#authentic source

[empyrangel]

A little late but I made Natlan edits

Anyone can use them for whatever if they want

[cozylittleartblog]

chat imma be honest that project diva PC release has had lasting consequences ,

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Historians having takes on frev women that make me go 😐 compilation

Sexually frustrated in her marriage to a pompous civil servant much older than herself, [Madame Roland] may have found Danton’s celebrated masculinity rather uncomfortable. Danton (1978) by Norman Hampson, page 77.

The Robespierres sent their sister to Arras because that was their hometown, the family home, where they had relatives, uncles, aunts and friends, like Buissart who they didn’t cease to remain in correspondence with, even in the middle of the Terror. There, among them, Charlotte would not be alone; she would find advice, rest, the peace necessary to heal her nervousness and animosity. Away from Mme Ricard, who she hated, away from Mme Duplay, who she detested, she would enjoy auspicious calmness. It is Le Bon that the Robespierres will charge with escorting their sister to this neccessary and soothing exile. […] If there is a damning piece in Charlotte Robespierre's case, it is this one (her interrogation, held July 31 1794). She seems to be caught in the act of accusing this Maximilien whom she rehabilitates in her Memoirs. She is therefore indeed a hypocrite, unworthy of the great name she bears, and which she dishonors the very day after the holocaust of 10 Thermidor. Charlotte Robespierre et Guffroy (1910) in Annales Révolutionnaires, volume 3 (1910) page 322, and Charlotte Robespierre et ses mémoires (1909) page 93-94, both by Hector Fleishmann.

Elisabeth, as she was popularly called, was barely past her twelfth birthday, younger even by three years than Barere’s own mother when she was given in marriage. On the following day the guests assembled again in the little church of Saint-Martin at midnight to attend the wedding ceremony of the handsome charmer and the bewildered child. Dressed in white, clasping in her arms a yellow, satin-clad  doll that Bertrand had given her — so runs the tradition — she marched timidly to the altar, looking more like a maiden making her first communion than a woman celebrating a binding sacrament. Perhaps the  doll, if doll there was, filled her eye, but certainly she could not fail to note how handsome her husband was. Bertrand Barere; a reluctant terrorist (1962) by Leo Gershoy, page 32.

The young nun who bore the name of Hébert did not hide her fate. She did not wish to prolong a life stifled from her childhood in the cloister, branded in the world by the name she bore, fighting between horror and love for the memory of her husband, unhappy everywhere. Histoire des Girondins (1848) by Alphonse de Lamartine, volume 8, page 60.

Lucile in prison showed more calmness than Camille. Before the tribunal, she seemed to possess neither fear nor hope, she denied having taken an active role in the prison conspiracy. What did it matter to her the answer they were trying to extract from her? They said they wanted her guilty? Very well! She would be condemned and join Camille. This was what she said again when she was told that she would suffer the same fate as her husband: ”Oh, what joy, in a few hours I’m going to see Camille again!” Camille et Lucile Desmoulins: un couple dans la tourmente (1986) by Jean Paul Bertaud, page 293.

What did it matter to Lucile whether she was accused or defended? She had no longer any pretext for living in this world. She was one of those heroines of conjugal love who are more wife than mother. Besides, Horace lived, and Camille was dead. It was of the absent only that she thought. As for the child, would not Madame Duplessis act a mother's part to him? The grandmother would watch over the orphan. If Lucile had lived, she could have done nothing but weep over the cradle, thinking of Camille. Camille Desmoulins and his wife; passages from the history of the Dantonists founded upon new and hitherto unpublished documents (1876) by Jules Claretie.

Having been widowed at the age of 23 [sic] years, Élisabeth Duplay remarried a few years later to the adjutant general Le Bas, brother of her first husband, and kept the name which was her glory. She lived with dignity, and all those who have known her, still beautiful under her crown of white hair, have testified to the greatness of her sentiments and austerity of her character. She died at an old age, always loyal to the memory of the great dead she had loved and whose memory she, all the way to her final day, didn’t cease to honor and cherish. As for the lady of Thermidor, Thérézia Cabarrus, ex-marquise of Fontenay, citoyenne Tallien, then princess of Chimay, one knows the story of her three marriages, without counting the interludes. She had, as one knows, three husbands living at the same time. Now compare these two existances, these two women, and tell me which one merits more the respect and the sympathy of good men. Histoire de Robespierre et du coup d’état du 9 thermidor (1865) by Louis Ernest Hamel, volume 3, page 402.

