barbarities that are said about drugs and brainwashing.” [Clarin, July 7, 1996]

Nevertheless, Moon’s organization did its best to disrupt the work of U.S. investigative reporters and government investigators looking into the connections between the drug trade and right-wing paramilitary operations such as the Nicaraguan Contras.

In the mid-1980s, for instance, when journalists and congressional investigators began probing the evidence of Contra-connected drug trafficking, they came under attack from Moon’s Washington Times. An Associated Press story that I co-wrote with Brian Barger about a Miami-based federal probe into gun- and drug-running by the Contras was disparaged in an April 11, 1986, front-page Washington Times article with the headline: “Story on [contra] drug smuggling denounced as political ploy.”

When Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, uncovered additional evidence of Contra-drug trafficking, the Washington Times denounced him, too. The newspaper published articles depicting Kerry’s probe as a wasteful political witch hunt. “Kerry’s anti-contra efforts extensive, expensive, in vain,” declared the headline of one Times article on Aug. 13, 1986.

Despite the attacks, Kerry’s Contra-drug investigation eventually concluded that a number of Contra units were implicated in the cocaine trade.

“It is clear that individuals who provided support for the contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers,” Kerry’s investigation stated in a report issued April 13, 1989.

Mysterious Contra Backer

In 1998, CIA’s Inspector General Frederick Hitz confirmed the earlier allegations of extensive cocaine trafficking by the Contras, including significant ties to Bolivia’s traffickers. Hitz also cited a partially redacted document referring to a “religious” group cooperating with the Contra-cocaine trade.

“There are indications of links between [a U.S. religious organization] and two Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary groups,” read an Oct. 22, 1982, cable from the office of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. “These links involve an exchange in [the United States] of narcotics for arms.”

In 1982, the CIA quickly shut down any further reporting on this drug deal, citing the role of U.S. citizens. “In light of the apparent participation of U.S. persons throughout, agree you should not pursue the matter further,” CIA headquarters wrote on Nov. 3, 1982.

During the Inspector General’s investigation, Hitz conducted a follow-up interview, with Contra-connected drug trafficker Renato Pena, who described the redacted U.S. religious organization as a Contra “political ally that provided only humanitarian aid to Nicaraguan refugees and logistical support for contra-related rallies, such as printing services and portable stages.”

Moon’s religious-political groups, some based in the United States, were extremely active supporting the Contras in the early 1980s, suggesting that Moon’s Washington Times might have had more than an ideological reason to attack investigators exploring Contra drug trafficking.

To this day, the Washington Times remains a reliably right-wing voice in the U.S. capital. [Moon died on Sept. 3, 2012.]

Still, the CIA’s shielding of the name of that “religious organization” and similar protective behavior represented a continuation of a long-standing pattern in which U.S. intelligence covered up for right-wing and neo-Nazi criminality, a dark history that began with the likes of Klaus Barbie and has extended “Hitler’s Shadow” to modern times.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

[siravalondulac]

paladin era dashboard simulator

(from this asoiaf fic)

🦋 harren-of-the-hal Follow

so when the golden paladin steals from a lord she's "a hero" and "our saviour" but when i do it i am "a wanted criminal"

🛞 darryofdarryofdarry Follow

they did also pursue her for being a criminal. not to be mean but that is a pretty big part of the songs. that she is a wanted criminal

1,875 notes

🐝 tridents-ruby Follow

🐉 vanceofatranta ☑️✅ Follow

this is "phony king of west'ros" erasure

89,697 notes

🍇 sallymydance Follow

view from my window

🍇 sallymydance Follow

lord toadface just burned it down. fml

4 notes

🥬 saltpants Follow

the golden paladin is in my town and i don't know why everyone is so obsessed with her. she's just some guy

🔮 witchqueen130 Follow

ask her to sing you something

🔮 witchqueen130 Follow

op it's been one week are you ok

⛵️ seaguard-against-those-iron-bastards Follow

i think she killed him

🥬 saltpants Follow

i have... seen... things...

