#didn't include this because it's more of an excuse than a justification

[matan4il]

I am at a loss for words.

A Jewish woman in Paris was kidnapped, held for several days, and raped for being a Jew, and her mother was psychologically taunted and tormented, as "revenge for Palestine."

And while the perpetrator is the main person responsible for this horrific crime, every single person denying or justifying the Oct 7 sexual violence is guilty of contributing to this normalization, making this antisemitic terrorist think his excuse is in any way an acceptable justification for this atrocity. Every single person who didn't believe Jewish victims, every single person who demanded proof, but turned a blind eye to the visual evidence Hamas terrorists themselves provided, every single person who called the films and pictures and testimonies from countless Israelis "propaganda," every single person who justified it and claimed that "rape is resistance." They're all complicit. They all have to know they've helped make Jews everywhere in the world less safe.

Speaking of complicity, even though a UN report found credible evidence for the sexual crimes committed by Hamas on Oct 7 and against Israeli hostages since, the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, has personally decided to leave Hamas out of the annual report on sexual violence in conflicts around the world. Israeli commentators expressed their belief that this was done, because had it been included, then the UN would have no choice but to finally recognize that Hamas is a terrorist organization. The UN is complicit. Guterres is complicit. Hold them accountable.

Speaking of the UN's known anti-Israel bias, what a surprise, their report on UNRWA, their own agency, claimed not to support the charges against it, though they did find that UNRWA has "some issues" maintaining its neutrality...

Just to make it clear, "staff publicly taking sides" refers to UNRWA employees being openly anti-Israel, antisemitic and pro anti-Jewish violence, and the "problematic content" in UNRWA textbooks is incitement to terrorism and educating Palestinian kids to be antisemitic. This alone constitutes more than "some issues with neutrality." But there's more. Out of the 12 Gaza UNRWA employees first identified by Israel as having participated in the Hamas massacre, at least three were killed inside Israel on Oct 7 itself, and at least one more was captured on film while helping to kidnap an Israeli young man's body from an Israeli kibbutz into Gaza using a vehicle with UN license plates. I'd say that's a bit more than "difficulties with neutrality". In fact, the UN itself implicitly recognized the evidence was damning, or it would not have fired nine of the twelve right away, and admit a tenth UN worker was dead following the invasion and attack on Israeli communities, while claiming they're still "clarifying" the identities of the other two killed employees who participated in the Hamas massacre. BTW, it's been about 3 months of the UN "clarifying" the identities of those other two dead employees (screenshot below is from the article published 2 days ago, link with same claim on "clarification" is from Jan 27).

UNRWA is complicit. There are other humanitarian aid NGOs, which can do better. Dismantle UNRWA. But we know the UN will not be dismantling the cash cow that this agency is, even though no other refugee group gets an equal treatment to that. At what point do we say out loud, that if more and more UNRWA employees are found to be complicit in a massacre or being embedded with Hamas, if Hamas terrorists have continuously used UNRWA infrastructure to store weapons and shoot at Israelis, if UNRWA was found to be providing a terrorist organization with internet and electricity, and if the UN can't hold its own agency accountable, then the UN is also complicit in UNRWA's collaboration with Hamas?

In Israel itself, as the biggest Jewish community in the world is celebrating Passover, attacks on Israeli Jews continue.

Two days ago, on the Eve of Passover, a combined terrorist attack took place in Jerusalem, in an ultraorthodox neighborhood, with two Palestinian terrorists driving their car into a group of visibly Jewish young people, then the attackers left their car and tried shooting at their victims, but the weapon thankfully malfunctioned. Three people were lightly wounded. (the vid below shows most of the attack, but not the graphic parts of the car hitting the young Jewish men)

Yestrday, the Lebanon-based terrorist organization Hezbollah launched three suicide drones at Israel's northern communities, along its Mediterranean shore. This attack comes on the heels of the news that out of 18 Israelis wounded in a previous Hezbollah drone attack on an Israeli Arab Bedouin town, one has died from his injuries, after fighting for his life for 5 days. It's 27 years old Dor Zimel, an officer who was stationed in that town to protect it. Dor was set to get married next month, and he had proposed to his fiancee with a ring donated by a bereaved father (his son, 23 years old Addir Messika, was a jewelry designer, and the ring was one he designed before he was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Nova music festival on Oct 7). Dor's organs were donated and saved the lives of 7 people, including an injured soldier, who's also the father of a girl. May Dor and Addir's memory be a blessing.

And today, on the second day of Passover, an attempted stabbing attack was stopped before the Palestinian female terrorist managed to harm anyone. She was neutralized at the scene.

I'm sure all those who decried Israel having to continue its war against Hamas during Ramadan are being extra loud about this wave of anti-Jewish violence during Passover, which is actually just a partial list of the on going attacks on Israeli Jews during this holiday.

In other news, the preparations for the IDF's ground operation in Rafah have actually already started. Reports suggest 250,000 Palestinians who have come to the southern city as they left other war zones in Gaza, have already left Rafah, and that Israel has already started building encampments to house those it will evacuate from the city before the ground operation begins.

Trying to remember when have I ever seen an army building an entire camp city for the enemy's civilian population. I'm coming up blank.

This is Miri Gad Mesikka.

She lives in kibbutz Be'eri, together with her husband Eli and their 3 kids. On Oct 7, they locked themselves in the bomb shelter from the invading Hamas terrorists. They were in there for 12 hours, fighting for control of the bomb shelter's door, until the terrorists set their house on fire, and the Gad Messika family had to make an impossible choice: stay and maybe suffocate to death from the smoke (or worse if the fire got in), or jump from their second floor window, probably be injured and maybe be shot to death by the terrorists. Eventually, they chose to jump out. They all got injured, and one of her sons got his leg broken, but the terrorists didn't spot them, and this decision saved their lives. During the time they were locked inside the bomb shelter, Miri recounts how she would see some of her friends and neighbors not responding anymore, and she couldn't know why. She kept hoping it was because their phone batteries ran out. "Today I know some of them were being kidnapped, while others were being murdered. It was a massacre, happening in countless different spots at the same time." One of her friends told Miri, that her daughter, a baby who was less than one years old, was shot in the head right in front of her. Then the friend's husband was murdered as well, and despite being shot with a bullet in her lungs herself, the friend somehow managed to get herself and her two other kids away.