Fel free to comment which one was your favorite! 😀

[urloveangel]

@posterjournal

[whatudottu]

Something something Decepticon recruitment (+physical exam) yada yada putting my Malay twins headcanon to good use and making names (and a non-typical matrilineal last name as opposed to a patrilineal last name) for them :P

Old fanfiction as well as echo chambering myself I have got some headcanons in my mind that do not make surface level sense but have Syakir and Darwesh bin Kalsom!

[liliaceaae]

rhea & ace in tomodachi life

[ssruis]

At some point I really do need to talk about tsukasa + rui wrt to rui - who has had so many people leave him because his ideas were scary/dangerous even when he did everything to ensure people wouldn’t actually get hurt - going “I’m going to be too weird and he’s going to leave me so I should just get it over with now by being as insane as possible. Ok he’s still here what if I’m more insane. Ok he’s still here but surely he’ll leave if I’m even crazier. Ok he’s still here but THIS time (rinse and repeat).” I feel like a lot of why rui acted Like That in the beginning was because he was like “this guy is a liar there’s no way he’ll actually stick around *nobody* is ok with my stunts.” If everyone says you’re weird and your ideas are insane and will hurt people you might as well lean into that being your reputation so that nobody else will attempt to be your friend and then leave when you + your ideas are too much. Obviously a lot of this is unconscious but I think in the beginning it was at least a little deliberate.

He was 100% lying when he was like “if you touch this you’ll die” in the main story but I feel like that was his way of being like “see recruiting me was a bad idea. Oh well this is what I expected”. Which is also why he immediately is like “bye then ✌🏻” when tsukasa is like “I don’t want to die.” & then he’s shocked when tsukasa is like “ok fine let’s do that” -> he suggests a flame thrower and launching tsukasa 10 meters into the air -> tsukasa is still like “😰… but it will wow the audience so as a future star I must do it”

which is 100% the first time anyone has been insane enough to agree to what rui throws at them & he’s very obviously super cheesed by this

The reason I’m singling out tsukasa (besides the fact that I’m a ruikasa enjoyer) is that, unlike with emu/nene, 1) tsukasa promised to match his freak during their first interaction 2) when rui attempted to call his bluff tsukasa continued to be insane and agree to his ideas.

& then when rui “shows and theatre are my entire life and also the only way I know how to connect to people (even though that never works)” kamishiro leaves and refuses to return, Tsukasa elects to convey his true feelings/rediscovery of his original goal through a show based around their argument. Which is an absolutely unhinged thing to do, but it works because rui is also unhinged and shows are the language he speaks best.

I think after the main story rui’s continued attempts to find the point where he’d finally become Too Much for tsukasa were unconscious. The brain likes patterns and it’s natural to attempt to make any exceptions to a rule fit with what you’re used to.

Wonder Halloween is absolutely rui’s worst nightmare coming true, in that he constantly goes to such great lengths to ensure that what he does is safe and people still leave anyways - and now he’s finally found someone just as crazy as he is, a place he can be accepted, and Tsukasa gets hurt because one of rui’s inventions malfunctions. If people left rui when it *was* safe, why on earth would someone stay when they actually got hurt because of him? & then tsukasa doesn’t leave, but rui pulls back because there’s no way he’s getting a second chance if someone else gets hurt. I think tsukasa being mad at *himself* for getting hurt and only getting mad at rui for pulling back was Huge because rui is so used to being too much, and now tsukasa is going “I won’t accept anything less than your authentic self.” Also huge because it showcases that tsukasa is a fucking freak.

The constant roping tsukasa into antics at school is (imo) another part of that - ok so tsukasa is fine with all of this on the stage, but what about in front of all of his peers? Getting in trouble and being labeled as weird will be the deal breaker right? Even nene doesn’t want to be seen around him. Nope! Tsukasa actually is going to act like they’re glued at the hip at school. Tsukasa cares about his reputation, in that he doesn’t want to be labeled as a trouble maker, but he’s already known as a weirdo and doesn’t really care. He’ll huff and puff about Rui being irresponsible and tarnishing his reputation but he’s still not leaving. Rui will purposefully annoy him & tsukasa will react dramatically but continue to associate with him.

