#and have it be almost wholly unjustified

[sylwanin-was-right]

Quaritch's Redemption Arc Ideas

Tw: s**cide

Super hot take I think the only redemption arc that would be suitable for Quaritch is if he either serves as an anti-villain in a rougue position, or takes his own life. And I think his su*cide in particlar would punctuate the end of his role as an antagonist while hitting much commentary and criticism about the MID, war, trauma, racial supremacy, identity, imperialism, capitaosm, and settler colonialism, while being an appropriate end for an irredeemable villain.

I personally dont think it would be appropriate or make any sense for Quaritich to make a 180 in his personality and view the Na'vi as equals just because of his RECOM form. He treats his Na'vi form as an upgrade and recognizes that hes no longer truly himself as he's restarting from a certan point in his memories (he crushes his human skull and abandons his old body and speaks about his old self to Spider in 3rd person). But he ultimately see's other Na'vi as beneath him; his full allegience is with the RDA military, and in his last video log before transfer, he makes his RECOM body seem more akin to a vehicle than a new self, implying theres possibly multiple options for rebounds. In many ways, Quaritch has an arrogance and voracity that almost comes off as if he sees himself as invincible or immortal ("regroup in hell"), and his loyalty to the military seems impermeable as he will commit to the mission wholly and personally against the enemy.

Despite his allegiences and personality, I still think character can still be used to explore anti-military, anti-war, anti-colonial themes by making him anti-villain against the RDA in ways that retain his character's deeply supremacist, military loyal attitudes while also eroding his allegience to all of those things. I think this could best be represented by exploring how the capital driven transhumanist tech us used in the Avatar Program that makes him and his loyalty feel disposable and dishonored, and how experiments against humans make the supremacist attitudes against the Na'vi seem hypocritical to him in a way thats unjustified against humans.

Id want his identity crisis in his Na'vi body to be secondary to his challenged allegience to the RDA because while it would serve as a neat parallel to Spider's identity crisis, I think their isolation as Others among their seperate positions (Quaritch in the RDA, Soider among Jake and Neytiri's family) would be more interesting; Quartich's isolation as a rogue stuck in an alien body on an alien planet, or becoming an emotional mess among the RDA, whom he felt betrayed by, would serve to represent the greater message against the RDA and capitalism/colonialism as a whole.

Some ideas that would erode Quaritch's allegience to the RDA:

RDA manipulation of saved and uploaded human memories and consciousness - perhaps Quartich discovers or is involved in a classified operation about an experiment involving the manipulation and disection of people's memories for intel and archiving. Quaritch, having an identity crisis as a Na'vi-hating man in a Avatar body, finds this repulsive since he feels that experimenting is not only unsustainable (memories and consciousness erode with each copy), but unethical as it violates people's autonomy and puts soldiers in the same degrading "driver" position as vacant avatars. He questions whether or not his loss of memories was from manipulation and archiving, and quickly tries to be a whistleblower about the operation among the military (oerhaos during another mission or while he is discharged). But this is considered espionage by the RDA and he is targeted as a traitor. Quartich runs away rouge into Pandoran wilderness either alone or with a small team of defectors. This would explore anti-covert operations of the [U$] gov, anti-racism, and anti colonial themes through his character.

Discharge - Quartich gets discharged because of his failures amounted to extreme casulties, damage, and profit losses. He is met with many instances of speciesism/racism among the RDA in an experimental and underfunded veterans assistance program on Pandora that makes him feel neglected and disposable, despite his loyalty and instrumental role to the RDA. He feels he and the surviving RECOM and human soldiers from the ship battle are dishonored and recieve poor treatment despite their service. Quaritch advocates for the rights of RDA vets but is neglected as if an NPC because the RDA's vet program for RECOMs wasnt very developed, and the dead or wounded RECOMS werent considered to have the same protections as human vets. Quaritch either becomes an anti-villain rallying up defectors against the RDA to form their own faction against the mistreatment and eventually the RDA itself for the irrevocable damage done to them by the Avatar program or he commits su*cide due his identity crisis as a failed, disposable officier "cursed" in the body and failed treament of the RDA VA program. This explores themes of racism, anti-MID, anti-war, veterans mistreatment/trauma, veteran su*cide, etc

Revival - Quaritch is revived again in a new RECOM avatar, but is less himself than before and has severe PTSD. He thinks it unethical and unsustainable to constantly be copied into new bodies as his integrity is eroded away and the traumatic affects of war an consciousness and memory transfer are ignored. He is suggested by the RDA to either not worry about the effects of his PTSD and continue the copying to complete his mission (still being seen as valuable since he got to Jake; hes just hard to kill lol), be duscharged as an active duty officer and work a different rank (to train new commanders, etc), or take a MAiD style "euthanasia" where his consciousness is uploaded and archived artifically so he can be literally and figuratively immortalized for his service. He considers all options but finds out the RECOM program is an extension of the experimental horrors of the U$ MID, ehich he is familiar with because he's a former marine; the Avatar program is highly experimental with lifespan stability and health conditions of the RECOMs going unreported turn the personalities of soldiers as disposable tools. Quaritch lies and accepts remaining active duty and revived again if he dies to spy on officials for intel about the RECOM program. He discovers many disheartening things firsthand and intends to warn other soldiers but is caught eventually and targeted for espionage. He flees alone or with defectors, and they spend the time escaping the RDA while trying to rally the humans against these operations. Themes of racism, anti-MID, anti-war, veterans mistreatment/trauma, assisited s**cide/euthanasia, etc

Perhaps while Quartich is rouge because of his defecting, he becomes so isolated out in Pandora that he succumbs to disease, or animal attack. He is found by Jake, in a state too weak to fight, but he talks to him as his last words and reveals his supremacy, his spiraling, his and the RDA's betrayal to humans. His last words could be something about how he admired Jake's willingness to stand up against the RDA's when they made pawns out of people, and how he has nothing left even if he wanted to change. Quaritch either takes it all out on himself or dies after that in fromt of Jake (from exhaustion, etc). Explores themes of indvidualism vs. collectivism, identity crisis, s**cide, etc

[scrawnytreedemon]

Micolash and Arty!!

YOU KNOW ME

Micolash: THIS F UCKER HAS BEEN EATING MY BRAIN FOR THE LAST S I X MONTHS IT IS ONLY FAIR THAT I GET A BINGO ON HIM!!!

This guy. This fucking guy. This horrid, awful, howling mess of a guy with his nails-on-a-chalkboard voice and dead fucking stare.

He does well inillustrating the fucking insanity of the Church and TECHNICALLY he's fulfilled his role but I WANT M O R E !!! ALSO I AM S T I L L pissed about the Bloodborne fandom wiki having fuck all on him last I checked. Oh??? You're gonna mention his tenure at Byrgenwerth??? But not the fact he potentially FOUNDED MENSIS and almost certainly led it by time of the ritual????!?!? ARE YOU FUCKING K I D D I NG ME?!?!?

On one hand my characterisation of him meshes well with the wider interpretation but at the same time I am so picky and will throw a FIT over peope getting minor, subtle details wrong in a fic. In private, ofc~ I'm not a fucking cock, lmao.

Also??? What is UP with his fuckigngng MODEL DISCREPANCY??? LIke??? DID THEY EVEN LOOK?? We don't even have public CONCEPT ART for his face even though they MUST'VE S U R E LY drawn something up??!?!

Cutscene!Micolash? Creepy, dishevelled, if alright looking guy. Ingame!Mico? Albino frog crossed with the "WHEN WILL YOU LEARN" bread. Literally what is wrong with him. Eurgh. Makes my OCDtism face-aversion worse. -10000/10.

Gotta cut it off here before I fill a whole book's worth... But YEAH. Damn right he's a blorbo. Bingo well-earned.

Artorias: Artorias is a beautiful illustration about the simultaneous all-giving and yet hollowness of Lordran's valour. He has offered himself, blood, flesh, body and soul, for the protection of this realm, and it has consumed him. Everything about him, everything that made him who he was, gnawed off to this end.

I'm a bit iffy on the concept of, "oh, you actually saved Oolacile all along :) Lmao Artorias took credit. What a punk." I know I'm being facetious, but that's kinda what it feels like. It feels... Inserty, y'know? Our purpose, if any, is to link the Flame-- And it's not ours alone. That's what I like about Dark Souls, and Fromsoft games in general; it didn't have to be you. It was not preordained that you, O' player, would fix shit and save the day. There were others that came before you, greater in magnitude. And yet, that doesn't matter. You pick up the pieces. You sweep the ashes. You make bed for change.

Also I headcanon him as having a more North African bent to him. I think it goes well with his palette and the sun-themeing, and also I love projecting~ (mixed babes keep winning!)

---

Thank you for asking, Bug! Enjoy~

[blueelectricroom]

What we have in Barney Fife is a prototype. He is a fictional character against which characters with similar traits are measured—a gold standard.

As dreadfully wholesome and corny as many episodes of "The Andy Griffith Show" could be, there were about three dozen that transcended sitcom flaws and clichés, thanks to the inspired purity of demeanor, character, and behavior that Don Knotts imbued in the character of Fife. It was a considerable act of total creation and control, since by all accounts Knotts was (not counting his height and weight) completely unlike Barney Fife.

“Barne,” as Sheriff Andy Taylor usually called him, was a zealot fighting for sundry causes—invariably unjustified ones if they existed at all. He was strung as tight as a banjo string, and consequently Barney was easily offended, excited, or goaded into responses—reactions, really—that were, in type or proportion (or both) always wholly inappropriate. The diminutive know-it-all frequently held forth on topics about which he had zero insight or experience; indeed, the inventory of subjects he did not quite grasp was encyclopedic. When challenged on a "fact," Barney escalated his didactic interludes to blustering rage, which quickly subsided into one of his more effortless postures—the all-day sulk. Pushed far enough, Deputy Fife would simply resign from the department, after which Andy calmly slipped the letter of resignation into a file drawer already stuffed with the simmering deputy's previous retirement missives.

As a first-order turkey neck, Barney was the quintessential 98-pound weakling, with a mouth almost weekly writing checks that his frame could not hope to cash. He fancied himself a ladies' man, a man's man, and a lawman of considerable skill; he might have been an ace crime fighter had he not been (in his mind) thwarted by the less-than-modern techniques that the Mayberry Sheriff's Department employed to battle the criminal underworld that Barney was certain lurked in the Carolina mountains.

According to Barney, Mayberry residents merely overlooked his potential, unfairly focusing instead on the deputy’s ineptitude with a gun, a patrol car, an unruly crowd, or those keys to the holding cells. His unhappiness with everyone’s misapprehension bordered on cosmic desperation. In short, this swaggering buffoon was what results when unearned confidence puts on a uniform, or when total delusion pins on a badge. Who could stand to be around him?

Apparently, everyone, because Barney Fife was, is, and always will be adored by anyone who has ever seen the show. His behavior may have consistently called for ridicule, but the key to his likability was that he never earned our scorn. Just as Don Knotts' admirable control of this comic figure transcended television's inherent lack of sophistication, some of Barney's inherent traits of character transcended his ridiculous demeanor.

He was, above all, loyal, and his unflinching defense of Sheriff Taylor's son, Opie, invariably made Barney look taller and larger than he actually was (recall the episode involving school bullies who were extorting Opie's milk money). Barney often interceded when he thought Andy was being too hard on the boy, and woe unto those who insulted or otherwise slighted Aunt Bea.   Anyone wishing to assert a critical remark about the town of Mayberry will have to run that assessment by Barney. Good luck to them.

It's true that Barney was a world-class braggart, but when the townsfolk lauded him for some good deed or act of courage, the otherwise cocky deputy collapsed into embarrassed modesty. He deeply craved the approbation of his peers, but upon receiving it he was suddenly too shy to exploit his new standing. Barney might stare down an insult, but he couldn’t make eye contact with a sincere compliment. Yes, he foolishly scanned the horizon for crimes and misdemeanors that simply didn’t exist. But he was keenly alert to any authentic injustice, and should some unfairness or unkindness emerge against friend or neighbor, the needle on Barney’s moral compass swung harder than anyone’s toward righting that wrong.