Never forget.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[ohsalome]

And I am once again reminding you that for centuries, Ukraine wasn't given its own voice in the world discourse. Our history, politics, culture were written by the people who colonised us and benefited from convincing the world (and us!) of a distorted picture. A good majority of information in English language that exists about Ukraine, that you believe to be the default knowledge of the world, is such distorted information. Because that is how russian propaganda work. They take a snippet of truth and blow it out of proportion and add a bouquet of lies to it and repeat it many-many times until you think that it is just basic information about the world that everyone knows.

No, Ukraine is not run by nazi. Ukraine has a non-zero percent of nazi population that is marginalized out of politics because their rhetoric is not relatable to the majority of the electorate, which leans towards socialistic populism and anarchism.

No, ukraine is not "brotherly nation" with russia. Antropoligically we belong to the same slavic family of nations that includes many other eastern europeans like czechs, polish, moldovan etc. There is no reason to select russians, belorussians and ukrainians into a distinct category that isn't political. The idea of "three brotherly nations" was literally created by a theologist Theofan Prokopovych as a part of philosophical justification to russian imperialism in the 19th century meaning of the word.

No, DNR and LNR are not "people's republics". They were created by russian army, run by the russian army and following the orders from the kremlin. Russis spent decades trying to create a dissident movement in the eastern Ukraine but failed and stepped down to brute force. Everything you see in the southern Ukraine now has happened in the east in 2014. The only difference is that y'all swallowed russian lies back then.

No, Crimea didn't have a "referendum to join russia". Russian soldiers occupied the peninsula, forced the politicians under the gunpoint to announce the referendum, and made sure that the results would be the ones they like. The native population of the peninsula, crimean tatars, that had been twice genocided by the russians in the past, boycotted the referendum. Despite making up only ~12% of the population, crimean tatar rallies were much more numerous than those of the russians in Crimea. The people who "supported" the "return of Crimea" were russian nationals, who moved to the peninsula after the ethnic cleansing of the native population and proclaimed that "it has always been theirs".

No, Ukraine doesn't have a "government-run kill list". Myrotvorets is (1) run by the volunteers, not the government, (2) is a database of pro-russian propagandists, and (3) hardly anyone on that database has been killed so far. FFS, our current first lady used to be in this database.

No, Ukraine didn't ban russian language. Ukraine has implemented laws that would help ukrainian book, music, film industry survive the competition with russian industry that has for many years monopolised our market. Ukraine has implemented the law that our politicians need to know ukrainian language if they want to hold office (this will sound surreal, but many didn't. Can you imagine such scenario in any other country? A spanish minister that doesn't speak spanish?). Ukraine has implemented a law that websites, advertisements published in foreign languages need to have the information accessible in ukrainian as well Ukraine has implemented laws that state that ukrainian citizens have a right to governmental service in Ukrainian. And if you bothered to open the law you criticise at least ONCE, you would have seen that every article has a clarification "the communication can happen in any language as long as both parties consent, but if the consumer requests to be served in ukrainian, the provider is obligated to respond to them in ukrainian".

No, Ukraine doesn't use the war as an excuse to repress the political opposition. The only people that have been "repressed" are the ones who have been colluding with ruZzia and have helped in organising the invasion of Ukraine. FFS one of those "poor oppositioners" is literally putin's godfather, and another visits russian tv channels agitating russians to nuke Kyiv. The proof against them is overwhelming and well-documented, and ukrainian civil society has been pressuring our government to stop them for literal years. Even today, many russian agents remain in governmental structures.

No, Euromaidan was not a "coup". It was a response of civil society to the police brutality and usurpation of power. We do not need white saviours to tell us that being beat up at peaceful protests is bad. We have enough agency to understand this without external help.

It's almost a year of this war. It's high time for people to stop spreading russian propaganda, especially if they claim to support Ukraine. I am yet to see a "both sides are wrong" argument that wasn't based on russian propaganda.

[bonefall]

So why's BB!Skystar like That? I'm not looking for a justification or excuse mind you, and I understand he completely refuses to better himself, but not even someone like him is born evil.

I'll get to his origin and tell you exactly how he grew up, but lemmie be clear about something. I don't think people respond to what they experience in a proportionate, 1:1, "hard times go in, bad guy comes out" sort of way.

People aren't bread and yeast. We don't follow a recipe for "becoming a bad person." You don't add trauma and then from there they choose to be a bad person because of their pain or not. No one is born evil, and the other side of that coin is that EVERYONE has the capacity for it.

Extremely privileged, charmed, blessed people with wonderful home lives can also become awful people. Violent, demanding, murderous ones. The "why" is "choice."

That answer's not satisfying because we want it to be deep and interesting. Like it makes it "mean" something, or adds some kind of "logic" to it. But you won't get it.

EVIL is simple. It feels good to get what you want. It feels good to hurt the people who keep it from you. POWER is even simpler. It is the act of making others do what you want. It's as simple as childish entitlement, indifference, or spite. Gratification that outweighs guilt.

If you're looking for some grand tragedy, you won't find it here. Nothing he went through was particularly unique and there was no grand ideology at play. His dad vanished when he was young and so did Gray Wing's. The Tribe dealt with a famine and several people died, including members of Bright Storm's family.

The only thing special about his birth and upbringing, in particular, was that he was quite privileged from the start.

Clear Sky and Gray Wing in the Tribe

From their very birth, both kits were welcomed and celebrated. They were destined for greatness from the start. Their mother was Quiet Wing, a direct descendant of the Stoneteller, Half Moon, and the father was a respected leader and political figure, Tempest Sky.

(This was before the Tribe would eventually become three camps, "Wards," united by a river. Tempest might have been considered an early leader of such a Ward.)

The older kit, a perfect image of xeir mother, was said to be the inheritor of her legacy as a relative of their founder and holy speaker. Xey were named Gray Wing. The younger, who would surely become the natural leader his father was, got the name Clear Sky. In their language, Koof Yaawrl-- Not just a sky without clouds. A perfect, flawless sky.

The two of them grew up with great opportunities. Connections are everything to their culture, and they had their pick of any amount of interests they wanted a paw in. The hunters would happily bring them along if asked. The crafters had extra patience set aside just for them. A good deployment of a mew and baby eyes could get them some extra scraps at dinner. Everyone wanted to make their little mark on such special, talented kits.

Clear Sky was a little general type. He wanted to be a leader right away. He loved hunts, he loved being in charge of other kids, he loved the way people listened to him. He wasn't familiar with the word No and was almost always the top banana of a group of other children. Even if they were older.

(Gray Wing in contrast was more of the game-creator, the "old soul," the kid who got along better with adults than other kids. Less of a leader and more of the guru, good at networking and settling disputes between people.)

While they were still kids, Tempest Sky vanished.