6,984 notes

🎤 songs-endorsed-by-golden-paladin Follow

🐛 wigglestone Follow

oh shut up, when did she sing this northern trash

🎤 songs-endorsed-by-golden-paladin Follow

LITERALLY LAST WEEK AT MY LOCAL INN

🎤 songs-endorsed-by-golden-paladin Follow

also 169.39.239.44 robb stark knows your location

836 notes

🦄 nimueandstarlight Follow

“average person burns 3 villages a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person burns 0 villages per year. Butcher Ben, who lives in cave & burns over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

374,645 notes

🌖 g0ld3n-pallad1n Follow

i hope the paladin steps on me

🐓 whenttheycame Follow

see, and that is the problem with today's youth. there is absolutely no awareness towards real-world issues and politics anymore, so much so that a majority of you are obsessing over an actual terrorist. and if you're not careful, lord lannister and lord vypren will punish you for supporting her

🦀 crabcrabcrabcrabcrab Follow

"lord lannister" "lord vypren" just say you want to get fucked by them and move on

🌖 g0ld3n-pallad1n Follow

i know someone else i want to get fucked by

36,245 notes

🍒 tumble-mycherrycross Follow

my liege's daughter is constantly playing these weird ass "paladin" songs. all day. at full volume. if this doesn't stop soon i might have to do a jaehaerys

🍒 tumble-mycherrycross Follow

while it is very sad she has been kidnapped, i am glad over the pause in music

🍒 tumble-mycherrycross Follow

oh no

6 notes

🐎 horse-nation Follow

the paladin just visited stone hedge. i think i know who she would choose @ blackwoody

🐦‍⬛ blackwoody Follow

she just threatened to kill your cousin

🐎 horse-nation Follow

and then flirted with another, you're not winning this

254,024 notes

❣️ rubysford Follow

my favourite genre of lord is the one absolutely obsessed with their lady wife. nothing can beat that

🔪 henrixdenrix Follow

benjiamin vypren and the golden paladin

❣️ rubysford Follow

what. what do you mean by that. what intel do you have that us lowborn are unaware of

92,457 notes

[mitchipedia]

Writer Zadie Smith and journalist Ezra Klein on connections between a 19th Century British huckster and Trump, emotions vs. rationality, wokeness, identity, how social media and other online spaces “seriously modify” our minds, loneliness and more

Smith and Klein discuss her recent novel “The Fraud,” which is based on the Tichborne trial, a real incident in 19th Century Britain where an Australian butcher claimed to be the heir to the rich estate of an English nobleman who had been lost at sea. The British working classes flocked to support the butcher, even though he was obviously a fraud.

Klein writes:

I didn’t expect this novel about a trial in 19th-century London to be so resonant with 21st-century America. But Smith has said Trump and populism were front of mind when she wrote it, and you can feel it in the book, as she explores the Tichborne trial. [The butcher] built a huge movement of passionate supporters who utterly flummoxed the day’s elites.”

The discussion goes a long way toward explaining Trump’s appeal, which baffles me because Trump is obviously not the man he claims to be, or that many of his supporters claim him to be. Trump is obviously a failed businessman, reality show star and disaster of a President who left the economy in tatters and hundreds of thousands dead. But his supporters lap up his act — just as 19th Century English people did for their fraud.

Klein and Smith also talk about the role of emotion in politics — how rationalists scoff at emotion (“facts don’t care about your feelings”) but in fact, emotions are a valuable guide to thinking.

Also, on “wokeness,” Smith says:

I just don’t even recognize the category. If I’m teaching “Pride and Prejudice,” it’s not a battle between woke thought and unwoke thought. I’m only interested in truth.

To me, there is no friction and no battle between teaching the beauty and artistry of Austen’s novels – discussing where Darcy’s money comes from, which is most certainly the Caribbean, understanding the political situation in England in the 1810s. Those things happen simultaneously. The working-class movement, which is off to the side in that novel, the complacency of the middle classes in that novel, the artistry of Jane Austen.

