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piracytheorist · 3 years

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So I went down some t*rf tags the other day to find which blogs I should block, as you do, and of course in order to avoid accidentally blocking people who were mocking the ideology or sarcastically agreeing with it, I actually read the posts there and scrolled down some of the blogs.

And with some of the things I saw... it made me understand how they reel people in. In some of the stuff they said, I understood them. I understood their struggle, and their anger, and I got how their feelings could make them burst out the way they do in their blogs. Also the fact that many of the blogs I scrolled down and blocked were by women between the ages of 15 and 19 didn’t help. That’s the exact age where you do the most reckless, the most emotional, and the least experienced thinking. It’s when you think of something and immediately think you’re right, because you’re not developed enough, neither mentally, nor emotionally, nor from the aspect of life experiences, to know better and reflect on how well developed your thoughts are.

And to see them act the same way older t**fs do, like in the ages of 26+... it’s fucking scary. It genuinely feels like a cult, where teen women, frustrated with the misogyny they experience, come to a website to vent out their feelings about that and find passionate adult women agreeing with and supporting them and saying that they’re in the right to hate men and trans women... it solidifies their at then immature thoughts.

Like, give me one (1) cis woman who during her mid- or late teens didn’t hate men, even for just a few months, in reaction to being treated as lesser just for having a female body. Just one. I specifically did. I was, for a couple of years actually, believing the bullshit going around that “Girls are more mature than boys”, that “Girls love truly, boys only want sex”, that “Women are statistically smarter than men” etc etc. But then you grow up, you reflect on those thoughts and you go like “Damn older people are right when they say that teenagers do stupid stuff sometimes”.

And that’s the thing with being a teenager; it’s the time to do mistakes, it’s the time to screw up, to vent out your frustrations, and when you grow older and have more life experience, look back at how you used to think and say “Wow, cringe. Good thing I grew out of that.” Absolutely not saying that everything teenagers do is stupid, if anything, most people start discovering themselves at that age. But that’s it; it’s a start. And on that road you’ll make mistakes, you’ll reflect, you’ll change your mind, you’ll learn, you’ll grow. The things that you start connecting with as a teenager which you keep on in your adult life also change, in the way that you look at them deeper, you understand them differently... it’s like with favourite films. Any movie you love as a teenager and as an adult, you’ll have a different mindset on the two occasions. Even if it brings you back to those times, you still have developed and you see it in a different way. Both ways may be positive, or fundamentally similar, but they’re still different, maybe one is the evolution of the first; it’s still not 100% the same. Because you grew up. It’s kinda sad, in a way.

So the issue I have with indoctrinating young women into the t**f ideology from so early on, is that it’s an ideology based on hate. By saying that women are only those who experience misogyny, you’re basically normalizing misogyny and abuse, and averting the blame. You’re saying that it’s expected from men to be misogynistic, and that women should band together against the oppression... instead of looking into why men are misogynistic and looking how you can inspire change in that. It’s victim blaming, basically.

By saying that “trans women are not women because they don’t grow up experiencing the effects of misogyny and patriarchy on themselves” (in a way that’s bullshit but as a cis woman I can’t expand on that, read trans women’s stories instead), you’re putting the responsibility of erasing misogyny on trans women. And again, you’re normalizing the abuse, and you’re defining your gender by the abuse you went through.

Like, fuck no. I was bullied for more than half my school life. It has impacted me greatly, many of the emotional scars I carry them still, my character has been affected by the abuse I went through, but by fuck no does it define me. I choose to try to be kinder. I choose to see abuse as wrong. I choose to be an educator so that I can help bullying stop being a thing in the schools I’ll be teaching. And not because I feel ashamed, or that I pity children who are being bullied, but because I want to make this world a better place, because I believe in teaching the younger generation into not perpetuating any kind of hateful ideology.

That’s not what t**fs do. They just say they hate men and perpetuate the idea of female supremacy... as if women, even women who are privileged in every way other than having a female body, can never do wrong.

Like on one hand, they deify JKR who said that “I am not a victim, I do not pity myself and I’m growing out of my trauma strong” in a very, very victim-shaming way, and on the other hand they define their femininity on the fact that they’re victimized by the patriarchy. Make it make sense.

And in general, it is still an ideology based on hate. When you take a group of people that are struggling both on the inside (either through gender dysphoria or through the pressure of not feeling free to express themselves) and on the outside (either because they’re bullied if they act “out of the gender norm” or because of transphobia if they come out), and you hate on them, when you put the entire responsibility of erasing unrealistic expectations on beauty and appearance for women on that specific small group that’s in a fundamentally disadvantageous position... bro I don’t know what you call it, I call it targeting. You have your frustrations with the patriarchy and sexist men, and because those people won’t listen to you - mostly because they’re privileged and assisted in that by the system they create - and you take it out on a group of people that’s just trying to live their lives in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone.

Like, I saw someone being upset by people comparing t**fs to nazis because she’s Jewish and I’m like... how the heck can you not see the similarities? How can you grow up Jewish and not see that it’s wrong to target an entire group of people, massively hate on them, say that they “have an agenda” just because they want to be themselves and aren’t hurting anyone? How can you not see that cherry-picking the unkind or misled ones and defining the entire group by those few people is wrong?

In fact, how can you not see that “trans women are perpetuating Hollywood’s beauty standards for women” has the exact same basis as “immigrants of colour are stealing white people’s jobs”?

And you may say, “Lillpon, you’re doing the same with t**fs right now. You’re going out there and blocking them after having said you hate blocking people” and I’ll say, I am not hating on them. As I said, I’m scared by seeing how many of them are teenagers, but at the same time, it’s telling. It’s a cult-like mentality, it finds people who are frustrated with how they are treated, who feel wronged, who feel they’re in an unjust world, and it takes those feelings and targets it to one specific group or characteristic. For t**rfs, that’s the XY chromosome set. For neo-nazis, that’s non-Caucasian races. The whole “finding young people who are alone, who see that the world is unjust, who feel no-one listening to them and indoctrinating them to an ideology of hate” is point-blank exactly how neo-nazi groups work. Here is a very interesting TED talk on the matter by a former neo-nazi, if you’re interested.

Also, I never said I hate blocking people, or that I think it’s wrong. I just don’t think it’s something to be proud of, and in fact I’m not proud for blocking those people, I even feel a little guilty as I understand how many of them are just victims of indoctrination.

You’ll say, “But Lillpon, a lot of neo-nazis are spoiled, privileged white men! How can you know how privileged t**fs are??” And to that, I’ll turn communist and whisper in your ear, “The privileged are few. They’re the minority. And they depend on the lower classes fighting against each other so that people forget that it’s the privileged who make all the laws and standards that hurt all the lower classes.” To that extent, you can never, never know who truly hides behind the blogs and twitter accounts with “r*dfem lesbian” on their bio. There are many occasions, especially on twitter, where accounts that claimed to be queer poc were found out to be run by straight white men.

... So, who can guarantee that everyone running a blog with “r*dfem lesbian” on their bio is actually a cis, lesbian woman? And again, on its basis, it’s the same.

Neo-nazism is putting the blame on people of colour; that not only causes a rift between neo-nazis and poc, but also between neo-nazis and white people who oppose them. It’s in fact a pawn so that the white people in power - the people who are responsible for the problems poc and lower class white people face - can avoid having everyone against them. They give poc and less-racist lower class white people a scapegoat.

T**f ideology is putting the blame on people born in male bodies - absolutely no matter what their character is. Again, that causes rifts between t**fs and cis men, t**fs and trans people, and t**fs and cis women who support trans rights. Instead of focusing on seeing how we can stop cis men from being sexist - which of course will inconvenience the men in power who rose so high because misogyny is holding women back - we’re fighting against each other. It’s again, a pawn, a scapegoat, to distract us from blaming the one who’s truly to blame.

If anything, if you’re a t**f, the fact that what you do is helping the white men in power - because absolutely nothing you or your friends can do can affect them in a negative way - should be a reason by itself to not be a t**f. But what do I know.

#anarchist lillpon coming out #long post

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angelhummel · 3 years

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could you rank the degrassi next class characters?

gladly!! also sorry in advance if you love any of the characters im about to shit on lol

20. Frankie Hollingsworth. Almost had her second to last but. No. Klu Klux Fran?? The ZOO?? I can't even talk about her she's just so damn annoying and racist and omg. And she was being pushed as the new Main Girl which made everything all the more offensive and unbearable

19. Esme Song. Sorry but I do not think she had a single redeeming trait. She had nothing she stood for, no actual character beyond being an antagonist to every single other person on the show. Like she thinks Shay is stupid for being embarrassed about getting her period on her boyfriend's pants, and yet she calls Yael disgusting for having armpit hair?? So what's the truth? And people are like "well she's mentally ill" to excuse all she does. Well Maya is mentally ill and Esme makes fun of her too. So who's side are we on? Like I would've liked to see her get help and develop but we didn't get that so.

18. Hunter Hollingsworth. Terrorist. Not even interesting enough to be an actual school shooter. Just a waste of a character. Sexist, violent, had a plot about wanting to play video games at school. I'm so bored. Only not at the bottom bc I feel like he wasn't in my face as much

17 & 16. Baaz Nahir & Vijay Maraj. Thing 1 and Thing 2 to the would be school shooter. Clowns. They were a terrible group and I cringed any time they had a plot together. Annoying together, useless on their own. Hard pass

15. Yael Baron. The final member of the above group. Was mostly boring and annoying and especially dumb for being romantically interested in Hunter. Only gets bonus points for their coming out as nonbinary plot. After their makeover I was literally crying

14. Jonah Haak. Mostly disliked him for being in a relationship with Frankie. Like I'm sure they were only a year or two apart but he felt so much older than her. It was gross. And mostly he's just really blah. The attempt at a straight edge character at that point was. Hilarious. at least.

13. Winston Chu. Seemed harmless at first but idk all the boys were shifted high into clown mode when this show hit netflix. The incident with the geisha and Japanese soldier costumes? Defending Zoe against Esme? Then later telling Goldi maybe she should take her hijab off to cause less of a fuss? Bruh.

12. Saad Al'Maliki. Honestly I felt like he was the one with the most braincells most of the time. Probably pissed me off the least. But he was also in the least amount of episodes and didn't make much of an impression on me. Was mostly just boring. But I'll take boring over everything that came before

11. Lola Pacini. Degrassi has a knack for introducing the worst and most obnoxious characters and then eventually making you love them. Lola was not quite that. I hated her for the longest time but it decreased a bit near the end. I got emotional when she had her abortion. And when she gave Yael their makeover. And when she reached out to Saad and convinced him not to leave. I feel like I could've grown to like her more if the show went on, but again... Oh also I hate her and Miles together sorry

10. Grace Cardinal. Ugh Grace is confusing to me. I wasn't the biggest fan of her story with Zoe. I mean sure you're allowed to hook up with someone and then realize "oh that's not for me" but it was handled so awkwardly. Like she slept with Zoe just to be like "damn i hate when everyone thinks i'm a lesbian :/" like why. Idk she was fine but I'm not over the moon about her

9. Goldi Nahir. Ugh okay I feel like they didn't know what to do with her. Like she had the plotline about if she should take off her hijab or not. And she had to teach the poor whities about racism. That was about it? She was adorable and sweet and a bright spot in the show but ugh she deserved better than what she was surrounded with lol

8. Shay Powers. Again, it's not her fault she's stuck in a show written by 70 year old white people. But the black girl is completely oblivious to the racism of her friend? She has to ask her dad if a racist thing is really racist? She's never experienced racism? Ok Degrassi. They treat all their black girls like shit and I feel like I just stan them out of spite bc of that lol. But she's cool and a nice person and she's into sports so she's at least doing stuff

7. Rasha Zuabi. Another generally nice and cool character that I have positive feelings for. Also she was gay so yay. Loved her story with Zoe. I think there was just one moment where I was like "wtf are you doing" but compared to everyone else it's not a big deal

6. Zig Novak. I have to admit that all my enjoyment of his character comes from before Next Class. He was such a sweetie and then he left and came back acting dumb as hell. That was not my boy in Next Class. But ahhh he's still my boy sorry I love him <3

5. Deon "Tiny" Bell. Basically the same as Zig above. But I feel like he maybe had a few less moments of being an asshole? Also his promposal for Shay was cute <3 Wait didn't he also date Lola? Wasn't a fan of that either.

4. Zoe Rivas. She was the one dressed up as a geisha lol (: Oh boy Next Class was something else. Umm it was nice to see her process of accepting herself as a lesbian. I feel like it took forever tho. Which is understandable irl but this is a tv show lol. I didn't enjoy her sucking Zig off in the woods. Not fun. But her relationship with Rasha was one of my fave things about NC

3. Tristan Milligan. The amount of hate Tristan gets is faaaar too much. He's one of my favorites of the whole show honestly. I think he's funny and dramatic and a great addition to the show. But he gets knocked down bc I can't remember anything he did in Next Class other than BEING IN A FUCKING COMA FOR A WHOLE SEASON. He's already Owen's brother, he's suffered enough. But I love his relationship with Miles. And him helping Zoe accept herself

2. Miles Hollingsworth. Yes another character I wasn't fond of at first. Hated his relationship with Zoe and thought he was just boring. Truthfully I think I only became interested when he started dating Tristan lol. Plus omg with his family?? It's a miracle he got out at all. He went through so much bullshit and he was especially going through it in Next Class. He was kind of a hot mess but also I just care a lot about him. He deserves the world <3

1. Maya Matlin. Is Maya really my fave?? I guess so! Yet another character I wasn't fond of at first. Which is insane bc we just got to the part in our rewatch where she first shows up and I'm like !!! baby girl!! So precious!!! And I wanted to cry thinking of what she's about to go through. I feel like her character is treated with some of the most respect and care. Her motivations and mental health decline all make sense storywise. I just care a lot about her and got super emotional watching everything in her story, especially the later parts in NC

Wow this is a lot!! But I hope you enjoyed my ranking and explanations lol. Also like. Everyone was racist. Everyone was mentally ill. That was the whole show. It was a hot mess and truth be told I am not a fan. Even the characters I love, they were acting weird here. Like I said about Zig and Tiny and their character regression. And I think it was the same for like Tristan and Zoe and plenty of others too. Everyone was off, idk how to explain it. But that's my ranking for the hot mess that was Next Class!!

Thank you for the ask, ily <3

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backupblogforjg · 5 years

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The racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and cruel tropes in Voltron

So, it’s the anniversary of the ending of Voltron. And I’m getting really, really tired of people saying that only shippers hated the ending. There were many issues with Voltron, and they were neither limited to shipping nor to S8.

So, I’ve decided to compile a list.

It gets LONG. Turns out there was a hell of a lot of racist, sexist, ableist and cruel tropes in VLD.

In fact, I had originally planned on writing a list of both the terrible tropes and the plot holes. But there just wasn’t enough room for both. The post is huge as it is, and with the plot holes, it would have been twice as long, so I had to focus on only one thing.

Salt, obviously. So, so, so much salt. I could turn a lake into a sea here. You’ve been warned.

RACISM:

1) The Alteans are genocide survivors. Out of all the Alteans, only the black Altean was used for a Reverse Racism story where she resents a teammate for belonging to the race that exterminated hers. The white Alteans are totally cool with him, and with his race in general, and only hate the bad people. But the black one had to be taught that hating people because of their race is wrong.

2) VLD Allura is also the only version of Allura who is black. In every other Voltron media (several different cartoons and comics), Allura is blond with blue eyes. All the white versions of the character get a happy ending, while only the black version ends up dying to save the world.

While "hero sacrifices their life to save the world" is not a bad trope in and of itself, it becomes bad when it kills off one of the extremely few black female characters in leading roles. You kill off a white male hero, there are 463278462387 more. You kill off the black female hero, you are kinda screwed. Making it worse, Allura had been portrayed as suffering from depression throughout the latest seasons, so that her death comes across less as heroic sacrifice and more as suicide.

3) The brown Cuban kid who dreamed of being a pilot, and never once in 78 episodes ever expressed anything but sheer love for an exciting life, in the final two minutes of the final episode ends up realizing that the place for him is a farm.

4) As told in interviews, Lotor was meant to be a bad example of mixed-race person, to contrast him with Keith as good example of mixed race person. Do I even have to point out how messed up this is?

5) Even before they became Space Nazis, back when they were still on the side of the angels, the Galra invaded and conquered planets. This is portrayed as totally cool when they happily name the prince after a "hero" who invaded and conquered a lot of worlds, and the peaceful Alteans think the guy is just as heroic as one of their greatest scientists. Apparently there is such a thing as ethically killing people to steal their land.

6) They whitewashed Keith, a character who is poc in every other iteration of Voltron.

I’m sure a lot of people are going to get angry here, claiming that I hate Keith. Let me assure you, I don’t. I love Keith, and I hate what was done to him. I hate that they took a traditionally poc character and went to frankly ridiculous lengths to erase that part of his character. Keith should be Asian, and it would be incredibly easy to make him so in VLD (seriously, all they’d have to do is update the freaking bios, an intern could do it right now in 5 minutes). But they refuse to do it.

A lot of people don’t realise that the surname “Kogane” in VLD is fanon.

I’m serious. Check his official bios page. Keith is not actually called Keith Kogane in VLD. Fans started calling him that in fanfiction, and it stuck, but it’s not canon.

In every other Voltron media, Keith is an Asian guy. But in VLD, they:

- went out of their way to always avoid giving him an Asian surname

- gave him a Texan father

- refused to confirm his race, even when every other character had a specific race. Again, check his official bios. All the other characters got a race, Keith gets “human.” It got so ridiculous it would be funny if it weren’t sad. It pretty much went like this:

Fans: Keith is half alien, but about his human half, what is his ethnicity? EPs: oh, we couldn't possibly say, because the story takes place in the future, and in the future, everybody is mixed up! So, Keith is HUMAN, we can't give him a specific race because there are no specific races in the future! Fans: ok. And what are the races of the other characters? EPs: Pidge is Italian, Lance is Cuban, Hunk is half-black half- Samoan, Shiro is Japanese. Fans: but Keith...? EPs: HUMAN! There is no such thing as race in the future!

Some people at least hoped that Keith's Texan father had Asian ancestry because he kinda looked like Shiro, who is Japanese. But the EPs confirmed that the resemblance was just a coincidence, they never meant for the dad to look Japanese.

At this point pretty much the only evidence that Keith is Asian is that he is voiced by an Asian person. But then, Josh Keaton is not Japanese, is he?

7) After whitewashing Keith, they claimed he is the best leader of Voltron, better than his poc predecessor, because he has Galra blood.

So, instead of bringing up any sort of legit reason to justify why Keith should be in charge (like his empathy or pilot skills), they go with "the half-white guy is also half space-nazi and that's why he should give the orders instead of the poc guy."

If you think I’m bashing Keith here, please ask yourself why you are getting angry at the person pointing out the whitewashing instead of getting angry at the whitewashing. Especially when, again, making VLD Keith canonically poc could be done anytime with zero cost and zero effort, and DW just doesn’t want to.

- Hunk, the half-black half-Samoan guy, was going to be killed and replaced as Paladin by a blue alien. The EPs were pissed when DW forbade them to, and complained in the interview about it.

SEXISM:

Every single woman who is ever put in charge ends up going insane, making terrible decisions that endanger her planet, or losing all of her authority.

Allura starts out as co-leader of Voltron and leader of the Coalition. Ends up as a foot soldier who takes orders from the new leader and his right-hand man, and is treated as a cadet by the Earth military.

HOMOPHOBIA:

1) Dreamworks, Netflix and the EPs very, very, very heavily promoted S7 as GLBT-friendly. The EPs gave whole interviews about the past relationship between Shiro and new character Adam, retweeted a ton of posts celebrating Shiro’s homosexuality, and enthusiastically sent tweets like "you are going to see more of Adam in S7! :D" from their personal accounts after they showed the episode that introduced him.

In S7:

- Shiro's homosexuality is so ambiguous that even the Brazilian voice actor didn't realize that he was supposed to be gay. Just by watching the show, without knowing the World Of God, you can’t tell he and the other guy were engaged.

- Adam gets about 30 seconds of screentime after that one episode they had already shown. Then he dies screaming in pain and terror in a fire.

A lot of people claimed that it was okay to kill Adam because Shiro was supposed to be our rep, not Adam, who was a brand new character we knew little about. And, out of context, that would be true. Adam was pretty much a NPC, why would his death matter?

