#and it isn't fair to blame him at all for a million reasons

[crowskulls-art-and-fandoms]

What is each of the zed stacks personalities in your au ? Including captain zero?

A MILLION YEARS LATER-

Uhhhhhh.

That is honestly difficult to answer, for I am bad at words, but I will try.

Zorran is probably one of the only ones who is genuinely just not a great person, he has his reasons but doesn't make the effort to change(at least not until later), he enjoys trouble too much. Expert manipulator, and used this to recruit the Z-Stacks, each of which he chose because of their specific uses, except Zip. Enjoys feeling powerful and is good at doing that, but does have good in him. Also, the sluttiest of the Z-Stacks. But he is still immensely protective, loyal, extremely intelligent(just doesn't use it correctly sometimes) and best of all, loves cats.

Zebedee is probably the kindest of heart, Zip only coming close because he's not that bright, but Zeb is really the only one who is mostly a good person. To an extent of course. He still enjoys his fair share of rough housing and.. Violence. But makes an effort not to make the same mistakes as his abusers, and becoming a sort of father or brother figure for Zip. He even comforts the other Zeds if they need it, though Zorran and Zak usually reject it. But like any Zed, Zeb still teases and bullies and all that. The textbook definition of tough outside, soft inside, because he can be a huge softie sometimes.

Zak. Whoo Zak. Zak is a total dick, probably the worst of the Z-Stacks. But unlike Zorran who's cunning and manipulative, Zak is straight up violent and abusive, especially towards Zip. I honestly haven't given him as much thought, in regards to redeeming qualities, he's kinda just the dickhead of the group. With frequent violent outbursts, meltdowns, and aggressive behavior towards his coworkers, even Zorran, and bullying anyone with obvious weaknesses. I can't fully blame him, after all it's all he's seen his entire life. He does show respect towards Captain Zero and Zorran, and even sees a friend in Zebedee.

Zug. Uh. Also not given the most thought. He's very skeptical, the most paranoid of the group most likely. Very cowardly and backs down from most fights, but takes advantage of Zip being even more submissive and essentially takes out his frustration on him. He still has a criminal mind and teases and bullies the Stars, even if he regrets it later. He may be paranoid but he isn't good at thinking of what bad things can happen from his schemes.

Zip is a sweet baby boy, just influenced by his more aggressive criminal coworkers. He is very air headed, naive, and has trouble understanding things sometimes, unfortunately that makes it easy for the Z-Stacks to just make him do things. He isn't dumb, simply.. Just misunderstands things. He mimicks behavior around him, teases the Stars mainly because he sees the other Zeds do it, but genuinely has a grudge against Ten-Cents though no one knows why. He gets attached very easily, and trusts even if he shouldn't, which is how he ended up mixed with the Z-Stacks. At least he has Zebedee, his first comfort and safe person.

Captain Zero, uhh. Short of it, he's a lot less scary up close. He's earned a reputation on the streets for being a dangerous crime leader, but truly he wouldn't have gotten anywhere without the Zeds, especially not without Zorran. Zero is all bark, and the Zeds are his bite. Zero is moreso a quiet business man and organizer, he's happy as long as things go according to plan, and as promised, but has the shortest fuse when it comes to failure. He does learn to get better, especially after finding his daughter.

Hope this was okay! Sorry it took so long. I'm not great at describing personalities but I tried my best, hope you enjoy. ^w^; 🫴💕

[dungeonsanddragonsfifthedition]

69 for everyone. its okay if it takes one million years

i mentioned this on disc, but while i usually answer these ooc, this is gonna be some ic stuff because i love silly goofin. no raisa here because when it comes down to it she is effectively their temporary medic and she knows she cannot judge these people, except for elegy being very nice and lel being a little bit of a dick. also if my players want major npcs. send yr own ask and i'll do it.

eirlys -

sicarii: a good friend. it's nice to have someone who understands me as well as he does around... i worry for him, but i know he worries for me too, so all's fair.

sunder: it is probably understandable why i was wary of them at first, but they're too wonderful to be frightened of. having kitty around is good for my nerves, i think. and their conviction and curiosity reminds me of better times.

nara: she's the captain! i think she is very sweet and i am glad she has a family that is supportive of her. she is also terribly brave, which i both admire and worry about.

aandine: i think he has a lot of wisdom, but he is so quiet. his comfort with death is jarring, but admirable. i wish he was a bit less grouchy, but i'm in no position to complain.

nobody -

tobu: the kindest young man. we all understand that he is to be protected. the ways my mother has hurt him infuriate me, and that recovering my name led to his exile too is something i regret more than anything. also he is rhubarb's favorite, and my favorite too.

haru: he is a well-intentioned boy, but he does not seem to be aware of his immaturity. we could be more honest with him, but he could be more accepting of us as well. i am worried that he will he unreasonable about his brother. and also his art is nice.

anton: i worry for what will happen once we kill his mother--she seems the type to tie her reborn to herself. i can't blame him for his mother, nor can i blame him for being too naïve to realize her cruelties. he is so young--i wonder how he first died? i also wonder about how his gears function, because it seems far beyond the abilities of an elemental without additional arcane training.

deliverance: i am a little bit upset that she is leaving us, because she promised we would be friends. but, zag and silas are still my friends (i think), so maybe we can be friends from far away. she is so pretty and powerful, and i wish i was more like her, but we are too different for that to be possible, i think. i'll miss having someone else who understands the workings of magic!

zag: i need to talk with him, but i worry that invading his dreams will seem too similar to our mutual acquaintance. he is large and strong and i think we are friends. if nothing else, we are bound by the monstrousness that lives in our skulls. i wish he were with us now; i miss his aura.

silas: i understand why she left, but i still think it's strange that someone as interesting and important as her is willing to be a background player to someone else. if she ever returns, i think we will have good conversations and better ways to calm ourselves. i'd like to study with someone again.

ibis: we are the same, in a way. it is less lonely to become if you do it with someone else. i think they are so powerful, and they are kind to me. i understand them, i think. their feelings for yaros frustrate me, because they can cloud their reason. they are more than they allow themselves to be, even now, and i want them to realize that potential. i think that they are very.

des -

fish: i love them. i need to find them. i would marry them again in a heartbeat.

priscilla: her wealth, however much she tries to be the ally of the working class, is frustrating. but she means well, and i'm sure she's helped a lot of people. her family seems... complicated.

la noyee: i don't miss him.

aggie: sweet, but she's kinda condescending. i don't think she sees me as an adult. cool magic, though?

titfortat: i think my dad is trying to consume them? which isn't great. i need to protect them from that, even if it's kinda terrifying.

keeper -

morgan: i want to know her better! she is so interesting but so withholding. i understand if she has issues with herself, but that doesn't mean i have issues with her. she seems so powerful, and the bees sing for the thought of her.

shepherd: he is so nice and i am so worried for him so often!!! he was such a great houseguest too. i feel bad for hurting him with my magic. the bees love him for his carrion.

metonymy: makes me a little bit uncomfortable, but i guess they're just a very attentive person. i'm not sure why they've latched onto me over shep and morgue, but i suppose it's kind of flattering?

aelwyd -

aria: i'll bring her back if she lets me. hot. suspicious, but we have similar interests, and who am i to judge?

blank: deserves better. i will protect them and help them avenge thenselves. i'm glad they trust me. i hope i can maintain that, for once.

chini: can't be trusted. kind of an asshole even before the whole dedicated to bela thing.

ira: she and i get along well. her magic is fascinating and her situation is familiar to me, in a certain way. i know she'll see sense.

