#cw: fascism

[mutalieju]

Rewatching America Decides... It's very funny how even this far Mencken has literally spoken in mostly, like 95%, in fascist dogwhistles and in this episode they just went 'fuck it let's have him just Say Words'

[smalllonelyegg]

My Own Headcanon to Echani Society bc Why TF Not

Most of this was kinda drafted up by me for the sake of a half Echani OC who went from merely lashing out however she could vs the Empire to attempting to nationbuild, as well as grow as a person, and learn to find value in living, so a lot of it was considered with that in mind, and as such it will not be particularly applicable for your purposes. May this serve more as loose inspiration or an alternate take at best. Also warning Eshan here is meant to be *terrible.*

Echani Command was not merely subservient to the Empire, but enjoyed a position of privilege by them. In exchange for treating Imperial officials equivalent to high caste Echani, including access to training in the Echani martial arts, they enjoy relative freedom, being allowed to maintain their own law enforcement, prevent their businesses being nationalized, and generally enjoyed a lax, comparatively unsupervised, existence under imperial rule

Eshan itself is a colonialist planet, having taken the other of the "Six Sisters" in order to exploit their resources

Echani rule was dictated largely by eugenics. People were sorted into castes depending on supposed "genetic worth," a remnant of their time as an experiment of the Arkanians. Low caste echani face various socio-political hurdles, such as access to education and autonomy

Echani of any variety are not permitted to choose their own romantic or sexual partners. Marriage is based on computations over ideal genetic combinations, and are limited to within a caste. To break this is to drop to the lowest rung of the caste system, along with the offspring of such combinations, and those who openly sympathize and teach low caste people.

Battle, other than a means of communication, is seen as a test of "genetic value." To succeed in combat is to show you are of greater worth than your opponent.

While it becomes frequent for low caste people to enlist in Imperial Academy to escape from the burdens it provides, it carries some degree of social stigma, as while imperials are treated as high caste in a legal sense, in addition to xenophobia leading to a sense of superiority to imperials, low ranking officers and conscripts are often seen as "not worthy" of these privileges. These generally go unsaid, privileged as Command is, imperial rule still holds true.

In addition to the assigned Imperial Governor, leadership was held by High Council, with each member effectively serving as an autocrat over the system they represent- though they still would post their own governors to manage on a smaller scale

Position of Councilor may be won in ritual combat with the current holder of said position. While nothing legally prevented lower caste members doing this, combat education beyond the very basics was limited based on caste, such that in effect only the highest castes may possibly claim rulership. This all builds to a symbolic representation of "genetic purity"- where combat prowess is seen as a measure of genetic strength, to be councilor is to assert genetic superiority over all but the other councilors

Combat is primarily conceived of as dialectics materialized, where strength in combat is representative of the strength of a party's ideals. To win is to let your convictions be heard, and while all but the most traditionalist echani judges find victory in combat something that binds one to action legally, to not follow the victor is seen as incredibly cowardly

While High castes are given a theoretically large amount of freedom, they nonetheless face great social pressures, as deviance from social norm is highly associated with "poor genetics" pressure is thus applied to "perform genetic value"

More lighthearted

Eshan's surface is near uninhabitable due to its scorching sun, a white star named Esh. As a result, nearly all life there dwells in the vast cave system spanning the entire planet beneath its surface

Due to the nature of Eshan, much of Echani diet is centered on fungi. Mushroom stew is an incredibly common dish, with many households having their own unique takes on how it should be made

Most animals on Eshan are insects, though many have evolved to convergently resemble other creatures such as mammals at a glance. Traditional Echani armor, though almost never seen outside museums, are made of their exoskeletons, being flexible, though still durable

Echani diplomats and senators are very frequently taught they *can't* challenge people to a duel. This has to be heavily stressed

Echani funeral garb is white, while the garb of the deceased is to be black

Weapons of Echani firedancers are often derived from farming or foraging tools, such as sickle like tools that were designed to scrape lichens from rock- This is allegedly because of a legendary farmer who, upon finding his village razed by bandits, killed all of them with a scythe. It is said his rage burned hotter than the burning village homes

Echani alertness can be a double edged blade- horror stories can get an extreme reaction from even seasoned echani warriors. Offworlders who bring holovids have often been told to ensure any media like that is to be hidden or disposed of

Many Echani clothes are constructed out of silk created from the cocoons of a particular species of insect. These clothes are often designed to be quick to take off, should a fight start and they prove too restrictive. Most Echani do not see any possible symbolism from this, coincidental or otherwise

Post war, many echani writers ruminated on the nature of battle droids. In a culture where combat serves as a form of communication, what is to be said of constructs who don't have any larger point to communicate, who simply fight because it was what they were made and ordered to do. Many echani tend to be put off by these droids, who come across as uncanny.