But the problem here is the context:

- Shiro is closeted in S7, you need to read interviews to know he is gay. So, if only Shiro is meant to be the rep, they couldn’t even do that right.

- They very heavily marketed both Shiro and Adam as gay rep, and specifically talked at length about Adam in several interviews.

In THAT context, REGARDLESS of what you ship, killing off Adam revealed a complete willingness to manipulate the audience to the point of outright lying. Even if you hated Adam, even if Adashi is your NOTP, the clear evidence that the creators had absolutely no problem making empty promises was NOT a good sign.

2) The moment Shiro is revealed to be gay in interviews, he is practically quarantined from the Team.

3) Shiro is also given a Totally Not AIDS deadly disease.

Making it even worse, Shiro never actually gets cured in canon. We are told he is cured in interviews, but the show itself drops the topic entirely. Depending on where you lean in the Word Of God VS Death Of The Author debate, Shiro may be doomed to die.

4) A female villain is revealed to be a lesbian. 30 seconds later she gleefully tortures a little girl. Then she, too, dies in a fire.

(Fan outrage about pulling two Bury Your Gays in the Season that had been very heavily promoted as GLBT-friendly caused DW to retcon her death and bring her back in S8, but she was originally meant to die in the explosion)

5) Shiro ends up marrying a random character who doesn’t even get a name in the show.

ABLEISM:

1) Shiro's PTSD magically disappears offscreen. In interviews, the EPs claimed that he "got over it" between S6 and S7 because "he is a professional." Wow! Who knew being a professional magically cures mental illnesses!

2) Shiro is an amputee. The EPs admitted that they never put any thought into his status as disabled rep, they just wanted a character with a cool-looking arm. It literally didn't occur to them that making him lose his arm (TWICE! First up to the biceps, then up to the shoulder) meant anything. Also worth noting that Shiro’s new arm makes him look like the guy who tormented him.

3) Shiro is systematically robbed of his agency.

- He is the only Paladin who never gets to use his bayard.

- He loses his bond with Black for no given canon reason (and the reason they give in interviews makes no sense, they basically say that transferring his soul out of the Black Lion makes her stop loving him. But she still lets Zarkon fly her!).

I know that Keith is traditionally Black’s pilot in Voltron media (although that shouldn’t matter, because VLD made a lot of huge changes to the traditional status quo). But if they wanted Black Paladin Keith that badly, they could have given some non-insulting reason for it. For example, say “because Shiro has spent so much time within Black, their bond is now so strong that he will get absorbed again if he flies her again.” Or co-pilots in Black (if Pidge can co-pilot with Matt, why can’t Shiro co-pilot with Keith?).

- He is defeated not only by Sendak, but also by a bunch of random Alteans. He basically can’t win a fight anymore unless it’s played for laughs.

- His new robot Atlas is bigger than Voltron, but also much weaker, and can only buy a few minutes for Voltron to come save the day.

- Every single enemy he ever defeated comes back to be finished off by somebody else (even the friggin' Gladiator from S1 comes back in S8). In the epilogue, he retires in his twenties.

4) Narti, the disabled General, is fridged shortly after her introduction. For a while at least it seemed like her death had affected the remaining three Generals, but then it turns out that the "For Narti" line was a trick and they never actually planned on avenging her.

CRUEL TROPES:

1) They intentionally baited the fans by pushing the plot thread that Lotor would be redeemed. They named the episode where he defects "A New Defender," they kept saying in interviews that they come from Avatar and they are very familiar with Zuko *hint hint*, they showed his family as incredibly abusive and Lotor himself as desperate, they showed that Lotor was a victim of severe racism (he is mixed race, and as stated above, the Galra are Space Nazis and are pretty obsessed with blood purity).

Then, after revealing him to be a villain, they gave an interview where they practically dislocated their shoulders by patting themselves on the back as they gleefully bragged that "we made them think we would give them a Zuko, but we gave them an Azula!"

(Nevermind the fact that Azula herself was a 14-year-old child, not a monster, and that Aaron Ehasz himself confirmed that he always wanted her to be redeemed).

When fans who are survivors of child abuse told them that the bait-and-switch was really hurtful, they laughed it off, and claimed that Lotor was just beyond redemption. Then they proceeded to redeem Lotor's abusive parents, who were objectively much worse.

2) Shiro’s clone, who sincerely believed he was Shiro and always meant well, was dehumanised, demonised and discarded like his life meant nothing. His short existence was full of pain from literally the moment he first opened his eyes, as Haggar kept torturing him with migraines to manipulate him. In the end, she brutally violates him body and mind, and brainwashes him to force him to turn on the family he was so desperate to find in The Journey. He dies in incredibly questionable circumstances, without ever getting to learn that his family survived Haggar’s plans. He is victim-blamed for the things she forced him to do against his will with mind-control, and is never mourned because the only family he ever had writes him off as a “thing” and “evil.”

In fact, the horrific treatment of Kuron foreshadowed S8. The Medium article “It never stops at one - Why Voltron: Legendary Defender's tragic ending wasn't a surprise and why more DreamWorks' series will follow suit” explains how.

The tl;dr version is that, when a story posits that the circumstances of your birth determine the value of your life, so that good intentions and hard work mean nothing, and long-established bonds can be discarded with zero thought and care, and your very humanity can be revoked over something you have absolutely no control over, and the whole sociopathic disaster is celebrated as a happy ending... it really, really can’t end well. Not just for you, but for the entire cast.

#voltron critical #vld shiro #vld keith #vld lance #vld allura #vld lotor #voltron #voltron salt #takashi shirogane

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rotationalsymmetry · 4 years

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One more thing about the Ferengi on Deep Space Nine and the idea of tolerance.

(Good morning, world.)

This is the so-called paradox of tolerance, ie, do you tolerate intolerance?

As far as we can tell, the main issue Sisko has with the Ferengi at the start of the show, is not anything relatively superficial like them eating slugs or what have you. It’s that he’s uncomfortable with his son making friends with Nog, because he’s worried that the values he wants his son to grow up with like respecting women and valuing education, will be eroded because the Ferengi as a whole do not value those things.

In point of fact this doesn’t seem to happen — Jake rubs off on Nog a lot more than Nog rubs off on Jake. Much to Quark’s frustration. And Sisko relaxing and letting 14 year old Jake make his own decisions was unambiguously the right call, even if it hadn’t gone that way. And it grows into a lovely friendship that is the heart of the show in many ways. But the show was presenting Sisko’s reluctance to let Jake get close to Nog as being equivalent to say white parents not wanting their kids to play with black kids just because of racism, and it really wasn’t that at all.

(And possibly reassuring white people that having some racism to get over isn’t that bad because here look, a black parent struggling in the exact same way. “We’re all a little bit racist”, right?)

That story would have worked a lot better if we’d seen Sisko having stereotypes and assumptions about the Ferengi that turned out to not be true. But...the Ferengi do actually have an incredibly sexist society, the Ferengi men do constantly insult the intelligence of women and largely see women as possible sex partners rather than whole people, they are actually exploitative and money-obsessed, Quark is a smuggler who frequently breaks the law and his brother is a weapons dealer, etc. While the show is weirdly sympathetic to Quark, to the point that you realize he does have an odd sort of integrity, and Ferengi are shown as being capable of embracing Federation values, Quark is actually everything Sisko thinks he is. It didn’t have to be — either Ferengi culture could have been retconned to not actually be as awful as it was shown as being in TNG, or we could have had a new species and entirely new stereotypes that turned out to be not entirely accurate.

In particular, there are many cultures that have different roles for men and women that also basically respect women and don’t give the men all the power, and which frequently have culturally established ways for people who don’t fit their culture’s default gender roles to do things differently. Treating men and women as much the same as possible is not the only way to seek gender justice. Nor is it without problems — for instance, when women get stuck with the double shift of a full time job and the lion’s share of the housework and child care as well.

I don’t think the Ferengi should have been brought back for DS9 at all, let alone had their role in the show expanded so much, but perhaps another culture could have been introduced that had gender roles that the Federation doesn’t or different sexual mores or what have you, Sisko might initially assume that means that the men don’t value women, and that might have turned out to be incorrect. That would have been somewhat difficult to handle well I think, without making it sound like “hey, women’s rights progress is totally unnecessary”, but if it was done well it might have worked, and actually made the point that Quark was supposedly trying to make about tolerance and hypocrisy.

(Which, goodness knows Western liberals do actually frequently make false assumptions about the backwardness of other cultures and the superiority of Western culture. So it is a good point. It just doesn’t make sense in context because the Ferengi as written actually do have an unrealistically awful culture.)

What does work with the Ferengi in the show as it is, is one episode where we see a female Ferengi who disguises herself as a man (so that we finally see a female Ferengi character and so that we’re shown that not all Ferengi embrace gender restrictions) and then later we get several episodes with Quark and Ron’s mother “Moogie”, who also has her own way of interacting with and rebelling against Ferengi gender-based restrictions. And again, we do have individual Ferengi assimilating into the Federation. These episodes make individual Ferengis less of a caricature, but don’t actually support the idea that maybe Ferengi culture is not so bad. And this is a problem: Ferengi culture shouldn’t be that bad compared to the Federation, it’s artificial and stereotypical and wrong that an alien culture just happens to be worse than the Federation in nearly every conceivable way.

I suppose it could have been worse. There could have been a whole movement (in the show) to forcibly “liberate” Ferengi women from their oppression, one that paid no attention to the women themselves and assumed they were helpless victims and ...

And you’ll note that tolerance isn’t a value of Quark’s or Ferengis in general. Quark is repeatedly contemptuous of the Federation and the “hu-mons.” Narratively, that speech is equivalent to a villain poking at the hero for (supposed or actual) hypocrisy.

In this past election season in the United States we also had a lot of “paradox of tolerance” handwringing. A lot of concern about how maybe the Democratic Party wasn’t thinking enough about poor or rural white people. Except oddly, the concerns were never things like, “hey, you can’t get work in lots of rural areas so they’re losing all their young people to the cities, what can we do about it?” or, “hey, real minimum wage has been going down because it’s not tied to inflation, let’s fix that.” No, it was “maybe we should forget about this LGBT stuff and Black Lives Matter, because, you know, that’s threatening to these people.” Which I’m pretty sure always meant “that’s threatening to me, or at least not something I care about at all, but I don’t want to look racist or homophobic so I’ll pretend it’s about practical electability concerns and not my own lack of compassion.”

Lack of...what’s that word again? Ah right. Tolerance.

If your “tolerance” or understanding or compassion for one group of people means less compassion for another group, you’re doing it wrong.

And in case I didn’t spell this out clearly enough in all the words I’ve written: you often get a lot farther examining the choices the writers (directors, etc) make, than examining the choices that characters made within the framing that the writers created. Sisko’s attitudes towards the Ferengi are far less interesting and worthy of comment than the writers’ attitudes towards the Ferengi.

“Why did this character choose to make a false accusation of rape” is always less relevant from a social justice perspective than “why is this writer telling a story about false accusations of rape?” “Does it make sense in story that this character is wearing a chainmail bikini” is less relevant than “wow, that author sure made a choice to put that female character in a chainmail bikini.” Luanne in the eponymous comic strip noticing that fashion magazines offer contradictory advice is less significant than looking over a comics page of two dozen strips and noticing only two female names in the author byline, and only one that isn’t co-writing with a male author — even comics that center female characters (which are very much in the minority) are often written by men. Notice the man (sic) behind the curtain.

“How does a representative of an idealized Western-coded future spacefaring society, see people who are outside of that society” is less significant than “how do the writers depict Western-coded societies vs other societies?”

#rape mention #racism #antisemitism #2020 election #homophobia #identity politics #paradox of tolerance #ds9 #Star Trek #as usual this is not saying you shouldn’t watch ds9 #or that you should be ashamed if you have and didn’t have this reaction #ds9 is a vast mix of contradictions #they handle some subjects incredibly well actually #just I do not know what they were thinking when it comes to the Ferengi #political

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mousehole5000 · 4 years

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reading tgcf chapters 72 - 88 end of book 2. body horror kind of in this one. if you know you know and i did include an excerpt of it

i didnt take any notes from 72-76 but uhhhh shit has hit the fan

fuuuuuuck. but he couldnt get there fast enough and then THAT happened to that family FUCK :(

xie lian has indeed been greatly sheltered and this is a painful if inevitable moment. very curious about where he goes from here :(

:pensive: the universe has its own rhythm. perhaps it does but im wondering if this is part of it orrrrrrr

wait theres a girl. shes pretty. feng xin is impressed by her this is a first. is she going to be important? is it too much to ask for? to see a girl do things?

xie lian and the king... i sad. but the anger is real from both sides regardless of their arguments. i sad

ahhh flashbacks to religious studies. read a whole essay about contagion magic vs similarity magic. pretty sure it was by one of those early anthropologists who were ummm racist but this is definitely a thing that people do

damn so xie lian’s first experience of killing anyone was during the revolt and he killed thousands. wow. “mere ants” like those crushed for him by servants. hoooo boy

:pleading: hes so good and im so sad for him to painfully learn that just being good isn’t enough

awwwww. </3

ohhh wait i think the epub version doesnt spoiler out the authors notes awwww i was enjoying the mystery but okay. not sure if i would have guessed this without tbh theres a lot of kids (2) running around with bandages in this book. but i guess the saber thing isnt likely to be anything else. also ohhhhhhhhh hong hong-er... little reddie... ah i see now :(

land of the tender; body of gold hard pressed against desire. hmmmm. im. hmmm. remember that scene with the prostitute in ghost city and how i was glad it ended quickly? i miss those days. i mean murderous desires/lustful desires okay sure thats something fine but. hmm not so sure how i feel about the rest of this. and the hair thing has significance according to the notes. i mean. hmm. moving on for now. ive seen spoilers for more about hualian’s relationship but im gonna wait to comment on it until i know everything

i would actually be curious to see feng xin and mu qing interact without xie lian when theyre still having to work together i wonder if they are more chill or less chill bc clearly feng xin cares a lot about xie lian and im wondering what theyre like with each other without him around. to be fair tho since theyre his generals im not sure if theres much room for that

human face disease time. oh boy. things really are only getting worse. im also suspecting that this disease was intentionally brought into the city to hasten its downfall but we shall see

saving this for the illustration of the differences between feng xin and mu qing. not sure what it says about me but im finding mu qing relatable that is 100% what i would do but i feel much more fond of feng xin. interesting

thank you for being a beacon of amusement in these trying times. distract your bickering friends by forcing them to play improv games. also the differences between fx and mq continue to interest me

awfully convenient there guoshi. i have to say that its looking more and more like the bad shit thats happening in xianle was actually not to do with xie lian. the fact that the yong’an rebels were being supplied? whatever the fuck is going on with lang ying.... i could be wrong but thats what im thinking im wondering how much of this was already laid out or at the very least poised to happen before xie lian intervened

here it comes this is the unsettling body horror bit

BRUHHHHHHHH. HORRIFIC. IM SORRY BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE IT IN ADAPTATION FOR THE CHILLS IT WOULD GIVE ME.

hmmm after this its mu qing who is like “hey ummm you kinda just chopped that guy’s leg off when he hadn’t actually asked you to. kinda fucked up also could definitely turn on you” makes sense that it was mu qing who said that he’s clearly very smart and bc of his background he’s more likely to think of things from a different perspective than xie lian and feng xin. he’s been scornful of commoners before but he definitely understands them more so than the other two

just when i thought this couldnt get more horrific. no rest for anyone what an awful fate

saving this as a note on mu qing as a character and his attitude towards xie lian. what xie lian says here about the curse is interesting. the faces/souls vs the ones they are infecting. its awful for both of them and neither are the only truly at fault theyre being pit against each other

its telling that mu qing is the one who is telling xie lian that line about there not being a second cup of water. also BIG ARGUMENT im bookmarking this to come back to in the present day

looks like celestial palace is coming down and im bitterly remembering the fact that xie lian toppled his own statue earlier to let lang ying get away... who then presumably planted the curse.... sighs

the bits with xie lian’s parents made me tear up. this is, what the kids call, relatable.

hmmm dont think feng xin is always going to feel this way lmao

oohh that is a cool image

i.... sad. and so book 2 ends!!! im wondering when we find out exactly how the split between our trio went down. im sure its sad

politically im still not sure exactly what the message is trying to be i mean obviously theres corruption that completely throws the poor under the bus but so far its also been clear that xie lian actually cant do anything about it. but!!! also xie lian doesnt understand a lot about the world, he’s been sheltered and he’s a prince and he wants to save the world and i love him for that but he hasn’t seen what the reality of life is for a lot of people he’s looking at everything from the position of the nobility and even with all his kindness i dont think thats ever enough to bring about meaningful change. how can it? idk but we still got a LONG ways to go

#all my mutuals: tgcf is a tragedy #me reading book 1: is it??#me reading book 2: oh it really is #:(#tgcf liveblog #mouse mumbles

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androgynousblackbox · 4 years

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I saw a post about how criticism of Hazbin Hotel was essentially good because it came from the groups most affected by it, and I don’t want to add discourse to it because it was a good point with a good post. But I still have some issues with that idea. As a queer latine man, I find many of the criticism Hazbin Hotel recieves to be either exaggerated by omitting key elements of the story and founded in also questionable principles. Not every criticism from minority groups comes from the same place and some of the reactions to it (not all, definitely not all) will inevitable include other members calling it out from their own perspective. Like, if you dislike Vaggie for being an “angry latin woman” but actively ignores that everytime she gets made at something she has valid reason for it, then I gotta question, why she being angry at reasonable things is a bad thing? Are latine character not allowed to be angry anymore? And why should her creator, a latina woman no less, have to be responsible for estereotypes she didn’t created when making something that was meant to reflect a part of her own experience? This is especially ínteresting when many times this criticism doesn’t even come from other latines, who, as far I have seen, don’t have a problem with her or not for that reason at least. Of course, this could be a “Speedy Gonzales” situation in which because the context is so far remove from them, given that they live on a entirely different country, that the implication are lost on some people. Latines in the USA would be perfectly aware of the estereotypes they have to live with and are seen through in the society they live in. Mexican who live in Mexico usually aren’t, so what is seemed like a tiring caricature for a mexican who has lived in the USA for years can be just a funny cartoon for a mexican who never set foot outside of his origin country. Neither of these people are wrong for feeling that way, they just have different contexts from which extract meaning. This could potentially be what happens with Vaggie too, but, as a latino who at least has an idea of why the “Angry Violent WOC” estereotype is harmful, I feel like reducing her entire character to angry and violent is making a disservice for her too. She is those things, but she is also supportive, sweet, smart and cares about the cause of Charlie, so I must assume she believes too that there can be good on everyone, deep inside (except Alastor but, like, can you blame her?), which is something already impressive for someone that is a sinner. Would people still assume that she is only violent and angry if she were just a gringa white woman? If Charlie was the latina one (which wouldn’t make much sense if she is a demon born out of centuries old demon but let’s imagine) and had the exact same personality, would people take her lashing out to Killjoy in the studio as proof that she is a Angry Violent estereotype too? Those are the questions I find myself having when reading a lot of that criticism, and more so when I see the person in question is not latine or is just repeating what other have said without even had watched the pilot themselves. I don’t say that you need to watch the pilot if you don’t want to, but if you want to critic? You should, at least to have a strong foundation behind your arguments. Same with the criticism used against Angel Dust. If someone said “I don’t like him because his oversexual nature makes me uncomfortable” then that could be fine, subjective experiences don’t need to be argued for, you can just feel whatever you like. But if you argue “he is a bad representation of gay man because he is overly sexual and an addict” or that is homophobic to have any gay male character as any of those things, then I gotta ask why. Why queer people being addicts and sexual is a bad thing, when in fact is extremely common in our communities. Why demonize addicts as something inherently bad that no one should ever see represented is considered an acceptable goal here? If the argument goes towards him being effeminate and indulge in drag as something inherently homophobic, then I will call bullshit on that. Femme men deserve to see themselves represented too, not be treated like a dirty little secret the straights cannot see. Same with addicts and overly sexual queer people. Tumblr in particular is very sus about this, because while people argue for more representation of queer identities, there is this underlying demand for all queer characters to be “pure and wholesome” and the very explicit message that if something deviates from that standard, then it holds no value and anyone that tries to find value on it is wrong and/or hiding some internalized issues. The policing for the respectability politics is strong withing this site, so when I hear about a character that is unapolegitically queer being bashed, my first instinct is to distrust it until I know the full context, because a lot more often than not the criticism is borderline homophobic with it’s framming. And the idea of letting all this pass because “criticism of media is good”, which is a general principle I agree with, I also think people have a right to criticize that criticism if they see it fit. People being allowed to voice what they like or don’t like about media also means other people are allowed to react to that voice with their own. Don’t just shut people down when they are trying to bring legitimate concerns, and this goes for both side as well. Futheremore, a member of a marginalized group having an opinion doesn’t suddenly erase the opinion of every other marginalized member in that group. This “but gay men said so” is constantly being used on anti fujoshi rethoric in order to silence and erase other queer men, especially when they bring out other axis of oppression into question, like transphobia and racism, so it can’t be as simple as “well, this gay man said is homophobic and so that is it, end of discussion.” I don’t say any of that to try to shut down people who didn’t liked Hazbin Hotel or even hated it. I actually do not care about either. Anyone will have their own preferences about the media they consume and their own reason for that preference, and that is okay. People who are merely voicing their opinion about a cartoon they watched have every right to do so... but also people can respond to it. Not shutting it down, not harassing, not saying bullshit like “wow, they dislike Vaggie so that means they must racist themselves”, because all that is asshole move, but talk about it. Have a calm and respectful conversation whenever possible should be encouraged too.