kairii: adorable, but unwise. reminds me of mae in ways i can't figure out. i hope she realizes that she's doomed if she doesn't act soon.

stras: self-obsessed asshole who considers himself more enlightened than the rest of us. which he is not. takes himself too seriously, on top of all that.

stray -

clem: i hope she can find comfort in the world soon!!! i am so upset about how the church treated her and i am glad i can help her.

emile: so nice and so strong! they seem very mature and smart too. i wish she let herself have more fun, and i want to know more about her. i wonder why she left her old work but regardless i love that she has big claws sometimes.

posy: she's like me! obviously we aren't from the same place but she's really cool and beautiful and good at magic. i look up to her, but i hope that she's okay with that because i wouldn't want to intrude or anything.

ragamuffin: i wish i could feel feelings as grandly as he does! she and splat always make me smile with their performances. his clown outfits are so delicate and pretty, too.... i like the way she carries herself a lot.

xochi: i worry about him in fights a lot. he's powerful with magic but his body is not ready for the world! or at least the cold. if he has to look at the stars, i hope he likes them. he is very sweet and his jokes make me laugh.

solace: i owe her so much! i think her old god hurt her in ways that gods should never hurt, and i think that her hurt loves to eat her alive. i don't know if she understands how much i value her but i think she is so amazing and her wizardly spells are really incredible. i hope she stops hurting. i hope i never make her hurt again.

[the-firebird69]

In Fund-Raising Blitz, Trump Warns Democrats: Hands Off Trump Tower - The New York Times

There's another point going on this guy told him this guy up for murder and he's not getting protection got beat up in the cops are terrible we're tired of them treating her son like that and our son says it's going to be hell for you and it will be between them for there or five they Don't know much and Mac does and it's aggravating what he's doing here with him is going to have an implication he's a clone but his group is big and people can't sense it and they just start blabbing and he's ridiculous nothing guide on the movie now is ridiculous it says I don't know what you guys are drinking in the water but your fleet is non-existent and the pseudo empire fleet is teensy you like these little teeny groups and you see them go out there and lose 10 20 billion in a shot and if they were flying by you they'll just get rid of you or absorb you I cannot even there and you're acting like the big wheel they want you to but boy this is getting very aggravating I don't get anything cuz you're a bunch of sticks in the mud you have to ask Mac how to find your way out of this cuz you see what you're doing I'm going after them a little they're going after you he's obnoxious.

And they said this is very rude s*** we're out there out front telling everybody what's going on and these Max won't lay off and they're blaming us for it and it's true but then again right under the rug and show continues and it does work but you're trying to extort from me and humanity and you're going to shrink to nothing and there's tons of stuff to do that's fun like for their big huge copper you can build the advice isn't there's a big market no but that's the fun part it looked at it and said I'm going to start doing this and it's not Trump and he's making stuff. And for the guy looks a little questionable there's a whole bunch of used cars different makes and models that have the same parts and people like you know which model uses the other car parts you can make a third car right now it's Chevy and Ford for the states and he said that's a great idea yes it's pseudo empire well you guys used to be big into business and you have your own businesses and opening the doors this is easiest putting the key in and turning it right now but in a few weeks or less you're going to have to go to the dirt and make iron so he got going on that and it is today blacklight guy is a colony says that are you steal from the max or these guys or you start doing nothing making stuff on your own and Tommy f had a lot of stuff and everybody needs stuff and it's already picking up and clothes like stuff that I like there's a huge business and African Americans do it all the time and the cars look stupid and it sound weird but with certain fairings they go over 200 mph and I saw one so it works but you know it's an idea and plan times these days would work differently you can take a plan time and you can take a firebird or Camaro a certain year and make a Ferrari and the rims and tires are not as much and you'll go over 400 miles an hour so he's looking at it and he says it's really that way let's see people aren't doing it so you only do it for your own and then he's a Laos but he can make motorcycles and people need something comparable to the Harley and there's a reason why it's selling it's not really the style is this style is kind of ambiguous you can't tell really that it's a Harley it doesn't look like one that much it's like recycled motors company or something but you're not into that you're into something with the moniker like something with your emblem and it's yours and you don't necessarily have a bike that does it but you could take like the same type of configuration and use a tank of yours it fits and look cool and it'll be some kind of strange odd dual bike and you kind of into that a little not as much as Terry cheese man but you need a supply for power and he has engines they're small and they're singles and he knows how to align them and those things are very very fast so it'd be like kind of a sport Enduro or something and so he's looking at it and he says why would I build it it says I don't know and handing them stuff and they're running off and doing it but it's something you could do for yours it would be smaller and you'd be known for doing stuff and it'll be only your guys you don't have to sell them and they looking very unique and be extremely fast 2 250s side by side these days will beat any Ninja and it'll go a little faster than supervised so he's looking at it and says faster than the superbike and he says I don't know if I want to open I want to check it out I think I'm the vengeful one and I might be Pee-wee Herman

They got your idea for the style cuz it's selling the lighter and smaller and they need to get around so there's a lot of people won't ride bikes they're dangerous you guys don't care it's an opportunity and he goes oh oh and he's tired to make him today believe it or not this is actually going on today and he can tell because it's the racism stuff and it was already aired it was today.

She's telling the stuff they're actually trying to do things you can't think of what to do with Trump he said to him quietly no one's taking from the empire and they have tons of stuff and I don't think you can do it and you're holding on to the money pretty soon that's going to start going so you can start getting mad and he said nobody's taking from the empire and in the future of the pseudo empire is taking spice machines and try and get Intel so he said I used to do that on a smaller scale since you shouldn't take some drugs because those guys are part of the weapons facility so he's doing that also he says it's kind of penance it's like we might all be like going to get hurt so I have ideas so he's going off and doing it. And things are going to change a little it's a good idea you saw him all fighting and just can't stand it anymore it's gross looking and they don't know it and they can't help it so they're doing things for themselves they might backfire but at least you're doing things like mac and the other Trump is trying to impossible and he says I can't open them and he says you need to open stuff that people want let Chrysler and he says okay and you probably do cuz you have parts this is good so he started to try and open it and it's going like that and he's opening different ones actually opening and we are up to 850% this morning these things are starting to happen again but we think by the end of the day it might be 950% and Dan is designing a new motorcycle is asking our son if you would drive it and instead of course it would be a cool looking multi-use bike and that's kind of what everybody is looking for you go a long distance have a lot of power and be able to go along distance without overheating and with the two motors it would do that and it's still white and with the two motorists it's still light and he says wow that's fine an idea and you put a couple lights on is a good idea it's for driving on dirt roads tire be the best of him it's like an adventure bike but a little lower is my idea with a big big tank but retro it's an idea so he's working on it now and he got the idea and he says I know how to build this he's seen one like it is not true but it will be like a utility bike and it'd be starting a whole genre himself and it's what like being David's like and he says a utility bike it's like sport utility but utility bike and he says why is it utility cuz you can Cruise they can go off road you could do trails you can do Baja and you can just support writing and high speed sport riding superbike riding racing and it is kind of technical so he's moving out and it used to be with Honda was doing but they didn't get the idea of making it across and now you can make it a mono shock and he said this is intense it's really a cool idea and having a retro tank is off like a chopper is really interesting it looks actually cool so it's going forwards I work on the hybrid later to give it more power and redundancy and he's moving on it he's designing that one too it's got to have some kind of alternator system and is trying to think of how to do that and it's just rerouting the alternator to run the alternator and you step it up with transformer and your truck will charge the battery I don't know how you make it a hybrid they're looking into the chain and he says wow that's an odd thing I don't know how to do that either I can't put it in the hub but these motors are not bigit has to go on a special gearbox and say that if you're doing it right so he's going to go ahead and do that and modern hybrids you can run at the same time and it really takes a lot of technical stuff