He was missing for days, and was assumed dead. There's plenty of ways to vanish in the mountains, but no remains were found. The Stoneteller tried to contact his spirit over and over to confirm his death, and he never came. So it was most likely that he just... left. Or maybe was taken.

Either way, they didn't really get closure for it. It was an awful thing to happen to a little kid, and Clear Sky took it really hard. A while after that, their stepdad entered the equation. Stone Peak wasn't big or strong or special, he just made their mom happy.

Gray Wing LOVED this man. After some friction, him and Stone Peak became excellent friends. They had a deep sense of respect and camaraderie. Clear Sky hated this. It was like Tempest Sky was being replaced before his eyes.

It was years before Stone Peak and Quiet Rain had a litter, well into Clear Sky and Gray Wing's adulthoods. It burned Clear Sky a new one to think that she was moving on from his father, who could still be alive. Maybe it's part of why he was so willing to throw his half-brother out into the snow, that fateful winter.

When Jagged Peak and Fluttering Wing were about half a year old, there was a terrible drought. It wasn't "overpopulation." It was a bad season. NOTHING could have stopped it. Lots of cats died.

Fluttering Wing was one of them-- along with some of Bright Storm's immediate family, Fox Claw and Petal Claw's mother during a hunting accident, and many more.

At the height of this drought, the southern river's level was so low that it became a scorched, crackled path with only a wet scratch of mud running along the middle. This dry riverbed beckoned to be followed downwards, until the water could be found again. THIS is the "Sun Trail;" a path carved by the sun.

It was Gray Wing the Wise who interpreted this as an omen. Xey believed it was their ancestors showing them the way to safety. The rest is history.

But the bottom line is...

Skystar's upbringing wasn't a supreme tragedy. He faced adversity just like everyone else, but he'd NEVER bring up the privilege that he had when he was young as something unfair to be examined. Tempest being a respected leader whose connections gave Clear Sky lots of opportunities is only spoken about in terms of Clear Sky being a "born leader" or "coming from greatness."

All of his charisma, his achievements, his command over other cats, that's all something he's "worked for." All of the adversities are examples of how strong HE is, in contrast to other cats, even if they went through the same exact struggles.

Why is he the way he is? Why is he so controlling? Why is he violent? Because he will take what he wants, and no one can stop him. He likes power more than he cares about the consequences of treating people poorly, so he cries "unfair!" if you take his toys away.

Stand by him and the rewards are sweet and delicious. Deny him what he wants, and he will crush you. He chooses how he treats you based on how much he likes you, and at the rotten heart of his behavior, is the simple choice to be this way.

[cdroloisms]

forgive me my demons but i see this take so much and it drives me a little crazy . c!Sam is stupid, obviously. He has no self-awareness, he somehow completely misses on the fact that his actions have social ramifications, he has a sense of entitlement a mile high and thinks that everyone automatically should fall in line and agree with his authority just because he decides that he has it. he navigates conversations with the grace of a wrecking ball because he assumes that everyone will agree with him being In The Right and therefore doesn't actually go for much more convincing half the time than "do what i say or you'll end up locked up in an inescapable prison." his moral compass is a roulette wheel and his justifications incomprehensible.

but at the same time, c!Sam is far from unintelligent. like, not just anyone was going to CREATE and then RUN pandora's fucking vault. he made a world eater ?? if there's like anyone on the server that could reasonably create shit to cause mass destruction across the server other than like the literal fucking nukes, then yeah it'd be him, see the world eater again. sure, he makes the craziest fucking assumptions off the fact that he's Right And Justified And The Ultimate Authority And Everyone Should Agree With That, but he's also able to lie and manipulate and gaslight and coerce and threaten pretty much without breaking a sweat if he ever deems doing so necessary for his own goals, and it's not like the methods by which he does so are like, all that clumsy either. like people absolutely bought his whole deal early on in the prison arc, believing him to be a well-meaning, burdened Warden doing Whatever It Takes for the good of the server, which did in large part have to do with how his character talked about the prison to others and such, etc. just because c!sam is crazy bonkers and expects his ex to forgive him chopping their arm off doesn't mean that he's completely incapable of being pretty damn convincing at some points.

and like, even more importantly, his being dumb really didn't make him ANY less intimidating. i'd argue that it made him A LOT WORSE, honestly! just because his moral bullshit is twisted up in knots doesn't mean that he's any less dangerous for it. c!sam is, honestly, from the top of my head, one of the most casual about being violent on the server, purely because he believes he has a Right to it. he believes that people owe him obedience by virtue of who he is. he threw several people into pandora's vault WITHOUT LIKE, ANYONE KNOWING just because he decided that they deserved to be put in prison. he kidnaps a toddler??? c!Sam really doesn't bend himself in half trying to justify things according to someone else's moral system; as he literally does in that one scene with c!Bad during the stream where they investigated Sam Bucket, he literally just. is the epitome of the guy that lets himself do shit because he has a self-written permit that says i do what i want. the only thing getting in the way of c!sam's bullshit is c!sam, and i think that people honestly chronically overestimate how much he holds himself back from horrific violence. he stabbed a teenager to Make A Point about his authority? he repeatedly threatens hannah, one of his own employees, because of things she did while being mind controlled--and then like, uses this to excuse himself of? workplace harassment? in the stream after techno escapes with dream, he literally MAKES UP A REASON to be really fucking angry at dream and then threatens TO TORTURE HIM over it. when new people joined the server he would threaten them with a sword for asking questions about the prison in a way that seemed too 'dream sympathetic.' and he regularly tells people that he would commit all the atrocities again, including ponk, because he's entirely 100% convinced that everything he does is justified?

and a lot of the stuff people hold against him, like. sure, his plan to contain technoblade didnt work, but it SURE DID WORK BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE THAT TRIED, DIDNT IT? like techno would've been decently screwed if he didn't have a statis chamber set up. and well, the situation with dream speaks for itself--he was stuck in there for ten months. a lot of what people attribute to c!Sam's stupidity really does very little if anything to make him less scary--less effective, maybe, but for every time his moral bullshit gets in the way of him getting something that he wants there's probably a few other times you can find where his ability to justify himself out of anything makes him do something fucking ridiculous . anyway i dont even have a point to all of this except c!sam is scary as fuck bro

[chireikiden]

Do you think there's any reason for Hecatia being one of the strongest characters in the series? Someone from a religion that isn't believed in anymore being powerful, doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the series. If someone from a dead religion showed up in Touhou, the first question should be how they're even still alive.