#andro is talking #homophobia mention #transphobia mention #racism mention

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amphtaminedreams · 4 years

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A/W 2020 Fashion Month: Before Vogue Went Blank (Part 2)

Hi to anyone reading,

I was going to start this post by jumping straight into Dion Lee and part 2 in general but there's been a lot going on the past couple of days-although this blog is primarily fashion, it wouldn’t feel right to start talking about designers without acknowledging all the shit that’s been going down.

^Photo Credit to @spiltcoco on Twitter

Yesterday, police footage came out of US police murdering yet another black man in broad daylight-George Floyd. He joins Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, and Alton Sterling, plus hundreds more named and god knows how many more unnamed African American citizens in the ever-growing list of victims of police brutality.

The majority of these are just people going about their daily lives, a majority of them doing absolutely nothing wrong; even those we know to have committed crimes have been unarmed and non-violent offenders. That being said, their offences are beside the point when we’ve seen the white perpetrators of mass shootings be calmly cuffed and escorted into the backs of police cars as if they were the ones selling cigarettes without permits. American police, given the amount of them that are armed, regularly become judge, jury and executioner trained for 8 weeks by an institution that originated from slave patrols. I cannot imagine how terrifying it is just to walk around as a PoC in America. I cannot imagine the collective trauma that has been suffered because of recent events on top of the intergenerational trauma that most likely exists because of centuries of oppression. I cannot imagine what it’s like to live in a country that was built to suppress you and was by law allowed to do so until very recently, those original structures still in place. I cannot imagine what it’s like to be made to feel like this is your fault. I mean, Boris Johnson is a useless, cold-hearted twat and I won’t defend him or this country for a minute (we have much blood on our own hands, and racial profiling is just as much a thing here as it is in America-I read earlier that you’re 28 times more likely to be stopped and searched in London as a non-white person compared to a white person), but I still can’t imagine him publicly advocating for the mass murder of groups he knows to be primarily made up of black people via Twitter. This whole situation is so unimaginably fucked up; anyone who still sees America as one of the world’s most developed nations needs to take a long, hard look at what is going on and reconsider that opinion.

Whilst we can’t fix everything, we can all speak up and make our voices heard, and it is our duty to do so. It’s not good enough to just “not be racist”, you have to be ANTI-racism, even if that means constantly reflecting on your own privilege and challenging your assumptions. Neutrality is complicity. Signing a petition isn’t going to change the world, but it’s a start:

https://www.change.org/p/mayor-jacob-frey-justice-for-george-floyd?recruiter=false&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=psf_combo_share_abi&recruited_by_id=7ba70000-a127-11ea-87fb-d1ff0bf6ea96

As I publish this, there’s less than 50,000 signatures needed to hit the target of 6,000,000 so if you happen to see it, get signing! There are lots of other petitions online but Change.org seems to be the only major one you can sign in the UK as the other are US based and require a zip code. I never thought I’d close a paragraph by quoting Macklemore but the line “no freedom 'til we're equal, damn right I support it” is at the forefront of my mind right now. Again, neutrality is complicity. We’re never going to achieve a fair society by sitting on our asses and hoping things will improve. Let’s all do the best we can.

Sorry if that intro wasn’t what you came here for, but I just think it’s so important to talk about. I know I’ve said in the past that fashion is supposed to be an escape from everyday life but there are some times when real life needs our attention and this is one of them. Feel free to unfollow if you disagree.

Anyway, onto the fashion. If this is the first post you’re reading, welcome! There’s a part 1! But I don’t wanna be pushy so start here if you wish!

If you read part 1, welcome back!

I ended that post by practically falling at the feet of Dilara Findikoglu, and I so wanted to start this post by regaining a sense of dignity and go straight into what-the-fuck-ing at Dior, but I know breaking chronological order would really piss off those “OmG I’m SoOo OCD, tHis BuzZfeEd aRtiCle WiTh DiFfereNt SiZed TiLes ToLd Me!” which is basically me minus claiming liking things to be organised means I have OCD-no, just dermatillomania and the denial that a compulsive skin picking disorder has anything to do with OCD because the neuroses club that is my brain doesn’t have any space left. SO, I have to continue where I left off and star the post with Dion Lee, whose collections I am a big fan of.

I could ramble a bit more but I did enough of that at the beginning of part 1 and am sure I’ll do more than enough in this post anyway, so here it is, Dion Lee:

Considering we ended with the maximalism of Dilara Findikoglu, sliding back over towards the other far end of the scale with a designer that tends to pitch their tent on the borders of the minimalism camp feels correct. Dion Lee, fortunately, seems the perfect collection to open with. There aren’t many other brands who do edge in such an understated and masterful way. If you want to be ready for combat and look like you’d fit right in at Vogue at the same time, look no further. This season’s collection is full of perfectly placed cut outs and immaculate tailoring and subtle street fighter-esque details as ever, and that’s why it pains me to say it:

Not that this is enough in the way of critique to restore my dignity by any means, it’s not a patch on last season.

I don’t think there was a single bad look in that show, and at times it felt like I was weeding through them here. When the looks were good, they were GOOD but a lot I found to be disappointing. Plus I have no idea why you’d put tie-dye in an A/W collection. I appreciate that it’s an Australian brand and that our winter is their summer, but they’re presenting to the rest of the world at fashion week and anyone in Paris, Milan, London and New York is going to be freezing their tits off and looking like a twat in an orange tie-dye sundress. There wasn’t much of a dip in quality for the menswear compared to last season, but honestly womenswear left a lot to be desired. That’s what happens when your expectations are high.

I used to think that if you assume the worst, it’s impossible to feel let down. And then I saw Dior’s A/W 2020 collection. Did a full 180 on that statement.

I suppose it’s a step up from haute couture, but then at least the styling in that was simple, and it just didn’t look like anybody had tried at all; here it’s clear Maria Grazia chucked everything she could at this collection, every headscarf, every gingham print, every shallow feminist undertone, and it was still a fucking mess. At first you think some of the individual pieces are cute but have just been ruined by the styling, and then you begin to look, and realise that even those individual pieces could’ve easily been bought in a New Look Boxing Day sale.

THIS IS CHRISTIAN DIOR, SUPPOSEDLY ONE OF THE MOST LUXURIOUS BRANDS OUT THERE. WHAT IS GOING ON!?

I don’t know, I included as many looks that I didn't mind as I could, but it’s like there always has to be a crappy, unnecessary detail in there. Everything is so literal. Of course the collection based around the divine feminine has the models dressed like basic ass Greek goddesses, so of course the collection based around the modern woman and equality has women walking the runway in ties and ill-fitting shoes too. Maria Grazia, here is a box:

Think outside of it.

Next is, thankfully, Elie Saab:

No, not exactly a trailblazer of a collection, but executed with poise and elegance as always. I mean, the styling is spot on. It looks like each part of the outfit was made for another, to contribute to a whole clearly envisioned look, similar to what we saw in the Alberta Ferretti show. Elie Saab is known for its haute couture shows where all the tiny details, the sequins and the silk and the embroidery come together to make something beautiful, and this is just that on a larger scale, with less “wow”s and more quiet admiration, more wishing you were the one wearing that outfit. If you’re gonna play safe, do it this well. The night dresses are stunning of course, but not even my favourite bit of the show. It’s the casual looks, the pussy bows and the ruffles and the neck scarfs and the private girls school monochrome colour palette with the occasional pop of red or purple, a toned down version of what we saw at haute couture, any of which deserve to be worn whilst eating macarons in front of the Eiffel Tower before trip to Musee D’Orsay. It’s Poppy Moore’s school uniform grown up and made fit for a fashion magazine editor:

Somehow managing to cram an Emma Roberts early 2010s fashion moment into every post is my talent, who knew. Wild Child was really a gem.

Erdem was a mixed bag:

With a lot of the outfits, I can’t tell if I actually like the garments that much or if I just like the look as a whole. I mean, without sounding too gluten-free Callie from the Valley, I like the VIBE, but there was a lot of outfits I almost included before I had to ask myself “LAUREN, do you ACTUALLY like this or do you just like the walking-into-your-sugar-daddy’s-will-reading-to-claim-his-fortune DRAMA of it all!?”

It happened a couple of times, where once I took off my black and white, theatrical violin accompanied entrance filtered sunglasses, I realised that the actual print was ugly. A collection so cohesively ornamental and kitschy is going to lean too far into that at times, and they were a few overly-fussy moments where it seemed less nudge nudge wink wink and more like Erdem Moralıoğlu fell into his grandma’s wardrobe, stole some fabric, and called it a day. I don’t want to sound like I’m not a fan of the collection because overall it’s gorgeous, I just thought it was a bit much at times.

Continuing with the theme of clever seasonal continuity that weaved its way throughout this year’s A/W offerings, Ermanno Scervino kept the core of his summer collection and made it just that little bit darker, added some weight to everything, and this is one of the rare occasions where I like the winter incarnation a lot more. I’m not huge about either but there’s a lot of things I’d love to wear here, the coats especially.

Up next is a reliable favourite of mine:

Etro.

Was it REALLY necessary for you to include ALL those coats I hear you ask?

Alaska Thunderfuck as Gia Gunn voice: Absolutelyyyy.

When it comes to bohemian fashion, Etro is unbeaten. Everything is always exquisitely coordinated and styled. Like I usually fucking hate aztec print but I love the way it’s done here. I’ve never known a brand to make belts seem like such an integral, tasteful part of the outfit in a field where they so often seem like a last minute addition for the sake of accessorising; it pains me to say it, but Elie Saab, I’m looking at you. It’s your only fault.

Yes for bringing back embroidered jeans! Yes for all those high necks! Yes for the tapestry print! Yes for the Afghan waistcoats! Etro will keep fedoras cool forever and I love them for that; I don’t know if she ever actually wore any of their stuff but I just know Stevie Nicks was in her prime would’ve ate this shit UP and she is my style icon for the ages. Plus, I might be way off base here but a lot of the collection seems to be inspired by traditional Romani style and it’s a beautiful direction to take things, a treasure trove of layers upon layers and rich textures and opulent prints.

I can’t wait til the phase of my phase of my life where I can swan around in maxi dresses and ponchos. I just hope those maxi dresses and ponchos are Etro.

Onto another brand which hasn’t had a bad show since I started my reviews: Fendi. This season, they took their late 60s/early 70s wild child aesthetic and gave a millionaire’s high maintenance wife spin on it, and what’s not to like about that?

I mean, Fendi is a brand which is always going to excel in its F/W presentations-the rich, bohemian prints (pro-tip: if you can’t already tell, me mentioning the word bohemian in a review pretty much guarantees I like the collection), the furs, and the warm colour palette all perfectly translate into clothes suited for walks through a city going through a post-summer burnout, where it rains red and orange leaves. You can tell Silvia Fendi is in her element when she’s got texture to play with, something that comes across in the gorgeous coats Fendi consistently puts out, and this season continues that trend. Plus, there’s a lot of adorable details here-shoes that show off the decorative socks underneath, the cube shaped bags and those furry ear muffs which I hope bring about a high street muff renaissance because they’re the equivalent of slipper socks for my ears and THEY’RE ACTUALLY REALLY PRACTICAL. The only thing I’m not in love with is the mirrored glasses, and I can’t help but think how replacing them with a pair of grandad style aviators would be the icing on the cake for the collection. Maybe I just need to see Miss Robyn Rihanna Fenty wearing them and then I’ll get on board. Usually works.

Ah, GCDS. I got so excited for it after last season but this time round, it was a bit of a disappointment. There were a few outfits that semi-matched up to how cutting-edge I saw their last collection, however a lot of the pieces looked pretty low quality. I get that streetwear is in the name, but it’s supposed to be a high fashion take on that, and a lot of the looks were quite pedestrian. Stand outs are the top 2 rows and the leather motocross style jumpsuit on the far right, third row down, but the quality of these pieces wasn’t consistent across the board and I feel like I ended up having to convince myself I liked some of the others just so I had enough photos to justify including the brand. It really sucks when I look back on how ahead of the game last season’s collection was-we’re talking outfits that wouldn’t be out of place on Instagram’s Tokyofashion page and as far as I’m concerned that’s the fashion holy grail. Some of these looks, especially the menswear, could be from a Boohoo TV ad and that makes me sad.

Meanwhile, Giambattista Valli put out a collection that looked like a virtual postcard of Parisian fashion; if a St-Germain-des-Prés streetwear themed Instagram doesn’t exist already, someone should capitalise on that, stat, because if my typical vision of French feminine fashion is correct it would be full of outfits like this. I feel like this is what a fashion novice EXPECTS Chanel to look like. Trust me-these days the reality is much more disappointing.

There’s many things I'm happy to see here besides the tulle and florals and prettiness I expect of the brand. Obviously the berets and the bows and the elbow length gloves are the kind of off-duty ballerina style touches I’ve become accustomed to but there are also some nice surprises here: the military style white jacket, the unexpected snake motif on clothing that’s otherwise overly delicate, and to my delight the return of the boater hat. IDGAF, this is the summer where I’m buying myself one off Ebay and making this happen for me whether they become a “thing” or not. I shouldn’t squander having this little of a double chin; the opportunity may never present itself again.

I haven’t watched Killing Eve in a longggg time since there’s only so much of two women attempting to kill each other and then miraculously avoiding death you can watch but I’d love to see Vilanelle prancing round a city in this kinda shit slitting some necks again. I hope that doesn’t make me sound like too much of a sadist; only in a purely fictional world is this something I want to see, I assure you.

Givenchy was really, really great this season too, imo. Definitely a step up from the last RTW anyway. Aside from the drama of the exaggerated floppy brim hats and the quirky tassle detail dresses a la Schiaparelli, a lot of these outfits kinda remind me of something a Miranda Priestly/Cruella De Vil type would wear, and you know me; I’m all for that kind of intimidating, about-to-either-slap-you-or-fire-your-ass bad bitch energy. The gathered leather gloves with the androgynous subtly checkered power suits feels CORRECT and if Giambattista Valli is the bottom in this relationship, Givenchy is the top. Am I allowed to reinforce sapphic relationship stereotypes as a bi girl? Probably not. I’m sorry. Won’t do it again. Just this once. And you know I’m right really xoxo

And OMFG Gucci. Another impeccable collection for me, honestly. Once again, it’s probably my favourite of the season. How it is that Alessandro Michelle gets it SO right for me despite his vision being so bold and different every time? He has this specific brand of strange, conceptual beauty which blends past and present trends in a way so supreme it should be considered art. It’s not a term to throw around loosely but the man is a genius, and tbh I’m still not over the human head props from the 2018 F/W winter show.

In my Haute Couture week review, I talked about the Viktor and Rolf collection (which I loved, don’t get me wrong!) and said that pretty meets grunge is my fave thing ever-this is that, but much even more substantial and intelligent. The Wes Anderson-esque pieces or that late 60s/early 70s hipster aesthetic that I loved in last season’s show hasn’t been done away with either-be it the level of detail or the colour scheme, it all somehow fits together. Never did I think I’d see dresses fit for porcelain dolls through the lens of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen seamlessly slotted in between outfits that could’ve been put together from the clothing rack of Dazed and Confused’s costume department. I want it all-opulent fur-trimmed coats, crucifix jewellery and pilgrim hats I’m sure both Edgar Allan Poe and modern goths would approve of, and the tiered skirts that wouldn’t be out of place in a Westworld saloon. The models were delightfully sad and almost creepy looking and I wouldn’t change that for the world. To say 10/10 doesn’t do it justice, so I’m gonna have to open a reviewer’s can of worms and say 100/100.

Gucci is a tough act to follow, and I’m sorry it has to fall onto the shoulders of Halpern. In the nicest possible way (as if there is any nice way of saying it), I don’t think I any expected anything but a downgrade, so if anything, my standards will be lower so...Michael Halpern, you can thank me I guess?

That was really mean, I’m sorry. It’s not a bad collection, and I definitely like it more than last season’s. It’s a slightly garish colour palette at times but an exciting one in spite of that, which when paired with the animal print dotted throughout makes this collection the perfect fit for a tropical beach party or at the very least, a semi-decent night at the Caribbean themed bar in your local town centre. The sequins and silk, a Halpern trademark, are as tastefully done as ever, and seeing them on the models, I can’t deny these are some power fits-the kind of clothes you are bound to look and feel confident in; if you wanted to play queen of the urban jungle for a night, this is what you need to be wearing.

Ah, Hermes.

Generally not one to stoke a fire inside me. In all fairness, the tailoring here is really, really nice and French biker chic, and the pieces are perfectly crafted-it’s not that I don’t like the outfits because I think that if I saw one of them individually in a natural, messier setting I’d probably be impressed. These are classy, elegant winter looks and what more could you want when you’re looking for outfit inspiration for this season? It’s just that it’s always a little too neat and uniform for me, and on the runway I like my fashion to be risky. This could almost be the sophisticated mother to a Tommy Hilfiger collection and whilst that’s something I would probably wear if I wanted to look put together, it’s not what you get excited to see at fashion week. Primary colours all together aren’t where it’s at for me either, the infamous colour scheme of the cheap plastic playhouses you’d find in the garden of every working/middle class British household back in the day. Yes, I had one. So did the after school club I was forced to attend whilst my mum was at work. Apparently the negative connotations are still too much for me (a boy I went to the after school club with did once fall off the back of one and crack his head open so maybe it’s justified).

Isabel Marant was pretty much exactly what you’d expect from Isabel Marant; if the Etro bohemian woman is one who rolls out of bed and chucks on the first thing she sees, the Isabel Marant bohemian woman is the one who claims she’s done the same thing but who actually planned it all out the night before. She designs for the gluten-free, bikram yoga Kourtney Kardashian style “hippy” who claims to be a free-spirit but would definitely not do acid with you. I was gonna say it was a collection for the Gwyneth Paltrows of the world but then I remembered Gwyneth proudly released a candle she claimed smelled like her vagina and changed my mind-she’d definitely do acid with you.

It’s definitely a cohesive transition from the summer collection; both have that seemingly laid-back, clean-cut vibe, and cater to the rich, impeccably groomed scented candle loving woman everywhere. Obviously the pieces are a tad more suited to an alpine lodge in Switzerland than a beach in Malibu this time round, but that same mild colour palette, pretty, naturalistic patterns, and generally relaxed fit persists. It’s cute enough.

J.W Anderson is a bit of an enigma.

Despite the experimental silhouettes and the kooky details that you think would very “look at me!”, the collections still seem to have a chilled, easy-going feel to them. They toy about with the strange but remain entirely sophisticated whilst doing so-I think it’s because aside from the little quirks that make the garments J.W Anderson, they’re otherwise fairly reserved and simple; even the quirks themselves mostly tend to be exaggerated, more conceptual takes on more typical stylistic motifs anyway. Anderson has a knack for producing statement pieces that don’t look like they’re trying too hard to be statement pieces, a talent he expertly deploys at Loewe as well. Whilst Maison Margiela collections are like the fashion equivalent of that Jughead “I’m weird, I’m a weirdo” speech, J.W Anderson’s refusal to conform is quiet and modest. I like it. It’s not generally my personal style but I can admire the thought behind the work, and there are still some things I’d love to try. I have a few standouts-the shoes with the hoop detailing dancing from the ankle straps, the dress on the bottom right with what appears to be art nouveau typography on, the trench coat with the cape detailing and the gossamer dress to its right are all stunning, especially that dress. If I ever want to dress as the bubble Glinda the Good Witch descends in when she meets Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I know where to go, though I don’t suppose there’s going to be an occasion that calls for that any time soon. Can I just have the dress anyway?