At the end of any episode, what we understand about Deputy Fife is that he simply tried too hard. When his friends faced a crisis, Barney may have been the first to draw up an insane plan or the first on the scene to make a colossal blunder—but he was the first on the scene, nonetheless. There are worse types in the world, fictional and otherwise.

[herinsectreflection]

Faith, Buffy, Dreams, and Secret Kisses

This is one of my favourite scenes in the series. Partially because it’s just my personal jam - I admit that I am Fuffy trash, and I have a real love for dream sequences. Buffy had great dream sequences, but this is where they take a step up. It’s a precursor to Restless in this regard and others. It feels weighty and meaningful, but also a little off and incongruent with itself, in that way that only dreams are. Lines are exchanged that don’t quite follow as direct responses to each other, clashing in interesting ways. It’s packed with foreshadowing, metaphor, and other juicy things. And beyond that, it’s a conclusion to Buffy’s entire arc this season about dealing with her shadow self, and it leads to what I think is the single most romantic moment in the series. I want to talk about this scene and unpack some of what I think it’s saying.

First of all, let’s talk about the setting. We’re in Faith’s apartment, bought for her by the Mayor. Essentially, the villain’s lair, where the two Big Bads plotted their evil plans against our hero. But it’s also a set where we saw most of the bonding and semi-familial love between Faith and the Mayor. A place of both evil and love. And for Buffy, a place of trauma. This is where she makes the decision and takes the action to kill another human. I don’t think she was unjustified in doing so, but it’s still an immensely traumatic act for her, and I think she loses a little part of herself when she does it. The location is very much a reflection of Faith, and Buffy’s relationship to her. I don’t think Buffy loves Faith romantically at this point, but I think she cares about her, and remains concerned about her, and I think it’s fair to call that a kind of love. Faith is also evil, a figure of betrayal but also temptation to the “dark side”. And she is also a figure of trauma, clear deep-seated trauma that she fails to resolve, and just gets worse over the course of the season. Buffy is essentially inside her own relationship to Faith, inside a stadium of sin, trauma, love, and shattered glass. Faith looks out of the broken window that they fought through, and we are reminded that their relationship too is broken, unrepaired, littered with the detritus of conflict. There’s no going back from this - even in dreams that window remains broken, and their relationship will always have this damage.

The props too are an interesting choice. TPN’s video on Graduation Day pointed out the painting of a giant snake with a man’s head on the wall. More conflicting feelings here - the Mayor is Faith’s closest connection to humanity and love right now, and also the reason for her betrayal of Buffy. Her redemption and damnation. We also see boxes of various things piled up - including the crossbow that Faith stole in Bad Girls. The image of packing up a room into boxes makes me think of moving away as a student. We must remember that Buffy is graduating today, on the verge of packing her life away and taking it somewhere else, and this reminds us of that.

The first thing of real substance we see is the cat, which jumps up on Faith’s bed. This is one of the aspects of this dream in direct conversation with Restless, where a cat symbolises the Slayer - a specifically feminine, solitary predator that stalks the night. In Restless, we cut to Miss Kitty stalking the camera from shots of the First slayer stalking Willow. Here though, the intercut images are between the cat and Faith, lying bruised and helpless in a hospital. The cat (and the Slayer) is, as far as Buffy is concerned, not a danger but a creature in need of help.

Buffy: "Who's going to look after him?" Faith: "It's a she. And aren't these things supposed to take care of themselves?"

They’re very clearly talking about their respective approaches to slaying, and to life in general. Buffy tries to encourage ties to humanity, telling Faith back in Revelations that she is on Faith’s side. Faith retorts that she alone is on her side, and she repeats that sentiment here. But Buffy is obviously proved right - Faith is lying almost dead because she rejected all help and care.

Buffy: "A higher power guiding us?" Faith: "I'm pretty sure that's not what I meant."

If the cat is the Slayer in this conversation, then the “higher power guiding us” could refer to the Watchers. It makes sense that Buffy delivers this line with a little wry smile, given that she’s just resigned herself from the Council. This allows a little bit of ambiguity in their debate - Buffy has taken on a little bit of Faith’s advice in emancipating herself and so making herself as the Slayer more self-reliant. The show agrees that that too is the right move. A little independence is good and healthy. What Faith means when she talks about “taking care of herself” is not self-reliance or independence, but emotional hardness and self-marooning to avoid hurt. This is something that Buffy will continue to struggle with for the rest of the series. Faith is kind of right when she states that the Slayer is alone and must take care of herself, and it’s up to Buffy to find a healthy way of dealing with that.

"Oh yeah. Miles to go - Little Miss Muffet counting down from 7-3-0.”

The scene shifts a little, and we get some foreshadowing for Dawn (Little Miss Muffet), and for Buffy’s death (730 days from now). This is done with the the lighting too, as Faith faces the camera, and the light of the dawn hits her face, in a shot extremely similar to the end of The Gift.

Interestingly, Faith is repeatedly used in this way. In This Year’s Girl, Faith talks about “little sis coming” as she and Buffy make the bed in her first dream. In Restless, that scene gets a callback (”Faith and I just made that bed”), in a scene that ends with the most anvilicious foreshadowing (”Be back before dawn”), as well as a callback to the 7-3-0 line (”Oh, that clock’s all wrong”). In Graduation Day, Faith refers to Buffy as being “dressed up in big sister’s clothes”, however to me Faith has always felt more as being the “little sister” in this relationship. She looks up to Buffy yet is also deeply jealous of her. She wants to be Buffy, to have her friends, her life, the love of her mother. She’s kind of a precursor to Dawn in this respect, so it makes sense that she’s a prophet for her coming.

Slayers having prophetic dreams is well-established, so it makes sense that a dream shared by two slayers would allow them to prophesise a little further ahead in time. Faith hints at this, remarking "Sorry, it's my head. A lot of new stuff.". You have to wonder what other “new stuff” Faith is becoming aware of. Perhaps a new perspective on everything Buffy’s been saying all season. Sharing a mind temporarily is often helpful in seeing another’s point of view. Faith does seem unusually thoughtful as she looks out of the broken window and remarks "They are never going to fix this, are they?".

This is perhaps my favourite line in the scene. It’s a slight mislead, as it comes right as we get a flash of the cat-as-Faith in the foreground. So we assume it’s a reference to her own injuries, which she is expected to never recover from.

But the Faith that’s talking isn’t looking at her own body. She’s looking at the broken window. The symbol for her broken relationship with Buffy. She has become us, the audience, looking at Buffy and Faith and saying “boy, those crazy kids really are never going to work it out, are they?”. It’s true for Faith, it’s true for Faith&Buffy, and it’s true for Buffy herself. When that knife entered Faith’s gut, all three were irrevocably changed forever. You can never put back the life you had before after it’s broken like that. All you can do is take what you can work with, and try to make something new.

Buffy: "What about you?" Faith: "Scar tissue. It fades. It all fades." Buffy confirms that the previous line was not about Faith specifically by asking “what about you”, in a lovely expression of concern. After everything, Buffy does still care about Faith. Faith’s reply of “scar tissue” is an obvious reference to the literal wound she is now carrying (emphasised by the shot of the knife that Buffy sees afterwards), but it’s interesting that she gestures to her face when she says this. It feels like a reference to her entire self. If we accept Faith as Buffy’s shadow self, then “scar tissue” is an accurate description of her. As Buffy herself says, Faith is who she could be if her life was worse (or, perhaps, who she would be if she allowed the tragedies of her life to rule her). She is the part of Buffy’s unconscious self that is revealed after receiving violence. She is the physical proof of trauma. The self that remains after pain. 

Buffy: “Is this your mind or mine?” Again, hitting that note of symbiosis; emphasising how inextricably tied these two characters are. The lines between their psyches are blurred to the point of no longer existing. This is such an intimate moment, almost sexual, with Buffy and Faith unable to tell where their own mind ends and another begins. Imagine the intimacy of that - entering another’s mental space and allowing them into yours, so wholly that they become one and the same. It becomes a mutual recognition of unity and shared pain, and an affirmation of the eternal divisions between them.

I love the ambiguity of the “human weakness” line too. One way we are invited to read it is that Faith is doing a heel-face turn, and intentionally giving Buffy the means to defeat the Mayor. But we’re not allowed anything that easy, to wash away Faith’s sins with a quick redemption before the climax. Faith has miles to go before she can achieve that. It’s just as likely that Faith is talking about herself, and the human weakness that led her down a dark path, or that Buffy is talking about Faith through the Faith in her head, or Buffy is just working it out on her own, etc, etc. This is the information that saves the world, and I like that it remains an unknown. A permanent “maybe”, just as Buffy and Faith’s relationship is. 

Buffy: "How are you going to fit all this stuff?" Faith: "Not gonna. It's yours." Buffy: "I can't use all of this!" Faith: "Just take what you need. You're ready?"

As the scene reaches its climax, we see the most obvious recitation of the season’s themes. S3 is about Buffy coming into conflict with her own shadow self, and here the show tells us how she does that - by taking what she needs. I mentioned earlier that we saw the crossbow from Bad Girls, from the “want/take/have” scene. Here, Faith is telling her the same thing, but in a more healthy way. She cannot just hedonistically consume everything like a crazed id-monster, but she also cannot deny herself things that she needs. 

Most importantly, the “stuff” they are referring to is Faith’s, but as Faith says, it’s also Buffy’s. Everything that Faith is, Buffy is too, because she is her shadow self. Buffy must recognise this, accept it, and incorporate the shadow self into her own identity. She cannot be consumed by the shadow self and simply become Faith, allowing her shadow to consume her conscious personality (”how are you going to fit all this stuff?”). Instead she must recognise her dark mirror, and take the healthy parts, and integrate them into herself as an individual (”take what you need”).

It is at this point of healing and merging between Buffy’s self and shadow self that Faith reaches out, almost touches her in an action that feels so tender, and Buffy becomes conscious. She literally becomes her conscious self by making peace with her dream (unconscious self). She stands up, and walks over to Faith’s bed. This is the moment that their relationship all season has been leading to. She leans over, and places a kiss on her forehead.

This kiss is everything. It’s an act of thanks, as Buffy realises Faith may have given her what she needs to save the day (at the cost of Faith’s one familial figure). It is an act of service, as Buffy literally gives Faith the kiss she asked for when they started to fight in Graduation Day. It could also be an act of forgiveness. We know from I Only Have Eyes For You that forgiveness, Buffy learns, is done not because somebody deserves it, but because they need it. Faith at this point probably does not deserve it, does not want forgiveness (she wants to be punished), nor can she recognise it in her current state, but Buffy gives it anyway, adding another layer of heartbreak. It is given not for any purpose, but for its own sake.

Above all though, this is an act of recognition. We must consider the previous forehead-kiss that these two shared, back in Enemies, and Faith’s words directly before: “What are you gonna do, B, kill me? You become me. You're not ready for that, yet.” And in Graduation Day, just after Buffy stabs her: “You did it. You killed me.” And her words in the dream, just a few seconds ago: “You're ready?"

Now I don’t think that Buffy stabbing Faith to save Angel is morally equivalent to Faith voluntarily killing people to help an evil guy become a big snake. I don’t think the show wants us to think that either. But the line is firmly blurred. Angel says in Consequences that the act of taking a life will change Faith irrevocably, and Faith agrees. She sees herself as tainted from that point on, and if Buffy took her life, she would be tainted too. And though it’s understandable and morally defensible, there’s no doubt that a part of Buffy - her innocence - dies on that balcony when she sticks that knife in. That act is forever. The choice to do violence is permanent. 

So when Faith says “you killed me”, she is saying “you have become me”. She identifies a common nature in them. And when Buffy kisses her, returning it in the exact same way as when Faith first said those words, she is saying “I know”. She recognises and responds to Faith’s mirror by holding up one of her own. She matches similarity with similarity. She is finally “ready” to assimilate her shadow self, and does it by telling her shadow self that she sees her, and that she was right. 