Echani made products used to fetch high prices in galactic markets, often being handmade artisanal products of high quality. As automation developed more and more, however, these items became more and more novelty: armies could be armed with state of the art blasters for the price demanded for a set of echani vibroswords. Echani attempts to automize struggled, often being low quality, not only in comparison to their specialty items but also in comparison to other similar competitors. As a result, Eshans economy began to center more and more on raw materials. Ironically, some of the biggest consumers of echani materials is MadalMotors.

[tailsrevane]

it's so cool how often things that literally threaten the life/freedom of me & my loved ones have to be framed as "if we let them do this they'll come after NORMAL people eventually too!" to get people to fucking care. like, i'm sorry, but i think it'd be pretty chill if WE weren't threatened with death/imprisonment just for being ourselves too, thanks.

[lizardsfromspace]

Was there ever a news event in our lifetimes that the media fumbled more aggressively than Columbine. They genuinely got every single detail wrong

From reporting that they killed someone for saying she believed in God (a different girl who said she did survived) to not reporting that they sought out students of color while yelling racial slurs - on Hitler's birthday & a day after the anniversary of OKC and Waco - while promoting the idea that you have to watch out for loner bullied nerds. Even though later research shows that the shooters were, in fact, bullies themselves, who had a wide social circle, and they were, you know, Nazis motivated by racism and not the video game Doom (1993).

It's a generational fuck-up, the GOAT of bad reporting bc it's still with us. The narrative of persecution after "she said yes" is a huge reason the evangelical right is like how it is today (they made a biopic that uncritically repeated it just a couple years ago!) & they still push the idea that it's primarily victims who do that sort of thing and not aggressors & people still shared that stupid video of Marilyn Manson saying he'd "listen" until a couple years ago (though the shooters being abusive Nazi creeps would uh, not diminish Marilyn Manson's desire to befriend them, I feel)

[clown-license-distributor]

Do fascists say altrighty then instead of alrighty then be honest

[not-terezi-pyrope]

Oppenheimer gets a lot of shit these days for the whole "oh I created this city-destroying bomb but I feel so bad about how it was used" etc etc, and people clowning on him for that, but I wonder how a lot of people on this site who call it a black and white moral choice would react if they were in that same situation, which is to say if their country was at war against the Nazis, and where the big fear was iirc that they were also working on developing the bomb.

Like, okay, nuclear bombs are bad, obviously, but imagine you're some dude in the 40s, you are a scientist rather than a politician or military strategist, you have limited information but your country is in the middle of a catastrophic global war with a massive fascist alliance the like of which the world has never seen. The physics community has just solved the equations and realised that this weapon might be possible, and that it is powerful enough to change the course of warfare forever, and the scientists who had escaped evil fascist alliance are telling you "look, the scientists who discovered this was possible were German, the Nazis are probably working on this and they might be further ahead than we are".

So the government comes to you and says, "we need to try and develop this first, because if not then they will use it to wipe us all out." And you have no reason to believe that's not true, because the science did come from the area of the Evil Fascist Alliance, and your country, your community and friends and loved ones, are already engaged in fighting the catastrophic world-ending war and there have been no holds barred.

I don't know, a lot of people manifest pretty strong principles in hindsight looking at the actual circumstances of the bomb's use by the US military, but given the sort of uses of violence I see advocated here for fighting back against fascists over much lower stakes than "literally World War II" (not judging whether that is correct or not, just observing), I am fairly sure that a large chunk of the people making snarky jokes about Oppenheimer would have built the bomb and handed it over to the US on the spot, perhaps feeling misgivings at the time but feeling it is necessary, then only coming to feel truly bad about it after the fact, following, like... the exact trajectory that I believe Oppenheimer did.