Pandemonium is essentially an event about their relationship, & I’m not going to go pull a bunch of quotes (I am keeping this post solidly under control. I am not going to go insane with the evidence. I am normal and in charge of my own destiny.) but since I have this quote on hand:

Rui: I had always thought that I could never properly understand everyone around me.

Rui: as I started doing shows at Wonder Stage with everyone, my way of thinking and feelings began to change.

Rui: now, I am able to understand and connect with someone without relying on shows, and I’ve come to value the beauty of laughing alongside others

Rui: that’s why — tsukasa-kun. Thank you for giving me the chance to change.

The reason why pandemonium is the turning point for their relationship is because they’re connecting outside of shows. The reason why rui specifically cites tsukasa as the reason he changed is because tsukasa brought him to wxs, repeatedly emphasized that he would not accept rui holding back, and stuck with him when any sane and reasonable person would have been like “I value not getting detention on the daily and not dying on stage.” I say that with love. Pandemonium shows that rui *can* connect to people and form relationships without playfully threatening bodily harm several times a day, but the rui + tsukasa relationship is special in that they’re both insane Together.

One specific thing I want to point out is in the card story where tsukasa joins the disciplinary committee (I’m not transcribing that/pulling quotes watch it yourself) because he’s tired of having a reputation as a trouble maker. The easiest way to clear his name would be to stop associating with Rui at school, but tsukasa instead goes “I’m going to be taking responsibility for him and watching him carefully”. ??? Ok? Freak. (Tsukasa Tenma voice) you are NOT getting rid of me.

Last thing to mention is that saki, upon first meeting rui, is like “He must keep my brother in check I’m glad he found someone to do shows with 🥰” (funniest possible first impression of the ruikasa dynamic). This post is rui focused (consequence of spending the past 24 hours rotating him in my mind) but I think that because rui is so crazy people often forget that tsukasa is also insane. Even saki, who he’s objectively more normal around, thinks he’s a freak.

They’re both show maniacs. Matching each others freak. Absolutely misery inducing to be around if you haven’t built up a tolerance. I think they’re neat. I hope they both explode. You understand.

[eternalflowershipping]

thought about a passage in like a Kalos History Book that's like... "While the king was mostly private in his relationships with women, it is thought by some that he may have had a favoured mistress during his rule. Though she is not mentioned by name, Caryscias of Medea writes that Though the king was often a lonely figure, there was a certain woman whom he often enjoyed the company of... I am not typically the type to conjecture, but I have reason to believe the relationship they shared was perhaps... 👀 less than appropriate 👄. However, because it is well known that Sir Caryscias was, in fact, quite fond of conjecture, this passage is typically regarded as mere fiction."

[quirkylilcumlord]

i’m reading through the wikipedia pages (sorry) of different ethnic groups in china for reference, and i can see how hua cheng’s silver jewelry and clothing is heavily inspired by miao culture and fashion, it’s pretty neat

[mariocki]

Honor Blackman guest stars as art expert Syd Lewis in Saber of London: Deep in the Heart of Chelsea (1.3, NBC, 1957)

[catenary-chad]

Electra the “woke agenda train”

And why perhaps my most “out there” takes on them are dead serious. Most of them are based on happenstance and things that have changed since the 80s but I can’t unsee how unintentionally resonant a lot of stuff became. It would have been brilliant if deliberate.

Basically, their framing in canon eerily reflects a complex of neoliberal/anti-transit/covertly anti-Black ideas that are painfully relevant in the US with “waste and inefficiency” and “woke” being so blatantly weaponized right now. This is reposted from AO3 and is an expanded version of a post that blew up back in December that I worded a little too jokingly (because it was most a weird personal theory) but the themes have become so painfully relevant that it’s become a central reason why I’m such an Electra apologist.