I'm sure you could reverse-engineer some headcanon excuses, but my personal guess is that rather than any particular in-universe justification, once ZUN decided that he wanted to have a powerful, "independent" Hell goddess (outside the Ministry's hierarchy), it wasn't a long leap - if a leap at all - to "Okay, so let's make her more powerful than the Ministry".

I mean, I don't know what led him to go for specifically Hecate/Hecatia in the first place, so we don't really have any first principles to start from.

She didn't have to be especially powerful just to be an independent Hell goddess; could've just been someone from the middle or bottom of the pecking order. But the story of LoLK is about her and Junko clowning on the Moon, so the tone is pretty different depending on whether she's super powerful or some scrappy underdog (and DDC had just come out). I'm sure that like any other writer, a lot of the time ZUN just does things because the end result is what he wants, rather than every step following naturally from the previous one. Or hecc, maybe the only Greek goddess in the series just had some exotic prestige in his eyes that Japanese gods don't, I don't know.

If you really get into some weird... comparative mythology, you could make a decent argument for Hecate the pre-Olympian titan-killer (cherrypicking the best of all versions, as one does) to be more powerful than most of the gods we see in Touhou, but cross-mythological power level debates are probably even less fruitful than Touhou ones. The very question of characters that in human belief predate humanity and how they might come into being "retroactively", and what that actually means for their backstories or power levels, is a whole swamp I'm not gonna wade into. (This may include some Lunarians, but it's hard to say which - humans just kinda appear unannounced in Japanese mythology. In the Kojiki, they already seem to exist by the time of Izanami's death.)

Somehow the matter of fading faith and belief has never come up in relation to any characters outside Earth and Gensokyo, that I can remember. I can easily imagine that the afterlife itself and maybe the oni there still have enough belief in the present day for it to not be a problem, or that ZUN as the writer simply has other things to talk about whenever those characters appear. But whether the otherworlders are actually protected somehow or ZUN just doesn't bring it up, faith or lack thereof has never seemed relevant there on a meta level.

[bluef00t]

Finally collecting these in a post—Atomic Robo robotswap ideas. This was more of a character design challenge than a real AU, but the concept kind of got away from me.

Rambling design notes + a couple panel redraws + some ideas I had for Helsingard and ALAN 1.0 under the cut:

This idea spiraled out of an old sketch by Wegner of real-boy Robo as a genetics experiment. I'm interpreting that as basically Wolverine minus the animal motifs (and generally much more well-adjusted).

I tried to mimic more elements of his bot design; for example the hair silhouette and the thick blue-tinted glasses, swapped for goggles as his lifestyle got more active. I guess sensitive eyes are a side effect of his mutations. (The classic superhero forehead curl on babyrobo has no design justification, I just couldn't resist.) His appearance would make the public of the '20s a little uncomfortable with seeing him as Tesla's son. Which feels very thematically appropriate.

I'm still calling him "Robo" because it feels weird not to, though it would be a nickname. Appropriate for a guy who never sleeps; plausibly derived from Robert/Ratko. (The American name would be how he's introduced to the public; the Serbian one used casually by Tesla.*) Honestly, it seems in-character for him to put down Robo as his actual legal name when he finally got that chance.

*Things I found out after picking these names for their superficial resemblance to "Robo": Robert means "famous, shining" and Ratomir means "defender of peace"; literally "war for peace". Definitely an affectionately ironic moniker for a son so determined to be an action hero. Though dear monolingual Robo probably wouldn't catch on until decades after Tesla's death... Well, now I've gone and made myself sad.

The action scientists are mostly an excuse to still draw robots. Let's say they're Robo's big midlife crisis project after realizing he was going to outlive his entire first team and not think about it too hard.

Vik (inspired by Robby the Robot) is the oldest of the models. He's optimized for processing power, which is how you get a robot that will try to suggest purely hypothetical (but mathematically sound!) solutions to urgent real-world problems. And enjoys TTRPGs of Turing-complete levels of complexity.

Lang (inspired by Robo) came shortly after, more optimized for the "action" part of action science. Being made of metal does wonders for your recoil management. (I know she hasn't had the hair buns in 10+ years, but that's what I was trying to do with the "antennae".)

Foley (inspired by Alan) is the newest model, optimized for human-robot interaction. Getting wifi installed in her head early on had the unexpected side effect of making her really good at understanding networks of all kinds.

BRN-3 wasn't built to be sentient. He's just a lab geological survey bot that began showing signs of sapience one day and attributes his own "enlightenment" to the "crystals" he'd been studying. This is obviously bullshit but nobody can give a better explanation, so...

Jenkins is literally just the Terminator, except his evil future is vampires instead of AI. He was sent back to kill Robo, which clearly didn't work, so they talked it out and now he just hangs around Tesladyne on high alert for anything that might kick off the apocalypse.

(I have no idea where Ada, Ben, and Koa fit in here, but I might come back to them later. Using their Agents of CHANGE power suits as android designs felt like cheating.)

Not included in these drawings are Helsingard and ALAN, but I'm considering switching around parts of their premises, too.

Helsingard was a Nazi supercomputer meant to calculate the perfect world-conquering strategy. Instead, it realized that Germany's loss was imminent and hid copies of itself around the planet. Every once in a while, someone accidentally boots up a copy and it tries to take over. In the modern age it's a total dice roll as to whether this will be horrifying (what major infrastructure isn't computerized these days?) or just kind of pathetic (it's too old to understand the internet and can easily get itself trapped in an office printer spitting toner and stacks of paper that read BEHOLD HELSINGARD).

ALAN (potential rename pending; the Turing connection is rather lost in the version I'm going with for now) is the world's second successful "unkillable" genetic experiment, a govt project during the Cold War to ensure that the last man alive in a nuclear winter scenario would be British. But it turns out telling a guy he's the next stage in human evolution and sealing him in a bunker for decades to await a chance to inherit the earth which doesn't come isn't great for his sense of compassion or morality. Eventually, ALAN decides to hurry things along before we inferior humans end the world in a less convenient way, and Robo has to... well, you know this part.

It turns out there was a secret phase 2 to this plan, which would have been to populate the solar system with perfect immortal mind-networked clones of himself. The single under-baked clone that it does manage to spit out before being shut down is our Alan :] He needs someone to look after him while his crazy healing powers fill in the missing chunks of his body and brain, and he didn't get a full memory upload from ALAN, so it's free son boy!

No changes were made to Dr. Dinosaur. He's already perfect.