Kim Shui is another new designer I found through blessed Twitter screencaps-thanks guys for doing my research for me. Much appreciated.

But anyways! Like Charlotte Knowles, it’s clear she’s still establishing her aesthetic as a designer, and thus far I love it. The whimsical, throwback prints on urban silhouettes that range from the androgynous suits of city dwelling cool girls to the amped-up sex appeal of nightclub dresses is gorgeous, especially twinned with dainty headscarfs and opera gloves-all in all I think this a very cool and wearable collection and I’m looking forward to the next collection she puts out.

Next up is Lacoste, and IDK why I always include their collections to be honest, considering they’re not really known for “high fashion”. I guess it’s because my dad has collected Lacoste shirts since I was little so I kinda have a soft spot for it and feel obligated to include it every time presentation season comes around. Yes, the outfits are unbearably preppy and the colours are garish but I feel like that’s kind of the appeal? So what if some of the tracksuits look like they could’ve been pulled out of a bad mafia movie? I see the argyle jumpers, with a bit of wear and tear, as a charity shop gem my sister would come across (she has the #Y2K Depop girl knack for finding old designer pieces in the shittiest charity shops without the audacity to try and sell them at a 70% markup) that I would then steal from her wardrobe to wear myself, contrasted with a ripped mini skirt, chains and and docs. I see the POTENTIAL of a look that is very fuck you to the rich middle age tory styling we see here. It’s punk, okay?

Lanvin was STUNNING this time around. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching Mad Men recently and it reminds me of the fashion on that-which I hope somebody won an award for at the time BTW, it is SO fucking good-but I just adore every look here. I can’t even remember if I reviewed Lanvin’s SS20 show, and so clearly if I did it wasn’t that memorable (no shade intended), however this collection is a different story. Every single one of these outfits is iconic movie moment worthy, a 60s Cher Horowitz plaid two piece equivalent that would get screencapped and replicated ad-nauseam, all the best looks of Betty Draper and Peggy Olsen and Joan Holloway and Megan Calvet brought together and refined for the modern day woman. I might even consider sacrificing my anti-royalist principles if it meant I could transport myself back in time and switch bodies with Grace Kelly so I could make this collection my princess-off-duty wardrobe and drive around Monaco in that Bella Hadid look, roof down, all the drama of the fur trim and the gloves and hair whipping about in the wind (but in this unrealistic vision I can actually see what I’m doing and I’m not choking on random strands and swearing at Mother Nature as if she is a real entity with a personal vendetta against me).

Loewe! More J.W Anderson! I’m gonna try not to repeat myself by arsekissing too much all over again and get the good points out of the way quickly! So rapid fire: elegant! Delicious colour palette! Interesting shapes! I think I’m seeing a Victorian/Edwardian influence there! Correct me if I’m wrong! I like it! The coats are strong! Remind me of the suffragettes! But lets pretend in this case these Loewe style coat wearing suffragettes are not raging classists!

AH. Apart from that, it was a bit too austere for me. I definitely preferred Anderson’s eponymous collection; there were a fair few recurring details in this show that I couldn’t get behind that I didn’t include, in particular this bib-like black panel that just kept popping up on everything. Sorry J.W Anderson. But a 50% success rate is still good! And at the end of the day, having 2 collections on Vogue Runway at once is more prestigious than the accumulative total of every accomplishment I’ll probably ever have achieved in my life by the time I’m on my deathbed so what do I know anyway? Sigh:( At least I’ll always have the honour of having the largest head by circumference of my class in year 4, right *sweats nervously*!?!?!

Louis Vuitton was definitely a downgrade on last season for me. There were for sure elements I liked-the Vera Wang-esuqe mixing of the tulle bustle skirts with the rougher, more masculine biker inspired vests and jackets was a cool choice, reminiscent of Gucci’s mixing of the lace dresses with harnesses. I enjoyed the baroque jackets and subtle nods to steampunk style too. Though we’ve already seen it a lot this season, the wet look coat with fur trim I can’t help falling in love with, and I’m immune to the potential ugliness of the muted blue monotone look purely on the basis I can picture Ripley from Alien in it. So like I said-it’s not as if I hated it. I guess when it comes down to it, the collection wasn’t bad so much as I just had higher hopes. I will say though, the staging was INCREDIBLE. As a history nerd, I never thought I’d see the day when a Henry the 8th lookalike actor was part of the backdrop of a Paris fashion week show-and I always thought there was no interesting career path for me in the subject!

And another big name I don’t tend to be so partial to, Maison Margiela. IDK, I did like last season but I wasn’t a fan of haute couture and it took me a while to warm to this. Call it deconstructed, experimental, whatever, but you know when you can’t decide what to wear and you’re in a rush so you kinda just throw all the shit you decided against into a pile? Well, my initial thought was that this season Margiela is kinda that, on the runway.

I will say, once I let go of my need to see a clear shape, a lot of the individual pieces were stunning (NOT the puffed up tabis though, I still can’t even get behind the regular ones). I guess I just wish they’d go for less is more with the styling because as it currently stands, it makes it hard to actually take the clothes in.

Ultimately, one thing you can always say about Margiela, like their clothes or not, is that it has a monopoly on being effortlessly bold.

Marc Jacobs I really liked again, though I will say it doesn’t stand out quite like the S/S collection did. That was absolutely STUNNING-I can’t remember specifically where I ranked it in my top ten but I know it was at least in the top 5. This, on the other hand, is...pretty. It’s very pretty, and very put together, so I’m not saying at all that I don’t rate it. I suppose it’s just a lot simpler than I expected it to be-I don’t have a problem with simplicity, at all, especially if it’s what a brand is known for but I feel like part of the appeal with Marc Jacobs is that it’s pretty kooky. I mean, not Thom Browne or Margiela kooky, but commercial kooky at least. I feel like the kookiness is lacking here? And that’s where this feeling is coming from? And also, the fact that Lanvin tackled the same era and did it a lot better? So there’s that, too. Plus, I adore Miley Cyrus but...why? Random celebrities waking the runway just doesn’t do it for me-it always comes across as a publicity grab, as if the designer isn’t confident enough in their collection’s ability to get people talking on its own, and I suppose in this case that says it all really.

Margaret Howell was...well, Margaret Howell. She’s known for her basics, and they’re always pretty non-offensive “regulation hottie” in the words of the icon that is Damian from Mean Girls. It’s been, what, four years? More? Since I last watched that film but I’m pretty sure watching it about twenty times between the ages of 9 and 15 tattooed it on my brain. I include her because even though they don’t get my pulse racing, I like these pieces; considering the fact that expecting straight white men to ever have style on the level of barbiedrugz (his instagram is my favourite thing ever) or Rickey Thompson is ludicrous, Margaret Howell’s menswear looks are probably are the best, realistic goal for any future partner. Because I like my men dressed like Paddington bear/a depressed Brown University English lit lecturer, okay? Or in other words, Will Graham from Hannibal.

Marine Serre had a few good moments-the looks that I liked were the ones that stayed within her lane of blending the weird with the visually appealing. There were a lot of cool things going on, and I like the utility vibe (the boot with the pouch detailing and the mask are perfect examples of this done well), but outside the fits I picked out a lot of it went over my head tbh.

Marques Almeida is a show I was looking forward to-it has such a youthful, experimental quality to its collections (it’s no surprise the designers said they were influenced by the HBO show Euphoria this year!), similar to Central Saint Martins, and you can tell the designers (Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida) are based in London too; we are talking about the birthplace of the punk fashion movement, and as a designer it’s probably almost a rite of passage that you incorporate elements of that into your work. Marques Almeida does that with a flair and consistency you can count on. Their clothes don’t have the wildest silhouettes or anything like that but the fun they have playing around with print and colour and the ease and confidence with which they settle on those combinations always comes through-the black and white coat with the yellow furs trim is one of my favourite pieces from the entirety of this season’s offerings.

I wasn’t so fond of Max Mara’s SS20 collection and I'm not gonna lie, this isn’t THAT much of a step up for me personally. It’s just one of those brands I feel obligated to include because it’s talked about quite a bit but I’m not totally sure if it’s for me. Too monotone, but I’ll give it another season! And I mean, there is a slight improvement here-this collection is a lot more laid back than the stiff, austere feel of the last, and there are some very well fitted and structured pieces. A lot of the looks kinda remind me of a 2020, fashion take on The Breakfast Club’s “Basket Case”, which is kinda cool, and just from looking at the clothes, the high price tag is palpable. Also, scruffy hair club unite! Though obviously it’s intentional here! That’ll be my excuse for the next time I turn up at work looking like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards-Max Mara made me do it.

Ending on those words of wisdom, I’m gonna bring this post to a close, because I can’t fit any more photos in! I’m desperately hoping that I can fit this all into 3 parts like I did with my last RTW review but even if I do have to make 4 posts, I still include my top 10 shows as I did before. I hope to get that post up within the next couple of weeks! After that, I’ve shot a Lana Del Rey inspired by each of her different albums and “era”s though given last week’s events I’m on the fence about whether to post it or not, especially given her silence over the last couple of days. I’m really proud of what I’ve put together and I’ll always love her art and music (I have 2 bloody tattoos, for fuck’s sake!), so I’m trying to think how I can reconcile that with those awfully worded posts and just the general lack of awareness of bigger issues that she’s displayed the last week. JFC, being a Lana stan has always been so chilled up until now. All the very valid and important takes aside, that “Lana pls delete that post and apologise, we can’t fight the barbz all your stans are depressed” tweet is the only good thing to come out of this shitshow. He got a point. Breathing feels like effort lately:( IDK, if you’re also a Lana stan and you have any opinions on the matter, feel free to DM me, because I’m feeling pretty conflicted rn.

Most importantly though, are the issues I opened this post by talking about, and I thought I’d finish by including the thread of petitions I saw on Twitter. Like I said, a lot of them aren’t available to sign in the UK but to anyone who read up until this point (thank you!) idk where you’re reading from so maybe some of them will apply to you:

https://twitter.com/yericvIt/status/1265801832930045953

Also, while we’re at it, because every tory voting twat seems to treat our country as if it’s some beacon of hope where racism is non-existent and love to tell PoC to stop moaning about their experiences, here’s a thread of black British men and women who have lost their lives to police violence:

https://twitter.com/illh0eminati/status/1266441604170223617

Thank you for reading until the end. I hope that you enjoyed the fashion part of the post but also that if you did read this far, you read the other bits too if you didn’t know what was going on already. It seems like everyone does but you forget that Twitter’s a bit of an echo chamber and that outside of it, there’s a lot of ignorance, whether intentional or not. I know Tumblr has a similar audience to Twitter so I imagine there’s loads on here about everything going on too, but ya know. I wanted to talk about it just incase.

Stay safe, keep fighting the good fight, and again, thank you for reading!<3

Lauren x

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wheremytwinwatches · 4 years

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[Where My Twin Watches]: Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood Episode 35

Last time: Ed wasn’t a racist, Sloth forgot to turn left at Albuquerque, and M.G. Armstrong was getting ready to show off to the tourists. Onwards!

Episode 35 - “The Shape of This Country”

Awesome, we’re right back into it, M.G. Armstrong repeating her line from last episode. Ed’s confused until Buccy grabs his head and then his whole body to “lend a hand”. The Brothers protest until Buccy puts his pistol to Ed’s head what the Leto?!

[Buccy]: “You were forced to help us under duress; how does that excuse work for ya?’

Eh we can get into order technicalities later, just go with it for now Ed. Heck, if you pull this off right it’ll never get back to Bradley!

Poor Falman’s conscripted as well, Buccy still holding Ed at gunpoint as they take fuel cans to Gate 8. Seeing as the defused shells were insufficient, M.G. Armstrong uses her new weapons as blunt instruments to simply push Sloth into the elevator. Poor tank commander, he just wanted to show off the tanks to his boss but now he’s just getting stepped on by her. It works, and the slow thug is sent somewhere else to the relief of the poor mooks.

Now we’re down to Gate 8, where Sloth shambles out of the elevator all confused about where he is now. Suddenly Buccy runs in and damn, guy just shoulder-threw the biggest Goth so far to the ground, right below the others who poured the tank fuel onto him.

Good, you’ve soaked the Goth in flammable material. Anybody got a match?

Uh.

Ok, I can’t fault you for this one. Why settle for a match when you’ve got a Leto-damn tank?

Alright, that shot knocked it outside, you can use explosive shells safely now! FIRE!

…

Oh you’ve got to be kidding me. You’re out of ammo?! You didn’t save even a single explosive shell? Boo.

Falman… I’ll say he ‘contributed’ by shooting down an icicle, but he probably didn’t need to bother. The Brothers run forward and Brother Kick off the fort wall. Guys, do you not realize the plan? You want heat, not this blasted cold!

Wait, what are you saying Buccy?

Oh. Well don’t I feel foolish now. I got so hung up on the idea of setting Sloth on fire that I didn’t even think about the opposite. Fast evaporating liquid plus stupidly low temperatures? Near-instant Gothsicle.

Awesome! Dead or not, Sloth isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Now we can- hey! Don’t arrest the Elrics, they helped! Falman too!

Argh, even with Sloth on ice M.G. Armstrong’s keeping up the excuse that they were forced to help, and as long as they’re detained she can try to get some more answers out of them. Although I’m totally down for learning what Sloth wanted, I can’t think of any reason the Goths would need a tunnel all the way to the northern edge of Amestris.

Rise and shine, prisoner! Ed seems to share my disdain for cold-weather mornings, but he perks up when one of the labcoats comes by with a mug. Ed, I wouldn’t- dude really? Just yesterday you got charged for a cup of coffee, why are you surprised the same thing happened today?

At least he gets some good information for free, like that a search party was sent into the tunnel to figure out what the heck it was, and Sideburns is visiting the hospital, there’s a soldier who… uh oh, it’s Kimblee, isn’t it? I know that the Elrics haven’t met him yet, and he still has to make up for his pathetic showing on that train, but I think that Ed should still worry more about the guy working for the Goths than his old enemy.

We get some other Briggs soldiers dropping by as well to thank the Elrics for their help yesterday. Ed and I are impressed by the camaraderie these guys seem to share, for a place defined by Survival of the Fittest there’s a good amount of teamwork and goodwill. Not enough to defy M.G. Armstrong and let them out of course, but still.

At the hospital Sideburns is confirming that Scar got away, before saying that Fort Briggs would search for Scar while Kimblee healed up. Kimblee of course demands that they back off and let him continue his hunt, Sideburns of course says they won’t just let a serial killer wander freely.

Ooooh… Sideburns just took off his sunglasses to show Kimblee his unmistakable red eyes, leaning in to warn a shocked Kimblee that if he tries to order him around again that he’d never leave the hospital. “You behave yourself.” Ha! Take that, you puffed up murderer!

Another visitor? Ah, it’s the traitor General Raven, come to check on their attack dog and their Philosopher’s Stones… really? Kimblee has both Stones? And he still got curbstomped by Scar? This is the same guy who utterly obliterated Ishval with just one, right? You make me sad, Kimblee. Shove off so we can worry about a real threat.

Whatever, the General still seems to think he’s useful so he’s brought a doctor (Leto-damn it stop adding doctors to this show, I can’t keep up with all of them!) to speed up his recovery with Alchemy. And wow that smile with several missing and one gold tooth. If I saw that guy come into the waiting room, I’d take my chances with whatever I had rather than trust him.

Marcoh and May! The original Doc is going over the research notes, says Alkahestry seems pretty complicated. May helpfully clarifies about this “Dragon Pulse” stuff, about how Alkahestry uses Chi, ‘rivers of power’ running through the world. Alhakestrists are able to trace the Chi and use where it enters and where it leaves to perform Remote Transmutation, like setting off the explosion at the train depot or making a statue of Shao on the other side of the cabin.

Alchemists don’t use Chi though, they use their own energy- wait, what? They use “energy from the movement of the Earth’s crust”? Bwah? So Alchemists tap into a deeper pool of energy… but May doesn’t feel like that’s right. She’s felt off ever since she got to Amestris, and under Central she could sense energy. Not like movement under the land, but “a crowd of people, squirming around”...

…

Oh for Leto’s sake. It’s the Super Grief Seed all over again.

Central’s sitting on either a crap ton of standard Philosopher’s Stones, or a great big honkin Super Philosopher's Stone. That’s what’s powering Amestrian Alchemy, isn’t it? And if all of Amestris draws from this one power source, and Uncle has access to it, then he can shut it down to cut everyone off. Alkahestrists like Scar and May were ok, but everyone else drawing from the SPS?

And damn it that means that when our heroes win they’ll shut down Alchemy? Either they’d better learn the heck out of Alkahestry to repair their bodies, or this show’s gonna have a very unsatisfying ending.

Mid-ep pictures of Edward and Alphonse Elric.

Repairs are underway in the Fort Briggs furnace room, and M.G. Armstrong’s getting a report about the tunnel; great big tunnel, but no one in it. She calls for some horses and the Elric Brothers.

Huh, the tunnel looks like it has railings. I thought Sloth was just digging a tunnel, and I doubt he’d have the fine motor control to set such even construction. So who set those up? While Ed admires the tunnel, M.G. Armstrong gripes that an intruder got through her defenses. Nobody’s even gotten in Briggs while she’s been in charge, but there was an incident 20 years ago…

Seriously? Teacher, I’m disappointed. You brag about surviving for a whole month in the Briggs Mountains, but it turns out that you just mugged some poor soldiers for their lunches?

M.G. Armstrong decides that they’ve gone far enough. Ah, I see! This was to get the Elrics away from curious ears in the Fort, so you can question them about what they couldn’t say earlier. Hoo boy. This could go very well, or very poorly. M.G. Armstrong? Please don’t give my fears foundation.

Cut to after the Elrics have talked about the Stones and Goths, Bradley and Uncle. The hostages too; Winry, Riza, Havoc…

[Falman]: “And, uh… w-what about Colonel Mustang?”

[M.G. Armstrong]: “Yeah… I couldn’t care less about him.”

Oh my Leto she’d just as rather see him fall to remove another “rival”. She’s after the title of Fuhrer! I… I don’t know how to feel about this.

Regardless, she wants the Elrics to examine the tunnel. Ed guesses that it didn’t originate in Drachma, and that it’s in the shape of a circle-

!!!

He’s figuring out what Hughes figured out ages ago! What got him killed!

Ed has Falman start reporting all major incidents in Amestris, gets a shock when he learns about Liore falling to pieces even after he and Al exposed the corrupt priest. M.G. Armstrong snaps at him to keep working though. He connects the dots…

[Falman]: “H-how is that possible? It looks just like the Transmutation Circle from the Fifth Laboratory!”

Yup. It’s a giant, country-sized TC. But-

Yeah, Marcoh’s saying he asked Envy if that was their plan, but the Goth had laughed at that, saying “That’s not it, but close.” Was he lying?

Oh thank Leto May’s giving up on the Philosopher’s Stone. Her Alkahestry and the research notes could possibly find a workaround. Maybe. There’s hope. But no matter what, she can’t continue to search for a Philosopher’s Stone. At least there’s that good news.

Which is something sorely needed, as our heroes have worked out that each of these incidents were caused by or exacerbated by the military, constantly growing the country of Amestris bloody conquest by bloody conquest.

[M.G. Armstrong]: “My country…”

Sheesh. To learn that the country that you swore to protect and defend, was designed from its inception to be a massive TC? That has to hurt.

Double sheesh, a flashback to Mr. Freeze himself. The very first episode, while I cannot condone his murderous actions… he was working against the Big Bad. And Ed, way back when? What was his attitude?

Regardless, probably not the best idea to let him keep doing whatever he’s doing. But Mr. Freeze starts monologuing about how Edward’s a Dog of the Military, how his bosses have Sinister Plans- Edward cuts him off, says he doesn’t care and it’s Not His Problem. Um. What? Do… do you really not care if you’re actually working for Bad Guys?

Bleh.