On a purely human level, Electra is surprisingly unproblematic, especially for the mid-80s. They’re just kind of creepy vs explicitly predatory like many characters in the same niche, like Dr. Frank N Furter or Velvet von Ragnar.  They’re a downright saint by actual rock star standards.  Outside of Dinah’s Disco (which few people seem bothered by anyways) Electra doesn’t fall into the glaring transphobic pitfalls most characters of the time do.  For all the characters who rely on blatant racist stereotypes, Electra isn’t really one of them (partly because they were raceswapped very late in development for seemingly arbitrary reasons).  Funny enough, turning white electric-themed superheroes Black as a lazy way to add token diversity on teams has become a running joke in recent years, Electra was just a non-superhero example way ahead of the curve.  It’s a benign if increasingly contrived trope, partly popular because it doesn’t have major offensive implications.

Electra is actually a way more compelling character when racebent, for excruciatingly American reasons I don’t think the writers ever picked up on.  I’ll go into the broader scope of electric trains as an Other in Anglophone media in another chapter.  But making Electra specifically Black has an especially deep meaning in the context of the later 20th century-modern US. 

Even without much train knowledge, even white Americans can probably pick up on how electric trains are strongly associated with urban areas of the northeast.  They’d absolutely notice the superhero trope connection today because it’s so infamous.  They may think of how Robert Moses was notoriously racist AND anti-train/public transport.  They may think of how the exaggerated danger of subways vs driving often has class/race undertones, as anti-transit sentiment often has since the 50s.  “Six murders in two months” is what the (actually crime-ridden) 70s New York Metro saw… almost 1,200 die a year in car crashes.  

But it goes so much deeper.  

Electra is an unintentionally fascinating and tragically relevant character from a US perspective. The contrast between the framing and traits they are given vs the reality of electric trains in the US since the Reagan years plays directly into how New Deal liberalism was demonized by the party of “the party of “needn’t ask the world to turn around and help you”.  A pattern that has only become more extreme with time, morphing into the modern situation of decrying anything even remotely progressive as “the woke agenda”.  The interesting thing about this term is that it never really changed from its original AAVE meaning (being aware of societal inequalities in the US), conservatives just treat that as a bad thing.  There’s a US-specific covert antiblackness to pushing the ideas of “small government”, and this goes hand in hand with anti-rail sentiment, which as mentioned before, is widely acknowledged to have a class/racial aspect.

Which ties into how the current administration (the latest, most blatantly awful mutation of all of Reagan’s worst tendencies) turned on long-accepted government agencies this year, which oh yeah, have been a major source of upward mobility for Black people since the 60s, especially around the DC-Philadelphia area, which conveniently is also where some of the earliest rail electrification projects in the US were. Oh, and the same politicians killing those jobs are also trying to kill (often electric rail) public transit in multiple areas, which is ALSO a disproportionately Black profession.  These things all tie into each other.  These are shared train and human problems that have only become more relevant since the 80s.  You can take the “literally trains” or “not REALLY about trains” angle and it works either way.  

But this is a show that paints neoliberalism as a good thing, the absolute wrong side of train history in both the US and UK for reasons discussed in the previous chapter.  

This is a perfect illustration of how I get so frustrated by how Starlight tries to do things that could be interesting and relevant with trains but always does it in stupid counterfactual ways. It’s not stupid because it’s about trains, it’s stupid when it doesn’t even try to get trains right.  It’s tripped into some accidentally brilliant concepts (that get shut down because they’ll ruin Rusty’s entire career).  It could be a really smart and compelling show if every character was written to the standard of Greaseball.  But that’s for a later chapter

Anyways, onto the specific traits of Electra actually in the show, how they’re wrong vs real life, and what they reflect.

People often make fun of how Electra makes such a big deal of being electric and futuristic and something so alien and radical when electric trains are just kind of the norm in most countries with substantial rail networks. But in this US, this goes from kind of stupid to sad and pointedly malicious.

You know what else WAS the norm in the US (and still is in much of Europe) until Reagan started treating it as a radical freak? The big bad “liberal agenda” of the government actually funding things like social programs and infrastructure, including rail.  And you know what kind of trains are almost completely dependent on that kind of government support?  Electric ones.  EVERY SINGLE REPLICA NATIONAL represents a country that (at least circa the 80s) had a nationalized rail network that actually invested in electrification. It’s not impossible for private companies to fully fund themselves but very hard, especially now.  As an aside, the difficult getting into private industry is a noted part of why government jobs are so appealing to black employees.  