[swordfright]

please write that essay

I assume based on your timing that this ask is in reference to this post, in which case I'm sorry it took me a couple days to get around to answering! This is not gonna be super well-organized but here are my thoughts:

The lore tidbit about c!Quackity actually having WON the bet with Glatt is literally the best possible way that whole situation could have gone. It’s such a solid storytelling move and I respect cc!Q to the moon and back for confirming it, both because I think c!Q's actions after having won the bet are very in-character for him and also because this option is, simply put, more narratively satisfying than the alternative. I'll explain why I think that.

c!Quackity's whole character arc is about belonging and agency and, importantly, how the pursuit of those things can go wrong. When he first joins the server he struggles to find somewhere to belong and gets used by others. His later attempts to exercise agency in order to foster his idea of a safe and stable community (yes, I'm including Butcher Army here) largely end in disaster. So eventually, Q establishes his own country, his own place where he can control every potential element and risk factor, but arguably he does so at the cost of love and friendship and community, the things he wanted to foster and maintain and protect in the first place. His defining fears about community safety eventually become reduced to fears about personal safety. To me, it’s a very clear negative character arc. When Q makes the bet with Schlatt’s ghost and ends up torturing c!Dream for the revival book, the audience are led to assume it’s because he lost the bet and is still beholden to Glatt in this one final way.

The exact nature of his and Schlatt's relationship prior to Schlatt's death carries some degree of ambiguity, but it's pretty widely interpreted as an abusive romantic relationship, and I'd argue that canon supports this interpretation. They were engaged following the Manberg coalition, and we know their relationship was increasingly rocky during this period. If you subscribe to this particular interpretation of their relationship (which I do because again, I believe canon supports it), then this adds a certain weight and gravity to Q's bet with Schlatt's ghost. The bet becomes a horrible postmortem extension of this toxic relationship that has deeply left its mark on c!Quackity, and Q losing the bet puts him in a vulnerable position both psychologically and literally. He is still beholden to his shitty ex, despite having put him in the fucking ground. That's a powerful motivation to get the book and be done with Glatt forever --- so it makes sense that when Q started torturing Dream for the book, many viewers automatically assumed it was because Q lost that bet.

Personally, I never really liked that assumption, because I feel it lets Q off too easy. It's too convenient an excuse. It dismisses the horror and cruelty of Q's deal with Sam by allowing Q the plausible deniability of desperation, characterizing the torture as his final desperate attempt to escape Schlatt's legacy, i.e. “My abuser made me do it, I’m still being threatened and coerced, I’m not culpable for my own actions!” (Which isn't even a justification that c!Quackity himself would ever use, so it's frustrating to see viewers fall back on it. The c!Quackity woobification in this fandom is much worse than the c!Dream woobification but let's leave that discussion for another day.)

But then (BUT THEN!!!) we find out that no, c!Quackity didn't lose the bet, he actually WON. He didn't want that book for Glatt, he wanted it for himself. He tortured Dream for this reason and because he enjoyed torturing Dream, and it’s an amazing anti-reveal because it pulls the rug out from under you but it also makes perfect sense given the sort of person we’ve watched Q becoming over the course of the past year’s worth of lore content. It’s about cycles of violence! In a story that has been about cyclical violence from the beginning, this is a natural conclusion for Q's character arc. DSMP is a story about building as an escape, and escaping what you've built. And ironically, this reveal makes c!Quackity a perfect foil to c!Tommy because Tommy is an abuse victim who, in a lot of ways, strives to be better than his abuser (hello I realize this is a controversial opinion but whatever this is my post) and Quackity is an abuse victim who intentionally strives to out-do his abuser.

Finally, Q winning the bet with Glatt is like, the only option that carries any kind of narrative catharsis. Because if he’d lost the bet, it means that despite Q's tireless efforts to gain agency, he never truly succeeded and is still being used as a pawn. Which is boring imo! It’s literally “area man ends up exactly where he started," which can be a compelling arc but it's not the most compelling possible arc for this particular character in my incredibly biased opinion. Whereas Quackity having won the bet gives his character arc direction. The arc then becomes “area man strives against all odds to achieve agency, succeeds, forfeits humanity in the process.” Area man escapes cycle of abuse only to perpetuate it. Which I personally like because I think it's interesting!

It may not be an uplifting arc, but it’s an arc! It starts in one place and ends up somewhere else. It has momentum! Even though this reveal technically reflects “poorly” on Quackity’s character (idc lol he will be my forever babygirl no matter how many times he violates the Geneva Convention), it’s a plot twist that respects his character so much more than the alternative. There's only so far you can take a story about a guy being powerless. It's much more fun to tell a story where the powerless guy finally attains the agency he always wanted, but at a great personal cost.

(Coincidentally, this is also the reason I wish c!Wilbur's finale stream had ended not with him leaving c!Tommy but with him asking Tommy to accompany him to Utah and Tommy rejecting his offer. But I digress lmfao I'll be bitter about that storytelling decision on my own time)

Anyway, I think @elmhat phrased it really well when they said "We care about Quackity because of his choices." Not just what happens to him, but how he decides to react.

[ablednt]

Got an email in response to my contacting the white house and IK this is just some PR person and/or a stock response sent to everyone but the wording here is glaringly evil like

[Transcript:

Thank you for writing to me about the war between Israel and Hamas.

On October 7, more than 1,300 innocent civilians were murdered in Israel—including American citizens—at the hands of the terrorist organization Hamas.  We must always condemn terrorism when we see it.  There is no justification for it—no excuse.

But Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.  It does not stand for the dignity of Palestinians.  We mourn the many innocent Palestinians who have been killed.  Many thousands of families in Gaza are suffering an escalating humanitarian crisis.

End transcript]

 The double standards here are sickening and it's nothing new but I don't think we should stop calling it out either.

"More than 1,300 innocent civilians" ignoring that this underepresents occupation soldiers and just taking it at face value, why do we get an estimate on the death toll then just "many thousands of families" for Palestinians when even a quick google search gives me "more than 29,000 deaths"

And why are Israelis (and Americans) called citizens while Palestinians are not? Tell me, if they are not citizens of a nation with homes and lives, then what are they? We know what it means to be a non-civilian, how that factors into the concept of innocence, but what does it mean to be a non-innocent Palestinian? Do they mean Hamas? Because they didn't say that, and the implication feels more that there's a non-innocent way to simply exist as Palestinian.

And if, in the words they chose, this actually were a war between two armies (which it is not) then why do they switch it up and say that it is a humanitarian crisis? Like as it it's just a natural disaster going on, like this is a series of unfortunate tragedies and not ongoing bombing, displacement, and calculated starvation?

I know this letter just is meant as a fuck you stop complaining we're the good guys here we can abuse imperialist power if we want to you don't live in a democracy but they actually think they're pulling yhe wool over our eyes and it's embarrassing.