Thor Freya

I'd be the first in this two two of these genre this would be mine forever and it's supposedly an area of my father accelerating I'm sick of him too and I helped my friend here he's trying to say it it sucks but it works it's just terrible and we get plowed over so many times and I delivered heinous messages about myself by screwing around with him but this is works for me I'm going to look at these and try some designs

Dan

Olympus

[ungiftedmusings]

okay listen i get that teh relinquishing his spot in university was a super emotional, irrational, and stupid decision.  i get it.  but why have i not seen anyone mention that it’s what oh asked him to do?

i mean, even as kids: what “if miss nuan had chosen you, and i said i wanted to play, would you have let me?”

yikes––

i’m not saying it’s oh’s fault, it was definitely teh’s choice - i’m just saying, for a dude who’s very smart and has a tendency to way overthink things, there’s no doubt in my mind that those words stuck with teh (and those lines were a really deliberate writing choice to convey that and even foreshadow that ep. 4 scene).  and i do not think oh meant for teh to take it this way - i actually don’t think he meant it at all, it was just him being upset and lashing out -  but in episode one when he found out he didn’t get in by direct entry, oh said “you’re so good at studying.  why didn’t you go through the admission system?”

now, pair that with the show’s theme of “if you love someone, you can’t stand to see them sad.”   itsay framed sadness as the most honest language of love and i could write a whole essay on that but not right now and on top of that, oh-aew’s sadness in episode 4 was directly caused by teh.

again, a rational person isn’t going to take this to heart, and i don’t think teh really did until he was emotionally torn apart and we all know he wasn’t being rational right then.

i’m just saying, it’s not just one single thing that led to teh doing that.  there was the false hope when someone showed up late,  there was the guilt from hurting oh, and more guilt on top of that because teh thought he’d led oh to give up on his dream.  and then, on top of all of that, all the guilt and the hope and the lack thereof brought oh’s words back to the forefront of teh’s mind.

on one hand oh-aew didn’t mean to ask teh to do that for him - but on the other, even if he didn’t intend to, he actually kind of did.

[the-final-sif]

What's Improv Dreamon!Ranboo's thoughts/opinion on the people his amnesiac dreamon is close to (Tubbo, Tommy, Michael, Techno, etc.)?

Oh! Great Question!

It changes throughout the duration of the AU, c!Techno is probably the person he's closest to out of the group. This is for two reasons, the first an foremost being that c!Techno is very careful to not pressure p!Ranboo into anything he doesn't want to do. He's hyperaware of the fact that p/c!Ranboo is easily coerced into stuff and is careful to not take advantage. ew!Ranboo appreciates that a lot. He's also more trusting of Techno on account of him being an ally of c!Dream, despite all the fuckery going on there.

Michael is a lil complicated, while ew!Ranboo does love him, he's also extremely nervous about having p!Ranboo being around a small child. Also, he doesn't really like c!Tubbo being around the small child. And he doesn't feel ready to be a parent given all the instability in his life. None of that is Michael's fault though, and ew!Ranboo doesn't blame him at all.

I think the most complicated person is c!Tubbo.

Early AU, ew!Ranboo hates c!Tubbo. Flat out. This is a mix of factors, starting from the fact that ew!Ranboo is extremely sensitive about p!Ranboo being pressured/forced into any kind of violence. The whole reason he ended up in this situation was the Dreamon possessing him attempted to murder his former family/friends (and managed to kill several of them). Tubbo having him be a part of the Butcher Army and going after c!Techno feels very similar to that. It's ew!Ranboo being forced to watch his body enact violence he morally disagrees with against other people. He hates it, and he blames Tubbo for it.

It grows about a million times more intense when he finds out about the plan to kill c!Dream at the festival. EW!Ranboo... Well, he's furious beyond belief. Even knowing that c!Dream is trying to play a villain, even knowing that it wouldn't work no matter what. Tubbo having p!Ranboo play a part in murdering Dream, the person who saved ew!Ranboo and basically the only person he has on his side, well... EW!Ranboo wholeheartedly wanted to kill Tubbo if he got the chance. He might've, if Tubbo had managed to go through with it somehow.

It's ew!Ranboo who insists that Dream (whose planning his speech at this point, since he's gathered enough energy and weakened/convinced his own Dreamon enough for it) reveal him as a spy. He wants Tubbo to hate him. He wants Tubbo to know that he hates him. Dream tries to calm him down and rationalize things, but ultimately gives in, on the condition that ew!Ranboo can't kill Tubbo. Dream doesn't want any dead people outside of the strictly necessary.

Then shit goes down, and in the end that doesn't work out. Tubbo an p!Ranboo end up living together with a kid. ew!Ranboo also ends up isolated from Dream for while which is bad for both of them, although he does have XD to help him. This means that ew!Ranboo has to gather energy to take control of the body on his own, which leads to problems since he's got no supervision or help. Also he only speaks Ender, which nobody else speaks. He has several run ins with Tubbo, and there's some violence between them, but ultimately ew!Ranboo cools off enough to keep his promise and not kill Tubbo. As time goes on, his hatred dulls, although it never gets time to go away or heal.

On some level, ew!Ranboo is aware that his feelings towards Tubbo aren't entirely fair. Tubbo isn't aware of any of the shit going on with the Dreamons, and he's not aware of how malleable p!Ranboo is as a a result. A lot of ew!Ranboo's hatred is misplaced projection. It's not fair, but nothing about this situation is fair. That deepseated resentment is hard to let go of, and it's not happening any time soon.

[sophiamcdougall]

This helps crystallise some of my unease at the backlash I see fairly regularly -- sometimes from randoms on Tumblr, but also from actual historians -- against many LGBT readings of history. This is where it all leads.

I've seen a cutesy uwu cartoon about how a medieval monk is actually more progressive than you, because he doesn't believe in "putting people into boxes." Which is of course a terrible thing to do. Even though some people have fought pretty hard for those boxes.

I've seen historians who are deeply offended at the idea that there could be anything homophobic about resisting the notion that, say, a passionate exchange of letters between two people of the same gender at least potentially indicates a sexuality we would understand as queer. "I'm not saying they were straight either!" they insist. "I'm just saying they didn't understand themselves that way and so you are being harmful if you say apply those terms to them! They didn't categorise people as gay and straight! You are being anti-intellectual if you think there is anything problematic about the idea that these identities only pop into being as they are named. " Even assuming, for starters, that it's true to say that until very recently no one really understood themselves as [whichever LGBT+ identity]...

Isaac Newton didn't understand himself as being autistic. And it is quite fair to say we can never know with absolute and final certainty if he was autistic. But we can say that autistic people existed in his time, even if unknown, and there is reason to think Newton might have been one of them. The fact that that the category was not established at the time does not mean that autistic people recognising him as perhaps one of their number are doing anything unreasonable. The idea that autistic people did not exist until they were named does not apear to be particularly widely accepted as far as I''m aware-- and thank goodness, because it is a profoundly troubling one.