M.G. Armstrong is not happy- oooooooh, crapbaskets. There’s only one circle left to be harvested on the map until the TC is complete - Briggs. Welp. I guess that explains why Sloth was digging there. So, what now?

Apparently it’s dealing with a certain TRAITOR General who’s shown up at the Fort. M.G. Armstrong has to go see what he wants. Maybe trick him into revealing some info?

There’s the jerk, Sideburns is asking him to wait until his boss comes back. Him and damnit Kimblee’s already back on his feet, and is inside Briggs with Raven now.

I guess it’s safest to put the Elrics back in their cells while Raven’s in the area, don’t want him seeing them and reporting back to Bradley. Aw, chin up Al, don’t give up on Winry’s apple pie now.

Teatime with the Traitor with a microphone in the vent, M.G. Armstrong’s talking about a “monster” who attacked yesterday. A bit of Drachma Paranoia to build your case, then name dropping the Elrics makes Raven pause. How odd that they seemed to know about the monster but refused to talk…

The Elrics, Buccy, and Falman are listening in on the mic as M.G. Armstrong… wow ok. I did not expect her to play the “oh, I’m a frail little woman who couldn’t bear to torture the boys”, to Buccy’s great amusement.

Now she’s even bemoaning not having children, that she’s… oh. Um.

She’s saying she’s growing older.

She’s admiring the immortal body of the monster that attacked her fort.

Raven is saying such a body wouldn’t be a dream very soon.

[Raven]: “Tell me, General… Would you be interested in a legion of immortal soldiers?”

The Elrics say that he took the bait, but…

I’m just looking at M.G. Armstrong’s eyes, and the growing pupils.

Um.

#wmtw #where my twin watches #full metal alchemist #full metal alchemist brotherhood #fmab #fmab 35

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umbralich · 5 years

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Never ending survey

RULES: Repost, do not reblog. Tag 10 blogs!

Tagged by: @lareine-kira and @paleshadeofrose

Tagging: @hangedemperor , @istolin , @maximiloix , @trahja-tia , @eorzeasfrozenknight , @charm-in-spades , @thorcatte , @haila-wetyios , @a-sharlayan-abroad

---

BASICS.

FULL NAME: Varg Blacksoul, formerly Timur Oronir NICKNAME: Varg-Varg (given by Lareine), Stiffy and Grumpy (given by Silke) AGE: 54 BIRTHDAY: 9th sun of the 1st astral moon ETHNIC GROUP: Xaela Au Ra NATIONALITY: Othard, Ishgard LANGUAGE/S: Common, xaelic, ishgardian SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Demisexual ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Biromantic RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single and not looking for company. HOME TOWN / AREA: Dawn Throne, Azim Steppe CURRENT HOME: Pillars, Ishgard PROFESSION: Paladin, medic/healer at Ishgard’s service.

PHYSICAL.

HAIR: Long and silvery grey. EYES: Black with white limbal rings, small irises. FACE: Angular features, long nose, high cheekbones. LIPS: Narrow, often cracked, slightly darker than his usual skin color. COMPLEXION: Grayish purple BLEMISHES: Dark circles SCARS: Lots of scars which he keeps hidden at all times. Two thick, long ones are visible and almost go across his right eye. TATTOOS: No tattoos. HEIGHT: 210cm WEIGHT: Slightly underweight BUILD: Slender but masculine, somewhat toned. FEATURES: Black markings around eyes, and naturally thick, black claws. ALLERGIES: None USUAL HAIR STYLE: At work or formal meetings it’s combed back either completely or with some locks on his temples left loose. In more casual situations he mostly just lets it be. USUAL FACE LOOK: Calm, focused, narrowed eyes. USUAL CLOTHING: Full, dignified heavy armor or parts of it combined with a long coat, formal robes, jodhpurs, vests, blouses and high-heeled boots.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR/S: Imprisonment, being held or tied down, physical pain, betrayal. ASPIRATION/S: To be successful, self-sufficient and powerful until the end, to bring as many as possible wrongdoers to justice, to find an heir, and catch people still on the loose who managed to escape his revenge long ago.

POSITIVE TRAITS: He keeps his word, doesn’t leave things unfinished, is a good motivator for slackers, aims for high-quality results in everything, is reasonable and logical.

NEGATIVE TRAITS: Insensible towards most of people, logic always comes before his own or other people’s feelings, very straightforward, capable of cruelty if necessary.

TEMPERAMENT: Calm SOUL TYPE/S: Thinker ANIMALS: Gray wolf

VICE HABIT/S: Smoking. He hates it, but it’s the least harmful thing that calms his nerves down, and he’s addicted. He tries to limit it though, and use it only in worst occasions, since he doesn’t want the side effects affecting his health or work. If things get especially grim, he also has full stashes of potent liquor and intravenous sedatives.

FAITH: Science usually comes first, but he’s also spiritual in some way. It’s one of those topics he doesn’t discuss with anyone. Some of his duties include working as a cleric, so it may have something to do with Halone. Or then it doesn’t, and it’s just another job.

GHOSTS?: Has seen them with his own eyes so can’t deny their existence. AFTERLIFE?: He hopes it exists, for reasons. REINCARNATION?: It’s a possibility.

POLITICAL ALIGNMENT: Generally neutral, but on demand would choose the side of underdogs: ignoble, the poor and the sick, minors etc. Wouldn’t show his alignment publicly if it was a threat to himself. Would also pretend to be supporting the oppressor, only trying to sabotage their work at every opportunity. Even I’m not sure would he actually die for anyone else or some common cause. He has fled once to save his own hide and he could do it again. Knows main points of what’s going on and where around the world for the sake of common knowledge, but is only interested in topics that concern himself. Has been a target for racists since arriving to Ishgard as a teenager, so he despises them from the bottom of his heart.

EDUCATION LEVEL: Learned

FAMILY.

FATHER : Not relevant MOTHER : Not relevant SIBLINGS : None that he knows of EXTENDED FAMILY: Iris Ymir (patient and protege) and Arsene Dreadeois (butler)

NAME MEANING/S:

Timur is a Turkic and Mongolic name which literally means iron. In Indonesian, timur translates to east and symbolizes hope by the rising sun.

All members of the Oronir tribe believe themselves to be direct descendants of Azim, the tribe's god of the sun.

Varg is wolf in swedish. Varg was also originally a nickname given by his friends at the Steppe. It was the only thing he kept after starting his new life in Ishgard and severing his ties with his homeland.

Blacksoul was given by his comrades in the army for being so ruthless towards enemies - both the ones on the battlefield and the ones captured.

HISTORICAL CONNECTION?: None

FAVORITES.

BOOK: Science, mythology, swordplay, alchemy, etc. Everything that has something to do with his work or hobbies. DEITY: Halone seems to share most of his values. HOLIDAY: Doesn’t celebrate any. MONTH: September and October. There isn’t many little things in life he gets pleasure from, but fall colors is one of them. SEASON: Fall and winter. PLACE: His estate, cathedrals, libraries and forges. WEATHER: Thick fog, rain and sunshine at the same time. SOUND/S: Fire, rain and musical instruments when someone who actually knows what they’re doing plays them. SCENT/S: Herbs, iron, parchment. TASTE/S: Whisky, tea, whatever Arsene makes. FEEL/S: Clean clothes, heat radiating from a fireplace. ANIMAL/S: Doesn’t like animals except for his chocobo, Mori. NUMBER: Doesn’t care about numbers. COLORS: White, black, blood red, gold, silver.

EXTRA.

TALENTS: Accuracy of a chirurgeon, skillful with swords, managing to define a goal fast in any kind of surprising situation and being very patient and stubborn at achieving it. BAD AT: Admitting he has weaknesses, comforting people, having fun, small talk, relaxing. HOBBIES: Reading, studying, weapon maintenance, alchemy. TROPES: Antihero, tragic hero and mad scientist. Definitely could also be a villain. Depends on whom you ask.

QUOTES:

“Since you seem to be so worried of my… customers, perhaps I should take you along the next time I interrogate them. You would see with your own eyes what kind of delicate, exquisite and misunderstood individuals they are, when they spit on you, mock their victims and brag about the amount of people they have raped or murdered.”

“Today it happens. Make sure she is out of here before I return tonight. I am no longer even sure which one of them is the worse one.”

“It was a mere procedure. If procedures were considered intimate, I would be close friends with half of Ishgard by now.”

“Do tell me... If you work as much as you claim, how come you are always broke when we meet?”

“Very well. Play something for me. Let us see are you a man of your word.”

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1 : If you could write your character your way in their own movie, what would it be called, what style would it be filmed in, and what would it be about?

A1 : He’s been busy sticking his spoon into so many soups during his life that you could probably make a trilogy of his fooleries feats. The first part would tell about his early life in Azim Steppe and how he was forced to leave from there, the second part about how he found his soulmate and adapted to his new life in Ishgard, and how it all eventually ended up into a shitstorm, and the third one would be the current storyline. No clue about the name, though. The Soulforge would be perfect but too bad it’s taken.

Q2 : What would their soundtrack/score sound like?

A2 : Bloodborne, Dark Souls and Amnesia the Dark Descent OSTs are absolutely the closest ones you could get to Varg. Orchestral, choir, bowed string instruments, both epic and monstrous. Even if there were more peaceful pieces here and there, while listening to them you’d still have that same feeling of dread you used to have while playing the original Resident Evil and Silent Hill games and finding a safe room: you just barely escaped death but can’t stay in the safe haven forever.

Q3 : Why did you start writing this character?

A3 : He’s quite different compared to my Forsaken shadow priestess in WoW, whom I used to RP for... two or three years? Long story short: I wanted something else for a change. I also used to have an old Forsaken death knight, who was a lot more similar to Varg, but he was more evil. He existed pretty much only for occasions when someone needed a true villain for some plot. He was funny however and I always thought it was a pity I didn’t get chances to RP him more often.

Q4 : What first attracted you to this character?

A4 : He’s a mixture of four different OCs of mine, with a bit of his original spice ofc. One of them came into being in, uh, somewhat obscure conditions. Kept seeing him in my dreams when I was a kid, and he became one of my imaginary friends I used to have back then. And not just one of the many, but the closest one. Also generally in entertainment I couldn’t care less about Lukes and Frodos. Villains, tragic heroes and the like are my thing. They’re usually the most multilayered and interesting characters.

Q5 : Describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse.

A5 : Perfectionism. I’m similar and it sometimes drives me nuts to watch him neglecting himself while trying to achieve perfection. If I could physically talk to him I would go and slap him and be like “EAT. SLEEP. YES THE THING IS GOOD ENOUGH ALREADY. LEAVE IT.”

Q6 : What do you have in common with your muse?

A6 : Well, already kind of answered this one, but wait, there’s more: insomnia, nightmares, PTSD, misanthropy and cynicism come to mind first. And booze. How could I almost forget booze? I believe I know what misery is so I’m good at RPing miserable characters and make them look as authentic as possible. *lols like Alcyone from Magic Knight Rayearth* We both also have a strong sense of justice and nonexistent sympathy for those who use others as stepping stones. Aye I know, sounds a lot like a self-insert character, but it’s not like that. It’s more like... before meeting him/the OCs he’s based on, I used to be quite a scentless and tasteless kid. Similarities and peer support attract. And I’ve also learned from him.

It’s also a lot like me and Lareine. We became friends because we had 95% of the same interests and problems but perhaps that’s why we get along so well and understand each other.

Q7 : How does your muse feel about you?

A7 : He would probably hate and like me at the same time. Or couldn’t decide. We both like peace and quiet, doing our job well is fundamental and our basic values are pretty much the same. We would get along well if we worked in the same place. However, unlike him, I have some horrid procrastination seasons, crippling self-esteem issues, tend to put other people’s needs and opinions above my own and keep stressing about things for 7 billion souls instead of just myself. I’m suspicious of pretty much everything else except Lareine and our plushie crow Agatha, except that Agatha creeps me out sometimes as well when she takes out a knife and sits next to my bed at night, staring at me, can’t watch Hachiko without bawling my eyes out during the entire movie, love puppies and kittens and danger noodles and I’m addicted to video games. Very likely he’d kick me out as well.

Q8 : What characters does your muse have interesting interactions with?

A8 : Varg would never admit it to himself, but I think he gets best along with people who are a bit silly in some way, and who get on his nerves by being too carefree and doing stupid things. Lareine and Iris, when they’re behaving. Arsene, who’s kind at everyone. Currently Shaura is my favorite. Varg himself is so uptight people like them help breaking his gray routines. Also a bonus: he doesn’t see them as a threat, so that’s probably the closest he’s able to get to relaxing among other people.

Q9 : What gives you inspiration to write your muse?

A9 : I’m a fan of my own characters. It doesn’t feel like I would’ve created them. I saw them with my third eye or something and I’ve just written for others to read what I’ve seen. I don’t plan RPs beforehand. I just let the hound loose and let him do whatever he wants. So far I haven’t got tired of my characters’ antics and could just write more. The only obstacles are limited hours per day, necessary evils like eating and sleeping, procrastination, trying to sort out my life, and the damn FFXIV. SOMEONE PLEASE TAKE IT OUT OF MY HANDS.

Q10 : How long did this take you to complete?

A10 : Ehh, maybe 4-5 hours.

#final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #character info #au ra #never ending survey

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a-rting · 5 years

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Japanese pedophile "culture" is not a culture. It is a subculture.

Also, you can't use this as an excuse "well..it is not an excuse but an explanation.." This is exactly why we are complaining in the first place, you clearly tried to justify it with culture, but realized it is only a confirmation of our concern.

Because anyone is ready to shout "racist!!!" if you ever dare to say how pedophilia is not seen as a big deal by Japanese people that are egoistically and disrespectful like:"why western and occidental people should complain? It's our culture!!!"

Yet, everyone ready to "justify" (so: just give us info for idk, make racism in 99% of anime seem less not okay and hypocritical?) their blatant racism.

If your "culture" is abusing and give children a trauma. No. I'm not going to respect it. Especially since you all do not respect nor care about other culture (almost, fortunately.) like if you are above any country. You are not. And the fact Japan even complain about us obviously worried in a mockery way, it's immature and ignorant.

Japan has issues and they get away with it by "culture" "respect" "taboos" "our feelings" and most popular on tumblr: "look! Looks how we are more modern than you!!! Look how we even respect nature!!" (They smoke everywhere. "But any country-" No, you don't get me, everywhere.) Also, they are know as an urban city, like the most famous and popular american cities. At least, America admits and constantly complain about it no end. Japan tries hard to make the country seem bio-friendly while keeping smoking everywhere and build skyscraper

No. It is not a culture. It is a subculture you find fun. Japan's way of make its country looks "above" and "interesting" is by making controversial and emotional/physical abuse a regular thing with more than 100 intricate explanations.

Because their general entertainment..is not the best.

"But anime are aimed at teens!" Yeah.

After years of adults watching anime, Japan developers do not know what you are even talking about(?) At all.

"I'm innocently and reasonably making sexualized teen characters for teens that mostly adults are going to watch and I know what they do with it because sexual pillows wouldn't even be a thing and I'm an adult..nothing wrong here. Again, I'm just making sexual anime for teens to turn on for, since years..nothing wrong.. You are the freak."

Basically, Japan's subculture is:

- Stereotypes are okay and you should follow them no end or you'll feel empty.

- If you drink you are a better worker.

- Pedophilia with more than three explanations and excuses is okay.

- Pressuring Physical beauty standards to men and women until death is okay! And you shouldn't act like if it hurts you and damage your self esteem and self confidence, at all! It's a fact. If you have no stuff you aren't handsome/attractive do not even deal with it until you are not like that :)

- If some popular/famous idiot says anything disgusting tastes good, it is a fact.

- No sense, like, 0 sense of subjectiveness.

- If you are not white, you are not pretty.

So no. Japan is not perfect and "any other country is okay but is not as 'wow' and cute while America just plain sucks!"

But of course, it is okay! Because they have taboos! You insensitive human crap!Therefore wrong subcultures are more than justified! Instead of finding healthy and positive ways to make people's life easier and enjoyable because of a lack of subjectiveness and concern :) !!

#japan #anime

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aimmyarrowshigh · 6 years

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@reliand @marysuewhipple -- I was midway through this response when you blocked, but let’s just bear this out after all, because you genuinely an actually seem to be confused on some of your canon and you might, like, want to know, for real, in a not-mean way.

Wow, you really bought into your own fanon and forgot that it literally is FANon, didn’t you.

No one knows what happened after Luke was knocked unconscious except for Kylo and the other students that left with him (presumably who became the Knights of Ren).

We literally see what happened in TFA. Remember? Kylo, and his knights, surrounded by the dead bodies of the other students in the mud. Kylo kills one of them. We saw that happen. We watched him kill them. That was on screen. That was canon.

I mean, you act like he is just plain evil and started training with Luke as an adult[.]

I can’t speak for Dan @raptorific, but I have never said that Ben’s training STARTED as an adult -- just that his decision to end his training with Luke and his choice to become Kylo Ren happened as an adult. He started training with Luke at ten, as far as canon has said, but canon has also presented two different timelines for Ben’s training with the Jedi because of the changes made to canon between TFA and TLJ.

Granted: in the Road To TFA materials, Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo became Kylo Ren at age 15; in the Road To TLJ materials, starting with Bloodline, this was changed to age 23 -- whether this change is because of actual canon-bearing narrative choices or just because Adam can’t play 15 because he’s 34, IDK, and it ultimately doesn’t matter.

The current canonical age that Ben Solo slaughtered all of his classmates except any who became the KoR -- and we only know for sure that they lived long enough to assist in the massacre, because we’ve only seen them in that singular flashback -- is 23. An adult.

An adult man who man the choice to kill all of his classmates.

That is what is canon.

First, Ben has had Snoke preying on him since he was in his mother’s womb. Keeping him up for days on end as a toddler, and getting into his head nonstop. Snoke has been grooming this kid from day one…

You guys straight-up invented this.

It is not even ALLUDED TO in any actual canon materials. Leia senses the Dark side of the Force while she’s pregnant, but guess what? EVERY Force-sensitive person is equally affected by the Dark side and the Light side. Their choices are what “choose their side.”

She does not sense Snoke, at least as far as any current canon has said, and Pablo Hidalgo -- I know you guys hate him, but he’s still the guardian of the SW bible -- has said that it has not been stated, or alluded, in canon. Will it turn out to be true? Maybe. It’s certainly a popular enough fanon that I could see LF throwing up their hands and surrendering to it.

But guess what else?

Even if Snoke were grooming Ben from the day Han’s sperm met Leia’s egg, it would not excuse Ben’s adult, agential choices.

Actual canon, in the films -- because Kylo and Ben have not appeared older than toddler-age in real-time in the extended canon materials yet -- makes it explicit that Kylo Ren’s actions are his own. He has a choice every time.

At Tuanul, Phasma asks him what to do with/to the villagers. It is Kylo’s directive to kill them all. Not Phasm’as. Not Snoke’s.

When Kylo Ren attacks and kidnaps Rey, he says -- in a defense TO SNOKE, so it clearly was NOT Snoke’s choice -- that it was his choice to take The Girl because she had seen the map rather than continue to search for The Droid. He’s chastised for this choice, sure. But he still made it.

When Kylo Ren murders Han, it is because Han is giving him the option to come home and come back to the Light. Kylo Ren does not want to be saved. He does not want to be loved. He was given the challenge by Snoke to kill Han because Ben Solo’s “greatest test” would be to kill the father he had loved and who loved him -- arguably, with that language, the person Ben Solo had loved most in the world.

Kylo Ren makes the choice to kill Ben Solo once and for all by choosing to reject Han’s offer of continuing love, welcome, belonging, and Light. The choice to remain Kylo Ren, NOT Ben Solo, was 100% Kylo’s agential choice. Snoke needed him to make that choice of his own free will for the Dark side to actually embrace it. He wasn’t controlling Kylo’s hands.

He wasn’t some kind of Kilgrave, Imperius Curse mind-controller. He was your average, run of the mill charismatic sociopath who radicalizes sensitive, smart, gifted, young men from loving families every goddamn day.

That is the metaphor that JJA set up. On purpose. As a writer, who is not an idiot, who wrote things on purpose in the script that he wrote with very unsubtle metaphors that he made on purpose.