[decks-and-duelists]

So I’ve been planning for April Fools since December. I made that page back in January, and now I can finally talk about it. So here's a blog post talking about random behind the scenes stuff.

I figured the holiday would be a fun excuse to do a yearly "what if I was adapting a different show", allowing me to play around with making campaign comics for series that I love but don't have any actual plans to fully adapt. This year was Sonic X, mainly because I am currently absolutely obsessed with the Sonic franchise and will gladly take any excuse to talk about it.

I decided to base the page on episode 36, The Threat From Outer Space (Shadow World in the English dub), for three reasons. One, using a scene from the Adventure 2 adaptation would mean even people who haven't watched Sonic X would hopefully have the necessary context. Two, reversing the "attack the moon" scene so that an NPC was threatening to blow up the moon and Yugi was panicking about the tides was like the first thing I thought of when I decided to make a page based on Sonic X. And three, it was the arc I was currently watching at the time.

The page itself was the easiest thing, since it was a single out of context thing whose joke hinged on referencing a scene from the actual comic. But then I had to write the character bios. And because the whole point of this thing was to imagine a hypothetical campaign comic, I couldn't just not come up with descriptions of characters that don't even appear in the comic, referencing past events from episodes I'll never make.

I was originally going to include the NPCs as well, but quickly realized there were too many to write bios for all of them. Even if I just included NPCs that actually feature in the Adventure 2 arc it still would be way too much. Only two NPC bios were actually written before they were abandoned. Mr. Stewart's was "Chris's former homeroom teacher who definitely isn't a government spy" and Cream the Rabbit's was "A child who was originally created just to be rescued in the first session, only for the party to get attached to her".

So that just left the PCs, most of which were yoinked from their regular bios with details swapped out. Tristan is the only one whose class didn't change, because the entire reason he plays a warrior in the first place is that he picked the most generic class. That's actually also why I decided he'd be Chris, because I figured he's the only one who would choose to be a generic human when everyone else is playing furries.

Tozokou and Yugi are the only ones with brand new bios, for completely different reasons. Tozokou just doesn't have a bio to yoink, because I don't want to add him to the character page until Episode 6 is finished. So when creating Knuckles' bio I tried to write it as if it was an edited version of Mokuba's so it'd match the others. Besides the class and character which are swapped for everyone, the main change is replacing avenging his brother with protecting the Master Emerald. Also Knuckles did actually appear as an NPC prior to Tozokou taking him over, as unlike with Mokuba he did have notable appearances before the first episode revolving around him.

Yugi on the other hand does have a bio, but it’s completely useless for Sonic. Both him playing two characters and being bad with names just do not apply to Sonic X. Though I was tempted to try and work in a joke about Nicky from the manga, I ended up instead giving him one based on my sibling/proofreader’s justification for why I should make Sonic a ranger.

Finally there’s the chapter cover. When making the covers, both for this and the actual comic I like to try and test my editing skills by doing more complicated stuff than what I usually do for the pages themselves, usually involving editing together completely unrelated screenshots.

With the NPC bios being cut and him not having any dialogue, I knew I had to feature Shadow the Hedgehog on the cover. He is my precious blorbo and so I was contractually obligated to include him somewhere. And since the moon being blown up is both the main thing that happens in the original episode and the focus of the page, I decided to combine it with a shot of Shadow’s reflection as he looks out of the ARK.

The transition between the two isn’t quite as smooth as previous edits I’ve done, but since this one was made just to appear as a thumbnail in the archive and not a proper update, it works for what I needed.

I don’t really have a conclusion for this, but I guess I’ll see you next year with another extremely normal update™ based on whatever anime I end up watching in December. 

[astromechs]

Has it ever been said why there was the need to make Thanos sympathetic in the first place? Meaning has anyone behind the mcu talked about the thought process?

I ask because the build up in mcu to Infinity War didn't seem to be going in that direction. Definitely not after vol 1 where we learned more about Gamora and Drax's history. Then suddenly they went the direction of maybe he had a point. Also they leaned into population control themes as a justification for genocide which I felt was troubling. Particularly with real world issues around similar subjects. The framing of the people on Gamora's planet as more primitive and struggling and Thanos coming in to fix it felt really off. Infinity War started out giving Gamora a voice and a well structured and acted look at the emotional toll her life with Thanos had. Then suddenly switched it up to frame him as having validity. It's interesting to me which bad guy characters creators will work really hard to make sympathetic and which characters will suffer the consequences.

It's also interesting to look at how fans reacted to Gamora's death with more than a few being willing to dismiss what it meant for her to only focus on Thanos. I saw way more people being adamant she needed to stay dead for the good of the story than some of the other characters who died except maybe heimdall who a lot of people seemed to ignore in general.

Fast forward to vol 3 and now I see more people coming to sympathize with Gamora's death in Infinity War when it comes to Peter's reaction and actions. What it means for Gamora however still doesn't get the same level of consideration. I have noticed that people are quick to view her actions in vol 3 as being evil or unacceptable, though her behavior was pretty understandable for the situation she was in and no more bad than behavior we have seen from characters like Rocket, Yondu or even Nebula in the past. There's also debate about whether she should count as a guardian, which I guess people can feel how they want but the standards for behavior and meeting the criteria to be included seem to be higher for her. Some people I interact with in fandom who felt they could at least understand where Thanos was coming from act like Gamora is too hard to identify with and she's the victim.

Sorry this is long and likely not as articulate as I was going for. But all the new gotg commentary has me curious about why they needed Thanos to be sympathetic and how that's reverberated through fandoms feelings for Gamora.

the russos had it in their heads that they wanted to create "this generation's darth vader" without actually understanding what makes darth vader a great and enduring character. like, that's essentially it.

what makes vader a great character and a great villain is that the story humanized him in a way that didn't make excuses for his atrocities. the reveal in the empire strikes back that he's luke's father... well, it's still the best twist in cinema history, because it turns the whole story on its head without compromising the integrity of it, all of vader's actions are cast in a new light, and you see there's a man inside that machine. return of the jedi really succeeds in driving that home by having vader sacrifice himself in the struggle against the emperor to save luke for a really effecting conclusion.

nowhere in there did giving vader humanity ever suggest he was actually right for destroying alderaan with the death star, or for torturing leia (who would turn out to be his daughter!), or for slaughtering countless people, or for supporting and enabling the fascist regime that is the empire.