The beautiful part of all this is that it is silent. Faith would’ve been aware of their unification in the dreamscape, since it was happening in both of their heads, but she has no way of knowing about this. I wonder if Buffy would ever tell her. I doubt it. This is the core of the Faith/Buffy tragedy. This is why I find this relationship so compelling. Buffy performs this act of recognition and devotion entirely in secret. It is a stolen kiss and a private confession. A whisper made to a sleeping lover. A letter written, sealed, stamped, and set on fire. It is an act of love and tenderness made entirely for its own sake, without witness or reward. 

This is the single most romantic moment of the show for me. In this show that in many ways about how when nothing you do matters, all that matters is what you do, what could be more romantic than this gentle kiss that changes nothing against this aching hole of violence and betrayal between them, but exists anyway, just because Buffy felt it needed to be done. It’s a silent moment that nobody but Buffy and us are privy to. Neither Faith nor the rest of the world will ever know it happened, but I know I for one will never forget.

[dameronology]

Bucky Barnes + number four please? :)

this took me FAR too long to write i am so sorry -- also i'm writing this from my phone bc my computer is broken so pls forgive any mistakes <3

bucky barnes + 4) “why do you keep making promises you can’t keep?”

The atmosphere around you was thick.

Not thick like a hot summer's day, when the the stickiness was bearable for the sake of beautiful weather - but thick in an almost deafening sense. It hung in the air, hot and cold at the same time, sending swarms of nervous wasps into the pit of your stomach. Your heart rate was picking up and your palms were sweaty, but the state of your mind worst. It was messy and completely scattered.

You fought again. This always happened after a fight. You and Bucky would both throw verbal punches -- ones that you both promised you didn't mean, but your tone always felt like you did. He'd insult you and you'd insult him and before either of you knew it, you couldn't remember what had started the fucking fight in the first place.

There was one thing you were always certain of, though - and for the sake of not sounding petulant, it should be said that you never blamed him - which was that Bucky always started it. He would either get jealous over something or unjustifiably aggy at you and it was...it was exhausting.

You'd reached your threshold a long time ago. It had been okay at first, because you loved Bucky - so fucking much, truly and wholly - but lately? You hadn't been so sure. If you weren't doubting your love for him, you were definitely doubting whether staying was so much more trouble than it was worth.

"You haven't said anything for a while," Bucky murmured. He was sat across from you, perched on one of the kitchen bar stalls like a nervous kitten. The entire counter was surrounded by evidence of your fight too - scattered papers, a half empty beer, slight marks in marble from where vibranium fingers had sunken in out of frustration.

"Bucky," you peered up at him, deep breath escaping your lips. "I can't do this anymore."

"Me too," he replied. "This fight is exhausting."

"No..." you trailed off. "I don't this fight. I mean all of this - the constant arguing, the bitterness, the feeling of being on fucking eggshells all the time."

Bucky's face fell. He knew that he could push you to your limits sometimes, but was all not fair in love and war? Love, as he knew it, was unconditional. Your patience, however, wasn't.

"C'mon," his voice cracked as he spoke. "Don't do this. I'll change, please, I promise-"

"- why do you keep making promises you can't keep?" you cut him off. "I'm sorry, Buck. I just don't have it in me anymore."

"This isn't fair," he murmured.

"You're right, it's not fair," you snapped. "It's not fair on me. We've been going in fucking circles for months whilst you promise to change but never do!"

"I mean it this time time - I promise."

You let out a derivative snort. "You say that every time. I'm tired of going in circles."

"Please, baby," Bucky went to reach out for you, but you moved out the way.

"No," you swatted his hands away. "I'm sick of the broken promises."

[it-sy-bit-sy]

The ending of Attack on Titan: a shallow analysis

(I don't think I should have to put a spoilers alert on a blog about the ENDING OF AOT, but in general if you mind being spoiled on a series, I advise you to refrain from attending discussions about the body of work until you've finished it in its entirety/come up to speed on the current chapter/episode. Screw hype dude, do you like being hurt? Also for the TLDR, it’s that Attack on Titan explores the cycle of hatred (Eren’s journey) AND love which is why Mikasa and Ymir become relevant at the end of the story.)

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PREFACE

Since the newly added panels of AOT’s ending have been likened by some to the ending of Naruto, I'd like to say that Naruto's end truly hurt me; the way it flows into Boruto is so contrived it burns. A story that's always centered around powerful ninja bloodlines fighting political wars suddenly introduced aliens that harvest planets for energy as the super antagonist, and additionally they're the source of all our characters' powers as well as the jinchuriki and tailed beasts themselves. Then when you look at the plot of Boruto which heavily relies on the Otsutsuki clan as an antagonistic force, their whole existence feels like the transition from Dragon Ball straight into the first DBZ arc with Goku learning he’s really part of an alien race that was meant to destroy Earth.

I didn't detect so forced a role in the ending of AOT, but it's absolutely plausible to speculate that the alternate ending was influenced for this reason, as we know Attack on Titan wasn't produced through Isayama's involvement alone. Certain compromises are made when operating as a team, though it would be wonderful if the original intent of authors were more absolute in the world of production than they are known to be.

And as much as I don't enjoy half-hearted continuations of series for a royalty check, I ALMOST can't blame them for doing it...it creates (many) happy fans, more jobs, and Isayama gets his royalty check. The rest of us suffer but hey, artists need money I guess... 🥀 Moving on. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#1. Eren's development as a character

I never saw Eren's goal steered in the direction of breaking the cycle of revenge or hatred. He was acting wholly in his own interests. He's intensely selfish, doesn't want to change his views, and exists in the story to further the cycle itself. According to me, Chapters 129 and 131 perfectly explain his motivations for the rumbling.

Now before I go on, I'd like to bring a particular scene to mind. I do remember him saying this once (to Historia who had just told him killing the rest of the world is unjustifiable and wrong):

Yes, he said that, but I don't think that is what he ever intended the rumbling to be used for.

After he stated that 80% of humanity was wiped out so Paradis will be safe for the time being, he neglected to answer Armin's questions in 139: "Did you really need to go that far? Are you sure you did all of this for our sakes?" We may also consider the thoughts he chose NOT to share in chapter 131:

That combined with this excerpt from 129 is pretty much all there is to Eren's convictions.

Those are the same words he said in Chapter 2 after his mother died.

So despite his brief period of self-loathing when considering 1) the countless lives in survey corps sacrificed for his sake, 2) being confronted with his and his father's involvement in the Reiss family, 3) everything he learned about his enemy--that all titans are formerly human, that the titan shifters were just children deceived by their world--he even admits to Reiner during Tyburn's speech (Chapter 100) that they are indeed in the same boat--and on top of that, admitting that the rumbling will do nothing to fix the course of history, he settled with the same conviction he held the moment he decided to do something to change the world.

Again, here's his words from 139 showing us just how angry a boi Eren was.

This was Eren Jaeger...he didn't even really know what he was doing.

As a human being, Eren was very much in the cycle of revenge as much as everyone else was. His course of action never deviated too far from that path. He knew better, but he lashed out at the world to protect the few people he cared about anyway. He took freedom away from the ones who threatened him. He was a mass murderer, and so were the other soldiers in this series fighting for their own reasons, since titans were people. Survey corps were always slaughtering these people whom they saw as monsters. Marley viewed Eldians as monstrously and with as much hatred as Eldians viewed the titans. Eren did not try to justify his actions to everyone. He simply stopped seeing the value of life in others not important to him, as humans often do.

So what did he sacrifice 80% of humanity for? From 129 again:

Them meaning his immediate friends.

No, he didn't care about their children's children and beyond because there's no way to control what happens when you're gone from this world. It wasn't his problem. Eren had 4 years at most left to live, and he wanted to do what he could to ensure his friends were happy before he left.

And as jarring as it was to see Eren become undone in the last chapter, I didn't find it completely out of character, because for one he was talking to his closest friend moments before his own death, and secondly, Eren was just a stupid human like the rest of the people in this series. Obviously, most people just want a normal life that they can spend with people whom they love. Eren was the same way, but was denied that future (and happened to be able to do something about it). Very selfish goals, but those chosen few were his world. Along with a general distaste for humanity, that's how I understand his character motivations.

*Which is to say in relation to the extra pages, Ymir's curse returning a generation or two after the events of AOT doesn't entirely void his actions. I’m assuming the power of Ymir apparently exists as a force of nature on this version of Earth period, so I suppose this points us to an endless cycle of humans eventually finding the power and using it as they see fit *

#2 Why is Romance Relevant to Attack on Titan?

I wasn't expecting a romance factor to be relevant at the end of the story, however considering that Mikasa's affection for Eren WAS her most prominent personality trait as a character, then the events that followed, I was forced to look back to a few moments in the series that could lend light to why, in the end, a romantic subplot ended the curse of Ymir. My conclusions are as follows:

1. Quite literally, the cycle of hatred never ends. Humans will always have a reason to be unkind to one another. We are animals after all; this trait cannot be reasoned through with logic, bred out, or defeated. We are a self-aware species (Eren's even aware of his own hypocrisy in Chapter 131). There will always arise those who take what they want for themselves because they decide in the end they don't care about others as much as they care about their own interests.

2. To make this second point, I'm stealing these words out of a certain machine lifeform's mouth, but bear with me here:

"But the humans...? Now THEY are interesting. Because they are an enigma! They killed uncountable numbers of their own kind, yet loved in equal measure! It's fascinating, don't you think? What could possibly drive such behavior? We have dedicated ourselves to unraveling this riddle of humanity..."

--Adam from NieR:Automata

AOT uses Eren and Mikasa as a case study of humanity. Humans hate and love in equal measure.

In Ch. 129, Zeke's piece here foreshadows the significance of those two for the story, I guess?

Now everyone reading this series as well as the characters in it had noticed how much fondness Mikasa always had for Eren, and how aloof he always was towards her in return...that's something for them to work out.

Despite never really reciprocating Mikasa's feelings, Eren told Armin at the end of the series that yes, he enjoyed receiving her attention; he would have liked to live a happy life with her. So, Mikasa just liked Eren, Eren liked her... And similar to Mikasa, Ymir just liked King Fritz. It doesn't matter whether we think these feelings were sound or not; they did what they wanted with themselves. I suppose that explains the reason she was a mega simp for Eren in the whole story. Yes, this turn in the story reads like a different plot now, not one about war and killing monsters, but I'm pleasantly surprised that this trait taken as a flaw of Mikasa’s actually served as a necessary condition to end the conflict of the titans.

Eren wouldn't let go of his hatred of the world for his own satisfaction, Ymir wouldn't let go of her love of King Fritz for her own satisfaction, and Mikasa is the only one who decided to let go of her convictions in the interest of someone other than herself. That's what moved the curse.

I think Isayama used the characters of Ymir and Mikasa to demonstrate that while there is a cycle of hatred and revenge running rampant in humanity, the cycle of love doesn't stop either.

In closing, and I truly apologize for such a lengthy post; I hope I didn’t reiterate my point too often here...I didn't think about any of this until I heard so many readers upset with the way AOT ended. I'm not personally left with any disappointment in where the story went. I didn't know where it was going to go in the first place, and I think it could have been much worse for us in different hands. 

*shrugs*

AOT is a story about the nature of humanity.

*And in regards to Jean, if that is supposed to be him with Mikasa in the new panels, all I can say is dude likes his girl. He was a simp for her and she was a simp for Eren, but the fact that they shared their lives together means a lot even if Eren was never completely buried in her heart. He meant a lot to her man, idk...

[tsarisfanfiction]

Xenoglossophobia (Tales From The Heart)

Fandom: One Piece Rating: Gen Warnings: None Characters: X Drake, Penguin, Shachi

A little known fact about X Drake – so little known that only he knew it – was that while he had long since kicked the cowardice he'd been known for as a teenager, there was one thing that could regress him back into a state where he was emotionally compromised. To say that it struck fear in him was perhaps not true, but with no exposure to the culprit since his teenage years, he had no way of knowing how he'd react if confronted with it once again.