The thing is "I'm not saying they were straight, I'm rejecting straightness AND gayness AND everything in between as valid categories!" isn't some academic lens that only apply to historical figures. It is highly current, applied by real, living people, to real, living people. And it tends to suck:

There are exceptions, but most people -- even homophobes -- can agree that it's unfair to blame someone for something that's genuinely an inherent, inborn part of their nature. So they don't, in their own mind, persecute gay people for being gay, they don't accept that orientation of any kind exists in the first place. They believe that people are simply choosing to act a certain way. They could choose not to, and therefore it is reasonable to hold them accountable for those choices. It is therefore kind of a lot when you insist that we must not merely be aware of this belief, but effectively share it when examining same-sex relationships in the past. A frequent extension of the idea that people in the past perceived sexuality only as an action, not an identity, and that we must discard all other lenses when examining the past, is that it was also not that bad to be subject to the explicit prohibitions placed on sexual/romantic relationships between people of the same gender.

"They thought it was a sin, but not a worse sin than say, lying! Or having the wrong kind of straight sex!" Again, this is an entirely modern attitude held by (at least) millions of people.

Have you talked to anyone about what it feels like to be on the receiving end of it? When there will never be any non-sinful way you can act on your sexuality? When falling in love puts you, at best, in the same category as someone obsessed with the desire to lie or to steal? (And it is worth mentioning that "theoretically not worse than [minor sin x]" does not necessarily guarantee that two sins were treated as equivalent in practice. They certainly aren't now.)

It's not wrong to remind us this way of thinking exists and has existed for a very long time, but it is galling to see it as held up as liberating or even kind of cute, when it's functionally indistinguishable from the TERF quote which prompted this whole post. Now, there can be a tendency to exaggerate the miseries of the past: all women were married at 12 (and somehow tight-laced to the point of fainting regardless of period) no one knew how to wash, and all queer people's lives were defined by oppression and possibly burnings-at-stake. Of course it is worth correcting that. Of course it is important to explore the way that queer people did manage to thrive as well as the institutional burdens placed upon them. But to do that you have to be able to name them, and to recognise continuities both in identities and in suppressions of them. Finally, before someone says otherwise -- I am not saying we have necessarily arrived at a final, perfect end point in our understanding of sexuality and identity! I understand myself as an ADHD, bi woman. The traits that lead me to identify myself thus existed before I found names for them and, I assert, would exist if I had never found them. But if some future age is able to look at those traits and others I am unable to even pinpoint, and armed with greater knowledge and precision they say "maybe, she was actually what we would call [x]" -- fine! Good! In fact I ardently hope someone comes up with a more accurate name for the appallingly inadequate and clumsy "ADHD". But, these inner experiences are real, they are part of me as they have been part of uncountable people throughout history, whether named or not.

[waheelawhisperer]

Why Team RWBY is Right

Yes, I know, another RWBY post. This one focuses on the situation at the end of Volume 7, so I'm going to be dropping the Read More link sooner rather than later. The reddit posts I link here and here are recommended reading, and I'll be drawing from both of them, as well as adding my own analysis.

First of all, I think the way the end of Volume 7 was written was fantastic, perhaps the best content that CRWBY's ever written in this show. If you paid attention to fan reaction at the time, you'll know that this generated a lot of discussion and engagement, across multiple platforms. The two threads I linked are examples of that. Even now, there are still people (hi, I'm people!) arguing over whether Ironwood or Team RWBY was right and/or lionizing/vilifying one or both groups. The end of Volume 7 set up a difficult and interesting moral dilemma (is it better to save what we can or is it worth risking it all to save all of the people that we, as Huntsmen and Huntresses, have an obligation to protect?) and set groups of characters that have been working more or less together for the whole Volume against each other. Ironwood thinks that the right call is to flee Mantle, to save what he can and prevent Salem from obtaining the Relics, while Team RWBY thinks that they should instead stand and fight. Ironwood presents his argument as pragmatic: he's making the hard choices that give humanity a chance of survival. His army cannot win a fight, and so Mantle must be abandoned. Team RWBY's argument is framed at least partly from a moral perspective: Huntsmen and Huntresses abandoning the people they swore to protect is wrong, a betrayal of the promises they made when they accepted the job. From a practical standpoint, they point out that he has more options/allies than he's considered: Mantle/Robyn are on their side and the Amity project could potentially allow them to call for reinforcements.

There are a number of things we need to talk about to put the situation in context. First is that Cinder is a very smart manipulator who just hit Ironwood's trauma button with a People's Elbow from the top rope and followed it up with a Stone Cold Stunner, grinning maniacally the entire time. Ironwood is in the middle of a PTSD-induced breakdown because Cinder has just ripped open every single wound associated with his various psychological issues and traumas at once. He's hurt, terrified, exhausted, and making bad decisions at least partly because of that. His trauma does not excuse his actions, but it does allow the audience to see where they come from. As one of the reddit commenters put it, "he's like this for a reason, but that reason doesn't mean what he's doing is right".

Frankly, Ironwood should not be in command at this point. He is not in any condition to be making decisions and realistically ought to be in the infirmary, if anything, but instead he's standing at his desk, deciding the fate of millions. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in my post about how the Atlesian military sucks at its job, it doesn't seem like there's anyone who could step into his shoes in the upper echelons of military leadership. To be fair, Ironwood isn't exactly the type to relinquish control regardless, but given how much of his personal struggles and character arc are about his belief that he lacks people he can trust and his difficulties learning to reach out to and trust others (on his terms and when he is in control, and only ever then), it's not out of the realm of possibility that he could've stepped down long enough to get some proper rest and medical attention if he'd had a bit more structural support. He's partly to blame for the Atlesian military's incompetence, given that he's in charge of the damn organization, but that doesn't change the fact that the way it's set up isn't exactly doing him any favors in this situation.

This is at least in part why Ironwood makes what I consider his most egregious mistake in this situation: refusing to send out scouts. Information is key in warfare, and the protagonists don't have enough of it at this point. Their strategies all hinge upon the belief that Salem is approaching, but no one has bothered to confirm that. Ironwood should have sent out drones or scout ships in order to be sure that the arrival of an enemy army was, in fact, imminent and immediately begun planning and preparing for all realistic contingencies.

Still, as viewers, we know that Salem is on her way, so we can skip the confirmation stage and move on toward determining what should be done. Let's examine the strategic and tactical realities: Salem is coming, immediately, with an army in tow. She's after the Relics, and the Maiden because the Maiden can access the Relics. All three of Salem's objectives are in Atlas, and thus Atlas must be kept safe somehow. Ironwood's army is exhausted and spread thin after defending Mantle, while Salem's troops are presumably fresh. Taking all of this into account, retreating seems logical, right?

Well, not quite. In fact, retreating is incredibly stupid, for a number of reasons. It's a knee-jerk reaction informed by Ironwood's fear and paranoia, and it makes long-term victory damn near impossible.

Now, let me be clear, I am not arguing this from a moral or ethical perspective. When the very survival of humanity is at stake, I don't really give a shit about morals or ethics. I am arguing on a purely pragmatic basis that Ironwood's plan is stupid and ineffective.