and hell, your mileage may vary on the star wars prequels (personally, i love them — yes, even attack of the clones, which i objectively know isn't a good movie!), but what they manage to do by going into anakin's past and how he becomes vader further serves to humanize him without trying to say his actions are the right ones. the scene in attack of the clones where he slaughters an entire village of tusken raiders for killing his mother is framed by the film as something horrific; the same is true of the scene in revenge of the sith where he kills the younglings in the jedi temple and the whole third act of the movie that primarily deals with his descent into darkness. anakin's story is a tragedy, and we're meant to feel the weight of that, but we're also not meant to agree with his actions or his point of view.

that's where infinity war gets it completely wrong with thanos. and i know, i know, the movie intentionally framed him as its protagonist as a narrative device — and that's something that could be done well, but wasn't. and again, friends, let's remember that protagonist =/= hero (which i don't think the russos/markus and mcfeely understand lol), protagonist literally just means what character is principally driving the action of the story. there are countless examples of stories where you're meant to understand the protagonist but not validate their actions; hell, the anakin example from the star wars prequels above is one, as well as stories like bojack horseman, succession, etc etc and so on and so forth.

where infinity war particularly messed up on this, imo, was having the soul stone validate thanos's murder of gamora as a "sacrifice" and actually giving him the stone. that was bad on a lot of levels, and really led to a lot of people having the attitudes that they do. and, just, in general, there are a lot of reddit bros ready to chime in and agree with someone spouting a bunch of thomas malthus-esque rhetoric, people just willing to accept what happened to gamora because, you know, misogyny, and voila. you have mcu thanos and his shitty legacy enduring.

[newwwwusername]

My Own Private Idaho - Scott/Mike, Scott/Carmela - Pride Month Prompt 3 : Bisexual

Cw for the f slur Prompt : Write either an M/M, F/F, F/M, or Other (to include nonbinary folks since yes, bisexuality often does include them) fic (can be fluff, hurt/comfort, whatever you see fit) in which either one or both of the characters in that pairing are bisexual OR a gen fic in which a bi character (can be a canon or headcanoned character) is coming out to/being comforted by/otherwise talking about sexuality with their friend(s) Headcanons : Bisexual!Scott, FTM!Mike, Autistic!Mike

Scott reckoned sex with Mike wasn't all that bad. A few drinks, twenty bucks, trying to scare off the cops- Whatever excuse he found always wound up with him inches deep into the other man, and a small part of him knew he didn't completely hate it.

Excuse or not, he'd always justify it to himself. Mike wasn't always a man. He had all the downstairs equipment that your average woman on the street did. But that never sat right in his head as a justification for why him sleeping with Michael didn't make him a faggot because, well, he didn't see Michael as a woman. He never did. He could never see Michael as anything less than a man because he wasn't anything less than a man. That was hard to deal with.

It was a slippery slope, too, admitting to himself that his feelings for Michael were beyond the line of platonic. If he admitted that he liked Michael in that way, then he'd have to admit that he didn't hate all the dates he went on with male clients over the years. He'd have to admit to himself that, no matter what change he made in his career path and personal life, that core part of him would always stray from his parents ideals. He couldn't like men because he wasn't a complete degenerate.

That's just how it was.

Maybe that's why running away with Carmela was so easy. He did genuinely like her in the same way that, deep down, he'd always liked Michael. But the difference with her is that she was a safe option. It's like the universe had presented him with two options- Man or woman. He loved them both equally but one was just the far more obvious choice in the context of his life, especially since he was on the cusp of making the change right when his family least expected it. He would be good for them, and he couldn't be good for them if he picked the riskier choice.

He was happy with Carmela. Really, he was. He loved her and vice versa. He was also finally stable in his living situation- As fun as being in Bob's prostitute gang had been, it didn't come with the soundest of sleep. And he'd outgrown them, really. Sure, sometimes he'd fantasize about running around with those boys again, really letting loose, but peace looked well on him and he wasn't soon to give it up.

The fantasies of Michael wouldn't stop either. Nor the guilt over leaving him behind. That was his one true regret in life, abandoning Michael. Not even necessarily that he'd moved on from the boy, no. That was inevitable (it had to be). But he felt bad for the way he'd gone about it because he knew Michael loved him and he also knew that Michael would have a hard time fending for himself without Scott there because of his Narcolepsy and his Autism, especially in a foreign country.

He'd never been Mike's caretaker by any means, but no one else ever really knew how to deal with his Narcoleptic attacks or his meltdowns except for Scott. Mike hadn't felt genuinely unsafe in a really long time because he always knew in the back of his head that even if he passed out or started having a meltdown in an inconvenient situation, Scott would make sure he was okay. But then Scott left, and he felt unsafe again.

Scott never could outrun that guilt.

Eventually, the guilt and the repressed feelings had to come to pass and he found himself sobbing in his wife's arms, admitting everything he'd buried down and wished desperately would've stayed buried. "I loved him" he said through tears, nearly choking from emotion. Carmela just smiled weakly and ran a soothing hand through his hair. She'd always been so good to him in that way.

"Loved who?" she asked. There were so many men in Scott's past, it could be difficult to keep track of them. Bob, Budd, Mike, Hans... The list went on for quite a while.

"Mike" he coughed out. "Michael. The guy who was with me when we- When I met you first" he explained, occasionally coughing or sniffing or gagging through tears. "I loved him. I fucking loved him, Car" he sobbed inconsolably. "And I abandoned him in the worst way possible" he continued. "How am I supposed to- How do- How-"

"Breathe" Carmela caught him off calmly. They went back and forth like that for a while and, by the end of it, Scott was clinging to her like his life depended on it, horribly afraid she would leave him. He couldn't even blame her if she did- No one wanted to hear about their husband's lingering romantic and sexual feelings for another man. But, she didn't. She couldn't. He loved him far more than anything else. She would rather eat nails than leave him over something she'd suspected for a while.

After that, he'd gone out for a rather long drive, just by himself, to Idaho. Why Idaho? Well, it reminded him of Michael. And he needed that right now. He needed Michael. He needed...

"Michael?" he said out loud to himself because there was an awfully familiar figure passed out in the middle of the road. He didn't want to believe it but, sure enough, as he grew closer and closer, he was more and more positive about the identity of the figure. Mike Waters was passed out in the middle of the road, clearly having been robbed if his lack of shoes were any indication.

Without thinking, Scott parked the car and got out. Fuck his parents. Fuck his ideals. Fuck all of that- Michael was in an unsafe situation and no one was around and he could do something.