Not, he'd thought, that that would have been a problem. It was region-locked, kept to the confines of a small island far, far away from anywhere he frequented after being drafted into the Marines, and had no reason to move. As long as he stayed away from that little trio of islands in the far north, he'd never need to face it.

In the middle of the Grand Line, working under Kaido's flag, he was wholly unprepared to hear something that should never have made it that far.

Different islands often had different native languages. The majority of their inhabitants also spoke Common, for ease of communication with traders, but as a young pirate Drake had discovered that those outside of the World Government's influence, in particular, vastly preferred to natter away in their native tongue in front of unwelcome visitors.

Some would say that the native language of Swallow Island was beautiful to listen to. It had a melodic undertone to it, with a lilting accent that made it sound almost like the speaker was singing, capable of enrapturing the casual listener. Minion Island's was similar – Drake had never worked out if they were separate languages or simply alternate dialects – while Rubeck had all but abandoned their own language due to the Marine presence forcing Common upon them. If not for the proximity, Drake suspected that both Minion and Swallow Islands would never have adopted Common at all. Then again, he'd never found any examples of writing for their native languages, so either they kept it close to their chest, or the languages were purely verbal.

The language(s) of those far northern islands was unique, in his travels. No matter where else he'd been, deployed to almost every corner of North Blue during his time as a Marine, he had never found another language like them, which was nothing but good news for him.

Some said the language was beautiful. To Drake, it was the noise of his nightmares.

Fear had made the two islands address the Barrels Pirates in Common. Discovering that they had been victimised by previous pirates with no patience explained their paranoia, and made trading with the terrified communities easier. However, not everyone respectfully kept their words in an understandable language.

Back then, Drake had been a coward. He wasn't proud of it, but the fact that he had always cowered rather than take part in a fight was unavoidable, and he wasn't the type to ignore his own flaws. Despite being easily strong enough to deal with any dissent from the residents of the two islands – their occupied Minion Island, and the trade with Swallow Island – he could never bring himself to stand his ground.

Two younger teenagers had not only picked up on that, they'd capitalised on it. Running from them had done little good – they were fit, and knew the terrain better than he did – but there was nothing else that a young Drake had been able to do in the face of their aggression, even if he should have been able to handle them with ease.

Their confrontations had always been accompanied by that language. Words described as beautiful by people who didn't know better took on a taunting quality. He'd never managed to pick up the language, so the exact meanings of their words were forever lost on him, but what they were saying wasn't the point. The thing that drove the fear into Drake was the sound that heralded his cowardice, spoken by two teenagers whose hate he'd always considered unjustified.

"Thír cé ha na," he heard one day, on an island in the New World, far far from Swallow Island where the language was supposed to stay. The words were familiar, ones he'd heard many times before in his childhood nightmares, and even said in the exact same taunting tone he'd come to associate with them.

All that was different was the deeper voice, that of a full grown man, rather than a pre-pubescent teenager's, but Drake had thought he'd seen them around, once or twice, and had no doubts that the boys responsible for his intense dislike of the language – he wouldn't call it fear, even though it brought back irrational old feelings of flight when he was strong enough now that he should default to fight – had found him again.

"Ha na mura sé Hén Dory," came the reply, and he turned around, already knowing who he'd see.

Matching grins greeted him, and while the teenagers were teenagers no longer – well into their twenties, even though Drake didn't care for the specifics – it was impossible for Drake to mistake them for anyone other than his childhood tormentors.

He was stronger than them, now, and clamped down the old urge to flee as he reminded himself that a simple transformation should allow him to chomp at least one of them. Not that either of them were weak – weaklings would never have survived the journey from the northernmost reaches of North Blue to where they were now, in the New World and clearly comfortable there – but if he could just shake the cold sweat gathering at the back of his neck, the fight would end in his victory.

There was no fight, however. The men were not stupid, and had set things up well. Drake had no qualms about transforming to munch on them, but they weren't alone. Confirming his long time suspicion that as well as having far too much to do with the annihilation of his father's crew, he'd also recruited two of the most infuriating teenagers Drake had ever met, Trafalgar Law was slouching alongside them, lanky limbs arranged in a display that promised he would not stand idly by if his nakama were attacked.

Alone himself, Drake fancied his odds against the two men, but not his odds against the pair of them and Trafalgar all at once.

Convincing himself that he was not fleeing yet again, but rather tactfully choosing his battles, he turned back away from the smirking faces from his childhood and walked away.

He'd get revenge on them another time, and with it shift his irrational reactions to that one minor language no-one outside of Swallow Island had any right speaking.

[jamesshuler]

Eren Jeager (Attack on Titan Spoilers)

Due to the events of the last ten chapters of Attack on Titan, most of the Attack on Titan fan-base has been torn over Eren’s actions. Some think he’s justified in his actions, and others think what he is doing is wholly evil and has no justification. This rift in the fan-base was obviously Iseyama’s intention and isn’t something that’ll go away soon; Eren’s actions will certainly be disputed far after the conclusion of Attack on Titan. Among the discord of the fan base, I want to articulate my position on Eren’s current actions and motivations as of Chapter 131.

I want to start off with information everyone agrees with (or should agree with). Eren is committing genocide. Eren is carrying out a gruesome genocide so complete Thanos would be jealous and with a swiftness that Hitler could only dream of. Eren’s attack is victimizing multitudes of innocent people and children. Just like Eren’s mom, on that day when the walls’ residents remembered the true horror of the titans and were attacked by Marley, people who had nothing to do with the conflict at hand died without even knowing why. Those people should not have died; their existence is as valid as anyone else’s. I feel like everyone can agree with that.

Next comes the controversial stuff. 

Many people take the above information and halt the discussion there. They say things like “Eren’s actions are evil. Genocide can never be justified not even a little bit. End of discussion,” and that is a valid view to have. However, I feel people who hold that view are neglecting to see things from Paradis’ point of view. Imagine being a citizen within the walls and all of these things happen:

Attack on Shinganshina (Massacre)

The Loss of Wall Maria (Massacre)

260,000 people died in total.

Attack on Trost 

Government Suppression of the Survey Corp (the people trying to win back land and fight the titans for the people within the walls).

Battle of Shinganshina (which wiped out 90% of the Survey Corp - their only military)

Basement reveal: There real enemies aren’t mindless titans. People have been doing this to them. The last 5 and half years of hell have been caused by a nation trying to wipe out everyone on the island, steal the Founding Titan, and steal the island’s resources.

On top of all that, Paradis is decades behind the rest of the world in technology, infrastructure, and military technology. Trade talks and diplomacy failed. Furthermore, at the conference attended by the remaining members of the Survey Corp and at the conference involving the world leaders hosted by Willy Tiber it was made apparent that almost every nation on the eastern hemisphere except Hizuru, a nation struggling to sustain itself, wanted to go to war with Paradis, if not kill all of them or wipe out all Eldians entirely. 

Again, I want you to put yourself in the position of a citizen of Paradis. They’ve been victimized numerous times and now their country is in threat of a worldwide attack that threatens the existence of every citizen on the island. When people are put in such a position, they do not have the luxury of thinking about the innocent people on the other side. With the failed attempts at diplomacy, they have no other option other than to act defensively. Of course everyone on the island doesn’t feel the same. There are individuals who are like Armin and Hanji who are against Eren’s action, but many are for his decision as seen in chapter 126. 

What am I trying to say with all this?

You cannot beat people down over and over again and expect them to have compassion for their attackers. You can’t expect them to not fight back. You can’t expect them to not be angry. They are victims and they are human, and they are not going to lay down and die just because that is the morally correct thing to do.

Many people look at the difference in population size between Paradis and the rest of the world and say that is enough deem the annihilation of Paradis preferable to that of the world, and that too is an understandable way to view the situation. However, I think it’s absurd to expect the Paradisians to not rumble the world because of this. They don’t see a number they see a unified enemy out for their demise. The rumbling protects them from anymore slaughter from the outside world. That is a fact. The pro-Jeager sentiment within the walls is understandable.

Eren’s motivation

Eren Jeager’s feelings coincide very much with the people inside the walls. He wants to protect Paradis and, above all, his friends.  I truly belive this is the main reason for his decision. Not only has Eren seen and experienced the wrath of Marley first hand, being apart of the Survey Corp and then later receiving his father’s memories and venturing over to Marley himself, he saw into the future. A future that didn’t seem to change even when they accepted aid from Hizuru. After seeing into the future and the future presenting itself as inevitable, Eren adopted a predeterminist mindset and accepted the events to come as unavoidable and justified. 

All that being said Eren’s actions are not all noble. It is obvious that he is vengeful and holds the same ideas about freedom as he did as child to the purist degree. The human side of him, the one who isn’t fighting for “justice,” the one fighting for the destruction of his enemies and for his idealistic view of freedom is what is scary about him. Erasing humanity based on vengeance is repulsive and not justifiable. However, I appreciate the direction Iseyama took with Eren because it is consistent with his character.  

What am I trying to say with all this?

Eren is committing an atrocity on a global scale. It’s understandable to call him a monster, but he’s not doing it for no reason. Along with some personal motives, he is doing this mainly to protect his people. Each side of the conflict is guilty. Vilifying Eren as an unjustifiable monster and saying he is completely justified in his decisions takes away a lot of the nuances of the Attack on Titan story.

Extra note: this moment was super sad for me

He’s so unhappy that he has to escape to an alternate reality inside his head to escape his sadness. Sad as fuck.

[novicetypewriter]

Religion: what it is supposed to be and what we have made it

Religion is supposed to be an intimate guide of a person, extremely personal and beyond the reaches of anyone else than the person itself. This would’ve been my ideal judgment of the affair had it been similar to its definition in real world.

A religion expresses a person’s ideal code of conduct as an individual and a part of the society. It shapes the conscience, morality, conduct and lifestyle of any person. We have tons of religions in our world that means we have tons of codes of conduct which may be complacent or conflicting with one another. This also means that we as humans have an inalienable choice to make, of either choosing any religion or none at all. It should not be of anyone’s concern as to why a person is following that religion and not mine; hello…it’s none of your business because it is what that person feels is right for them.

My own opinion is that this whole complex tangle of religion is abhorrent. As mentioned earlier, there are so many religions that are out there, mostly with conflicting views, or so it seems pragmatically. This leads to hatred among the followers of somewhat “polar” religions (mind it, they may not be polar in their ideals but have been made so by most of the preachers) and then, follows a race of establishing superiority of one over the other. I think most of the conflicts in the world, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia, definitely have an attribute of religion too, that keeps the fire burning. This also brings me to my conjectural conclusion that conflicts over religion mostly occur in places where at least one religion has its origin at.

I absolutely have no interest in discussing religion because I consider myself an atheist. But it disturbs me listening to instances of violent, communal riots, especially in my country which is a fucking developing country and all people talk about is this smallest aspect of one’s fucking personal life. This has a lot of reasons such as illiteracy among the citizens (especially, men; I will justify this later), obsolete yet unconditional love towards the religious preachers (not the religion, but the preachers because as it turns out people assume that they connect with them and the preachers teach the ideals, which is mostly not the case), and the most powerful of all, ‘people in power struggling to make religion a public issue and shamelessly declaring their religious identity in space and slandering other religions’. There are a lot of other reasons too, but these are issues I consider are at the forefront of them.