I'm well aware that "there is no victory in strength" is a major theme in RWBY, but this is an action show, which means that while the ultimate victory does not come from strength, beating up bad guys is still very much a part of the show's composition. Temporary victory in strength is absolutely on the table, especially if you define "victory" as "not getting ripped to shreds by an enemy that fundamentally hates you for daring to exist and cannot be reasoned with in any way", and is in fact an essential component of ultimate victory. All that means that humanity requires some kind of functioning fighting force, whether that be Remnant's Huntsmen or Atlas's army. The anti-military messaging of the Atlas Volumes has always fallen flat to me, to be honest, because Remnant is a world where having a military makes total sense. Humanity faces an existential threat. That threat cannot be reasoned with, bribed, or otherwise deterred without the use of force, especially given that only a few people know that Salem exists. There are three ways to stop the Grimm from wiping out settlements: defenses so strong that the Grimm cannot penetrate them, some kind of armed force capable of repelling them, or the complete suppression of negativity, such that the Grimm are never drawn to a settlement to attack it. We see that the first and the third have repeatedly failed. Mountain Glenn was destroyed because it lacked the natural defenses of Vale, and even Vale suffered when Cinder's plan brought about the Fall of Beacon. We saw during Volume 3 that events can be orchestrated to create a sufficient spike of negative emotion to attract the Grimm, and Mantle and Mistral failed to suppress widespread negative emotion prior to and during the Great War. That leaves fighting back, and a military is very useful in this context. Huntsmen are difficult and expensive to train (the Academies do not seem to have particularly large classes, the training takes four years at the Academies in addition to any preparatory training, and each Huntsman requires special, personalized equipment) and there don't seem to be very many of them, which means they run into difficulties covering the wide swaths of territory that many of the Kingdoms control. By contrast, US Army basic training (which I am using as a rough equivalent for Atlesian military training because I have no idea what the actual in-universe training looks like) lasts less than three months, which means producing a soldier is much easier than producing a Huntsman. More soldiers means more area you can cover, which means more territory you can control and defend. Realistically, any remotely organized political entity on Remnant ought to have a military, but evidently the Great War left a whole lot of collective societal trauma.

Okay, tangent over with. I'll get into why Ironwood's plan is stupid now. We have established that a functioning fighting force is necessary to defend Remnant. Well, that fighting force becomes a lot less functional when it runs out of food, ammunition, clothing, medical supplies, vehicles, and everything else a modern army requires to fight. We see in Volume 7 that the Kingdom of Atlas's industrial base is in Mantle. The city of Mantle is full of factories and Dust refineries. Atlas has an agricultural district, which the Grimm trample in Volume 8, but it's too small to produce the food required by the population of one city and the refugees from another unless Plant Dust can do some really wild stuff, and the series never really explores that. Also, as far as I could tell from what we saw on screen, the only crop it grew is wheat, which is not a balanced diet on its own. Raw materials like ore, Dust, and timber are found on the ground. Food crops and livestock are grown and raised on the ground. Ironwood fleeing to the upper atmosphere both condemns his people to strict rationing and dooms his war machine if he stays there long-term. Eventually, he will reach the point where he cannot feed his people, supply his soldiers, or keep either of them healthy. By abandoning Mantle, he abandons the infrastructure Atlas depends on to survive, and he has no allies to provide that infrastructure: Vale is in bad shape after the attack on Beacon, Mistral is barely holding on post-Haven, and Vacuo is both lacking in the type of infrastructure Atlas needs and outright hates Atlas for years of exploitation. The only hope of retaining the long-term viability of the Atlesian war machine is by defending the infrastructure that supports it. From a strategic standpoint, Mantle cannot fall.

If Ironwood had done his damn job properly, Mantle would also be a fortress, meaning that fleeing actually would have made fighting a defensive battle harder, but he didn't, so it's kind of a moot point. Even so, with advance warning, Ironwood could have evacuated the city to Atlas and then seeded the streets with mines, created temporary barricades, and prepared his forces to meet the enemy advance. We don't see the big airships do anything during the fight for Mantle, so I'm assuming they've expended limited resources and taken minimal damage prior to Salem's arrival. If I'm correct, Ironwood could have concentrated his fleet once he'd determined Salem's approach vector and massed the power of 40 airships against her forces.

These are all simple measures that could have been taken in the brief time between the conversation in Ironwood's office and Salem's arrival. A defensive battle is still a viable option at this time, especially with proper use of the air fleet to break the back of any enemy advance before it reaches either city. With Robyn allied with Ironwood, Mantle would have supported the war effort wholeheartedly. The holes in Mantle's defenses could have been exploited to create killing fields and the refugees could have been pressed into service performing task like providing medical support or preparing food to free up the soldiers for the upcoming battle.

I've seen some people argue that Ironwood's plan is just a tactical retreat, but it's never presented that way in the series. Ironwood ascending to the upper atmosphere solves the immediate problem, and only the immediate problem. He still has nowhere to safely land and resupply and nowhere from which to safely stage an attack, unless he intends to let his army rest and restock for a few days and then immediately retake Mantle, but this is, again, never brought up in the narrative, and the clear indication the story is giving is that he's fleeing in fear without considering the long-term consequences and justifying it by claiming he's making the hard choices.

On top of all that, the sky isn't even safe. Cutting off the evacuations and fleeing doesn't chance the fact that Cinder has already infiltrated Atlas. She's free to strike at strategic targets or just murder refugees at will. Raising the city might keep Ironwood ahead of Salem's army, but Salem is immortal. She can wait as long as she needs to to starve him out. All she has to do is task some Grimm to shadow the city from below while it moves through the upper atmosphere in which they can't survive and then task her forces to attack it whenever it descends to resupply, and all of this isn't even considering the tensions between Atlas and Mantle, human and Faunus, military and civilian (who may well be justifiably upset that their Kingdom's vaunted military is running instead of fighting), rich and poor, or whatever disparate groups you can think of. Add in potential rationing and repressive curfews/restrictions and riots aren't just likely, they're damn near inevitable, and every bullet Ironwood's troops have to spend suppressing rebellions is a bullet they can't use against Salem and can't easily replace. Follow Ironwood's plan and Atlas will tear itself apart without Salem having to lift a finger.

People like to say that Team RWBY just whines instead of offering solutions, but this is not the case. Ruby brings up the possibility of completing the Amity Tower and calling for help. While this plan has potential problems of its own, it is, in fact, an alternative, and they had, like, two minutes to come up with anything before Ironwood wanted to throw them in jail. Weiss still manages to point out that Ironwood has Mantle on his side (meaning he can work with a capable leader in Robyn) and Blake attempts to encourage Ironwood to work collaboratively. Ironwood's the one shutting down dialogue here, and everyone plays into Salem's hands as a result.

As an aside, I always find the negative reaction to Ironwood declaring martial law, both in- and out-of-universe, to be extremely amusing, because this is exactly the kind of situation for which martial law is intended. An invading enemy force is on home soil, civilian forces and systems are overwhelmed, and the survival of the Kingdom depends on the effectiveness of the military response. The response really should have been "yeah, makes sense, how do we blow up the giant whale?" rather than the kind of outrage we see from both Team RWBY and the Council.

To sum things up, Ironwood attempts to exercise command when he's clearly unfit to do so, completely misreads both the tactical and strategic situation, and attempts to implement a stupid plan that is emblematic of the Atlesian military's institutional incompetence. I think it comes back to the Atlesian military's lack of institutional experience, to be honest. They don't know how to deal with situations like this and don't have training or doctrinal guidance to fall back on, so we see a failure on every level to anticipate and plan for an invasion. Modern real-world militaries have contingency plans for everything from nuclear war to some drunk dipshit trying to rob a munitions depot because real-world nations are constantly fighting each other, but Atlas hasn't had the incentive to develop that kind of intelligence infrastructure, so they repeatedly get caught flat-footed when they encounter new situations. Team RWBY was right about defending Mantle, though I think they were arguing mostly from the wrong perspective, and I think both sides failed to present their arguments in a way that would incite compliance from the other. Ironwood fails to make a convincing case that the option he chose is the most viable option available and Team RWBY fails to couch their arguments in the cold pragmatism that might have gotten through to him.