The modern incarnation of this only makes the framing more pointed.  Now it’s anything even remotely progressive dismissed as the “woke agenda”, a term far more racially loaded and explicitly anti-LGBT. Electra couldn’t look MORE like the physical embodiment of the “woke agenda” in right-wing cartoons.  It’s a weird way that their design has aged incredibly well.  Funny enough, electric trains are a VERY disproportionately LGBT interest, and racially diverse due the demographics of the cities they’re found in.  It’s just plain accurate to depict them as the groups “anti-woke” people hate the most.  

Now for some (heavily simplified) historical context for my other major points.

You may not realize this if you’re from elsewhere, but the US has very, very little rail electrification vs other rich countries.  You have some commuter rail and local transit systems in a number of cities, the Northeast Corridor and Keystone Corridor, and that’s…. about it.  Intercity service between a line of the big northeastern cities and that’s it.  The rest is all diesel domain irl.  Behold the wikipedia page for electrified lines in the US and see just how many are GONE. (Passenger service is also absolutely threadbare if not nonexistant in most of the non-electric network and often offensively slow, not even local road speed.  But that’s a whole separate can of worms) 

Why is this?  Heavy simplification, but the government subsidized highways and airports instead after WWII and that along with antiquated laws and losing mail service made passenger rail a massive money pit for most the railroads forced to continue it.  Instead of passenger rail service and infrastructure improving like basically all the other Nationals’ countries,  routes dropped like flies and many railroads sank into financial ruin until Penn Central’s collapse in the late 60s.  That’s when the government finally stepped in and took over passenger services as Amtrak.  While virtually all trains suffered from this, electric lines were hit disproportionately hard because they were so passenger-heavy and relied on increasingly dated, sometimes outright dilapidated infrastructure.  There’s another economic parallel between how Black citizens were notably left out of, or outright harmed by midcentury infrastructure  projects.  Highways and almost anything Robert Moses touched being the most blatant examples for both groups.  For trains, this only started to reverse with the shinkansen spurring worldwide high speed rail development in the mid-60s.  There was some progress in the 70s, and then Reagan swept in and crushed spending.  He wanted to quietly kill Amtrak all together.  Electra being bi suddenly becomes very dark in the context of how Reagan actually did quietly kill thousands in the AIDS epidemic. It’s been an on and off uphill battle since to get enough funding to keep things going, let alone improve or expand.  Literally left decades behind by the system due to underfunding.  

Somehow, the 2013 tour is the most accurate version of Electra as a reflection of electric passenger rail in the US.  A guy who’s been at it since the 80s that still looks like a decades-old vision of the future in a notably cheap, visibly worn out costume.  Actually the AEM-7 locomotives used at the time date to 1978, even older than that.  Bonus for the particularly elaborate makeup fitting the “slapping new paint on old equipment to make it look fresher” reputation Amtrak had earlier on.  I also love that the later more saturated and toyishly shiny toothpaste-era costumes look even MORE dated, they feel more Spirit of ‘76 or “Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk” obnoxious disco sci-fi.  Which perfectly ties in to how conservative backlash against disco and its “extravagance” in 1980 was often blatantly homophobic and racist.  Also conveniently the time period when Amtrak was trialling new electric locomotives (including one similar to the model Electra’s helmet is based on)

With all that, Electra being a rich frivolous celebrity has… implications when representing a woefully underfunded (and infamously thrifty) system.  The celebrity part technically works with how US media is so dominant and depictions of urban trains are widespread.  But “Electra must be rich” sounds like something a stingy conservative politician would say about Amtrak needing billions of dollars (to just be barely functional due to years of neglect).  Because handouts bad.  Because you must be so extravagant if you need that much.  Congrats, you now have a “welfare queen”, sucking government funds to blow on exotic pets and glitter and other frivolities.

 Painting those who need government assistance (usually coded as Black) as extravagant was directly weaponized by Reagan to destroy social programs and further inequality.  

Additionally, this “wasteful and extravagant” line has been weaponized against US government agencies and transit as an excuse to gut or destroy them in 2025.  

“Or unreliable”- electric trains have so few moving parts they tend to be notably reliable in terms of the physical locomotive/multi unit*.  A lot of their issues are actually due to structural failures with powerlines, and this is ESPECIALLY true with the NEC and other ooold electric commuter lines in the US.  This has also limited the maximum speed of trains at times.  See video below for more on this, also explains a lot of the history I’ve mentioned earlier.  