I don’t take the bait. I don’t accept the argument in the first place that I have two kinds of students who are in some kind of football game of ideas, and if one wins, the other loses. That’s not how I teach literature. That’s not how I think of history. That’s not how I think of the relationship between Black and white people. So I don’t engage, because I think it’s a bait and that what you’re meant to do in response to it is move further and further to the right in response to this boogeyman.

This is exactly how I approach old movies and novels. I disagree with Smith on a minor point: There is friction, but it’s part of the experience. (My interests are less highbrow than Smith’s. I watch old Hollywood movies and re-read midcentury science fiction. Midcentury American pop culture was far more segregated and gender-defined than today, and it’s reflected in the pop culture of the period.)

Much of what we label “wokeness” is “people who thoughtlessly considered themselves at the center of history, culture, would be made to look at the world another way,” Smith said. In other words, in the West, being a white man was default, and everybody else was different. Now, everybody is different, and some folks who were accustomed to being the default are struggling with the change.

Klein alludes to a point he’s made in the past — that when we bemoan divisiveness and identity politics and yearn for a return to a time of harmony, we’re forgetting that in the past we had consensus because many people were simply left out of the room. Congressional representatives got along with each other because they were almost all older white men.

Smith notes that people are multi-dimensional. The “straitjacket” of identity politics is “something that nobody really wants. Sometimes it’s needed politically. We absolutely need to gather in our identity groups sometimes for our freedoms, for our civil rights. There’s absolutely no doubt about that.” But most of the time, we want to be ourselves.

And those multiple dimensions are a balm for polarism, because we often find common ground even with people of other races, religions, sexuality, etc.

Smith talks about how social media and smartphones change who you are. She and her husband do not have smartphones and she says she’s happier for it.

When you wake up in the morning and you turn to your social app, you are being instructed on what issue of the day is what to be interested in. The news has always played some element in doing that, but this is total. And it’s not even, to me, the content of those thoughts. There’s a lot of emphasis put on the kind of politics expressed on these platforms to the right or to the left.

Social media drives us to think there are two and only two sides to every argument, the right and left, and they must be in conflict with each other.

I keep thinking about a comment my Congressional representative, Sara Jacobs, has made at least twice that I know of. She is far Left — which is a big part of why I support her. She divides her Republican colleagues into two groups: Those who are interested in governing, and the others. She says she gladly works with conservative Republicans who are interested in governing, and often finds common ground with them.

Smith says that everybody who went online in 2008 has been “seriously modified” by technology.

And that’s OK. All mediums modify you. Books modify you, TV modifies you, radio modifies you. The social life of a 16th-century village modifies you. But the question becomes: Who do you want to be modified by, and to what degree? …

And when I look at the people who have designed these things – what they want, what their aims are, what they think a human being is or should be – the humans I know and love, this machinery is not worthy of them. That’s the best way I can put it.

And I speak as someone who grew up as an entirely TV-addicted human. I love TV. I love reading. Modification is my bread and butter. And when the internet came, I was like, hallelujah. Finally, we’ve got a medium which isn’t made by the man or centralized. We’re just going to be talking to each other, hanging out with each other, peer to peer. It’s going to be amazing. That is not the internet that we have. That is not what occurred.

I’m skeptical of individual technological solutions for the ills of being online. (With one exception: Keep notifications to a minimum. You don’t need to be notified of Facebook comments, etc., when you’re not in the app. Switch 99% of your smartphone notifications off.) Getting rid of smartphones won’t make us better people.

Klein recommends Marshall McLuahan and Neil Postman, “media theorists from the rise of the television age.”