To be clear, this is a shit situation where there is no good answer. Ironwood's solution might well have been the best answer if he'd addressed the issues listed above and provided a viable location to which to retreat and a way to recreate the necessary infrastructure, while fighting for Mantle is enormously risky, and losing the battle might well have doomed humanity as a whole. Volume 7 did a great job of setting up this conflict between Ironwood and the other protagonists, and while I'm not super happy with the way Volume 8 resolved it for a number of reasons, I think it stands as one of the high points of RWBY's writing.

I've got a few other post ideas bouncing around in my head, but the next one is probably going to be an explanation of why Team RWBY was... not right, necessarily, from a purely utilitarian perspective, in the sense that it led to the most optimal outcome, but absolutely justified in not trusting Ironwood, so be on the lookout for that one hopefully sometime in the next few days. As always, there's probably something I missed or forgot somewhere in here, but I'm always open to feedback and so on. Shoutouts to the, like, 4 people who listen to me ramble, you guys rock.

[thunderheadfred]

❄️Todoroki HC's🔥

Aged-up pro hero Shouto. NSFW under the cut. Minors do not interact.

- - -

General

Might as well be tied with Bakugou for the #1 pro hero spot; they seem to pass the crown back and forth every other year. Everyone knows about their intense frenemies uber-rivalry. Well. Everyone but Shouto.

He's asked to speak at a lot of charity events. If he has time to prepare (and hire a speech writer) he is capable of stirring crowds to standing ovations. But if caught unawares... he gets cornered into hilarious on-the-spot interviews. He's been memed. Mercilessly.

He's an OP character, but unfortunately he rolled -500 in fashion sense. Eventually he wises up and hires a stylist. When he finally cuts his hair a slightly different and even more flattering way, it's a national event. People faint in the street.

Does god-awful sleight-of-hand magic tricks when he meets young fans, even though nobody asked him to. The second-hand embarrassment is palpable. But he keeps doing it. God, why does he keep doing it?

Has hovering arm syndrome in every fan photo.

Super into pop music. Not a fan of any particular group or artist, couldn't tell you the name of a single song. But every time he turns up the volume on the radio it's like... really? THIS? Probably pumps that shit through his hero agency to keep up morale. Has no idea what you mean when you tell him his music taste doesn't match his personality.

Similarly, he enjoys brainless romantic comedies and old silent movies. Doesn't laugh at jokes but loses it over physical comedy. Thinks Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd are the funniest people who ever walked the earth.

He's long and limber. Runs practically a hundred miles every day just to "relax." Doesn't even get sweaty doing it. A filthy yoga addict. He'll probably live to be 200 years old.

He can regulate his body temperature for quirk use but in everyday life he's always half a degree outside the Goldilocks zone. It drives him quietly insane; he has an epic love-hate relationship with his thermostat.

Has a therapy animal pet. Doesn't matter if it's a dog or a cat or a bird or an iguana or a teeny tiny rodent. It's the best-behaved animal in the country and speaks more languages than you. It has its own room and an instagram account with millions of followers.

Lives in a traditional Japanese estate that doubles as a national treasure. Probably has government-appointed snipers at the gate, and he's just like, "don't worry about it." You are afraid to touch anything. Fuck, don't even look at anything, just to be safe.

Has an outstanding personal chef who only gets to cook five things unless (thank fuck!!) company comes over. Impossibly picky eater. He rotates between a few "safe" foods and suspiciously side-eyes everything else. If you cook something unfamiliar for him it will be the most awkward meal of your life, because he'd never tell you he doesn't like it. But oh lord, just look at his face.

This clashes directly with his love of traveling. Frequently uses his hero earnings to visit exotic foreign locales over long weekends... but rarely tries the food.

- - -

Dating

A grey-ace demisexual disaster. You could count the number of people he's been attracted to on one hand. He falls madly in love every time and always gets his heart smashed to pieces when his crush can't magically intuit the meaning of his frigid longing glances and generically courteous romantic gestures.

Which is stupid, because he gets propositioned constantly. He can't walk out the door without being flirted with. People keep slipping him their phone numbers and he always directs them to his agency like a moron. It's a good thing he will never understand how attractive he is because that's the only thing keeping him from total world domination.

Conventional attractiveness does not compute. Shouto doesn't have a type, doesn't care that he's an eleven whilst you are merely mortal. He will fall for your personality above all else.

Probably falls head over heels because your schedules overlap in a completely ordinary way and he witnesses you doing something endearing or brave or most likely: utterly mundane.

Pick a favorite, because you're his favorite coworker, or his favorite barista, or his favorite random bystander in line at the grocery store. You made him smile once; then he spent the next three months daydreaming about your future together before you accidentally stomped on his foot, initiating your first real conversation.

He's big on healthy communication. HUGE. He goes to therapy and it shows. Will talk through literally everything to the point of delirium. Sometimes his dedication to resolving every issue right away can get overwhelming; sometimes you just need some frickin time alone. But it pays off, because the two of you have practically never have a "real fight." There's just no way for bad vibes to fester.

STILL, his family wasn't exactly... erm... verbally or emotionally supportive, shall we say. For that reason, he might not give you all the compliments you deserve, because it simply doesn't occur to him to do so. He assumes you know how he feels. If you're self-conscious or insecure in the relationship, it might take him a while to notice. But when he figures it out (or even better, when you tell him directly) he will make it up to you with enthusiasm.

Will take you on lavish dates. Spoils you rotten without actually intending to. He's clueless about money. If you wanted a sugar daddy, you just hit the fucking jackpot. But if the word valet makes you uncomfortable, perhaps suggest some romantic picnics instead. He can still go all out with the food and five-star location without making you see cartoon dollar signs.

Chronic Insomniac. Stays up too late watching YouTube every night. His viewing history is an incomprehensible blur of k-pop music videos, serial killer icebergs, and super girly crafty ASMR channels. When he's watching a video, he is unreachable. Please call back later and try again.

He's disgustingly cute when he sleeps. Doesn't snore, but drools. Sometimes the drool freezes and leaves frost trails on his face in the morning. Still sleeps with the giant stuffed cat pillow that his mother gave him when he was like, zero. He'll inadvertently suffocate you with it, and you will welcome death with open arms because awwwwww!!!!!

The first time he tells you he loves you will be after your traditional Japanese shinto wedding. You won't hear it again until you start a family. Honestly, it's a good thing he doesn't say it often and is always holding you when it happens. It's a knee-buckler.

- - -

Icy-Hot

I don't even need to say it. Shouto is as old-fashioned as they come. You will never open another door or pull out another chair for yourself as long as you live. He will ask before he holds your hand. He will ask before he kisses you. He will stop and check in if you so much as breathe funny during sex.

If you don't orgasm at exactly the same time while staring into one another's eyes, he'll consider himself a failed lover. God forbid you want him to pound you into the futon... cause you are going to have to present that scenario to him in writing first.

Physical intimacy rarely leads to sex. He loves cuddling, craves physical affection. He'll sprawl all over you and turn into goo while you hold him close. He's an amazing, astounding, phenomenally good kisser. And that's... nice and all... but sometimes you have to grab his face and say, "Shouto, I'm horny," before he's like so that's why you're currently dry-humping me?

Even if he isn't technically a virgin the first time (or the millionth time) you sleep together, you won't know the difference. He's a blushing violet. Every. Fucking. Time. This doesn't mean he's a bad lay, oh no. But there's always ten minutes of confused bumbling before he hits his stride and remembers oh yeah, I DO know how to fuck good.