[transmascpetewentz]

adolf was right about you all tbh...

"anti zionism isn't antisemitism!" motherfuckers when they're given the chance to say something without their name attached:

[llyfrenfys]

"Fascism and Welsh Nationalism", or "Stop Fawning over the FWA you cont"

This is inspired by things I've been noticing around Aberystwyth lately while out and about.

Some mfer is putting up Free Welsh Army (FWA) stickers and I have to keep on pulling them down. Why? You ask.

Fascism.

Because of the not so subtle links between the FWA and fascist movements (of which those links are quite frankly underdiscussed) this post is necessary.

So, starting with the stickers:

This is just one of three identical stickers I've pulled down this last week in Aberystwyth. They appear more to be car stickers than anything else and must have cost a pretty penny to print and/or purchase. They appear to have been bought directly from a website using FWA imagery and slogans - yet does not claim to be the FWA (that I can see, at least). I'm not going to link to it because they don't need any more web traffic. But we will get onto why this is significant in a bit.

Anyway, returning to the stickers - I pulled down the first one off of an electric box on North Road, opposite Vaynor St in late November. I pulled down the second (pictured) also in late November on Penglais Road off the bus stop near the hospital. And in early December I pulled down the third one off of a wall near the Spar at the end of Vaynor Street. Right off the bat we can assume the guy who wasted a lot of money on these stickers lives local to where the stickers I've found so far were. So they're lazy, for one - not venturing much further than their own front door by the looks of it.

Iconography:

I've written about the iconography of the FWA before here but it bears repeating that if fascists approve of your iconography, then that's a sign your movement is already overrun with fascists.

This is the sticker design which I've been noticing about town. Top to bottom we have "Cymru Rydd/Free Wales" which on its own is fine. No qualms with that. But between the Welsh and English text is a symbol. This one:

Now, this was the symbol of the Free Wales Army. Note that I say *was* because the FWA doesn't exist any more. Yet various actors have tried to resurrect its very unsuccessful corpse over the years. These stickers seem to belong to a new organisation which is the latest to try and capitalise on the ghost of the FWA. Now, if you're like me, you'll have already noticed this design is, for lack of a better word, a bit dogwhistley. The angled, blocky, swastika-like stylisation of what is supposedly an eagle, the black and white void of any other features and the very fact it *is* an eagle depicted all seem a bit *too* similar to the iconography of the Third Reich, don't you think?

Their design choice is no accident. It is a design which appeals to fascists while also has enough Welsh cultural reference for apologists to hide behind with a plausibly deniable reason for why their eagle Looks Like That. The white eagle is a reference to the 13th C. poem Mab Darogan, in which Myrddin prophesises that "a king shall come with heroism from among the Welsh people" and that "generous men shall be reborn of the lineage of the eagles of Snowdonia". The eagle could have literally been drawn in any way. But it rather specifically was drawn like this. That choice is not accidental.

Now this new organisation which is trying to reanimate the corpse of the FWA (we'll call them EW) has incorporated the FWA symbol into their sticker. An endorsement of the failed so-called 'paramilitary' organisation on their part, to be sure. EW also have included a different style of white eagle on their sticker as well - which is blatantly stolen from Wikipedia (the copyright is expired, but 0/10 artistic effort on their part even so). Also not to nitpick but the eagle on the sticker is grey not white so that's also a fail.

Artistic criticisms aside, the sticker is loaded with dogwhistley iconography all round. The Celtic knot border isn't necessarily problematic, however, fascists and/or neo-nazis love to slap Celtic knots onto things because they associate Celticity with whiteness. The colour scheme may also be a coincidence, but it does remind me of the fascist symbol which is the 'Flag of Kekistan" which uses the same colour scheme.

Why does this matter and who were the FWA?:

The FWA were a Welsh nationalist (supposedly 'paramilitary') outfit which formed in Lampeter in 1963 and disbanded in 1969 (just 6 years of activity). They took a lot of their cues from the IRA and were effectively fanboys of them. The group was never really considered a threat and mostly consisted of middle-aged men playing paramilitary dress-up. They did claim to be funded by the IRA and that they had dogs trained to carry explosives. Their claims remain unproven.