The SW villains have always been mirrors of political and social threats in the era of their trilogy’s writing. The OT cast the Empire visually as Nazis, and included the Holocaust-analog event of the genocide of Alderaan, but the villain Lucas was critiquing, particularly through ESB and ROTJ, was the U.S.’ military-industrial complex and the war on Vietnam. (“Back in a 1973 note on “Star Wars,” Lucas made clear which side he was rooting for in the Vietnam War: 'A large technological empire going after a small group of freedom fighters.’”) In 1981, Lucas literally said in a press conference that Palpatine was based on Nixon; he’s held since that his inspiration for the series was less A Space Opera than “How do democracies turn into dictatorships?” Discussion of exactly how racist it is that he considers the ewoks to be based on the Viet Cong is for a totally other post...

This was also super unsubtle if slightly contemporized with the PT, when Palpatine became less Nixon and more Bush, working to create a global economic crisis that would precipitate a war against his own long-hated enemies. At the same time, it’s been pretty widely believed that part of what muddles the PT’s storytelling is Lucas’ dual focus on criticizing the Catholic church, who at the time that the PT was being written and filmed -- late ‘90s through mid-2000s -- was finally being publicly held to account for centuries of corruption and abuse that had been downplayed as just being part of the status quo because of the Church’s obsession with ritual and dogma. While a worthy thing to criticize, trying to go for moral ambiguity and “both sides are bad from a certain point of view” while also trying to adhere to Campbell’s schema while ALSO trying to make people sympathize for a character that the entire audience already knew grows up to be a mass-murdering cyborg was... a lot to tackle. Lucas arguably failed a lot of his intentions with his execution in the PT, but he still HAD intentions, and again: they weren’t subtle. ROTS literally ends with Anakin cribbing one of Bush’s jingoistic declarations post-9/11: “You’re either with me, or you’re my enemy.” In some ways, the most successful criticism Lucas made through the PT was that this kind of dichotomous sociopolitical dialogue eventually causes you to get three of your limbs chopped off as you backflip into lava to your own downfall -- and yet, it doesn’t cause you to die -- it just makes you come back stronger and angrier than before. Which leads us to the ST.

Although Lucas has nothing to do with the ST, it’s honestly rude to the Storygroup, JJ, Kasdan, and even RiJo to pretend like it isn’t following the same edict to use the fantastical setting of a Galaxy Far Far Away to level harsh, and super overt, criticism of the sociopolitical power structures of the real world contemporaneous to the trilogy’s release.

Snoke -- the gold bathrobe-wearing charismatic fascist megalomaniac who smooth-talked his way into a figurehead position of power despite functionally having others do all of the actual work of both “governance” and violence.

Hux -- the far-right neo-Conservative political schemer who actually WAS raised from bith to idealize the explicit, intentional SW-universe analog for Nazism and thus became a powerful and Dapper Haired neo-Nazi leader.

And Kylo Ren, the violent angry entitled man who sees the kind of power his life position (wealthy, male, Force-sensitive AKA educated and gifted) would have garnered in previous generations but doesn’t today in a Star Wars Analog For Democratic And Increasingly Diverse Landscape*) and is enraged by it, so thus turns to the rhetoric of the megalomaniac and the Neo-Nazi to find afocus for that anger beyond, idk, trying to fucking just be better.

SUPER UNSUBTLE METAPHORS FOR THE POLITICS OF MODERN AMERICA.

* See: Bloodline, and the differences in policy/goals of the Centrists and the Populists; as the Populists have more Senatorial power at the time directly preceding the destruction of Luke’s school and the chief schism between them and the Centrists is that the Populists believe in giving more planets and more sentient species equal rights to vote and self-determine governance, and the Centrists -- many of whom are secretly funding the First Order, not unlike how many Republican senators and congressmen IRL have turned out to have very strong ties to the Klan, the NRA, the TWP, the Proud Boys, various neo-Nazi groups, and alt-right supremacist organizations and militias, fwiw.

THIS PARALLEL WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT.

All of the insistence y’all make to it being Just A Kids’ Movie This Shit Is Just ~Ess Jaw Dubbayoo~ Reaching!!!! is a) something you have to know, truly, is just borne of wanting to stan for Kylo, and honestly, it’d be less irksome if you just... stanned for him without trying to rewrite canon and insult everyone else? and b) Insulting, both to fellow fans and to the SWST writers.

While TFA was written long before The Election, it was still written within the modern sociopolitical landscape. Trump already was out there leading the idiot Birther movement. Sarah Palin was a thing. Alex Jones and Glenn Beck and Fox & Friends had 24/7 airtime. Antisemitic hate crimes were on a steep rise both in America and overseas, and homophobic and Islamophobic hate crimes were still happening far, far too regularly. Police brutality and the unlawful extrajudicial lynchings of Black men and boys by Klan-affiliated police officers and unjust Thin Blue Line that protected their murderers was already (finally) a daily headline. Standoffs between the government and far-right fringe militia groups lasted months; conflicts between armed militias and civilians over access to statehouses and public spaces was on the rise. Mass shootings by angry disaffected young white men were happening every fucking day. Gam/e/r/g/ate was a thing, exposing the depths to which angry entitled young men could sink if they felt like their stranglehold on All Media Things was threatened. The writing for 2016 was on the wall long before the campaigns on either side officially began.

And you know who probably was not an unaware dumdum just scootin’ along without a clue of what was in the air?

Two Jewish men, one of whom was the son of a man who won two Emmys for a docudrama about the Nuremberg trials -- gee, wonder where JJ came up with the imagery for Hux’s Hosnian rally on Starkiller, though? -- and the other of whom does interviews of Holocaust survivors for the HMH.

Denying that is both to assert that JJA/Kasdan don’t have the right, as Jewish writers, to react to the world authentically, and to assume that they are too stupid to know what they wrote. You gotta stop pretending like everyone who fucking sees what they wrote into the ST on fucking purpose is either lying or crazy. Seriously. Stop it.

~*Antis*~ don’t en-masse see these parallels and metaphors just because wE tHiNk EvErYoNe We DoN’t LiKe iS A NaZi!!! It’s because that’s what they’re fucking overtly intended to be.

And guess what? Hitler was in the ear of the Hitler Youth from infancy, too.

It 0% absolves anything they fucking did.

SW is not subtle. The only thing LESS subtle than SW is Harry Potter, and they’re both the same fucking story. With the same fucking villains. The difference is that JKR is white and goyishe and you can tell. (As you can, tbh, in TLJ being written by RiJo. RiJo goyishe as hell and it, uh, shows. A lot.)

For all of RiJo’s faults and lazy writing, he ultimately did not undo the metaphors that JJ/Kasdan set up. He handled it in maybe the most circuitous and sloppily written way possible, but honestly, the longer since TLJ came out, the more it becomes clearer that RiJo really wasn’t trying to make Kylo seem heroic, or trying to subvert TFA’s storyline insofar as giving Kylo depth that belied his character’s setup. He was showing the audience just how easy it is to be hooked into a narrative like the one that suckered in Ben Solo, and that he tries to use to sucker in Rey -- and nearly succeeds.

In TFA, it couldn’t have been more overt if he were straight-up just constantly watching snuff film porn or something, but in TLJ, Rian’s cues -- which I STILL will always maintain are poorly executed -- are less “out on the street in Charleston with a tiki torch in hand” than “on Twitter sealioning female journalists until they delete their account, and then retreating back into anonymity on /pol.” It’s still Kylo Ren as the toxic masculine underbelly of rage, violence, and entitlement that is part of the current sociopolitical nightmare hole, even though he’s actively trying to seem like an empathetic #normie. Every single frame of Kylo Ren in TLJ, especially after Snoke makes him remove his helmet, is in service to the Dark and to all of the real-world metaphors of toxic masculine rage that Kylo represents.

Because when given the choice between being free and usurping Snoke’s power, Kylo chose to the power. That is Dark.

It isn’t even Dark inherently because he First Order are an explicit Neo-Nazi parallel, although they are -- and FWIW you don’t get to be antisemitic by rejecting JJ Abrams’ and Lawrence Kasdan’s right, as Jewish artists, to create fantastical metaphors for their Jewish pain and name them as such [“The original name for the First Order was the Neo-Empire,” etc.] in the name of ~protecting Jewish feelings~ when the entire schema was created by Jews and the fact that y’all are excited to claim that theyre are “six Jewish reylos” is... just yikes; I gotta say, as a Jewish ~anti~, there are more than six of us -- it’s Dark because it is the self-serving choice at the expense of the Galaxy.

And, truly, at the expense of what Ben Solo would have known was moral and ethical. Ben Solo was raised by Han and Leia. He was educated by Luke. He grew up with three parental/guardian figures, plus Uncle Lando and Uncle Chewie, who ADORED him and doted on him. He canonically had happiness and friendship in his childhood (per Bloodline). He isn’t a sociopath devoid of empathy; I’ll give you that, because it’s true. He knows exactly how much he is hurting people, both emotionally and physically, with his actions. And he chooses those actions anyway, because they further his goal of becoming the literal Master of the Universe.

Kylo Ren considers his own desires to be of higher value and priority than the well-being of the Galaxy or his own sense of morals/ethics, and that is a Dark choice. (See also: Anakin killing Mace Windu.)

(Cue Palps cackling about “POWAAAAA!”)

Being brainwashed by a fascist lunatic to murder for them does not absolve you from that murder.

Are you out campaigning for the release of Manson’s girls, too? Because they were brainwashed. Psychologically, medically, truly brainwashed to the point where they were unable to perceive the fact that Manson’s beliefs and orders were objectively fucking batshit and evil. But they still were responsible for their actions. They committed the murders. They are in prison for them because of the choices they made.

How about Allison Mack sex trafficking and branding women for NXIVM? Is she an innocent lamb-flower who could not possibly have made any other choices because her charismatic leader was in her ear for years and years? I’m sure that in her trial, her lawyers will make the same exact arguments about her relationship with Renier than y’all make about Kylo and Snoke, but uh, it ultimately doesn’t fucking matter. Allison Mack is the one who slowly and torturously branded her victims with a goddamn laser-pointer. That was her choice. That was her action. She will be held accountable for her choice.

...and his parents didn’t know what to do with him. They have a super force sensitive child, who has a presence constantly poking at him, and he’s highly emotional…

This just literally isn’t canon.

All of Ben Solo as a child’s appearances in canon have shown him as a happy, playful, mischievous child who knows that he is loved and is responsibe to the emotional cues of his parents and others. He is exactly as upset by things that would upset any child as... any other child. He doesn’t have a Presence Constantly Poking At Him in canon. You guys invented that, and it isn’t backed up by his largest pre-Kylo canon appearance, which is Last Shot. Ben, in Last Shot, is loved and knows it, and he loves back. He is happy. He is a normal, good-natured child. He babbles, he plays, he cuddles, he goes outside and gets muddy with his friends and beams and laughs. He has toys and watches cartoons.

He cries a) when he gets woken up, which is when all babies cry and frankly everyone else wants to cry when they get woken up lbr; b) when he doesn’t get to do exactly what he wants to do, and, tbh, it could be interpreted as foreshadowing of the way that Kylo Ren uses the display of emotion to manipulate people into letting him do what he wants in both TFA and TLJ. Or it could just be him being, you know, a normal toddler.

I will give you: he IS highly Force-sensitive. SO IS LEIA. Leia is the granddaughter of the Living Force for fuck’s assing sake. You really think that Luke and Leia are LESS Force-sensitive than Ben??? Being highly Force-sensitive doesn’t, and literally in canon did not, turn Ben into a hyperemotive mess as a child. He’s just, you know, two years old.

“But Kylo Ren is hyperemotional, so what happened HUH!?” you cry.

Well -- for one, the main emotion that he canonically shows as Kylo Ren is anger. He is an angry man, and he acts like an angry man, because he is in a social environment -- by his own choice as a 23-year-old thru 30-year-old -- that encourages violent expressions of male anger. He punches walls. He chokes subordinates. He destroys property. He yells at people. He SCREAMS at people. He is angry, because he feels entitled to more than he has, always more, more power, more respect, more control over others, and he has been encouraged to believe that acting on that anger will help him get what he feels he is owed.

That ain’t special. And it’s hardly even a scifi metaphor. That’s just how violent, angry men ARE.

“But he cries so much!” He cries once in the movies. Once when he is about to kill the father he still loves, because he craves the power he sees as his due more than he cares about anything or anyone.

The other time that it looks as though he might cry -- in the elevator after Snoke’s mocking and the Force lightning -- he instead does what violent, angry men DO when they live in a culture or subculture that glorifies male violence and disrespects all other emotions: subverts actual emotional processing or catharsis by turning it into an act of violence. He destroys his mask, the symbol of his obeisance to Snoke. RiJo even confirmed that was the moment he started to plan Snoke’s murder more concretely. His reaction to feeling sadness, or rejection, or guilt, or WHATEVER, in the face of his killing Han not actually getting Snoke to give him more control and power and leadership, was to PLAN A MURDER.

(AKA: It wasn’t to save Rey; Rey was only there because, using Snoke’s playbook of manipulation, Kylo got her to believe what he wanted her to believe and come to the First Order because Kylo couldn’t kill Snoke alone, and Snoke had to die for Kylo to get what he wanted: ULTIMAAAATE POWWWWAAAA.)

(And FWIW, I’m not saying Snoke’s murder was unwarranted, I’m just saying that it was borne of the same exact cocktail of toxic hypermasculinity that caused Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo to kill Luke’s students and flee to Snoke in the first place. Kylo Ren’s sole motivation, in canon, is the pursuit of total power over others, which he feels is his due because he happened to be born to the family he was and with the genetic makeup [Force sensitivity] that he has.)

[B]ut his parents are also war heroes and they’re trying to build a government and just rebuild in general after a war, so they can’t be there for their son. They’re not the best parents, okay. They leave him in the care of a kitchen droid instead of one suited for care giving. (Also, this kitchen droid tries to murder him as a toddler due to a…let’s call it a computer virus or malfunction. so that’s extremely terrifying).

They literally left him with BX for like 20 minutes because his actual nanny droid had to run an errand.

This argument is so tired and it also kind of proves that you don’t even actually read/watch canon, you take all of your beliefs and cues from what Reylo BNFs with vested interests in keeping y’all brainwashed to believe that Bennyboo is a Pure Sweet Angel Baby Who Never Did Anything Wrong so that they can maintain the social capital of having lots of followers.

Gee, I wonder if that’s similar to anyone we’ve been talking about?

That said, this argument is also exhausting because it places blame on working parents for being working parents, and that’s misogynistic bullshit. Han was Ben’s primary caregiver. In canon. T-2 is really only ever in full-on Nanny Mode during Last Shot, when Han has to leave the house for more than a day or so.

Otherwise, it’s literally canon that Han is a stay-at-home parent whose full-time vocation is caring for Ben until Ben leaves for Luke’s school. After that, he STILL is a full-time househusband, but does some charity ship-racing on the side to raise money for galactic orphanages. He does mentorships for junior pilots, too, and once one of them -- Greer Sonnel -- starts to seem like she has a terminal chronic illness that will keep her from flying, Han helps to place her in a safer job opportunity rather than have to go back to her impoverished home planet. MAN, what a BAD GUY who HATES KIDS and is BAD AT CARING FOR THEM.

Not even the nanny droid -- they kept T-2, who had programming for obstetrics and pediatrics, around because he was a protocol droid just like Threepio but with the benefit of specialized programming that would help them better care for Ben, from early on in Leia’s pregnancy at least through when Ben left for Luke’s school. God forbid parents have specialized, knowledgable help raising their child!

It is only after Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo destroys Luke’s school and becomes Kylo Ren that Han leaves, and that’s alluded to in canon -- although I’ll give you that it isn’t confirmed at this juncture in either Road to TFA or Road to TLJ material/timeline -- to search for Luke, search for Ben, and/or help raise and gather capital for the burgeoning Resistance. He isn’t a deadbeat who’s never around for his son. His son’s disappearance is the only thing that could make Han leave the domestic home and life that he’d wanted since before he even met Leia.

Second, his powers are erratic and POWERFUL and when he’s like a preteen or something he hears his parents discussing him behind closed doors…like he’s some sort of monster.

And what, exactly, did Ben do before they said this?

We don’t know.

We have had hints in both Road to TFA and Road to TLJ canon that something Ben Solo did, at age 10, was sufficiently powerful and Dark enough that Leia and Han did the best thing they could as parents to a child who did a Dark thing: get them help from a source who has the training and knowledge to help them in ways the parents themselves cannot.

That is not bad parenting. That was the right thing to do.

We don’t know what Ben did that caused his parents to worry about how Dark his behavior, in that act at least, had been, but parents admitting that they are out of their depth and getting their child help from a professional is not neglect, or a lack of love, or a lack of empathy. I get it; being forced to get help, when you view your own actions as justified, is scary and painful and embarrassing. When I was teaching, I had an eight-year-old male student who had been expelled from public school after breaking another kid’s arm and was in a specialized school for students with violent behavioral issues because he had kind-of-accidentally killed his toddler cousin by hitting him over the head with a chair when he was angry. I’m 100% sure that his parents talked about that event, amongst themselves, behind closed doors, with horror and the kind of language that would be immensely hurtful to this boy if he overheard it. That’s a human reaction. A monstrous thing happened, hard to comprehend, and like... parents are allowed to react like humans about complicated emotions of trauma or shock or horror, even though they are parents. But then they did the exactly right thing for their profoundly violent son by getting him professional help. That specialized school was not fun. The boy definitely saw it as, and talked about it as, a punishment. But it wasn’t a punishment. It was loving him enough to try to save him from himself.

Sending Ben to Luke’s school was not a punishment or some way to ~throw him away. Ben DID need help, objectively, although we haven’t yet been told exactly what the final straw was. I believe, IIRC, that the Road to TFA referred to whatever he did as a “great family tragedy,” but I don’t 100% remember -- I only recall that was part of why most people assumed that the incident occurring right around the time of Rey’s birth would ultimately be significant, and who knows, it may yet be. We don’t know. There’s no canon about it.

Also --

You guys act like Luke was some mean, scary stranger who hated Ben on sight, but Luke was Ben’s uncle. Leia and Han adored him, and he adored them, and he loved Ben. We don’t have any canon about Luke’s feelings towards whatever child!Ben did to warrant the intervention, but even in TLJ, there’s no actual objective statements of Luke hating Ben, or even Kylo.

The only person who asserts that Luke hates/hated Ben Solo is Kylo.

And frankly: he needs to believe that. Just like he needs to believe that killing Han will cause Snoke to finally respect him and give him more control/power/leadership. These are things that, honestly, he’s gotta KNOW are not true, but has to create the believe of their truth to continue acting as Kylo Ren.

So this belief, and those actions as Kylo?

Are agential, active choices. As an adult man.

Further:

Re: the moment with Luke in the hut, any interpretation that doesn’t take into account the filmmaking and CANONICAL choice to present it twice, once in Kylo’s POV and once in Luke’s POV, is missing the point of its being shown at all.

Kylo has already begun his manipulation of Rey in service to the eventual murder of Snoke and usurpation of the throne when he tells Rey about that night. He knows that Rey is frustrated with Luke on her own merits, so she will be receptive to a telling of that story that frames Luke as all of the things that Rey is already annoyed with Luke for being: stubborn, afraid of the Force, afraid of the Dark, quick to anger, irresponsible, whatever.

In the flashback from Kylo’s POV, he is telling Rey the story, so it is being presented to her for the purpose of garnering her sympathy in order to manipulate her. It isn’t even necessarily how Kylo remembers that moment when he’s just remembering it to himself, late at night, or whatever! We have never been privy to what’s actually in Kylo’s mind about that night. While you guys are using that as evidence that his mind was good and guileless and sweet, it’s equally (or more) likely that he was so Dark that night bcause he was, just like with Rey, already planning his next Dark act. In both TFA with Han and TLJ with Rey, Kylo’s choices in Dark actions tend to rely on someone else -- someone Light -- falling alongside him because he is a skillful manipulator of empathy.

Han steps closer and takes the lightsaber, blade-end pointed at himself, because he believes that Kylo Ren is choosing the Light and will come home.

Rey mails herself to the First Order, becoming a pawn in the takeover of Snoke’s throne, for the exact same reason.

When Kylo is telling Rey about the night that he destroyed Luke’s school and killed the other students, he is relying on the same tactic -- using someone’s own goodness and Lightness against them.

Han, on the bridge, even as he was dying, believed the best in his son and believed 100% that if given the choice, Kylo Ren would be Ben again, and that he wanted the Light and just felt like he couldn’t have it anymore.