Absolutely silent during sex. Focused. Intense. Sometimes you have to push him a little to make any kind of noise at all, just so you know you're pleasing him (oh don't worry, you are).

His cock is Just Right. Not to big or too small. Perfectly proportioned and symmetrical. Somehow pretty. Like a fucking factory prototype. It truly is not fair.

Gets handsy and restless at night, even if you both have work the next day. Seems to crave sex at three in the morning. You've given him more than one exhausted handjob.

Gets offended if you don't cum. Will go down on you for hours. Of course he uses his quirk to tease you. He doesn't typically use it during actual intercourse, but he's all about foreplay, and he'll use every tool in his arsenal.

His sex drive is completely fucking unpredictable. Sometimes he's all over you, other times he's an icy slab. His line of work leaves him busy and stressed on a near-constant basis, so you can't entirely blame his personality for this one. Just give him some time and help him take care of his basic needs. He'll come back around soon enough.

[beautyofthend]

As much as I enjoy reading people on twitter watching SW for the first time, it makes me sad when they they get to some key Jack or Jakki moments and there's like no reaction :( I think if people are at s24 and they still don't see all the Jakki moments meaning something then it just isn't going to happen for them and it makes my Jakki heart so sad lol.

I can understand in a way because a lot of people who are watching it for the first time all the way through are more likely to be still mourning Harry, where as people who have watched it in real time have had years. And I know with other shows I think I would have felt the same way. But I just don't see how people can't see all the Jack and Nikki moments we've had and not see how wonderful they are.

*don't mind me having a meltdown right now. I think its just missing SW hours lol

I totally understand you!! I see people being critical of Jack and my heckles go up and then I have to remember that I have seen ALL of Jack, I’ve watched his episodes through more times than I can count and I feel like I fairly understand his character. I don’t think people quite appreciate the complexity of Jack as a character as well, he’s not like Harry, he’s had a totally different upbringing and is a different character. Jack, at times, can be seen as “Harry’s replacement” so people often watch him with Harry in mind and I think that’s wholly unfair.

You have to watch Jack and watch his relationship with Nikki and appreciate that it is very different to Harry and his relationship with Nikki. You can’t watch Jack and Nikki and expect them to behave in the same way that Harry and Nikki once did because one, that would be very boring to watch again and two, it would be a disservice to either character. The characters are separate and the relationships are separate.

Jack is so complex and his behaviour is often hard to judge the first time round, you really have to dig into him to understand the true meaning of his actions; his behaviour in the beginning of S21 is a perfect example. On the surface he looks like a horrible person for ignoring Nikki when she needs him the most. In reality, as Nikki puts it herself “he’s suffering too.” There’s a lot going on in Jack’s head and there’s a lot of reasons why he’s giving Nikki the cold shoulder; it was drummed in to both Nikki and Jack out in Mexico that they take the ones you love, that love is weakness. Jack blames his love for Nikki being the thing to put Nikki in direct danger. Alright we know that Eva was the one that took Nikki but she was the only one who could truly see how Jack felt about Nikki (a bit like how she was the only one who knew about Luisa and Gustavo…they’re paralleled). Eva knew Jack would do anything to get her back (which, in turn, benefitted her, which is another reason she took Nikki; Jack was the only one with access to El Buitre).

Jack blames himself for Nikki being taken so puts that distance between himself and her in order to protect her and because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. It’s why he encourages her to pursue that relationship with Matt, it’s the easier, safer option; if she’s with someone else, he can’t love her. Jack used Matt as a wedge between himself and Nikki because he wanted to protect her from himself.

It isn’t fair to take Jack’s behaviour at value, and while I appreciate that I, as many other people, have had time to get over Harry no longer being in the show, it also isn’t fair to put Jack against Harry and expect him to exhibit the same reactions to situations, because that isn’t fair to either character. They exist on their own and should be treated as such.

But the beauty of Silent Witness is that you can watch an episode a million times and pick up something new each time; what you may have missed the first time will be spotted on the second. I hope the people who have watched the first time will watch through again and hopefully, with hindsight and more understanding of their characters, will pick up on the more subtle moments that don’t stand out straight away.

And I feel like a stuck record with saying this but opinions do change, I went from loving Harry the first time watching to becoming rather critical and disapproving of much of his behaviour the second time I watched, couldn’t tell you why, I seen things in a totally different light. Same thing with Leo, I’ve always loved Leo but watching him again with Sam and actually concentrating…not a fan so much anymore. (Doesn’t mean to say I hate both characters and can’t enjoy their time in the show because I absolutely do and both characters have so many stand out moments that I love but my opinion on them has changed over the years).

[larktb-archive]

Whenever I go to block a racist I've been seeing a post that claims that revolutions dont work and peaceful protests do.

These are the examples said post uses:

These are all fucking terrible examples to use and I'm gonna go in order of worse to best which isn't saying much.

Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace

Yes this did in fact end the civil war. But no one denied that peaceful protests can make momentary symbolic changes such as ending a war or gaining a country its independence. This does often happen and you can list off dozens of countries wherein there has been a peaceful response to violence which has seemingly brought about an end to that violence I should know this because after all I come from the best known example of that happening aside from India (and I'll come back to my home country eventually). The problem with saying this is that it ignores the aftermath of the "peace" and whether or not it made enough of a difference in peoples lives for it to matter; even though external visible violence has been quelled, other covert forms of violence stay in place.

Liberia is a good example of this because of one major issue in Liberia: Corruption. Millions of USD are lost every year due to members of the government pocketing the money for themselves to the extent where, according to Transparency International, Liberia is 137 out of 180 and 53% of public service users had paid a bribe within the year of 2019. Interestingly enough the OP of that post calls China and Cuba corrupt despite the fact that Cuba is 60th and China is 80th. But I guess what happens after the revolutions is successful only matters when you're talking about places you dislike.

This corruption has lead to protests in 2019 and 2020, wherein police used tear gas to disperse peaceful protesters. Something to note is the minister of informations accusation of the protests being caused by outside elite forces. Rings a bell but I'm not sure from where.

Now one of the reasons Liberia is so corrupt is because of the lack of punishment against the main actors of the civil war, in spite of the trc listing out 100+ perpetrators and recommending that they be dealt with.

Then president, Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, was on this list and has admitted that she backed the civil war. She went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

Jasmine Revolution

Around 79% of people in post revolution Tunisia think the country is "going in the wrong direction", 29% of people would not vote with 48% not knowing who they would vote for, 81% said they don't feel close to a political party, 57% said they aren't interested at all in elections, only 20% believed elections would be free and fair, 45% said they disapprove of the current president, 71% said the government isn't addressing the needs of the youth, 50% of people said the government struggles with preventing political violence and I could go on and on.

But this is only 1 study with a very small sample size so by itself it's not a lot.

But when you compound that with a corruption index of 74, an unemployment rate of 15% (compared to Vietnam and Cubas horrible 3% rate and Chinas 6% rate), ~100,000 skilled workers leaving the country and a slowly increasing number of asylum applicants leads me to think that the data is not unfounded.

Suicide and murder rates also increased after the revolution, with cases of self immolation increasing threefold, such as with the case of Abderrazak Zorgui, who's death sparked protests which turned violent after the police were sent in to quell them.

At least 800 Tunisians went to fight for Isil and that's only counting those who came back from Syria. For comparison 900 returned to Turkey and 760 returned to Saudi Arabia.