HOWEVER - and here's where things get sticky. A lot of the issues the FWA were publicly concerned with were and are actually valid issues (e.g. the drowning of Capel Celyn, the Aberfan Disaster etc.). The problem is that fascists or fanboys of fascists love to get their foot in the door by addressing genuine issues. But what happens is that invariably a minoritised group is blamed for the existence of said issue and naturally that leads to discrimination and violence.

The police started to get a bit antsy with the investiture of then-prince Charles as prince of Wales and the possibility of the FWA doing some terrorism. So some of the FWA's leaders were arrested just prior to this. The group officially ended in 1969.

The nationalism advocated for by the FWA was of the 'blood-and-soil' type. Not just your common or garden nationalism (which still has issues but given context is perfectly able to exist in a non-fashy way). And that's why the idolisation of the FWA in years since is sus. It appeals to romanticised nationalist notions of brave men in uniforms helping free Wales - when in reality they did little terrorism and little to actually further the Welsh nationalist cause. In fact, the leadership of the FWA fell apart after they started to disagree on whether their actions were damaging the cause rather than helping it.

Julian Cayo-Evans founded the FWA and ran it with Dennis Coslett and Gethin ap Gruffydd. Gruffydd went on to found other youth nationalist organisations after he left the FWA due to disagreements with its direction - e.g. he founded the Patriotic Front in 1964 which was later outlawed by Plaid Cymru in 1966. It goes without saying names like 'Patriotic Front' are deliberate nods to other, similarly named fascist organisations like National Front.

Legacy and The Present:

FWA's only legacy is the sycophantic fanclub which ressurects the corpse of the FWA every few years to parade it around and relive the 'glory days' of paramilitary cosplay. But aside from functionally being useless, their iconography and politics are still very much under the fash umbrella and that must be resisted at every opportunity (hence why I'm tearing down their stickers - I don't want fascists to feel welcome here). Part of why people may turn a blind eye to the FWA/sympathise is that they may not be aware of the history of the FWA or see the dogwhistles laden in their work and symbols. Some may even just assume without any other context that they're just another Welsh-language preservation group and may even support them without realising the deeper nature of the organisation beyond just preserving the Welsh language.

Which brings me back to EW. I'm going to put the rest of this under a cut, I do encourage reading the rest though and reblogging to get the word out that

It is always morally okay to tear down fascist propaganda

If you see some in your town, don't hesitate to let fash know they aren't welcome here.

EW:

So, onto the latest in a long line of paramilitary wannabes who idolise a long-dead organisation from the 60s.

The EW website seems... sketch. Lots of banners and sections asking to 'donate now' and 'take action' (with money). So right off the bat this looks like a cash-grab.

Secondly, from their own 'About' section they claim that the Welsh Independence movement has "become inundated with authoritarian Marxist entryists who regard Welsh independence as merely a vehicle for furthering their own political agendas". Which is pretty bold stuff coming from an organisation trying to do The Exact Same. There's also a LOT of emphasis on youth involvement and youth nationalism.

There's also a lot of ahistorical claims in the About section too. E.g. on the prophecy of Myrddin "From this legend derives the very name of Cymru’s greatest mountains, with ‘Eryri’ meaning the ‘Seat of the Eagles’ in Cymraeg." - this is contested as there is no one agreed upon etymology of Eryri. To claim that this is The Etymology suggests that they picked this one just because it conveniently fits the version of the mythology they're presenting. They also claim that "Owain ap Gruffydd, would adopt three such eagles as his royal coat of arms" - this is blatantly incorrect as Owain ap Gruffydd lived before the Age of Heraldry and the three eagles are actually later attributed arms.

In EW's FAQ there's a section on supporting their organisation - with one paragraph saying that you can buy stickers instead "If you aren’t eligible or willing to commit to becoming an activist". Lol at 'if you aren't willing to fully commit to our FWA fanboy club you can put up some stickers instead'. Also the button to buy stickers suggests you pay via paypal "We’ll accept quick payments using PayPal and will have them shipped to you First Class" - which *totally* sounds legit (what do you bet they ask people to pay via 'friends and family instead of through business means?).