So when he’s manipulating Rey with the story about that night with Luke, in Kylo’s POV, we can visually see from the filmmaking choices that he is telling it in a way tailored to her belief in inherent goodness. Rey, until after the throne room, believes that people are ultimately and innately good and Light -- it’s stated basically outright iirc in her Survival Guide -- and Kylo knows that because he mind-raped her and saw her thought processes and viewpoints and knows, exactly, how to mold his story to ply her. When we see that night with Luke as Kylo tells it to Rey to get her to come to the First Order, he tells it in a way that casts his choice to flee to the Dark as being borne of fear and confusion, not desire. (And y’all reylos buy that??? Okay.)

But if Rey herself weren’t being so muddled by her own confusion and sadness, honestly, TLJ itself presents her with enough evidence that wasn’t true: she knows Leia and Han loved him, and he tells her that he didn’t hate Han. And yet, he stayed. He stayed in the First Order for six years after that night. He didn’t destroy Luke’s school by accident out of shock and fear and pain in a whirlwind of Dark energy that he couldn’t control, and then, you know, feel bad and atone and try to make amends and acknowledge his bad deed and accept consequences and try to redeem himself.

He destroyed the school and fled to the First Order and stayed. He destroyed the school and kept on destroying.

But he IS a skillful manipulator, and he also knows that Rey most likely assumes that he wants to come home because, he’s seen in her mind AND she’s reaffirmed, that all she wants is a loving home and parents. If he tells about that night in the hut in a way that casts himself as the victim, his hand forced so that he doesn’t feel he can come home, she’ll believe it (despite literally having seen him in front of her face reject the invitation to come home with his dad, but whatever Rian).

So that’s how he tells it: Luke, fallen to the Dark side, his face twisted into something demonic in his fear and hatred, and Ben, still innately Light inside, only acting in the Dark basically by accident. THAT IS KYLO REN MASTERPIECE THEATER PUPPET STORYTIME, AS HE ACTIVELY MANIPULATES REY TO LEAVE LUKE AND COME HELP HIM KILL SNOKE.

It is, in the world of the story, and in the narrative through-line of TLJ, not the truth.

Personally, as with a lot of the things that Kylo claims to believe, I don’t think even he believes it’s the truth. It is what a convenient truth would be in that moment to further his progress towards his goal of supremacy. He KNOWS that he was steeped in the Dark side (by choice, as an adult) when Luke entered his hut that night. Even though you’re trying to insist that he was an innocent lamb that night, even your own pro-Ben Solo arguments rely on the idea of his being fully and totally steeped in Darkness by then -- don’t you think he was 23 years and 9 space months into being groomed by Snoke by that night? If Snoke really had been grooming him for so long, then by default Ben Solo was already Dark by then, and the Dark has no power unless you choose to act on it.

And to that end: what, exactly, if not kill all of the other students, destroy Luke’s school, and help to destabilize the New Republic in favor of the neo-conservative fascist junta of the First Order, was Snoke grooming him to do or be?

If you believe that Snoke was grooming Ben Solo to the level that ALL of his Dark actions were really Snoke, and not Kylo Ren actually making agential active choices to further his own agenda, then what was Snoke’s plan for him before that night? Because unless his plan for Ben Solo involved the destruction of Luke’s school... wouldn’t Kylo be starting out his tenure under Snoke’s tutelage with Snoke HELLA PISSED at him for doing something so rash and stupid?

So yeah, granted, it IS only an assumption that the Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo actually consciously and actively planned the destruction of the school and the murder of any classmates who refused to join him... but it’s an assumption based on all of his actions since that night. He has made zero efforts towards self-aware atonement or culpability, and if he truly did not mean to destroy the school and kill other students, one would think that someone who ultimately wants the Light and to be Saved Ben Solo Again would, idk, feel bad about it. Not try to blame someone else as a tactic to get a partner in another murder.

And you might hate the comparison to a school shooter, but that was as unsubtle in Ben’s destruction of Luke’s school as the comparisons to Neo-Nazis are in Hux’s rally in TFA.

He is an angry and entitled man, already steeped in Darkness and resentful that he doesn’t have all of the power that he feels is his natural due, and he scapegoats the adults in his life for making him get professional help that he didn’t want and was angered by because one of its tenets (if Luke was adhering to at least basic Jedi teachings) was that no one person should have that much power.

When he is caught continuing to act/think/speak/etc. in Dark ways -- like, IDK, someone’s loving parents trying to disconnect their internet access because they were so deeply entrenched in alt-right conspiracy theory that they were functionally insane and had become frighteningly violent -- his reaction is extreme violence (like stabbing to death the father trying to protect you from your own delusional conspiracy-driven subculture) in service to leaving his life for a literal, in-world neo-conservative fascist slave-owning militia planning a political coup through the equivalent of an atomic bomb in the capitol. Again: the parallel that JJA and Kasdan wrote and created for Kylo is not an accident, nor is it subtle. We’re MEANT to see him as a toxic masculinity-driven, entitled, violent white man, and we’re meant to view his slaughter of his classmates as having been driven by his rage and his quest for the power he feels is his due.

That is a school shooter. Trying to pull the “you can’t compare this overt fantastical metaphor to a real-life bad thing to the bad thing it’s meant to be because that would mean acknowledging the bad thing!!!!” card is really tired.

Like. There is no realistic, actual, canon-based scenario in which Ben Solo, by the night of the hut, DIDN’T have plans for violence against any who would not join him.

Remember? Star Wars has already cribbed-and-canonized the reactionary mindset once: you’re either with me, or you’re my enemy.

#|franchise| star wars #**star

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lightsandlostbells · 6 years

Text

Druck episode 7 reaction

I fell behind with Druck because the release of the clips from this episode threw me off, lol, but I’m catching up now!

Some of these comments are outdated as I wrote them before seeing the clips that came out after this episode.

Episode 7

Clip 1 - Leonardo DiCaprio sweetie...

Sam’s hair!!! Love it.

Unfortunately I do not love that Sam is somewhat encouraging Kiki in her Alexander-related delusions.

Tbh, I wonder how Sam copes being a friend of Kiki since Kiki is racist, but then again racist people can be selective. They’ll have bigoted beliefs about one marginalized group, but they’re OK with another group.

Kiki referencing Titanic and being like the film is based on a true story!!! And Amira being like, uh, just the iceberg and sinking part. Well, Titanic is applicable to real life, in that Kiki and Alexander are the sinking ship. But also, Jack died at the end of Titanic, so maybe Kiki should pick something with a happier ending, anyway.

Mia has incorporated the famous red lipstick into her style.

Amira asking about the party and Sam saying Mia twerked, good for her.

I adore Amira messing with the girls and saying costume parties are haram. Even Mia, the self-designated progressive feminist of the group, falls for it. But I love that Amira can joke with them and tease their expectations and it’s casual and friendly. Pay attention, Kiki.

Awww, even the Hanna/Jonas guilt making out is too cute! I’m going to savor it while it lasts.

Clip 2 - Hanna confesses to Matteo

Matteo settled on a different hairstyle, I see.

So I guess Hanna did end up joining the refugee tutoring program, and Matteo did too. Despite the less-than-enlightened attitudes we saw from the group representatives in the first episode, I’m glad to see Hanna is involved in another activity, at least. Since she’s very insecure, volunteering and participating in activities can give you some sense of purpose and direction. And Matteo - I don’t think we ever saw Isak really involved in anything at school? Just kosegruppa, which he was blackmailed into. Which is fine, I just like seeing Matteo doing something productive. Also, I enjoy seeing something that Hanna and Matteo do together, whether that was intentional or not on their parts.

After seeing a few versions of this scene, I prefer it when the Isak character needles the Eva a bit into confessing what’s up rather than Eva just spilling her secret unprompted. It makes sense in that Hanna/Eva might need a push and also gives a subtle hint about Matteo’s/Isak’s investment in their relationship status.

I laughed out loud at Hanna being like “I made out with Sam” and Matteo being like “Well yeah, girl Sam is hot.” I mean, she is a babe, but Sam is the one girl Chris character who does not flirt with the Isak character (from what I remember), and it turns out to be the one time that the Isak says that the girl Chris is hot. Even though I don’t think it’ll matter much, lmao.

Also Matteo being like whyyyy are you telling me this right now … in front of a bunch of students within earshot. True!

LMAO AND FATIMA AGREES WITH MATTEO, HOLY SHIT? I hope that this poor girl isn’t going to be like … a red herring as to who spilled the beans.

Clip 3 - Kiki gets a much-needed pep talk

Kiki just cuts straight through the bullshit and figures Hanna has a thing for Samuel.

Well, now we get the “I’m not a lesbian” comments from Kiki. I wish they would go there with her. Honestly, after Skam Austin, this is the version of Skam I would most expect an f/f storyline (other than Skam France which has girl Alex as bi but it’s not much more than Word of God and a couple offhand comments.)

Kiki asks Mia if she’s a lesbian and Mia says she doesn’t think in categories like that … which does not rule out the possibility of her being into girls … I am just saying …

“Just because I’m pretty does it mean I need to have a penis inside me?” Well damn Mia, when you put it like that.

Alexander repeats the same bullshit lines on different girls. I bet he compliments them on their stomachs because so many girls are self-conscious about having rolls or belly fat.

Kiki is near tears, and she gets Vilde’s line about everyone saying it’s not her fault, but it is her fault … because that’s how she feels. I’m glad they kept in that line, and it does make you think about how “of course it’s me” would feel in light of S2. I mean apparently Vilde didn’t care that it was Noora who ended up with William, but if you think about it, William apparently was willing to settle on a girl. It just had to be Noora. And IDK, to me that would kind of sting regardless of my ultimate feelings for this dude - because apparently I wasn’t enough to make him stop acting like an asshole, but for another girl he could act like something resembling a decent person (in certain opinions).

The girls making a Hanna and Mia sandwich with Kiki inside is so sweet.

Clip 4 - Mia tells off Alexander

“You’re a proud, confident pussy!” Aw, that’s a lovely line in context.

Mia is, out of all the Nooras, the one who most feels like a feminist or at least someone who is heavily guided by feminist principles and has done the required reading.

I was going to say it was a bummer that Sam went against Kiki’s idea to stand up to Alexander, but the way the actress played it, plus the line “That’s how I always do it” made it feel like there was more going on with her than just not wanting the party invitations to stop. Like the pressure to be chill and not take anything too seriously, especially relationships, was something that weighs down on her. If she’s like girl Chris, perhaps she feels the need to be the fun party one, too. (Heh, I actually thought of the infamous Gone Girl “cool girl” speech, believe it or not. A lot of these insensitive teenage boys don’t want a girl who’s going to have feelings and inconvenient stuff like that, they just want a girl who’s cool to do whatever. And I think there is some pressure on girls to not be like “those other girls” who cause drama by speaking up for themselves and not taking crap from boys.)

And I like Amira’s point of view, which was the same as Sana’s, but which was explicitly compassionate and trying to help Kiki keep her dignity.

Also Hanna is just like “No idea” which is in-character for the whole not-having-her-own-opinions, going-along-with-what-everyone-else-does theme.

Alexander wasn’t as bad of an actor as I expected, though he needs to work on his dead eyes. Maybe he meant it but it’s going to be hard to deal with that in the long run.

His version of this put-down is one of the cruelest in a way, though. It doesn’t even feel like he winds her up as much, he’s just callous. And he had the temerity to tell her to stop crying. Because crying is inconvenient for him.

He mimics Mia’s smirk back at her when she steps up which was a nice touch.

I’m glad that Kiki stuck around in this version so she got to hear someone stick up for her. It is sad that her moment becomes Mia’s moment but it’s nice to see the girls immediately defending her, Amira stroking her arm.

I’m not sure Mia had quite the fire to pull off that scene; however I am liking her more and more in general because as I mentioned above, I think she’s convincing as a baby feminist character and she’s good with supporting the other girls.

I loooooooove Sam giving him the finger as she walks off. itswhathedeserves.gif

Clip 5 - Hanna and Jonas in bed

They’re easily the best Eva/Jonas outside of the original. They just have great chemistry.

“By the way, I found out there are studies that prove the danger of cell phone radiation.” Wow, I didn’t know Jonas was channeling my 72-year-old auntie.

So cute with him talking about getting down and asking for her hand!

“Society made me do it, a boy from the streets like me, what can I do?” Jonas is definitely the most endearing drug dealer in the Skam extended universe. Ahem.

That description makes him seem like Aladdin.

Oh god they’re so cute. I don’t have much to say except they’re fabulous together.

don’t break them up

Clip 6 - Fight!

NO NOT THE SCARF. Wrapping her scarf around his neck! I know what happens next for them, you assholes!!!

The girls are ridiculously cute when they pose for a photo. Mia giving Hanna a kiss!

Also they love Mia so much for her smackdown. And Amira stroking Kiki’s arm <3

Brawl time!

Lol, this is the least convincing Iben.

DON’T TOUCH SAM’S BEAUTIFUL BLUE HAIR YOU JERK

I love that all of them got involved in the fight. Amira seemed like she was trying to stop the fight at first but then it looked like she was trying to put that girl in a headlock. Kiki went all in, too, jumping on that girl’s back and holding on with her thighs.

Lol, a teacher actually yelling at them to knock it off and them breaking it off on their own? How novel.

Clip 7 - Hanna and a reptile

Hanna actually has a bruise from the fight so that’s a good detail.

That line from Matteo about Carlo being friends with Jonas and not with Hanna ... buddy … you’re going to want to consider that line more closely, considering I can think of someone who’s friends with both Jonas AND Hanna who’s also screwed her over.

Jonas asking her to stop calling when her phone background is all pics of her and Jonas being affectionate :( :( :( You know, just to rub it in.

Matteo were you fucking SMIRKING after you gave Hanna a hug? Is that an actual smirk or is that just his face? Duuuuude, I do not approve.

Clip 8 - Leonie dropping hints

Lmao, it’s not really funny but those are some A+ celebrity sunglasses that Hanna is wearing to presumably cover up her bruise and hide from the world.

Love how shook and upset Hanna gets from just spotting Jonas through the window.

Kiki is probably the biggest asshole of any of the Vildes but not gonna lie, I still kinda like her? She is a jerk but she feels like a very specific, realistic type of jerk, like she feels very believable as a character.

Also, something I’ve never thought much about is how Vilde/Kiki fixates on Eva/Hanna being considered a “slut” to the whole school, and obviously some of that for Vilde has to do with the impact it’ll have on their bus group. But this is also happening right after Vilde lost her virginity to the most popular guy in school, wore his hoodie that marked her as a trophy, and was treated like trash by him afterwards. So for Vilde/Kiki/the equivalent characters, is it possible that there’s some projection going on here? I don’t know if I’d say for certain because she seems so eager to have sex, but the aftermath also messes with her self-worth, and that’s mostly indicated by her eating disorder but I think it’s possible she may have internalized some ideas about slut-shaming that could apply to herself.

Mia loves Hanna so much. I don’t get the mega-flirty vibes between them I got from Eva/Noora or Eva/Eleonora, but Mia just cares for her a whole lot. I’ve had some doubts about Mia’s performance but the writing for her has made me love her quite a bit.

Oh, I love that Hanna kinda snapped at Leonie and that Mia took a bit more of the caring, leave-her-alone approach at first but then got all forceful and told her to go away.

Mia either thinks Kiki needs to shut the fuck up or she’s noticing that something’s up with her attitude.

Clip 9 - Hanna and her dad

Is that plant symbolic of something? “There’s a lot going on and I just forgot to water it”? Or you know, sometimes a plant is just a plant.

The dad! I love him being all concerned by his daughter’s banged-up face.

And he’s being so sweet and supportive when he sees Hanna is having a hard time! Gosh, Druck is really like the sweet and soft remake. The baby lamb version of Skam.

Hanna also freely confesses to him that Jonas broke up with her instead of it slipping out in a fit of frustration like with Eva. The dad is sympathetic and wants to help and tries to reassure her that it can happen to anyone, but Hanna is just too upset and stressed for it to have any effect.

General Comments:

I have no idea what’s up with the production on this one. I’ll be so bummed if it doesn’t get another season. Honestly, this is still my favorite of the remakes - it’s the one where I have the most fondness for the characters. I enjoy almost everyone by this point.

This is also easily the version where I would want a S3 and S4 the most (other than a Shay-focused season of Skam Austin), as I think Matteo and Amira could potentially pull them off; they both have conveyed plenty of youthful vulnerability. Mia/Alexander is the least convincing Noorhelm yet but Mia has grown on me a lot. And I think girl Sam and Jonas are fantastic and would love to see more from them.

Just to say it again: girl Sam is wonderful and I would looooove just a full season of her.

I guess the Druck team posted a little message on IG about Kiki’s eating disorder and a link to a hotline? That’s really great, I’m glad they did that.

Not to compare remakes but when Meg and Marlon from Skam Austin make out: 😒 😒 😒 When Hanna and Jonas make out: 😄 😄 😄

I don’t speak German so if I miss some context, feel free to correct me.

If you got this far, thank you for reading!

#druck reactions

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stimmyvillainarchive · 6 years

Note

WHY does the android app gotta suck so much, when i click the faq link it just like refreshes the page,,,, this happens with all links in bios on the andoird app :[

NNNN lovin this broke ass app.

I’mma go ahead and paste the FAQ just under the cut, hopefully you should be able to read it now :’))

(FAQ is written by Mod Joker)

“Are requests open?”

We get this ask a lot. And while I don’t mind answering, it does get a lilll annoying sometimes since we’re essentially repeating ourselves constantly. Before you ask, please check our ask box! It will ALWAYS give our request status!

From now on if we receive requests when they’re closed, we’re going to delete the message entirely. You’re free to ask again when they’re open, but we need breaks!

“Can allistic/neurotypical people follow?”

Yes! So long as you’re respectful of stimming and understand it’s not an aesthetic or something to make fun of.

“It says there’s two mods, but I only really see Mod Joker post.”

There is! But Mod Boo is rather, well, shy. We both are, tbh. I’ve just gotten used to talking a lot on this blog. And to tell ya the truth I invited her to mod this with me because she considered making a blog but wasn’t sure how she’d do it, and was worried she’d be too awkward/quiet. But she actually tends to see your messages a lot! She just tends to let me handle things. But if you ever wanna talk to her, just say the message is specifically for her and I’m sure she’ll get back to you. She’s very friendly and tbh one of the best people to talk to!!

“How do you make gifs?”

I use the same method stimmybby uses! His tutorial’s right here!

“How do you make banners?”

I use photoshop and for backgrounds (depending on what type of background), I use paint tool SAI. I made a tutorial on how I do it here!

“Can we use your banners for posts that aren’t stim related?”

Absolutely! So long as credit is given and you’re not in our dni, then use it as you like! Discourse posts, art, vent posts, promo posts, whatever floats your boat!

“Can I use your gif/s?”

As long as there’s credit to us for the gif/s and you don’t apply to our dni, you’re free to!

“How can I credit you?”

There’s a few ways! Such as

- Including the credit in the post and/or under the cut (this is the best way people can access the original post and see the credit!

- Include the credit in the post’s captions

- Include the credit in the tags

- Include a link in the post to another post that has the credits in it

- Saying you got the gif/s from us in the post

“What are bad/wrong ways to ”“credit”“ you?”

- Saying “I don’t own these gifs”

- Saying “credit to the original owner(s)/gifmaker(s)

- Straight up not saying you took these gifs from people/including in no credits

- Claiming the gif/s are yours/you made them

If I see any of these I WILL publicly call you out on it and you WILL be blocked immediately thereafter. That block will not be lifted.

“What does REG mean?”

Reactionary Exclusionary Gatekeeper. Meaning people who try to exclude certain queer people from queer spaces. Such a biphobes, transphobes, aphobes, panphobes, and so on.

“What does TERF mean?”

Trans/Transgender Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Meaning radfems who are transphobic and are violent towards trans people (especially trans women).

“What does SWERF mean?”

Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist. They’re radfems who try to exclude sex worker from their feminism and often treat women attracted to men as less worthy.

“What’s the ADT community?”