In most of the cases, the conflicts are seen in the developing world that is struggling to develop using available resources. And since, these countries comprise a huge share of illiterate population, there are certain popular arguments which are used against minority groups. One of them is xenophobia. The minority groups are often of foreign origin or from regions in the peripheral areas. The majority (that, mostly, comprise the native religion) feels this unjustifiable superiority complex that they are the sole inheritors of the land they live in. This theory itself reflects roots of illiteracy because these are given by people who are struggling in the country, and who hence, may not be having access to better education. To further bring the perspective of feminism in this argument, we need to know the fact that the modern religions (and this time it is the ideal concept of almost all the religions, besides the accentuation by the preachers) have their origins in a society dominated by men. The modern religions are simply anti-paganistic; be it Christianity, Islam or Hinduism. Each and every religious epic was written by men, with men protagonists and addressing men solely. Women were just represented symbolically, and that too reinforcing the fucking ideas of fragility, subordinance, and for the pleasure of men protagonists. It is very rare to see strong women in these epics as compared to zillions of men counterparts and that too probably, just to satisfy feminists. But guess what: this is not helping feminism even a bit. Firstly, men think that the women gods are superior to real women in the world, thus having an unanticipated effect; those gods are majestic which women in real world are not, logically, yes fuckers, because this is real world and that’s why they are fantasies. Secondly, a more direct consequence of the representation of women as fragile and delicate creatures in these epics has made men to believe that women NEED men to protect them and that their honor is central to men’s honor and courage. This really pisses me off because again fuckers, those epics are fantasies, women in the modern world are not those women, you are really backward, women know how to protect their own honor, they do not give a fuck about your honor and you are the ones we need protection against, so won’t it be a simple task to control your testosterones and remain within your boundaries. If we compare men and women living in exactly the same conditions except for their genders, women are much more aware of this fact and they do not need men to interfere in their affairs; they are being toxic. For example, in India, honor killings are a widespread practice in some of the rural areas. It arises when a woman marries a man, consensually, but the family of woman thinks that the man trapped her. Unsurprisingly, this would not have been a problem if the man belonged to the same religion or caste as the woman. It becomes a problem if the man is of an alien religion, mostly a Muslim, or of a lower caste. Then the family, without asking the woman for her fucking conviction, goes on to kill the man through mob-lynching and surprisingly, the woman is killed too because she was being difficult and rebellious. And mind it that things never even reach to this point; even if the woman is seen with a man of the same kind as mentioned above, the man will be lynched and woman confined to the house. Rumors are spread that a woman of one religion was raped by the man of another religion and the man is lynched. In the backdrop of all of this, is the man’s political dream of being masculine as preached by their religion; but YOU ARE BEING FUCKING LEECHES ON WOMEN AND WE DON’T LIKE IT, SO FUCK OFF AND DIE SOMEWHERE FAR.

The second important issue is the personality cult around the priests and preachers of different religions. People are illusioned in front of these “mystical” leaders who know this fact and use this to facilitate hatred among religions. When I wrote about the feministic problems earlier, it must be noted that the men with those toxic beliefs are disciples of these preachers. So, ultimately, the preachers are the overlords. They just need to speak a word slandering any other religion and this rat race of disciples start to run behind it. These preachers are in no way propagating religion and they have absolutely no idea what a religion is. They are bestowed upon the responsibility of interpreting the religious texts in accordance to present context and try to accommodate different religious ideologies so as to attain overall peace and harmony. This is exactly what a religion should do- peace and harmony. But this may come as a surprise to almost everybody, as this is not what religion in the real world means. It more likely to be a phenonmenon upheld by a group of fanatics, radicals, bloody orthodox terrorists. That’s what a religion is today. (again this is a general idea; there are many people within these religions who are against this mainstream approach, including some priests too)

Any sensible person will not believe wholly in any one religion; rather they would consolidate the good virtues of all religions and create their own personal religion. Every other insane person will be wholly devoted to a particular religion and act as a robot in the hands of fanatic overlords.

The last yet the most worrying issue is the knowledge of the religion of people in power and their open declaration about it. Democracy is supposed to be a consolidating force and the people in power should be symbols of this consolidation. This means that they need to suppress their personal opinions and act as an absolutely neutral person. But guess what threatens this argument: the people in power being more personal than public and in the worst case, BLOODY PREACHERS BEING BROUGHT TO POWER. Can you believe this? The fundamentals of secularism, fraternity, liberty, freedom, equality, and every other political principle being endangered by giving the power in the hands of these people. This scenario is an extensive combination of all the other issues I have mentioned in this article; think about it. And this is the only reason my country is observing so many riots, communal clashes, police brutality, women objectification, and loss of hundreds of thousands of innocents lives every fucking year.

This is my take on religion and again, I personally do not give a fuck about religion. But those who do, please know what a religion is supposed to be and what we have made it. (and for those leeches, get your act straight otherwise you are the ones who’ll need protection; FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING DIRTY LIVES.)

[internetbynight]

𝙊𝙣 𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙇𝙞𝙚 𝙞𝙣 𝙖𝙣 𝙀𝙭𝙩𝙧𝙖-𝙈𝙤𝙧𝙖𝙡 𝙎𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙚

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of "world history"—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.

One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that he floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world. There is nothing in nature so despicable or insignificant that it cannot immediately be blown up like a bag by a slight breath of this power of knowledge; and just as every porter wants an admirer, the proudest human being, the philosopher, thinks that he sees on the eyes of the universe telescopically focused from all sides on his actions and thoughts.

It is strange that this should be the effect of the intellect, for after all it was given only as an aid to the most unfortunate, most delicate, most evanescent beings in order to hold them for a minute in existence, from which otherwise, without this gift, they would have every reason to flee as quickly as Lessing's son. [In a famous letter to Johann Joachim Eschenburg (December 31, 1778), Lessing relates the death of his infant son, who "understood the world so well that he left it at the first opportunity."] That haughtiness which goes with knowledge and feeling, which shrouds the eyes and senses of man in a blinding fog, therefore deceives him about the value of existence by carrying in itself the most flattering evaluation of knowledge itself. Its most universal effect is deception; but even its most particular effects have something of the same character.

The intellect, as a means for the preservation of the individual, unfolds its chief powers in simulation; for this is the means by which the weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves, since they are denied the chance of waging the struggle for existence with horns or the fangs of beasts of prey. In man this art of simulation reaches its peak: here deception, flattering, lying and cheating, talking behind the back, posing, living in borrowed splendor, being masked, the disguise of convention, acting a role before others and before oneself—in short, the constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make its appearance among men. They are deeply immersed in illusions and dream images; their eye glides only over the surface of things and sees "forms"; their feeling nowhere lead into truth, but contents itself with the reception of stimuli, playing, as it were, a game of blindman's buff on the backs of things. Moreover, man permits himself to be lied to at night, his life long, when he dreams, and his moral sense never even tries to prevent this—although men have been said to have overcome snoring by sheer will power.

What, indeed, does man know of himself! Can he even once perceive himself completely, laid out as if in an illuminated glass case? Does not nature keep much the most from him, even about his body, to spellbind and confine him in a proud, deceptive consciousness, far from the coils of the intestines, the quick current of the blood stream, and the involved tremors of the fibers? She threw away the key; and woe to the calamitous curiosity which might peer just once through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and look down, and sense that man rests upon the merciless, the greedy, the insatiable, the murderous, in the indifference of his ignorance—hanging in dreams, as it were, upon the back of a tiger. In view of this, whence in all the world comes the urge for truth?

Insofar as the individual wants to preserve himself against other individuals, in a natural state of affairs he employs the intellect mostly for simulation alone. But because man, out of need and boredom, wants to exist socially, herd-fashion, he requires a peace pact and he endeavors to banish at least the very crudest bellum omni contra omnes [war of all against all] from his world. This peace pact brings with it something that looks like the first step toward the attainment of this enigmatic urge for truth. For now that is fixed which henceforth shall be "truth"; that is, a regularly valid and obligatory designation of things is invented, and this linguistic legislation also furnishes the first laws of truth: for it is here that the contrast between truth and lie first originates. The liar uses the valid designations, the words, to make the unreal appear as real; he says, for example, "I am rich," when the word "poor" would be the correct designation of his situation. He abuses the fixed conventions by arbitrary changes or even by reversals of the names. When he does this in a self-serving way damaging to others, then society will no longer trust him but exclude him. Thereby men do not flee from being deceived as much as from being damaged by deception: what they hate at this stage is basically not the deception but the bad, hostile consequences of certain kinds of deceptions. In a similarly limited way man wants the truth: he desires the agreeable life-preserving consequences of truth, but he is indifferent to pure knowledge, which has no consequences; he is even hostile to possibly damaging and destructive truths. And, moreover, what about these conventions of language? Are they really the products of knowledge, of the sense of truth? Do the designations and the things coincide? Is language the adequate expression of all realities?

Only through forgetfulness can man ever achieve the illusion of possessing a "truth" in the sense just designated. If he does not wish to be satisfied with truth in the form of a tautology—that is, with empty shells—then he will forever buy illusions for truths. What is a word? The image of a nerve stimulus in sounds. But to infer from the nerve stimulus, a cause outside us, that is already the result of a false and unjustified application of the principle of reason. If truth alone had been the deciding factor in the genesis of language, and if the standpoint of certainty had been decisive for designations, then how could we still dare to say "the stone is hard," as if "hard" were something otherwise familiar to us, and not merely a totally subjective stimulation! We separate things according to gender, designating the tree as masculine and the plant as feminine. What arbitrary assignments! How far this oversteps the canons of certainty! We speak of a "snake": this designation touches only upon its ability to twist itself and could therefore also fit a worm. What arbitrary differentiations! What one-sided preferences, first for this, then for that property of a thing! The different languages, set side by side, show that what matters with words is never the truth, never an adequate expression; else there would not be so many languages. The "thing in itself" (for that is what pure truth, without consequences, would be) is quite incomprehensible to the creators of language and not at all worth aiming for. One designates only the relations of things to man, and to express them one calls on the boldest metaphors. A nerve stimulus, first transposed into an image—first metaphor. The image, in turn, imitated by a sound—second metaphor. And each time there is a complete overleaping of one sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and different one. One can imagine a man who is totally deaf and has never had a sensation of sound and music. Perhaps such a person will gaze with astonishment at Chladni's sound figures; perhaps he will discover their causes in the vibrations of the string and will now swear that he must know what men mean by "sound." It is this way with all of us concerning language; we believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things—metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities. In the same way that the sound appears as a sand figure, so the mysterious X of the thing in itself first appears as a nerve stimulus, then as an image, and finally as a sound. Thus the genesis of language does not proceed logically in any case, and all the material within and with which the man of truth, the scientist, and the philosopher later work and build, if not derived from never-never land, is a least not derived from the essence of things.

Let us still give special consideration to the formation of concepts. Every word immediately becomes a concept, inasmuch as it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized original experience to which it owes its birth, but must at the same time fit innumerable, more or less similar cases—which means, strictly speaking, never equal—in other words, a lot of unequal cases. Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. No leaf ever wholly equals another, and the concept "leaf" is formed through an arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences, through forgetting the distinctions; and now it gives rise to the idea that in nature there might be something besides the leaves which would be "leaf"—some kind of original form after which all leaves have been woven, marked, copied, colored, curled, and painted, but by unskilled hands, so that no copy turned out to be a correct, reliable, and faithful image of the original form. We call a person "honest." Why did he act so honestly today? we ask. Our answer usually sounds like this: because of his honesty. Honesty! That is to say again: the leaf is the cause of the leaves. After all, we know nothing of an essence-like quality named "honesty"; we know only numerous individualized, and thus unequal actions, which we equate by omitting the unequal and by then calling them honest actions. In the end, we distill from them a qualitas occulta [hidden quality] with the name of "honesty." We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us. For even our contrast between individual and species is something anthropomorphic and does not originate in the essence of things; although we should not presume to claim that this contrast does not correspond o the essence of things: that would of course be a dogmatic assertion and, as such, would be just as indemonstrable as its opposite.

What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.