*technically CC 40104 used as Electra’s helmet actually was an unreliable model because it was trying to run four voltages pre-computerization for a uniquely European situation but that’s downright cherry picking.  The other Nez Cassé engines with that styling were reasonably reliable.  And realistic Amtrak Electra from the 80s to 2018 would be an AEM-7 (common fanon choice too) that was also fine. The fact that a notoriously pre-computer locomotive gets used to reflect anti-computer sentiment ties into how my boomer mom has noted Reagan having anti-computer views.  But this was VERY widespread at the time and distinctly aligned with anti-Japanese sentiment (Asian Electra is fascinating for very different reasons)

Anyways, huh.  Gee whiz.  Someone held back and suffering due to structural problems being blamed as personal failing.  When you think about it, the likes of “only you have the power within you” and “needn’t beg the world to turn around and help you” might be the most offensive things you could say specifically to an electric train in the US besides“lol they shoulda replaced your line with even moar I-95 lanes”

It’s funny that everything I rip Rusty to shreds for conceptually, the show accidentally accomplishes with Electra between the lines. There’s a really interesting political and economic metaphor there.  The show keeps having to project faults more true of steam engines (HIGH MAINTENANCE) and non-train traits onto electric trains to make them look bad and give the choo choo endless plot armor so the “eViL OpPrEsSoR” juice jack can’t win.  And yet they say the system is rigged against steam when it’s anything but.  Oh yeah, ever notice how media bends over backwards to spotlight steam engines even when mediocre or outright bad?  But it’s crickets for much of anything electric until they go wrong?  There’s a reason why my default image of Rusty and Electra are the 1989 Japan tour and I think raceswapping them is the best thing the show ever did.  It just exposes how backwards canon makes things.  

“Radically unthreatening 2013 Electra” is also one of my favorite versions of the character because he makes you question why things are depicted this way.  Why is this guy supposed to be scary, he’s just kind of a bitch?  Isn’t it kind of a great thing to reduce pollution by having electric trains?  Could it be that this guy epitomizes how the likes of socialized healthcare were treated as an abomination by Reagan?  It’s just kind of funny and maybe underwhelming to his intended audience but he jumps the shark into accidental brilliance in the US.

Anyways this is why I get so pissed off when people compare electric trains to electric cars or try to turn Electra into a gadgetbahn or Musk figure.  It’s offensively wrong compared to the actual politics and economics of them on every possible level.  Electric trains play into and benefit from the villified “woke agenda” in its original and appropriated sense and disproportionately suffer at the hands of “government efficiency”.  

(If you want to read more into these issues, see Jamelle Bouie, Intelexual Media (youtube, 18+), and Banks Rail/Robo Rail (youtube, train politics) )

[urloveangel]

[walker-lister]

I just have to remind myself sometimes that no matter what anyone else says, the way a piece of media makes me feel and the positive impact it has had on my queer identity is valid, and that tearing myself apart thinking I have to defend it or questioning my own place within queer communities is not at all important when compared to the almost tangible sense of 'rightness' that piece of media helped me to feel about myself.

[scarletfasinera]

Had an opportunity to talk about my goal to read The Anatomy of Melancholy in 2025 with my best friend's brother & his girlfriend. She's a literature teacher, so she recognized it and seemed really impressed by the goal. She's was like "Wow! Isn't it like 1500 pages? That's a really good goal for the year, please keep me updated on your progress!" and when I got really serious and said "I'm GOING to read it entirely. It's my White Whale." she laughed & started clapping & nodding at me.

[ed-nygma]

For anyone curious, this is the blog behind that deranged IDF "autistic bluntness" post. I genuinely thought whoever wrote that was a troll but the account was set up and already regularly active before Oct. 7. And if you're still suspicious, you might be surprised to find @/autismserenity has written countless original paragraphs in defense of Israel's war crimes. So, not a troll, just a genuinely unhinged individual.

Also lol lmfao @ "don't screenshot without my permission"

[aztecbrujeria]

Anyone else have thoughts about the genshin Natlan sneak peeks? Boy why am I not shocked that the archon [rumored] is pale asf and dressed like a conquistador and the npcs are ofc shocker brown while the good guys are pale asf…