And the things they were saying television would do to us and do to our culture are right. There’s a straightforward argument in Neil Postman’s great book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” where he says that the thing television is going to do to politics is make us believe politics should always be entertaining, and that’s going to make politics a space dominated by entertainers. And like here we literally are, with a reality television superstar running for president, having already been president once before. For better and for worse, they saw it all coming, and they described a world way less warped and deranged by all this than the one we actually live in. If you went back and told them what happened, I think they would look at you with their mouth agape.

And that is perhaps a part of Trump’s success. His supporters don’t support the man. They support the character he plays. Or the character that they perceive him to be playing. It’s like a cult TV show where the lead actor is bad but the fans love the character anyway.

Additionally, Klein and Smith talk about loneliness and aging, and how that’s particularly hard for men. Klein reads a passage from Smith’s novel, “The Fraud,” where one of the characters, Eliza, thinks at the end of her life: “When she was young she had wanted to know everyone, touch everyone, be everyone, go everywhere! Now she thought that if you truly loved – and were truly loved by! – two people in your lifetime, you had every right to think yourself a Midas.”

[umbranocturnes]

Valerius Draculya

Character introduction for my OC Valerius the second main character of the novel series I have been developing for many years now behind the scene. I really enjoy doing these character portraits even though they are repetitive. I am posting some information below about him if you would like to read! There is also a second version of this portrait where you can see proper colors without the lighting effects.

TW/CW: World War I & II, Real history, mentions of nazis/fascism.

Valerius has an extensive history, perhaps some of the longest in my story.

Background

As a mortal man he was quite literally Dracula. Born in December 3rd of 1431 he had a long and strife filled life for a man of his time and possessed a long running list of enemies. He became one of the most notable rulers of his time and depending on who you ask he was a ruthless butcher or a just ruler. During this time Setheroth Noctus became his closest advisor and confidant. Having known each other since childhood, and having been raised to inherit the position as right hand to Valerius as ruler, Setheroth was the only man he trusted fully with his life. The two were inseparable forces, riding into battle together and covering about all manor of political issues freely, they also grew a rather infamous reputation amongst their peers. They both die in battle trying to defend Valerius' kingdom which falls under the rule of another. Terrified that the two would come back from the dead and seek revenge Ottoman soldiers decapitate and dismember both Setheroth and Valerius in death, Setheroth would go on to be buried in a deep grave under a tree in a field, what happened to Valerius' body remains unknown.

Something curious happens after Valerius dies. Undead beings are given a choice when they are reformed into dead beings, to change themselves in ways that wouldn't have been possible in life and to even forget the memories of who they were in life. Valerius makes the choice to completely change his image, adopting the new name Valerius and burying most of the memories of his former life starting over new.

Victorian Era

Valerius returns to life as a vampire during the early Victorian Era where he lives utterly isolated away from society for decades, keeping to the ruins of his old strongholds and forests of shat was then Wallachia and Transylvania. Over the course of decades Valerius spent time educating himself on world history and 'modern' advancements in science, medicine, and language changes. He amassed collections of reading material and repaired one of the old fortresses he used to inhabit, taking up residence there. Having lived in isolation for many decades attempting to teach himself how to speak a few very rudimentary languages he begins to travel to different countries namely Germany and Autria-Hungary meeting other undead beings. He sets his mind on visiting and moving to Great Britain but being out of touch with the new laws now governing undead beings in society and their interactions with humans, he finds himself in trouble with a real estate agent, his wife and their friends. They chase him out of the country all the way back to his fortress and kill him for his crimes, however Valerius would not stay dead.

WWI

He awakens again in 1916 shortly after the Kingdom of Romania declares war on Austria-Hungary during the Great War. He fights alongside Romanian units for a long time careful not to reveal his identity. However, after taking extreme casualties and being one of the last of the unit left alive he leaves behind fighting alongside Romania and with great hesitation joins up with the British army resuming the fight now part of a different unit headed by Captain Sheridan Levingston and his Lieutenant Francis Rothwell. He will remain fighting alongside the British army until the end of WWI, growing close to the unit he was a part of despite some language barriers.