We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors—in moral terms: the obligation to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all. Now man of course forgets that this is the way things stand for him. Thus he lies in the manner indicated, unconsciously and in accordance with habits which are centuries' old; and precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth. From the sense that one is obliged to designate one thing as red, another as cold, and a third as mute, there arises a moral impulse in regard to truth. The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes. As a rational being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions. First he universalizes all these impressions into less colorful, cooler concepts, so that he can entrust the guidance of his life and conduct to them. Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept. For something is possible in the realm of these schemata which could never be achieved with the vivid first impressions: the construction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries—a new world, one which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and imperative world. Whereas each perceptual metaphor is individual and without equals and is therefore able to elude all classification, the great edifice of concepts displays the rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium and exhales in logic that strength and coolness which is characteristic of mathematics. Anyone who has felt this cool breath [of logic] will hardly believe that even the concept—which is as bony, foursquare, and transposable as a die—is nevertheless merely the residue of a metaphor, and that the illusion which is involved in the artistic transference of a nerve stimulus into images is, if not the mother, then the grandmother of every single concept. But in this conceptual crap game "truth" means using every die in the designated manner, counting its spots accurately, fashioning the right categories, and never violating the order of caste and class rank. Just as the Romans and Etruscans cut up the heavens with rigid mathematical lines and confined a god within each of the spaces thereby delimited, as within a templum, so every people has a similarly mathematically divided conceptual heaven above themselves and henceforth thinks that truth demands that each conceptual god be sought only within his own sphere. Here one may certainly admire man as a mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in piling an infinitely complicated dome of concepts upon an unstable foundation, and, as it were, on running water. Of course, in order to be supported by such a foundation, his construction must be like one constructed of spiders' webs: delicate enough to be carried along by the waves, strong enough not to be blown apart by every wind. As a genius of construction man raises himself far above the bee in the following way: whereas the bee builds with wax that he gathers from nature, man builds with the far more delicate conceptual material which he first has to manufacture from himself. In this he is greatly to be admired, but not on account of his drive for truth or for pure knowledge of things. When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding "truth" within the realm of reason. If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare "look, a mammal" I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be "true in itself" or really and universally valid apart from man. At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man. He strives to understand the world as something analogous to man, and at best he achieves by his struggles the feeling of assimilation. Similar to the way in which astrologers considered the stars to be in man 's service and connected with his happiness and sorrow, such an investigator considers the entire universe in connection with man: the entire universe as the infinitely fractured echo of one original sound-man; the entire universe as the infinitely multiplied copy of one original picture-man. His method is to treat man as the measure of all things, but in doing so he again proceeds from the error of believing that he has these things [which he intends to measure] immediately before him as mere objects. He forgets that the original perceptual metaphors are metaphors and takes them to be the things themselves.

Only by forgetting this primitive world of metaphor can one live with any repose, security, and consistency: only by means of the petrification and coagulation of a mass of images which originally streamed from the primal faculty of human imagination like a fiery liquid, only in the invincible faith that this sun, this window, this table is a truth in itself, in short, only by forgetting that he himself is an artistically creating subject, does man live with any repose, security, and consistency. If but for an instant he could escape from the prison walls of this faith, his "self consciousness" would be immediately destroyed. It is even a difficult thing for him to admit to himself that the insect or the bird perceives an entirely different world from the one that man does, and that the question of which of these perceptions of the world is the more correct one is quite meaningless, for this would have to have been decided previously in accordance with the criterion of the correct perception, which means, in accordance with a criterion which is not available. But in any case it seems to me that the correct perception—which would mean the adequate expression of an object in the subject—is a contradictory impossibility. For between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and object, there is no causality, no correctness, and no expression; there is, at most, an aesthetic relation: I mean, a suggestive transference, a stammering translation into a completely foreign tongue—for which I there is required, in any case, a freely inventive intermediate sphere and mediating force. "Appearance" is a word that contains many temptations, which is why I avoid it as much as possible. For it is not true that the essence of things "appears" in the empirical world. A painter without hands who wished to express in song the picture before his mind would, by means of this substitution of spheres, still reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world. Even the relationship of a nerve stimulus to the generated image is not a necessary one. But when the same image has been generated millions of times and has been handed down for many generations and finally appears on the same occasion every time for all mankind, then it acquires at last the same meaning for men it would have if it were the sole necessary image and if the relationship of the original nerve stimulus to the generated image were a strictly causal one. In the same manner, an eternally repeated dream would certainly be felt and judged to be reality. But the hardening and congealing of a metaphor guarantees absolutely nothing concerning its necessity and exclusive justification.

Every person who is familiar with such considerations has no doubt felt a deep mistrust of all idealism of this sort: just as often as he has quite early convinced himself of the eternal consistency, omnipresence, and fallibility of the laws of nature. He has concluded that so far as we can penetrate here—from the telescopic heights to the microscopic depths—everything is secure, complete, infinite, regular, and without any gaps. Science will be able to dig successfully in this shaft forever, and the things that are discovered will harmonize with and not contradict each other. How little does this resemble a product of the imagination, for if it were such, there should be some place where the illusion and reality can be divined. Against this, the following must be said: if each us had a different kind of sense perception—if we could only perceive things now as a bird, now as a worm, now as a plant, or if one of us saw a stimulus as red, another as blue, while a third even heard the same stimulus as a sound—then no one would speak of such a regularity of nature, rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree. After all, what is a law of nature as such for us? We are not acquainted with it in itself, but only with its effects, which means in its relation to other laws of nature—which, in turn, are known to us only as sums of relations. Therefore all these relations always refer again to others and are thoroughly incomprehensible to us in their essence. All that we actually know about these laws of nature is what we ourselves bring to them—time and space, and therefore relationships of succession and number. But everything marvelous about the laws of nature, everything that quite astonishes us therein and seems to demand explanation, everything that might lead us to distrust idealism: all this is completely and solely contained within the mathematical strictness and inviolability of our representations of time and space. But we produce these representations in and from ourselves with the same necessity with which the spider spins. If we are forced to comprehend all things only under these forms, then it ceases to be amazing that in all things we actually comprehend nothing but these forms. For they must all bear within themselves the laws of number, and it is precisely number which is most astonishing in things. All that conformity to law, which impresses us so much in the movement of the stars and in chemical processes, coincides at bottom with those properties which we bring to things. Thus it is we who impress ourselves in this way. In conjunction with this, it of course follows that the artistic process of metaphor formation with which every sensation begins in us already presupposes these forms and thus occurs within them. The only way in which the possibility of subsequently constructing a new conceptual edifice from metaphors themselves can be explained is by the firm persistence of these original forms That is to say, this conceptual edifice is an imitation of temporal, spatial, and numerical relationships in the domain of metaphor.

We have seen how it is originally language which works on the construction of concepts, a labor taken over in later ages by science. Just as the bee simultaneously constructs cells and fills them with honey, so science works unceasingly on this great columbarium of concepts, the graveyard of perceptions. It is always building new, higher stories and shoring up, cleaning, and renovating the old cells; above all, it takes pains to fill up this monstrously towering framework and to arrange therein the entire empirical world, which is to say, the anthropomorphic world. Whereas the man of action binds his life to reason and its concepts so that he will not be swept away and lost, the scientific investigator builds his hut right next to the tower of science so that he will be able to work on it and to find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks which presently exist. And he requires shelter, for there are frightful powers which continuously break in upon him, powers which oppose scientific truth with completely different kinds of "truths" which bear on their shields the most varied sorts of emblems.

The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself. This drive is not truly vanquished and scarcely subdued by the fact that a regular and rigid new world is constructed as its prison from its own ephemeral products, the concepts. It seeks a new realm and another channel for its activity, and it finds this in myth and in art generally. This drive continually confuses the conceptual categories and cells by bringing forward new transferences, metaphors, and metonymies. It continually manifests an ardent desire to refashion the world which presents itself to waking man, so that it will be as colorful, irregular, lacking in results and coherence, charming, and eternally new as the world of dreams. Indeed, it is only by means of the rigid and regular web of concepts that the waking man clearly sees that he is awake; and it is precisely because of this that he sometimes thinks that he must be dreaming when this web of concepts is torn by art. Pascal is right in maintaining that if the same dream came to us every night we would be just as occupied with it as we are with the things that we see every day. "If a workman were sure to dream for twelve straight hours every night that he was king," said Pascal, "I believe that he would be just as happy as a king who dreamt for twelve hours every night that he was a workman." In fact, because of the way that myth takes it for granted that miracles are always happening, the waking life of a mythically inspired people—the ancient Greeks, for instance—more closely resembles a dream than it does the waking world of a scientifically disenchanted thinker. When every tree can suddenly speak as a nymph, when a god in the shape of a bull can drag away maidens, when even the goddess Athena herself is suddenly seen in the company of Peisastratus driving through the market place of Athens with a beautiful team of horses—and this is what the honest Athenian believed—then, as in a dream, anything is possible at each moment, and all of nature swarms around man as if it were nothing but a masquerade of the gods, who were merely amusing themselves by deceiving men in all these shapes.

But man has an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived and is, as it were, enchanted with happiness when the rhapsodist tells him epic fables as if they were true, or when the actor in the theater acts more royally than any real king. So long as it is able to deceive without injuring, that master of deception, the intellect, is free; it is released from its former slavery and celebrates its Saturnalia. It is never more luxuriant, richer, prouder, more clever and more daring. With creative pleasure it throws metaphors into confusion and displaces the boundary stones of abstractions, so that, for example, it designates the stream as "the moving path which carries man where he would otherwise walk." The intellect has now thrown the token of bondage from itself. At other times it endeavors, with gloomy officiousness, to show the way and to demonstrate the tools to a poor individual who covets existence; it is like a servant who goes in search of booty and prey for his master. But now it has become the master and it dares to wipe from its face the expression of indigence. In comparison with its previous conduct, everything that it now does bears the mark of dissimulation, just as that previous conduct did of distortion. The free intellect copies human life, but it considers this life to be something good and seems to be quite satisfied with it. That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided by intuitions rather than by concepts. There is no regular path which leads from these intuitions into the land of ghostly schemata, the land of abstractions. There exists no word for these intuitions; when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in unheard-of combinations of concepts. He does this so that by shattering and mocking the old conceptual barriers he may at least correspond creatively to the impression of the powerful present intuition.

There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an "overjoyed hero," counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty. Whenever, as was perhaps the case in ancient Greece, the intuitive man handles his weapons more authoritatively and victoriously than his opponent, then, under favorable circumstances, a culture can take shape and art's mastery over life can be established. All the manifestations of such a life will be accompanied by this dissimulation, this disavowal of indigence, this glitter of metaphorical intuitions, and, in general, this immediacy of deception: neither the house, nor the gait, nor the clothes, nor the clay jugs give evidence of having been invented because of a pressing need. It seems as if they were all intended to express an exalted happiness, an Olympian cloudlessness, and, as it were, a playing with seriousness. The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions. And while he aims for the greatest possible freedom from pain, the intuitive man, standing in the midst of a culture, already reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer, and redemption—in addition to obtaining a defense against misfortune. To be sure, he suffers more intensely, when he suffers; he even suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch. He is then just as irrational in sorrow as he is in happiness: he cries aloud and will not be consoled. How differently the stoical man who learns from experience and governs himself by concepts is affected by the same misfortunes! This man, who at other times seeks nothing but sincerity, truth, freedom from deception, and protection against ensnaring surprise attacks, now executes a masterpiece of deception: he executes his masterpiece of deception in misfortune, as the other type of man executes his in times of happiness. He wears no quivering and changeable human face, but, as it were, a mask with dignified, symmetrical features. He does not cry; he does not even alter his voice. When a real storm cloud thunders above him, he wraps himself in his cloak, and with slow steps he walks from beneath it.

Frederich Nietzsche

[nonbinarybrainstorm]

How's your weekend? Thoughts on the WFC trailer?

Hey! My weekend’s been ok. Really I’ve just been playing catch up because everything is so chaotic with the grad students striking that it’s been a bit of time trying to figure out how I can keep up with my school work. It’s also been stressful that the director essentially threatened to fire all 200 grad students if they didn’t release grades by Friday. So yeah it’s been a bit of a time.

ANYWAY WFC... (long post, undercut)

I’m honestly very excited for WFC! I do have a few things I’m not super stoked about but I’m gonna talk about what I liked first.

It’s this one moment of Optimus that made me go OOOOOO because his freaking optics dilated when Ultra Magnus said “not winning a war...” the attention to detail in their expressions is so wonderful not mention the little nicks and scratches in their armor that makes them look (for lack of a better phrase) lived in. Like they’ve actually been fighting a war. (You can clearly see deep gouges in Megatron’s armor.) The colors used in the show are a bit dark but the characters don’t feel washed out which is usually a problem from shows that try to darken the colors to show that the situation is grim. If anything, the characters pop out against the darker background.

