We are one Iowa caucus into the absolute shitshow that is going to be the US 2024 elections, and I'm already sick of seeing takes downplaying the risk that Trump and his fascist followers represent.
Look. Around 1900, my mother's grandparents immigrated to the Lower East Side of New York City. They brought with them children born in Europe (Poland? Ukraine? which country they were in depends on what year we're talking about) - we're not 100% sure they were THEIR children, even, but there were three, and they were young, and they came. But my great-grandparents had siblings, parents, cousins, uncles, aunts, huge families. And while my understanding is that an attempt was made to convince those folks to move to the US, none of them ultimately opted to.
They all kept in touch as they were able, exchanging letters and pictures, but through World War 1, through the 20s, through the Great Depression, through the worsening situation in Europe in the 1930s, my entire extended family who chose not to immigrate...continued to stay.
I think we all know how this story ends.
I have an entire family photo album of people whose names I will never know, because after every single one of them died in the Holocaust, my great-grandparents and grandparents couldn't bear to even label them. And they were PEOPLE, poor, vibrant, eager to maintain connections with their loved ones abroad. One was a Klezmer musician, and we have photos of him with all the different instruments he played. They're so real on the page, and they all ended in ashes.
And you know how that started? Fascism started with every inch allowed, with every well-intentioned moderate who tried to maintain a middle position even as the whole ground shifted right beneath their feet and even "middle" became extreme, every "no that change isn't coming fast enough, I want instant full improvement NOW" liberal who felt that doing nothing was better than accepting a slower improvement in the (truly awful!) post-World War 1 living situation in Germany.
Most of the members of my extended family also downplayed the risks. They never imagined that the worst could happen to them. They never fathomed how bad things could become.
And now I have their example always before me to know and to scream:
I KNOW HOW BAD THINGS CAN BECOME. I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO MY FAMILY THEN.
I WILL NOT LET THAT HAPPEN TO MY FAMILY NOW.
People look at me like I'm crazy when I say I've got our passports ready (and have had since before the 2020 election).
Look. I don't know what will happen if Trump is elected, but there's a very real possibility he will, and he's been extremely clear about saying what he'll do. He did a lot of the things he said he'd do last time. I expect he'll continue to do the things he says he'll do. And the things he say he'll do will lead to the deaths of more people than we can imagine - in the US, in Palestine, throughout the world.
Don't tell me there's a middle ground here. Don't tell me I'm over-reacting. Don't tell me the worst won't happen. Don't tell me the risk is mild. Don't tell me we're safe.
We. Are. Not. Safe.
The lives of dozens, hundreds, of members of family were lost in the 1940s amid the horrifying statistic "6,000,000 dead Jews."
I will not let my life (as a Jew), my wife's life (as a disabled woman), my son's life (as a biracial boy), my daughter's life (as a biracial trans girl), be part of the statistics that come from our a second Trump presidency.
If you won't vote like YOUR life depends on it, vote like someone ELSE'S life depends on it, because IT DOES.
And if you can't even do that much, at least shut the fuck up and stop spreading your poison around. You're wrong. The danger is real. Downplaying it now won't make your conscience feel any clearer when it actually happens, and comforting everyone else downplaying it will just make you that much more complicit.
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...okay, so I'm probably not the first person to notice this.
But gear's earing that he points towards when he says that he did the same ritual he wanted to help kuro with already on himself before:
actually looks pretty similar to the pieces of the necklace the count used to create the servamps:
The different pieces of the necklace seem to contain one demon each and the count used them to create the servamps.
So...did the count either learn this technique from the werewolves or is he possible even originally a werewolf himself? It would explain why he's immortal, that's why I'm wondering about this.
Gear says that the ritual is used to remove spirits, could it be that the count removed his own sins using the werewolf ritual and created the demons this way? But he went too far and removed too much unlike gear who only removed one part of himself? Him removing the sins from himself would also explain why he's so weird and doesn't understand other beings. As the sin demons say, they are a natural part of being a human and we have seen multiple times that denying their existence is harmful, removing them all from you would probably lead to you not being able to relate to other people anymore.
Maybe removing all these parts of himself is also why he has no appearance. Without his demons he's not a person anymore.
The count originally being a werewolf would also explain why he has magical abilities (gear can also use magic) before other magicians existed and why he's so anxious about certain people dying. Gear talks about how his immortality makes him sad because human friends do die, but unlike the count gear seems to accept death, grieves in a heathier way than the count and is able to move on and make new friends. Could also explain why his magic and creations are all strongly tied to the (full) moon.
Another similarity is that while werewolves apparently can't reproduce gear was able to have descendants by sharing his life force (it's mentioned in chapter 135 which isn't translated yet) with a woman and through her human children tsurugi is related to gear. Sigurd explained to nicco that the magicians came to be because the count let humans drink his blood, three survived, got magical ablities and became the ancestors of all human magicians:
Maybe the count is more of a werecat though. He and the sloth demon do seem to have a closer connection, even though the count's appearance changes depending on the person looking at him he does usually keep his tail and the tip looks exactly like the one of kuro's cat/lion form and similar to the the one of inner sloth's non-human form.
It was also stated multiple times that the sloth demon is the strongest. I wonder why that is. Servamp comments on the fact that being lazy is often actually a sign of depression/anxiety through kuro's arc, so maybe the count was depressed and that's why the sloth demon is the strongest? Basically the demons strength depends on how much the count suffered from the different sins? It would also explain why melancholy is so strong, I assume kuro refusing to see him no matter how many siblings he sent his way to tell him to come looking for the count made him extremely sad and probably even made him come up with the plan to have himself be killed and then put in the same body as kuro through the ritual.
I assume he was behind C3 ordering the servamps to kill him because he's the one who created the magicians and thus C3 and lily who is kind of working for him was probably the one who put the idea that the count needed to be killed into the head of his eve (aka a member of the alicein family who hold a lot of power in C3 basically since the beginning. I explained this in more detail in another post). The people from C3 even said that the count can only be killed if he wants to and yeah, kuro didn't truly kill him, but he did destroy his body and kuro seems to have met little resistance when he attacked the count. Which probably means the count wanted this to happen.
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