ADT stands for “Actually Dysphoric Trans/Transgender” and was created by transmedicalists/truscum to break off from the trans community. It’s an insult to the trans community, an insult to the creator of the transgender pride flag (it’s removed the white that was there for people who ID as non-binary/outside the gender binary), and is there purely to start drama and create rifts in a community that’s already got enough enemies for simply existing in a transphobic world

“He/Him lesbians don’t exist/they’re transphobic towards trans men”

As a trans man who doesn’t think the world revolves around me and who understands that what lesbians decide to do it literally none of my goddamn business: get the fuck over yourself you whiny pissbaby

“What do you mean by people in the true crime community?”

People who sexualize, romanticize, excuse, and/or support serial killers and their actions/crimes. This doesn’t include people who are INTERESTED in the topic of crimes, serial killers, etc but acknowledging how these people are disgusting and their actions are unforgivable.

“Why are you anti-cgl?”

Cause we hate pedophiles and are decent human beings.

“You’re bigoted to kinksters just like homophobes are bigoted to gay people!”

I hate to break it to ya bud but I’m proudly kinkphobic and you’re a giant homophobe!!

“I’m a SFW cgl(re)/littlespace blog so I’m following/interacting uwu”

No the fuck you aren’t!! You’re a kink blog, there’s no such thing as a “sfw kink” even if you’re remaining two braincells are too busy fighting over the last pacifier to tell you some fuckin common sense. Your ass is getting blocked and I’ll also be using your blog to take a look at the people you interact and block them too just for safe measure! Eat a cactus, fuck nugget

“You hate lesbians if you hate TERFs”

You owe every lesbian an apology for assuming they’re all mysogynistic, LGBT+phobic pieces of horseshit like you are. Eat a dick.

“aces/aros aren’t LGBT uwu”

Wow… that’s so wrong Alexa play Fuck You by Lily Allen

“Me/Someone I know/(insert user/s) has been blocked. Why?”

There can be a number of reasons why you’re blocked, and I’m not afraid to block people as I want this place comfortable and safe for the mods and followers. So there’s several reasons as to why.

- You apply to our DNI (see BYF)

- You’re a (insert harmless children’s cartoon) critical blog (I tend to block those due to them saying LGBT+phobic things)

- You get into kin drama

- You’re an ace discourse, pan discourse, bi discourse, and/or overall REG discourse blog (this does not mean I block inherently block discourse blogs! I block the shitty ones)

- You’re a spam/porn/etc bot (if I’ve gotten this wrong, lemme know! I tend to block shady and empty blogs for this reason unless their desc/url/etc says it’s empty/weird for a reason)

- You’re a blog that frequently posts/centers around one or more of my triggers

- You’re an aesthetic blog (though I tend to soft block for them. But this is NOT an aesthetic blog and stimmy is NOT an aesthetic)

- You’re an “anyone can interact” stim blog

- You’re a stim blog that steals/doesn’t credit the gifs they use

- I feel you and I are going to argue and I’m just saving us the trouble of future unpleasant encounter/s

- You’ve been shitty to my friends or just been shitty to people in general and I’ve noticed it

HOWEVER I’ve made slip ups in the past! If you feel you don’t apply to any of these, you can contact me through my main and ask why. Sometimes I don’t always remember why I blocked somebody (sadly there’s a lot of shitheads on this site I’ve needed to block) or I’ve confused one blog for another person’s blog. Or maybe the person was more chill than I thought. Please contact me yourself rather than ask somebody else to do it though so I can get all the details! Even if I don’t lift the block, I won’t report you for block evading or anything.

“You used to be kidheart friendly and now you’re not, why’s that?”

Sadly, Raven (the creator of Kidhearts) has proven to be a bully sympathizer and feels it’s okay to compare agere to kinks/cgl and sides with regressionuncensored. She condones bullying/harassment/the sexualization of minors and I am not nor will ever be okay with that.

“But Raven sai-”

I don’t care what she says. She made it abundantly clear that she supports regressionuncensored and I don’t care that it came back to bite her in the ass. Bullies deserve no support, no sympathy, no nothing. And if you side with her than don’t come near this blog. This is agere safe and I will not allow people who support sexualizing it to interact. Kidhearts WILL be blocked on the spot, no questions asked.

“I’ve left a community on the dni list, can I follow/interact?”

Yes!

“Why are you anti-(insert thing on blacklist here)?”

Camp Camp: It’s racist + antisemitic

Dragon Maid: It’s pedophilic

Killing Stalking: It’s homophobic, ableist, sexist, perpetuates rape culture, and fetishizes abuse

Your Lie in April: It romanticizes child abuse and it literally starts off with a gross pedo joke when we meet the love interest in episode one

Split: It’s ableist

Hetalia: It’s antisemitic

Harry Potter/J.K. Rowling’s works: Actually there’s nothing inherently bad about the story. I just don’t like it. HOWEVER: I can’t stand J.K. Rowling as she’s a TERF/overall LGBT+phobe, and racist. So none of her creations will be featured here.

Sonic Boom: Nothing inherently problematic. I just can’t stand the show because it just fuckin sucks

13 Reasons Why: It romanticizes suicide and the creators refused to listen to actual mental health experts and have made the show potentially dangerous to anyone who even slightly deals with suicidal thoughts/urges

Detroit Become Human: It’s racist + antisemitic

Voltron: Legendary Defender: It queerbaits/it’s LGBT+phobic

“REG is a transphobic term”

I, Mod Joker, am trans. Try again.

“A-specs aren’t LG-”

*buzzer sound* wrong. So sad for you

“You’re not LGBT+ because you DARED disagree with me because you actually acknowledged that tumblr didn’t credit the community sweaty uwu”

We get this shit because a lot of you assume I’m ace or at the very least a-spec. And… Ya couldn’t be far from it. I’m a pan, genderfluid trans man. Even with all your gatekeeper (sorry, BULLSHIT) logic; I’d still be attracted to multiple genders and not be cis. I’m p queer. So no matter which way you slice it, I’m part of LGBT+. Die mad about it.

“You’re comparing aphobes to TERFs and SWERFs you fucking transphobe!”

Wow I didn’t realize setting boundaries meant that I viewed y'all in the EXACT same light. I’m so glad I have the lovely aphobes that have told my friends that they should kill themselves to set me straight.

Asking people not to interact doesn’t inherently mean I think they’re the EXACT same thing.

“Mod Joker is a gif-thief and reposts people’s content without properly crediting them!”

I have made this entire post explaining that’s wrong. Idrc if the post is too lengthy for you. Don’t talk shit if you don’t even have all the details.

Additionally, if you send me somethin about this in a negative light I’m IP blocking you. One strike and you’re out. If you want to believe people with false info and false accusations then that’s your baggage. Not mine.

HOWEVER if I’ve accidentally mis-credited, forgot to/messed up on crediting a person for their gif/video, or so on let me know! I’ll make mistakes, but I never do it intentionally.

#I realized the last link was a bit outdated anyway so whatever #this should help at least!#asks #anon #Mod Joker

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omegaleveltrouble · 6 years

Text

@rebekahwinters

His head was spinning, his stomach weak, as he sunk to his knees atop the chilly lawn. He hiccuped, trying to restore balance, telepathic tranquility, all that good stuff that would keep his mind away from the pain. His arm hurt so much worse now than it had in the aftermath of the actual fight. He'd barely noticed it, against the psychic trauma; how could it have got so much worse? He inhaled sharply and settled himself on the ground, legs crossed, head drooping in concentration, trying to shut out the voices in his head of passing losers.

He'd woken up this morning feeling unnervingly ill, yet had bravely — dazedly — stupidly — pulled his way through breakfast and wandered his way outside. He blinked, trying to steady himself as he forced himself not to retreat to the astral plane. Wincing, afraid to look but more afraid now not to, he unzipped his sweater jacket, pulling the knitted material back so he could slowly slip his arm out from the sleeve.

Cool air against a boiling a sensation made him wish he would pass out. Breathe. He'd been hurt forever ago, he was fine. Counting determinedly in his head, he made up his mind; he peered at the wound, taking in mental record of the damage. Ew.

He didn't need to be a doctor to see that it had gotten worse. The arm was… lopsided, and through every aching shift, he wondered how it was that he could even still feel all his fingers and their throbbing screwy circulation. The blood clotting looked on the verge of reopening, but it was the pus bubbling from that area that made him flinch. Well that was pretty much confirmed, then: he'd definitely made it worse two days ago when he'd tried TK-ing the bone back together. To be fair, it'd been a shaky attempt. Even though obstinate snark had always been his go-to upon being tortured over demonic mutant super-people stuff (wow, the fact that he'd had a go-to spoke volumes about how bad the school sucked, totally not how he used to run away from it) — regardless, that did not mean he was good at channeling pain, or whatever it was that the fake badasses did. This really hurt and he needed opioids now, and it was so gross.

He lifted his trembling opposite hand to poke at the obvious bit of bone that jutted out of his skin. It was really weird. It seemed coated with a layer of slime against his jagged fingernail. Inadvertently he shuddered. He wasn't actually shy of gore — at that ridiculously unsafe school, he used to have to watch Logan get horrifically disfigured on the daily — but seeing his own arm like this made him feel nauseous. How did Glob Herman deal with this all the time? Or maybe this nausea was all just the infection whose persistence on existing was now impossible to deny. Complicated shit. It made him actually miss the days of being a disembodied semi-conscious psychic entity, back before he'd learned to put himself back together again. Bodies were totally overrated. And at least McCoy had used to talk to himself in the lab; sometimes even to Quentin. It had been soothing. Unlike now. Now was sensory overload; he assumed that was something to do with all the pus, because he liked his telepathy.

But someone was yelling at him. That itself wasn't weird — Quentin was always being yelled at — but this seemed a little different. They were concerned.

~Hey man, are you okay!

~Bro lookit your poor arm bro!

The thoughts and feelings behind their yells weren't annoyance or anger, at least not towards him; but all the same this still became a problem when someone with a less-than-sappy psyche abruptly grabbed at his awesome hair.

"Bad sapien!" he muttered angrily, pushing them away with a gentle wave of TK, clutching the arm to his side. Honestly this tug at his scalp was nothing now compared to the searing injury, but it was the very principle. He liked his hair. It marked him as a mutant overlord; it made him recognizable; it wasn't like enough people gave a damn about his face. Why was everyone thinking at him? He couldn't do this right now, he couldn't handle it — struggling to his feet, he resolved to march away. He'd have to try again to fix the arm again. Not here. Back in his bedroom. Other people were about him now, and they hadn't stopped yelling, so loud— or was it thinking? Thinking at him, far too loud…

~Lookit his arm, is like

~The hell is that there, pus, or

~Stay back from him, darling, he's

~He's infected! He's been bit!

~Get him away from my baby!

~Oh my god, the poor boy is burning up!

That last one was accompanied by a gentle hand upon his forehead. Dazed, Quentin found himself leaning in against it, a comfort against his feverish skull, but in a moment the touch was pulled sharply away, and he stumbled to his knees, wincing angrily. The world was hazy as if a dream. Maybe he was overtired. He was certainly dizzy. There was shouting, pulling, flinching, so many minds unsure what to do.

~Stay back from him for the love of

Quentin got back to his feet, glowering about him. They were treating him as less than, they were treating him as a thing, for what, because he was a mutant? His brow tightened as he tried to regain balance. Waves of pain like a jigsaw puzzle were shooting outwards from his arm to what felt like his entire body. He started cussing at the people. But they never knew when to let down, did they? He lifted himself into the air, blinking through the brain fog into a concrete pink haze of psionic energy. "Shut up, shut up, shut up! I'm Kid Omega, doesn't that name mean anything anymore? Get lost, or I swear to god I'll kill you all!"

~The signs are already showing, irritability, violence, ravenous desire for brains

~An infected got inside of Haven oh god oh god omigod it's the beginning of the end

~Kill it kill it before it kills us all

These were thoughts, right? The mouth movements didn't seem to match up, like he was watching a shitty old monster movie, but he was too stressed to care. "Fuck you," Quentin gave another telekinetic push in their general direction. He was feeling so woozy though, and he couldn't stay in the air. TK flight gave him a definite sense for the direction of gravity, but it wasn't enough to settle his nausea. He dropped to his feet some steps away, lumbering off towards the dorms as best as he could; man did he want to show these sapiens what's what right now, but he just didn't feel well enough now. Scheduling revenge for a later date was just as good as immediate retaliation, right? Just like he'd do for Scott. Maybe. He didn't know. Scott was such an asshole. Quentin was a million times more powerful than him; and the only reason he'd been hurt at all was because he'd taken the moment to feel sorry for him! Pity had been his downfall. The psychic trauma especially was the fault of Quentin's overflowingly kind heart. He didn't get nearly enough credit for this shit. And Scott had actually hurt him? That was the most embarrassing thing ever ever ever annnd… he was thinking in circles. Don't stop moving. It peeved him, the unsureness anymore of how much of his perceptions was his words or their words and how much was their thoughts. But he knew that his telepathy was okay, Scott was pathetic — it was just Quentin that was less than okay. Right now. He needed his room. To fix this. Sleep fixed everything, yes, sleep. A smile crossed his lips. He was fine. He'd feel better in the morning…

The world seemed to flip in his vision, and the voices of the little group of sheeple returned to him. It was a moment before he spoke. "I could shut down all your brains with a thought… leave you vegetables…" Firm arms were laid around him, graciously well avoiding his injury, but he felt too exhausted to argue. It didn't mean he'd lay down and take it.

~Ohmigawd he's trying to bite me

~Keel eet with fire

~Calm down son, can you hear me?

He blinked into a pair of piercing green eyes. "…I'm not a zombie." Because that's what these idiots were fussing about, weren't they? Infected. Zombie talk. Because even that ridiculous assumption was easier for them than to admit to themselves than their hatred of mutants?

~I know, help me with him

"I didn't get bit!" He could sense the fear around him. They all did think so. Why…? People could really be cray when they wanted to rationalize their bigotry. They had every reason to be scared of him, why not tell it like it is?

~Dude, your arm is

"I obviously didn't get bit! How bout you weirdo, you wet your bed till fifth grade!" he shrieked, pulling away. His head was spinning. He needed to throw up, but nothing came up; he couldn't, until he got away. Quentin took off at a run, before promptly faceplanting flat into the ground. Fuck it, had one of these sapiens literally fucking tripped him? He let out an undignified strangled moan into the dirt, seriously considering psychically calling Storm or somebody for help. Nah, he wasn't that desperate.

Someone was helping him up, but it wasn't easy to trust these guys right now. Naturally, he began to dig his nails into their skin and they promptly let go with a squeal. Now that was a sound he was over ninety percent sure wasn't telepathic.

~Remember who you are! Kid Omega, right?

~God's sake, he's a mutie terrorist, he doesn't deserve your sympathy!

~Don't be racist, Jerry!

~It's not that he's a mutant, it's the terrorist part I'm more worried about.

~The arms scandal was years ago, he was a confused child!

~It's the zombie part that I'm most worried about.

~Shut up, Lazlo.

Well… at least someone knew who he was. "You'll never take me alive," Quentin mumbled, the only possible response upon this ridiculous human conversation, eyelids drooping, as he felt his body lifted into someone's arms. This was so pathetic. Quentin could control every single one of these people, effortlessly make them all start killing each other or some shit. If only he could focus. "Put me dowwwwn," he whined.

He tried for a moment to break free, before promptly deciding against it. He didn't want to jostle his belly. "Fine, fine, you've convinced me, guys, I'll go with you willingly in defense of my cause. Like MLK, if you really want me as a political prisoner again, yay, but you'll never stop me from defeating the murderers and oppressors in your species or submitting you humans underfoot for all the harm you've did to us—"

~What's the infected terrorist on about?

"Well fuck you… mmmph!"

A hand was clasped tightly over his mouth, before being promptly and wisely being replaced with a crumpled cloth, held in his mouth by a hand.

~Did he scratch you

~Quire? Quire, I'm an Inhuman, you little weirdo. But hang onto your… convictions, what's important to you. You're going to Observation, we'll see if you're infected

~Don't let him bite you

~I got it

~Stay with me Quire

It was like a dream, how he was… was he carried off? He wasn't sure how much was real and how much was the impressions from reading all their thoughts; or even for that matter if he hallucinated. He thought he heard himself crying. It wasn't his fault, it was just that everything hurt, all shooting from that carefully avoided arm. Right now, it felt like he'd never been in so much pain in his life, even when he'd been tortured in a dungeon by demons over the whole thing with the Siege Perilous. Probably he wouldn't feel that way in retrospect. But still.

There was a discussion going on around him — he felt their feelings, but not their words. Probably explaining the situation. Fake situation, why the hell would he be infected? Did they really think he'd been gnawed on by a zombie, and just pulled on his jacket to stroll back in the gate? Maybe. What would he do if he had been bit? And he couldn't admit that it was Scott, or everyone would condescend him and laugh because Kid Omega had been hurt by Cyclops. Maybe it was a good thing though. It had been forever since he'd been treated like the revolutionary riot-starter he was. He couldn't let himself get rusty now, could he?

He was laid on a bed, which rather ironically perked him up a little. The individual was standing over him, brow knit into a look of… he didn't know, but he could hear him. He was actually upset.

Quentin stirred on the bed, grasping at the sheets. He was going to be left here, wasn't he? No… no… there was no time for the big questions. "Hey…"

~Hi there

"I could get away, if I wanted to, but I don't, because my bravery in prison will bring people to my cause. Like, it hurts to focus but I could still, like, telekinetically bring the building down if I'm not worried to be precise." He exhaled, weirdly proud of his boast, but his heart thudded in a mix of exhaustion and fear. "I kept falling down, Inhuman." Yeah, this was the Inhuman. "…How many people saw me like that?"

~None really. We found you wandering along the back wall, mumbling something about voices. I wouldn't worry. It was clear you weren't yourself. We've all seen them outside. I thought you were high till I saw your arm.

He knew the guy was just rambling to calm himself down. Fabulous. Either that or he wanted to ramble to calm himself down, but he wasn't actually saying all this, it was just his thoughts.

"Yanno I'm not infected, damn you, you know! You just hate it when a mutant advocates freedom for a minute."

~Just… hang in there

"If I am infected, you'll kill me, right?" Which wouldn't happen. This arm was just an injury from… fighting… it just looked ugly because it hurt too much to wash it. But he couldn't think straight, so just in case he was…

~Just, hang on, kid

"S'okay… just tell Isaac and Jubilee to burn down Haven in my honor… they're my friends. And Wade can have my stuff. He's probably low on cool stuff out where he's at."

~…Okay.

He was lying, the idiot didn't plan on telling anyone to burn Haven down! Quentin knew that from the guy's mind, but he said nothing on it. There were more pressing things than a oral Last Will and Testament that'd never end up needing to be enacted. "I'm not infected, though. Okay, I'm almost certainly infected, but I'm not a zombie." He pushed his good fist against the bed, trying to get a look at the arm again.

~I know, I understand, kid

He genuinely thought he did understand, but Quentin knew he didn't. It wasn't the zombie virus, dammit. And the guy was literally thinking right now, how sad it was that Quentin would have to be 'put down'. He actually had the actual fucking gall. He grit his teeth, blinking… but the guy was gone. Dammit, how long has he been alone? His heart raced. He hadn't imagined this, had he? Maybe he was dreaming.

He coughed, then started yelling; the only reasonable move in his place. It hasn't been a front that he figured he could bring the place down on them, but some good could come from politics-based incarceration. Maybe the kids would write inspirational Quire quotes on their arms…

"Mutants will rule the world before this day is done! I'm far too powerful for you to kill! I could control all the minds in this place!"

That was enough yelling. This was a bed, and he was tired. It was actually far cleaner than his own blankets in the dorm. This was comfy. The pillow didn't seem so rough and stinging against his unprotected muscle and bone. He thought he might have passed out. He may have been unconscious for a time. Whenever he thought he could hear footsteps by his cell — it was quite comfortably furnished, but he would call Observation what it was — he'd yell out something in a slurred voice about revolution and their cowardly political agendas for holding him here. But here was comfy. It was nice. The sheets felt so clean and his surroundings smelt like fresh laundry. And he had no idea how much time passed.

He woke up for real at a mind signature that he recognized. He struggled to place it; but it felt like a person whose opinion mattered somewhat. He sat up, rubbing at his reddened eyes, struggling not to cry from the pain that had seemed only to increase. At least his head felt somewhat clearer. Hell yeah, revolution. Oh… this was Bek.

#(its weird)#(but here)#(sidenote ive never had an injury involving bones sticking out...so...yeah lol)#rebekah winters #rebekahwinters

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