Like, in this moment, the world around Elita is really dark and gloomy but she’s not blending in the background (and looks like a total badass). Not super stoked about Elita’s specific design because I think she could be bigger and a lil more on par with Optimus but I do appreciate that at the very least they don't make her specifically too uh “hyper-female”. Her design and many of the other designs feel more like an homage to G1 which I like a lot. The overall style of animation they use for the character models fits the stiffer blockier bodies of Transformers but they still manage to let their movements be fluid and natural.

I personally really like Chromia’s design in this series, she’s my favorite design-wise thus far. She just looks so cool and they light her beautifully especially in this shot. From what clips we see of her, it looks like she’s going to play a significant role too which is also fun.

Wheeljack!!!!!!!!

Another interesting bit that they’re doing in this show is the clear symbology that they use to better emphasize the major story elements right away.

I found the flags here really interesting. They clearly copy very similar, recognizable flag styles used right here on earth, specifically ones around Europe (yknow where christianity is a big deal hence the cross). It doesn’t specifically refer to any, one country but it does imply the idea that in this case, the Decepticons are more of a national power than just a military faction. A militaristic state if you will. This is interesting because in this case, that would make Autobots more of a kind of resistance. If this holds true that would be an interesting tweak to the normal story.

Megatron’s last supper anyone? It’s really clear that that is what this is supposed to be, if nothing else, a parody of. Megatron here is being depicted as an almost divine savior to the masses he’s talking to. Albeit the symbology has been twisted just a bit in that Megatron is on more of a throne. Also, note the “mysterious figure” who is obviously Ultra Magnus coming up to kill Megatron as a kind of Judas thus displaying that Megatron believes he’s wholly in the right and is being (betrayed) defied unjustifiably. Also yay! Skyfire! (And it’s definitely a “they’re sure standing next to each other” case with lil starscream standing right next to him, so cute) Also, Megatron’s voice is very tasty.

I mean come on it’s totally Ultra Magnus. Look at those shoulders and head dealies. Also, I know everyone is already commenting on Megatron’s dick sucking lips which is why I didn’t add that on here (Overlord had to get them from somewhere I guess) but can we appreciate Ultra Magnus’s very kissable lips in this shot? Whoever modeled him clearly loves him and wanted to make him hot as hell. (They succeeded)

Seriously, you’re not fooling anyone Ultra Magnus.

Now for a few things I’m not stoked about...

In this series at least, I don’t think we’re going to be getting much lgbt rep, especially not from the big man himself. The creators of this show seem to be big G1 fans which I can get behind but that also means they’re attached to the original narrative that Optimus and Elita were yknow in love and stuff. That can really be felt from Elita’s line “This is not the life I imagined for us” with deep and meaningful intonation that “us” clearly means the two of them and not the Autobots. 

I’m not really sure how they’d be able to balance the grim situation with the normal humor you get from og transformers without it coming off as offbeat or stilted. I’m also worried they may not try in the first place and go full grimdark which is not really the kind of show I’d want to watch. I am very interested in the drama but if it’s all darkness and without hope all the time, my little heart won’t be able to take it and it’s a real possibility that this may be the path it goes down.

It may be just me but I’m really worried about what voice they give Starscream. With how I think they’re big G1 heads, they’ll probably want a really screechy Starscream and that can go sour really fast if the voice actor tries to go over the top with it.

Endnote: Despite my worries, I am still very hopeful for all of it and I think at the very least it will be shot of nostalgia and an interesting new take on transformers. 

[kateofthecanals]

A Tale of Two Reunions

So, last night featured 2 reunions that I knew were coming... both which I was dreading/anticipating. They both turned out to be Not As Bad as I feared but still contained a lot of problematic aspects which made me cringe...

First up...

Sansa & Tyrion

Not the love-fest I was fearing, thank goodness, with Sansa, having been through her fair share of fuckery since leaving King’s Landing (Ramsay, Littlefinger, etc.) expressing some sort of relief at seeing him again because she now realizes what a Nice Guy™ he is. Nah, none of that, and I am grateful (for now). Though it doesn’t exactly jibe with show-canon, does it? This is the reunion I would expect from their book-counterparts, from a Sansa who never quite warmed up to Tyrion, by design, and a Tyrion who is highly resentful of her for it. In show-verse, Sansa and Tyrion were buddies and quasi-confidantes. He seemed to respect her and gave her her space, and in return she (seemingly) gave him her trust. So I honestly would have expected a much warmer reception from her toward him, based on what the show established about their relationship. It almost feels like the show is trying to make some glib point about how Sansa doesn’t trust anyone anymore, even people she previously allied with.

On the other hand, this scene directly followed one in which Tyrion announced that Cersei and her army were coming North to “help”, so in that regard, I can understand her being a little pressed with him. That’s fine, tbh, because the last thing I want is for some cushy-wushy reunion between these two. She was throwing quite a bit of shade in his direction, and I am not mad at it.

Of course, we all expected another stop on the Sansa Apology Tour to take place here, and it did. Though it wasn’t quite what I had feared -- i.e. Sansa apologizing for not being a more “dutiful” wife or some such crap. No, she apologized for leaving him high & dry at the Purple Wedding, which... isn’t wholly unjustifiable. Unlike the books, Sansa was unwittingly whisked away by Dontos; she did not leave of her own volition. And as has been established, she and Tyrion were pals, so an apology here wasn’t the most outrageous thing in the world.

What did bother me, though, is when she said the wedding “had its moment” with a little grin. Ugghhh... It reminded me of last season when Sansa & Arya were bonding over having wished THEY were the ones to murder Joffrey. This constant reinforcement by the show of Sansa Stark as someone who delights in the brutal deaths of her enemies makes my stomach turn. #NotMySansa

Then Tyrion’s line about all these people who underestimated her being dead now. Who are these people exactly? Littlefinger? He’s the only one I can think of, but he wasn’t exactly “outsmarted” by her; she needed BranBot 2000™ to clue her in before she finally turned on him. Ramsay? She escaped him thanks to Theon, not by anything she did personally. And Jon was the one who set him up for her little dungeon revenge kill. Who else “underestimated” her who is now dead? Or rather, who else “underestimated” her that she had a direct hand in their downfall?

On the whole, though, it was tolerable. I’m hoping this is their only interaction this season.

Sandor & Arya

I was already feeling pretty resentful about this one before it even happened, because it comes at the expense of NO interaction at all between Sandor and Sansa. I���ll be perfectly honest -- the more that SanSan is willfully ignored, the more annoyed I am by anything Sandor/Arya-related. If we were at least on an even playing field here -- with Sandor feeling a protective urge toward BOTH Stark sisters -- then that would be one thing. But the continued prioritization of Sandor’s relationship with Arya over his relationship with Sansa makes me HIGHLY begrudging of the former. I just DON’T. CARE,

So the scene opens with Sandor, again, being a dick to Gendry for no reason. I do not understand the purpose of making Sandor just an utter intolerable shit to everyone around him. It doesn’t make him cute or funny or badass, it makes him unwatchable. And the fact that Arya had to step in and ONCE AGAIN reign him in? HARD FUCKING PASS. It reminded me of Season 4 when Arya had to cover for Sandor’s inexplicable rudeness by claiming he was MENTALLY ILL. Fucking spare me...

Then they have a rather tense exchange... almost like a standoff to see which of these hardasses would soften first. Arya, somehow, won this game of chicken (NO PUN INTENDED). I was legit scared that they would end up hugging or some shit but thank goodness we were spared that. Sandor seemed rightfully grumpy about the fact that Arya left him for dead (AND robbed him), which I’m GLAD because yeah that was totally a dick move, even if he was eventually rescued. The intention was that he die a slow agonizing death in the middle of Buttfuck Nowhere, The Vale, so yeah, I’d be a little bitter too. And she was 18764% not apologetic about it either. (Indeed, when she first spots Sandor in the retinue at the beginning of the episode, she looks surprised but also doesn’t look happy about it). Recall Season 5 when The Waif beat her with a stick and called a liar for claiming she hated The Hound and hoped he was dead. Well, if her look at the beginning of the episode was any indication, she was telling the truth.

But apparently her bitchiness was like a warm compress on his cold, dead heart, because THIS was the moment he softened?? And then, with the hint of a smile, delivers the line “You’re a cold bitch. I guess that’s how you’ve been able to survive.” Because as we all know, you can’t survive the Game of Thrones without being an emotionless husk. The implication here is that Sandor is PLEASED with this outcome. Of course, his “lessons” for Arya during their time in the Riverlands consisted of him teaching her how to kill without remorse or hesitation. She’s become a hardened killer, just like him, AREN’T WE PROUD?? There’s no attempt at self-reflection here (I mean, no one has bothered to bring up the fact that she nearly killed her own sister last season), and because Sandor himself has had ZERO character development, he’s more than happy to be the one to endorse and encourage her homicidal tendencies and be proud of the coldblooded killer she’s become. And somehow we’re supposed to find this heartwarming?? NO THANKS.

So, even though this reunion wasn’t as bad as I had feared, the messaging behind it was absolute garbage. THIS is what we get instead of a Sandor/Sansa reunion??

Of course, at this point, looking at these 2 scenes, I’m not convinced that a Sandor/Sansa reunion wouldn’t be much different. Sansa would receive him with the same air of aloofness and standoffishness that seems to be her default nowadays, Sandor would make some snarky quip about her still being alive, and at some point he’d express his approval for the cold, untrusting (and murderous) ice queen she’s become.

So.... maybe it’s a good thing if they don’t ever cross paths again.

[motherboxing]

I need to like, communicate with my mom, but the problem is what I need to communicate is “I need you to respect some basic ground rules if we are going to communicate, such as ‘no more telling me that I don’t love people like a normal human being does’”, and I am having a hard time doing that without it coming across like “stop doing this or fuck you”, which probably isn’t gonna get me anywhere though FRANKLY I do not feel my anger about this sort of thing is WHOLLY unjustified, and I am frustrated by the fact that if I show my mom anything approximating the actual emotional fallout of the way she consistently treats me, that will almost certainly be used as proof that she’s right and I am unreasonable and impossible and incapable of love, so in order to make any actual progress I have to paper over my own feelings like I have been doing with her since I was four years old! THIS IS WHY I HAVE A HARD TIME MODERATING MY SELF-EXPRESSION, gosh

[singtheskyandfightlikehell]

I read “trust deficit” and God I feel the same way about ed and Oswald’s relationship. Usually people portray oswald to be the victim when he’s the one that started it... ed has been trapped in his own mind since oswald betrayed him, and nobody ever takes that into account. Stans act like oswald did nothing wrong when he did everything to hurt ed even if it wasn’t intentional. 1/2

First off, let me apologize for the length of this. I’m a wordy person, I’m aware…

It’s lovely to hear from you, both as a reader and as someone I agree with on characterization! (I also really appreciate that you mentioned his loss of intelligence, because that’s so much more than just “he’s not smart anymore”. His self worth was wholly based on his intelligence. That was the thing he feared most, and Oswald did do that to him)

I agree that it’s important to remember that Oswald started this all by deciding to a) betray Ed’s trust in him, b) kill someone Ed cared about, and c) attempt to manipulate Ed by being his “shoulder to cry on”. Sometimes, it seems as if he’s learned from this and moved on, but other times he acts just the same.

I definitely will grant that Ed has done bad things in return, but there’s a fundamental difference between them in that Ed has a grab bag of mental illnesses and trauma, while Oswald’s decisions are usually very calculated (and on the occasions they’re not, he’s easily able to justify them to himself).

One discussion I’ve had with my gf on the matter is that while both Edward and Oswald have done bad things, Oswald likes to come up with excuses about why those things were okay, while Ed (sometimes) stews in guilt over them. Idk if it’s intentional, but the fandom seems to respond more to what the characters say than what the characters do (i.e. Oswald does awful things, but then says it’s okay bc “x” reason he pulled out of thin air, and people just go “yep”, while Ed sometimes goes on about how he’s a terrible person, and that’s how he gets portrayed).