And... that's it. There's very little else on their website. It *looks* like they're trying to be a movement, but appear to lack substance (and money, judging from how many different Donate Now buttons are plastered all over the site). A hollow organisation blatantly bending history and mythology to fit their narrative, proudly using symbols designed to appeal to fascists while asking people to trust them with the future of Wales?

Dim diolch.

For further reading on why we should guard against fascism in Welsh language revival and independence, see my other post here.

Reblogs welcome for an antifascist independent Wales.

[gojobait]

what angers me the most about the italian gov's unwavering support of israel is that they're justifying it with "we need to protect the jewish community" from "islamic fanaticism" when these are the same people who cosplay nazi generals and have busts of mussolini in their homes and refuse to celebrate april the 25th (the day we celebrate the liberation from nazi occupation) because its "too political" and who continue to allow marches to mussolini's home in his honor every year (<- im fully aware the current gov isnt the only one allowing that and if you're wondering how i feel about the previous "leftist" governments allowing it too i feel nauseous)

[inficetegodwottery]

I have so many people telling me to play Helldivers 2, and yet every time I tell them I just don't like the vibes of it and I played the first game and didn't like the satire, I get told I'm just not media literate enough, and that I obviously don't just get satirical treatments of overwhelmingly evil ideologies.

I've been a 40k fan since I was eight, and I've had tons of great friends and cool people into warhammer my whole life. I have dealt with countless fucking dipshits who were either outright fascists or /pol/-ass cryptofascists. I have also dealt with countless people who assume being a fan of any warhammer property is a mark of being a cryptofascist. Both of which are exhausting douchebags.

I'm also a fan of Starship Troopers, specifically the movie version that's a direct fuck you to the original author, and all the deconstruction and exploration of political propaganda that franchise has been able to put out over the years, especially its satire of the U.S.'s involvement in the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

In both of those communities, we have to constantly deal with the fact that parody (or really any portrayal) of an authoritarian ideology inevitably attracts real life fuckwit brainwashed members of that exact ideology who are all-in gung ho enthusiastic about the fictional authoritarian ideology of the setting. I'd like to think we do a good job. I'd like to think for every pasty teenage asshole screaming slurs at Eldar players, we've got ten more rational and emotionally mature folks who understand it's fiction.

So for a while I was inclined to re-examine my experience of the first game, and potentially give this new one a shot with the same caution and "media literacy" I apply to Warhammer and other games where you actively play as the villains.

...but then I actually looked up discussions of the game, and it was truly astonishing the number of times I saw supposedly levelheaded fans of the game shouting slurs (like libcuck K***), saying shit like (This is just another gamer gate/SMH why are there no straight pride flags), and typing stuff like "Kite Yams Street" at people who dared expressing their concerns at how the community actively glorifies some of the stuff in the game.

What really fucking disappointed me is how many upvotes and people agreeing with them there were, even on the main Helldivers communities.

As an example, from just a handful of Steam threads. (AND THEY ARE ALL FUCKING LIKE THIS)

These are some of the least gross examples I could find.

Virtually any topic on Reddit, Steam, Twitter, or Discord that even mentioned fascism indirectly becomes an absolute shitstorm, with Helldivers fans actively arguing with both people who think the game fails as a parody, AND with people openly, unironically, and EXPLICITLY self-identifying as fascists.

Because saying this game about authoritarian dystopia is attracting authoritarians is stupid and bad. There are no authoritarians in our community.

But also remember to tell the authoritarians in our community that they're stupid and bad.

I have to conclude that the Helldivers community is just instinctually hostile and dismissive to people who are in any way uncomfortable with the premise or delivery of the satire or the state of the community. "Stop putting politics in our political parody game!" I guess.

If your fandom is actively in a pitched civil war with openly avowed fascists within your community, you are not "just a parody," and it's extremely immature and hypocritical of the Helldivers 2 community not to openly admit to this issue and address it without screaming invectives at people who are scared off by it the same way Warhammer, Star Wars, and Starship Troopers have been able to in the past.

So let's just say now I don't feel bad in the slightest for being completely uninterested in Helldivers 2 anymore.

If I wanted to get slurs yelled at me over voicechat by a bunch of 20-something MAGA CHUDs I'd just reinstall Mordhau or Call of Duty. That I'm used to.