Following WWI Valerius falls on hard times, living in poverty in Britain due to the demobilization crisis. Being severely injured in the Great War and suffering trauma he once again isolates himself away from society taking up residence in a farmhouse in the countryside that had belonged to a soldier who died in the war. There he struggles to live off the land, scraping by without a job being unhirable in British society. Being a vampire Valerius requires blood to sustain himself, during the war it had been easy enough to obtain but following the war he's forced into stealing it from unsuspecting families in the countryside. When people start experiencing fatigue and illness in large numbers a young freelance doctor is forced to get to the bottom of it, Brahm Faulkner. Brahm along with some friends who were members of undead hate groups / hunting organizations came to the conclusion the illnesses were due to vampire attacks and Brahm tracked down Valerius to the old farmhouse.

Interwar Years & WWII

Brahm discovering that Valerius living in poverty and having fought in the Great War and even had medals to show for it doesn't have the heart to kill him. Instead Brahm offers to help him and Valerius accepts his offer coming to live with Brahm in his small flat. Brahm and Valerius become quite close as Brahm's friends cut him out for 'sparing the life of a monster'. Brahm teaches Valerius many things including how to drive, speak modern English, and the laws governing the undead that Valerius had been unaware of and breaking. Valerius eventually starts to assist Brahm with his medical practice running errands for him.

However, as fascism begins to rise into prominence and starts threatening peace in Europe in 1929 Valerius gets a unexpected visit from one of the men he served with during the Great War, Alfred Hackett. Alfred now working in intelligence asks Valerius for his help wanting him to become a spy for the government and go to Germany to keep watch on the newly forming Nazi party. Valerius agrees to it understanding the importance of the assignment and rejoins the army now as a spy and leaves for Germany in 1931. From then on Valerius stays in Germany infiltrating the ranks of the Nazi party reporting his findings back to Alfred in Britain. As war threatens Europe Valerius goes through officer's schooling and climbs the ranks of the Nazis ending up as the head of the undead sector for the army. This puts him in both a unique and precarious situation, placed perfectly to foil nazi plans from the inside saving the lives of allied soldiers and partisans alike. Valerius devotes himself to interfering with nazi plans throughout the war and handing over information to the allies.

Throughout the war he rewrites and interferes with battle plans so that they favor the allies, burns and loses information critical to axis plans, plants misinformation to confuse axis command, assassinates axis commanders, and conducts sabotage operations all in a effort to help the allies from behind enemy lines. He is joined by Setheroth Noctus in 1941 after reuniting under strange circumstances, and following his induction into the SOE, the organization Valerius was grandfathered into Setheroth assists him in his operations.

Random Facts:

Valerius has a lot of random medical knowledge from reading Brahm's medical notes from university.

The scar over Valerius' eye is from WWI he was gashed by a bayonet. He was also caught out in a gas attack and gave his mask to a human soldier. As a result he suffers permanent lung damage and has issues with them.

Valerius' hobby is working on vehicles having taken a liking to them as the technology progressed. He compares it to surgery but without all the risks. He does not allow anyone to drive his cars.

Valerius' main ability is to manipulate iron, he can manipulate it in varying amounts including traces of it present in blood. He can manipulate how it moves and use it as weapons.

Valerius' first language is 'vulgar Latin' as this was the precursor language to Romanian. He can also speak with varying degrees of success and fluency, Romanian, English, German, Turkish, Hungarian and some smaller more regionalized languages.

Valerius is a good cook but almost exclusively over an open fire. It takes him years to get acclimated to using a stove and still prefers to cook over open flame. He likes spicy foods or foods with a lot of flavor and cannot stand overly sweet things.

//Thanks for reading if you made it this far! Valerius is one of my favorite OCs and I enjoyed combining both military history and classic literature into his lore. I have always been obsessed with Dracula as a story, it's one of my favorites and has a lot of influence on my own story along with the anime Hellsing. This is another version of the image above with the proper colors.