I’ve always viewed it as, if they were each being tried for an equivalent crime, Ed could feasibly plead insanity, while Oswald really couldn’t. Oswald is in control of his actions. He chooses to do the things he does. Sometimes Ed does as well, but oftentimes there are other factors at play. Furthermore, Ed can theoretically be redeemed. There are versions of the Riddler where he reforms. Edward’s motivations do not revolve around crime and cruelty. He is perfectly fine with changing if the circumstances that drove him to crime were ever fixed.

Oswald, on the other hand, is motivated by a need for power and money, and he does not feel guilty about the ruthless and illegal ways he obtains it. Oswald can’t reform because no part of him views his actions as wrong or unjustifiable. His background working for and with Falcone, Maroni, and Fish only reinforces how okay his actions are in his mind. He doesn’t want to change.

To me, that’s the real difference in terms of sympathy. It may come across as saying “Edward actually did nothing wrong, it’s all on Oswald,” especially to people who say the reverse (and perhaps can’t understand loving a character who has done bad things without ignoring those bad things?) but what I’m really going for is “Both have done bad deeds, but there are factors that make me feel sympathetic towards Ed in ways I don’t towards Oswald”

But yeah, I absolutely agree that Oswald is seen as a victim a lot when he’s at the very least equally guilty (I would argue more so, personally). That would be okay if it were just an opinion that was out there, but the push back people get for daring to say differently is a little ridiculous. The majority of Nygmobblepot content out there I don’t agree with, so my response is to go make some that I do like.

I guess it would be another matter if I pestered people in that majority opinion to make content my way, but I don’t understand why some people are complaining that I made my own content about my own opinion (and even added disclaimers that it wasn’t going to be a particularly popular portrayal)

Yep, I love Nygmobblepot, and I’ll keep writing it (at least in AU format), but I may be drifting away from it more and more.

tl;dr: I agree that Oswald being portrayed as a victim (especially some helpless victim) is pretty inaccurate. I wouldn’t say that Ed has done nothing wrong, but the circumstances of Ed’s life and mental health are such that I feel sympathy for him as I don’t for Oswald. I also take issue with the way that disagreeing with the majority opinion (that Oswald is a victim/innocent/whatever) almost guarantees push back/anon hate

[ainawgsd]

Nile Crocodile

The Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) is an African crocodile, the largest freshwater predator in Africa, and may be considered the second largest extant reptile in the world. It also sometimes referred to as the African crocodile, Ethiopian crocodile, common crocodile or the black crocodile. The Nile crocodile is quite widespread throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, occurring mostly in the central, eastern, and southern regions of the continent and lives in different types of aquatic environments such as lakes, rivers and marshlands. The range of this species once stretched northward throughout the Nile, as far north as the Nile delta.  It is a rather common species of crocodile and is not endangered despite some regional declines or extinctions.    

The Nile crocodile is an opportunistic apex predator and a very aggressive species of crocodile that is capable of taking almost any animal within its range. They are generalists, taking a variety of prey. Their diet consists mostly of different species of fish, reptiles, birds and mammals. The Nile crocodile is one of the most dangerous species of crocodile and is responsible for hundreds of human deaths every year.

Nile crocodiles are relatively social crocodiles. They share basking spots and large food sources, such as schools of fish and big carcasses. There is a strict hierarchy, which is determined by size. Large, old males are at the top of this hierarchy and have primary access to food and the best basking spots.

Conservation organizations have determined that the main threats to Nile crocodiles, in turn, are loss of habitat, pollution, hunting, and human activities such as accidental entanglement in fishing nets. Though the Nile crocodile has been hunted since ancient times, the advent of the readily available firearm made it much easier to kill these potential dangerous reptiles. The species began to be hunted on a much larger scale from the 1940s to the 1960s.  The population was severely depleted, and the species faced extinction. National laws, and international trade regulations have resulted in a resurgence in many areas, and the species as a whole is no longer wholly threatened with extinction.

Nile crocodiles are an invasive species in North America, and several specimens have been recently captured in southern Florida, though there are not yet signs that the population is reproducing in the wild. Genetic studies of Nile crocodiles captured in the wild in Florida have revealed that the specimens are all closely related to each other, suggesting a single source of the introduction. This source remains unclear, as their genetics do not match samples collected from captives at various zoos and theme parks in Florida. When compared to Nile crocodiles from their native Africa, the Florida wild specimens are most closely related to South African Nile crocodiles. It is unknown how many Nile crocodiles are currently at large in Florida. It is likely that the animals were either brought there to be released, or that they are escapees.

Much of the hunting of and general animosity towards Nile crocodiles stems from their reputation as a man-eater, which is not entirely unjustified. Despite most attacks going unreported, the Nile crocodile along with the saltwater crocodile is estimated to kill hundreds (possibly thousands) of people each year.  the Nile crocodile lives within close proximity to human populations through most of its range, so contact is more frequent. This combined with the species’ large size renders a higher risk of attack. Crocodiles as small as 6′11" are capable of overpowering and successfully preying on small apes and hominids, presumably including children and smaller adult humans, but a majority of fatal attacks on humans are by crocodiles reportedly exceeding 9′10″ in in length. Since a majority of fatal attacks are believed to be predatory in nature, the Nile crocodile can be considered the most prolific predator of humans among wild animals.  Other wild animals responsible for more annual human mortalities either attack humans in self-defense or are deadly only as vectors of disease or infection. Regional reportage from numerous areas with large crocodile populations nearby indicate, per district or large village, that crocodiles often annually claim about a dozen or more lives per year.

Most fatal attacks occur when a person is standing a few feet away from water on a non-steep bank, are wading in shallow waters, actively swimming or have limbs dangling over a boat or pier. Many victims are caught while crouching and people in jobs that might require heavy usage of water including laundry workers, fisherman, game wardens and regional guides are more likely to be attacked. Incautious human behavior unfortunately is the primary drive behind crocodile attacks. Most biologists who have engaged in months or even years of field work with Nile crocodiles have found that with sufficient precautions, their own lives and the lives of their local guides were rarely, if ever, at risk in areas with many crocodiles.

[the-girl-with-shad0ws]

From Broken to Whole

@magicandheart (this popped in my head and wouldn't leave so I kind of imagine this as her full vow to Damon! Or whatever it is, it's meant to speak to Damon!)

Girls are always told that we are meant to endure. That we must face the pain to understand love. That we must learn what society wants and to conform to its rules. That our place isn't as we defined it to be.

What they also don't tell girls is that we can't show how broken we are. For our bitterness at the world and every person in it is unjustifiable. So endure we do and suffer long we have.

They don't let us speak. They are afraid of our voice and our power and our fight to go on. To continue and rise when speared through the ground.

I never really got that voice. I know my story now but it does not make it any less painful. From house to house, pain to near death, I witnessed too much all too soon for a little girl. I was told to keep quiet and live with it because no one cared enough to protect me like people should. I knew what scars meant before the warmth of a hug. I learned how to hide and make myself invisible in the face of bottle and the power behind a fist.

Life never did get easier after the homes. Flames came and went and memories seared into my head all while I was just turning 11. And then I met a woman. A proud, beautiful woman who taught me love and acceptance, leading me to learn to trust humanity again. A woman I still call mother today. She was ripped away from me and I was sent running away, coursing my path and etching my footprints for those who looked closer to see my story.

And then I meet more people. I met a man who kept a gang name as a token of survival and wears it with pride. This man is my father now.

I met a previous drug-dealing-heroin-addict who now is a body builder and runs Chipotles like no other. I call this man my brother.

Next we have a previous gang member who was taught that the world needed more predators than humans to survive. Enduring and resisting, she eventually found her way to us and never looked back once. Well, especially not after seeing what guns she coule have. I call her my sister.

Then we have the most irritating but loving twins I could ever know. I wish I could say you weren't than the Weasely twins but even Harry Potter would agree that they are both more devious than Fred and George ever could be. I call them brothers at best, distant cousins twice removed at worse.

And then we have an amazing technological prodigy with an affinity towards electricity. His powers spark and burst but just like his heart, it too burns bright from hid passions and hurts he's received. Still, he goes on and I love to call him the best baby brother I could ever hope to have.

And I would be an idiot to not mention the best wizard I will ever see or know. Too blinding for this world but too pure for sin, I owe him so much for everything he's taught and gave me. I think it was him that taught me what forgiveness meant. I call him my brother.

And his family is now my family. Consistent of love and squabbles, I know what family is supposed to be and I am honored to be a part of them. Thank you Aishling and Errol for that.

Of course this wouldn't be complete without mentioning the best doctor. The woman who never sleeps but always heals us with the power of patience and a hidden love for us all!

And finally.. the man who made me whole again.

Now this man and I did not have a good start at all. We met over a dead body in an alleyway and immediately bumped heads. It was only through the grace of our shadows that we even stayed near each other or else we would have been dragged by them. But this was a good thing because the unthinkable happened: we fell in love. Well.. after arguments and fights and lots of really angsty events that shoved us towards the other, making it impossible not to grow close.

And of course there were quiet moments in between. Cofee breaks here, case files there, and plenty of baking in between to put a diabetic to death from the sheer number of cookies I baked for this man (still do). And even after saying all that, this is still the man I would have chosen.

Sounds crazy but.. he completes me in a way that no one ever could. I don't like sharing this with people but I tried to kill myself when I was younger. The woman I mentioned earlier? She died. A horrible death that was caused through me but more indirect than that. And me attempting to cross that bridge just settled something in me that I never wanted to notice.

That I had pieces of me and none of them were ever going to be put back together to fuse and heal. I was shattered. Something empty and playing at being whole. I never wanted to recognize this and always shut that out of me.

But this man made me realize that maybe I wasn't as put together as I should- or wanted- to be. That maybe I needed to learn and see what made me feel broken so I could start the process of moving on to heal. And he was always there for the major or tiny steps it took to realize this.

This man, for all his faults and traumas he's endured, taught me to want to live and be happy for myself again. He taught me that I could be upset and cry or rage at the world and demand it give everything back to me. Demand that I be happy and to fight back for what I really wanted and needed in life.

I call this man Damon. With his beautiful golden-amber eyes that shine like a molten star caught in a sea of amber waves. With his shining ebony locks and the too cute light freckles that darken in the sun. I swear they're there- you just have to get close to his nose to see the dusting.

He also has a slight dimple and the most radiant smile ever to shine on this earth. And his smiles are not common, making them all the more precious when they are given.

His hugs are what a home should feel like and his heart- past all the walls and thorns- is a lovely, beating entity all on its own. It cries out for love and is scared of rejection, repulsion, and fear for what could happen to the person who dares to hold it.

But I held it and still continue to hold it. For his heart is the best gift ever given to me without me actually realizing it was to and for me. It beats and quivers, wavering in size but never in his feelings. It beats true and he gave it to me expecting to be shredded and thrown as an end result.

This will never happen. For Damon Riley Darkstorm has given me a thing I never thought I deserved. And for that, I will always be grateful to him.

You make me want to live and experience the world with you.

You make me want to learn how to overcome the bad shit and keep the good with me.

You make me happy- so very, very happy- because I never thought anyone could or would love me like you have. I never thought I would attain that dream of marriage and of someone completing you so wholly that you cannot look back without them. And I will always love you for that.

I love you Damon Riley Darkstorm. From now until I die and even then, I know I won't be alone. Because eternity without you id impossible now that we've met. Our souls are entwined from now and forever. A balance of good and evil, light and dark.

I am yours and you are mine and we become one. Because for you, my love will never fade, never waver, and never doubt. That I promise you from now until the end of existence. And you can always ask me, no matter if I'm sleeping or showering or just angry with you.

I love you.

Thank you for coming into my life and staying in it. It's been rough and too many times did it almost end. But at the end of it all, we overcame everything and became stronger because of it.

So from your stubborn idiot, I say thank you Damon Riley Darkstorm.

You beautiful, wonderful asshole.