But it's one of the most depressing things in the world to get yelled at by self-identified leftists just cause I said a mean thing about their funny new Not-Starship-Troopers game and how it might, possibly, have attracted some of the exact sort of people they supposedly oppose.

[beneaththemasks]

40 years ago people in my country were killed for being poor

and black

and studying

and thinking

and speaking

and working

and loving

today, a president who denies the last military dictatorship that took 30.000 lives ever happened, has won the elections

today is a farewell to all the rights we fought so hard to gain by raising our voices in the streets.

it's hard to feel at home.

[not-terezi-pyrope]

It's posts like this that tell me that I'm never going to see eye to eye with certain people on the left, because this is a deeper cognitive problem that exists irrespective of any political axis, although it's just as directly damaging as being a reactionary or a protofascist.

I've noticed for a while now that some people seem incapable of perceiving the world through a non-aesthetic worldview. Their understanding of how society work is full conceptualized through narrative and symbolism, and they seem incapable of contemplating simple utilitarian cause and effect.

The context of this post was somebody saying that even if you accept that Trump would be identical (or worse) compared to Biden on foreign policy, but that a Biden presidency would tangibly improve the domestic situation, then you still shouldn't vote for Biden, because Biden is the one currently endorsing genocide and a vote for him is "saying that you're okay with that".

Do you see the disconnect there? The way that that argument fundamentally talks past what it is claiming to argue against? I'm not one to argue some bizarre conspiracy theory about incompatible styles of cognition, but it feels like sometimes these people genuinely don't understand how their argument fails to make sense.

It feels like some people understand that out of a limited range of possible actions, you should take the one that causes the least harm, because that utilitarian approach is how you produce desired outcomes.

Then you have this entire other group of people who can't conceptualize that. Who can only understand moral choices as which flags to fly in support of which narrative. And the narrative of "Joe Biden being president" is seen as carrying out the narrative of fascism, and so voting for Joe Biden, regardless of your motivation for doing so, is seen as allying with fascism. As "endorsing" it with your vote, as the screenshotted post says, with a fully straight face.

People are so adamant about this, even after you explain, at length, the concept of choosing the path of least harm (because not voting for Joe Biden will, to be clear, cause more harm, as best as anyone can tell), they will dismiss what you are saying as obviously silly.

So I'm forced to conclude that they simply don't understand the argument being made, or else see it so obviously secondary to the moral aesthetics of voting that they can't bring themselves to even contemplate it.

The problem is that, from a utilitarian point of view, prioritizing the moral aesthetics of one's own actions - of keeping one's own hands clean - over actively working to reduce harm done to others through the choices you have available, is actually an incredibly selfish and damaging way to make decisions. It is very much "part of the problem".

But don't try to tell them that. They've already decided that you're a fascist, and if you argue with them that just proves it more.

[bonefall]

Can I hear more about Villain Thornclaw? The way you described him is a really cool take on his character.

He exudes a sense of detached ruthlessness, something happened and he just never got over it, most of the time he is a model warrior, but sometimes he says something or gives a cold look, and that hints just how much he is willing to do for his beliefs

The first warrior that Firestar named becomes his most insidious enemy.

He was too young to clearly remember Clawface snatching him and his little sister, but he does remember the way it became an early fixation. His favorite games were always reenactments and play fights, and his father Lionheart and kidnapper Clawface would be characters in them. He often would go too far and play rough, actually biting or scratching his playmate.

We, in the real world, may recognize this as a way kids often process trauma. But they don't have cat therapy here.

And quickly these fixations became unsettling. Brightkit didn't like these games, and their older siblings were disturbed. Frostfur reacted strongly and tried to intervene, but it didn't help the way they wanted.

He got good at hiding it, and he got better at finding other ways to express his fixation. He never knew Lionheart, but he DID know Grandma Speckletail, and she would tell him all about the ways he could be like his dad. When you don't know a person, they can be anything you want them to be.

Turns out if you dress up "I'm obsessively xenophobic of foreign cats and want to rip them to shreds" as "I will ferociously avenge my father and uphold his legacy," suddenly you're golden! It's that simple!