Much like Liberia there has not been any justice, with the government instead introducing a law granting amnesty to former members of the dictatorship in Tunisia. A constitutional court was supposed to be set up in 2014 to speed up this process. 6 years on it still hasnt been set up.

Rose Revolution

Now this one is interesting. Georgia has a corruption ranking of 44, its unemployment rate of 11%, although higher than the corrupt, evil nations of Cuba and Vietnam isn't terrible and its Gini Coefficient is 36.4 which is pretty average.

So what's wrong with this one?

Well for starters four years after the Rose Revolution, Georgian protestors once again took to the capital to protest against the increasing amount of power, President Saakashvili, who led the Rose Revolution, was gaining.

To be more specific in 2004, legislation was passed to give him the right to dissolve parliament and in 2006 local elections were manipulated so that the government would dominate local legislatures.

And what's that? The president of Georgia blamed outside Russian influence on the protests and sent in police with tear gas and water cannons? That seems weirdly familiar familiar. Where have I heard that one before.

Here is a quote from a leader of a peaceful revolution after peaceful protests against him took place: "Everyone has the right to express disagreement in a democratic country. But the authorities will never allow destabilisation and chaos".

Interesting how after he was put in power, suddenly peaceful protest is the work of Moscow and needs to be controlled by police. Funny that. But this is totally a successful revolution guys!

And how many protests happened after this one? 3, not including the anti-homophobia protest. I think if you need to protest against the government every few years to the point where people keep calling each new protest, the Rose Revolution 2.0, your 1st revolution wasn't that successful.

Womans Suffrage

But before I talk about the relatively well off post-Soviet nations let's just do a assessment of the absolutely dumb as fuck idea that the Suffragists were more effective than the Suffragetes despite the Suffragists making no progress in the 40 years they existed prior to the branching off of the Suffragettes.

Now some historians do agree that the Suffragettes more violent methods did begin to turn men away from granting womens suffrage during their later years. Less concrete is the idea that this outweighs the net positive they had on the movement for womens suffrage.

In fact heres a contemporary source from 1906 praising the suffragette movement:

"I hope the more old-fashioned suffragists will stand by them. In my opinion, far from having injured the movement, [the Suffragettes] have done more during the last 12 months to bring it within the region of practical politics than we have been able to accomplish in the same number of years"

Who said that? Millicent Fawcett? Oh clearly she's just biased towards suffragettes?

But even if I gave evidence that the Suffragettes were indeed more effective than the Suffragists, you could easily find an opposing argument and vice versa. Ww1 happened and in the end that swift change of culture is what gave women their rights to vote (or at least the wealthy).

What can be argued is the historical reasons of why the Suffragettes became even more violent in 2nd decade of the 20th century leading to more guerrilla warfare like tactics being deployed such as arson.

Black Friday happened. Was a protests against the government caused by then Prime Minister Asquith, reneging his promise to put a bill granting womens suffrage through parliament. This protest started off as peaceful and ended up with women being physically and sexually assaulted by the police and counterprotesters with there being accusations of plain clothes police officers inciting this violence. Do I even have to say it?

In order to avoid further molestation, the Suffragettes stopped doing large gatherings with each other and went "underground" so to speak getting more and more violent.

What we should recall is the fact that prior to this Emmeline Pankhurst told the Suffragettes to stop all operations and renewed them after this traumatic event.

Prior to the suffragettes emergence the fight for women's rights had been by in large ignored by the public and it was only after their emergence that this became an issue in the forefront of the public's mind.

For a more nuanced view:

"Viewing the militant movement from the second half of the twentieth century, it is difficult to argue that violence does not ‘pay off’.   [The history of independence of the colonies, and Civil Rights campaigns in the USA shows that violence can succeed.]   It may be that suffragette violence after 1912 fell between two stools, being inadequate to force the government but sufficiently destructive to antagonise public opinion.  This writer [i.e. Constance Rover] is of the opinion that, as the events turned out, militant tactics helped the women's suffrage movement until 1912, but after that date were harmful.   This does not mean that militancy was necessarily a foolish policy.   With hindsight, one can conclude that militancy failed in the last two years before the war, but with the experience of rebellion we have had since, one cannot conclude that militant tactics are an unsuccessful means of obtaining an objective such as enfranchisement..."

- Constance Rover 1967.

I use the quote in specific because it calls the civil rights movement violent. And was written a year prior to the end of the movement. It's almost as if the movement has been whitewashed by liberals to be a completely non-violent effort or something.

Singing Revolution and Velvet Revolution

I'm putting both of these together as these states are all former Soviet nations who have became arguably more successful than others like Moldova, Bulgaria and the aforementioned Georgia.

Now in the post-Soviet Baltic states, there are a large list of things i could talk about. The high suicide rates, the mass exodus leading to a quarter of the population in each nation leaving them, the large amount of people at risk of poverty, high incarceration rates, the gutting of labour laws, the rise of anti-semitism and the glorification of Nazis within their societies all come to mind. Some of these also apply to Czechia and Slovakia.

I could talk about specific events such as the Gorilla scandal, the murder Jan of Kuciak literally everything concerning Czech prime minister Babiš and the large proportion of Soviet Nostalgia in both Czechia and Slovakia (1/3 in the former and 1/2 in the latter).

I could mention protests that have taken place after these revolutions leading to the usage of rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse protesters who were acting non-violently. But I'd be repeating myself so I'm leaving it at that.

"But Lilly" you might say, "that doesn't necessarily disprove OPs point that these protests were successful, they did after all achieve their goals of 'political revolution/ending war/gaining womens suffrage".

And that's true. But...

TL;DR

OP used these as examples to contrast against so called failed violent revolutions with OP using violent revolutions like Vietnam, Haiti, Cuba, China, the USSR and the French Revolution as examples of failed revolutions. Anyone with a brain knows these revolutions absolutely succeeded in their short term goals of political change. There is no Tsar anymore, Cuba and Vietnam are still socialist, the aristocracy of france were decapitated, Haitians arent slaves and China has no emperor.

So where does the problem with these revolutions lie? Well according to OP:

... of course as we've just seen the so called successful peaceful revolutions are also poverty-ridden, corrupt and unstable with problems years later so what's the actual difference? There is none (aside from the historical revisionism of socialist states but that's beside the point), it's just hypocrisy and an incredibly silly gotcha to those currently arguing for violent protest.

I could continue and talk about how Haiti collapsed because of sanctions from racist countries who wanted to punish Haiti for fighting against their white masters, how Vietnam was practically always in war throughout the 20th century and how its stabilized since the end of the Viet-Khmer war, how Cuba infinitely improved the lives of all Cubans and was far more humanitarian than any western nation at the time, how the USSR and communist China turned Russia and China from poor feudal states to economic powerhouses which were far more equal in nature than the US.

But this post is way too long and I don't want to have to read through another dozen sources written by anti-communists liberals again.

Edit: the conclusion didnt save properly (thanks tumblr)

To end I'll say that the major problem with non-violent protests that is shared by every single one of these examples (apart from womens rights) is the lack of punishment towards those who caused the problems the people were protesting against. This means that said people can become president or a member of the government without any impediment and those people continue to be corrupt. From Ellen Sirleaf Johnson to Mikheil Saakashvili to the Tunisian government to Andrej Babiš. On the other hand violent revolution makes sure that those who war complicit in the crimes of the past are not able to usher in the crimes of the future, even if others eventually do.

The thing about that is progress has still been made, and even if they begin to reverse some of the gains that had been made they cant reverse all of them. With non-violent revolutions there is no change except for the ways that those in power step on the working class being more covert than overt.

You can decide which you prefer.