(it's almost like clan culture didnt actually value peace or kindness and just encourages you to channel ur violence towards specific ends)

Thornkit went from Grandma Speckletail to Mentor Mousefur, and she continued to cultivate this. There's a time and a place for aggression. Be good to your clanmates. Use words in camp, not claws. She made a good soldier out of him.

When ThunderClan had a reckoning with Tigerclaw and his ideology in TPB, during his coup, the line of thought that went through Thornpaw and the cats like him was that Tigerclaw was the problem. Who could have known! A shock! Sickening!

...for a while they were "better," devastated by his betrayal, more openminded. But minds don't always trend towards progress.

Eventually, Thornclaw backslid. Let's not throw out the kitten with the tonguewash, here. Yes yes, Tigerclaw was a damn traitor and a hypocrite, but there's worse cats to look up to, you can't deny his nobility, that some of his ideas were great for ThunderClan, that there were lofty ideals he merely took from our grand and glorious history and we can return to those days...

What is so terrible about being a thistle? To lash back when you are attacked? To defend the meadow for you and yours?

We can have Tigerclaw's good aspects without the bad, surely?

And Firestar...

You must understand it's nothing personal. Firestar's a fine cat, for a kittypet. There is no hate for him. But we can't have a leader who stops ThunderClan from engaging in honorable combat. The Clan has become too mixed, and he punished him simply for expressing his concerns. What other choice is there? To do nothing as the clans are destroyed from the inside out?

Bluestar brought wildfire to the forest, to burn it to the ground. Firestar is Thornclaw's natural enemy-- and so is every cat like him.

[bellepeppertronix]

Elden Ring thoughts re: Mogh and Miquella, and Miquella in general

Why are writers still doing the thing where there's a reveal that an apparent victim of kidnapping and molestation turns out to be the secret mastermind controlling the molestor?

Especially when the apparent victim is shown to look like a child?

What are these (let's be honest) mostly cis-man writers trying to get us to absorb? Who are they trying to make us feel sympathy for? And why?

To point out, after some digging, Mogh already had a compelling backstory before they decided to *checks notes* have perpetually childlike looking younger brother seduce and then mind-wipe him. And then use his body as a shell to put the soul of their half-brother into. So that the childlike older brother could marry the body with the soul of his half brother living in it.

Like Oooo The Tragedy...(and his story up to this point IS a tragedy)

But did we need this "actually the pre-pubescent looking victim of a kidnapping is at least hundreds of years old AND he orchestrated his own kidnapping 😌 and the guy who the whole fandom has been making 'molester' jokes about was innocent all along 😌" ???

Did we need this in this day and age? When so many actual victims are coming forward and pointing out that they couldn't speak out for years because the person who attacked them was socially prominent or wealthy? Like why are these men making DARVO into huge plot points in videogames, presented as a vindication for the apparent aggressor?

[possumcollege]

These dingbats are a real thorn in my teeth. I'm not an architect, not a student of ethnography, but I do know enough about the history of art and racism to know they're using art as an excuse to fling classic fascist talking points, white supremacist propaganda, and great replacement conspiracy theories like a manure spreader full of Klan hoods.

I'll save you the trouble of reading any of them: They're saying white people are behind every major cultural accomplishment since humans stood upright. That other races are so jealous of white success that they conspire to destroy everything beautiful in the world out of spite. They're the ones saying castles weren't political, that art is anti-white because it isn't just pretty pictures of Jesus and prefectly smooth women anymore, and that trains are Communism but O WE HAD SUCH WONDROUS TRAIN STATIONS! 😭

They completely ignore the entire nonwhite world of human achievements and when they can't, they shoehorn in any white "innovator" they can dig up to say that's when math/science/buildings/farming/war really got good. It's desperately craven bullshit.

They're whiners at best, and at worse they're reading Goebels word-for-word.

[luulapants]

Jesus fucking Christ, is this really where we're at, folks? If you needed any better proof that modern feminism has become a movement of "save no one but us, undo no oppression but our own," here it is. Is it girlboss to promote the police state? Is it empowering to cheer on modern day slavery?

OP got all sad and shocked that terfs found their post... Buddy, you made a fascist post wrapped in feminism. It was a terf-ass post from the moment you made it. Don't post pictures of birds and get mad when ornithology tumblr starts reblogging it.