"Come on, big guy" Scott said quietly as he lifted Michael's unconscious body, dragging him towards the passenger side of his vehicle. "I'm here, man. I'm here"

Do not repost on other sites! If you want to participate in this month's challenge, there are 30 LGBT-centered prompts that you can find here

[snorkling-in-sodasea]

Moments of Stupidity 12

Okay, so I'm once again not including the childishly petty arguing between Stella and Stolas. It just felt stupid to watch but I don't think it was anything stupid that greatly affected the plot. If it actually makes a difference in the overall narrative, as shocking as it would be, but it at least didn't make much of a difference in this episode. In fact, the conversation itself is so inconsequential since the only thing that really mattered at the beginning was that Stolas was at that restaurant for Striker to swoop in and kidnap him. Andreaphlus, Stella, and Stolas highly likely could have been talking about anything else and that's how much difference it would make for the plot

Western Energy -

First moment goes to Stolas, for not using his fucking powers other than flying away only to get caught in holy rope. Maybe that can be excused by how pampered and sheltered Stolas is bound to be that he's unaccustomed to not react more appropriately to danger but there's something about the way I saw how he reacted that made me think 'dumb'.

But then there's Stolas's next moment, for taking so damn long to realize he's in fucking danger. Fuck seriously, shot at by an assassin, tied up in blessed rope, and being carried away on a horse like a cowboy's hostage. And it wasn't until Striker took the phone away, taunted Blitzo over the phone, and then smashed the fucking phone that it finally registers in Stolas's head. Just... moving on...

Third moment of stupidity on Stolas's part, never trying to escape himself. Sure, again, he could be so pampered and sheltered that he wouldn't have gotten far in helping himself, but that's just it. Stolas didn't even try. He never tried rolling off the horse, he never used his untied legs and hands to do anything, just. Fucking. Nothing. Instead, Stolas just looks bored as he rides the entire fucking way to Striker's hideout, even though he was never being held by Striker for most of the way. Maybe the explanation - not a justification - is that Stolas is still desiring to live out a fantastical romance novel with Blitzo that he's willingly the damsel in distress. Seriously, that could be the reason why Stolas called Blitzo as his first reaction towards being kidnapped, goes on and on about Blitzo the entire damn time he's being tortured, and even had Blitzo's name as his last word when Striker was about to cut his eyes out; Stolas only bothered speaking of Octavia when Striker directly threatened her but, otherwise, Blitzo was the only thing in his fucking-filled mind. But if I'm right in my guess on why Stolas never even tried to escape when he totally could have done something, then it's still stupid that he prioritized living out a fantasy with Blitzo in the knight-in-shining-armor role over actually helping himself and whether or not he gets to see Octavia again. Because yeah, I just realized that, if Stolas could get hurt or even die, then it will leave Octavia fatherless and alone with Stella. Either Octavia's future way of life and future anguish never registered in Stola's head or he decided it wasn't very important. Neither one makes Stolas look good

A small moment of stupidity Stolas has is shared with Blitzo and Moxxie, when Stolas was calling to ask for help about being kidnapped. Every single one of these fuckers act like it was tricky to remember fucking Striker. And maybe they did legit forget Striker of all people. Blitzo couldn't remember the guy who was going to kill off his 'easiest ticket to the human world behind his back'. Stolas couldn't remember the guy he declared a winner alongside Blitzo in the Pain Games; even the maybe explanation that Stolas didn't consider Striker so important to remember doesn't stop me from thinking it's stupid for the recognition to never kick in. And Moxxie was a little bit stupider because he chastises Blitzo with 'how many cowboys do you know?' but then immediately asks for Striker's description. How many cowboys do you fucking know, Moxxie?

Either the hospital Blitzo and Loona goes to or the nurse at the counter because what use is someone who doesn't know how to read and write when it comes to running the counter at a hospital? I'm happy for the nurse that she got a job despite that but she's incredibly lucky that something went wrong at that hiring process

The gang of cowboys for their reason for picking a fight. Seriously? Same hat? It's apparently made on a massive enough scale if Moxxie just so happened to have the same kind of hat just laying around in the I.M.P. van. The maybe explanation is that the cowboy gang just wanted to pick on a seemingly weak target (and Moxxie probably should have been physically weaker because it feels like he was only written to be strong badass because plenty of fans had enough of Moxxie being a damsel in distress even against his own damn father)

Stella... oh, boy, Stella. Like I said, this episode really highlighted her so obvious let's get to it. First, she was just so obvious that she sent the assassin after him that, if it wasn't for Stolas being so stupid to ever even tell anybody, Stella would be in fucking hot water. Maybe she was so confident that Stolas was going to die but that's a gamble right there. There is the part where Stella had it spelled out for her that she'll get nothing if Stolas were to die now but I like to view it differently. Stella could have known all along that Stolas hated her too much to willingly leave her anything. In fact, Stella probably only bothered talking about the divorce stuff so that it gives Striker the chance to come in and kidnap Stolas

The really stupid moment of Stella's is the fact she wanted Stolas to have the 'royal treatment', which is Striker torturing Stolas before finally killing him off. With no cameras recording it, with Stella not looking in through some magical object, with absolutely nothing that would provide Stella with a show. Considering that Stella is at least characterized to be a sadist, then how the fuck was she going to enjoy it? Was she just going to have Striker tell her all about it?

Of course, Striker had plenty of stupid moments throughout this episode, since he was so reckless that it became stupid. If anything, probably the only thing he didn't do was stupid was going along with provided the 'royal treatment' to Stolas. After all, it's what Stella paid for and it gave Striker the chance to let out his anger on a blue blood, so why not?

Anyways, 1) just barging into the restaurant, attacking Stolas, and carrying off with a Geotia as his very clear hostage with a shit ton of witnesses around 2) letting himself be seen so much that he legit has wanted posters on the walls; I just find it weird for a fucking assassin 3) waiting a minute or so into the fucking phone call Stolas was making before finally taking the phone away and crushing it. Fuck seriously, you waited that long before finally doing that? Even though you said that you can hear it? 4) Having a hideout that's well known enough for Millie to be able to find out about when she asked for directions. Again, weird for an assassin and 5) never holding onto Stolas to make sure he wouldn't try escaping like, say, rolling off of Bombproof. There was one instance, when Bombproof got up on his hind legs on the train, but that seemed more like part of the fun and the song than anything. Striker's just lucky that Stolas was too stupid to even try. I think I'll throw in a 6) since Striker got so easily disgusted at all the sex jokes. Not only is he supposed to be an assassin, he's also supposed to be an expert assassin. I would have expected someone like that to not be so easily fazed when carrying out a kill, to tablet the unexpected, and to be flexible and adaptable since I think his job is the kind of job where anything can and would go wrong. Instead, if Striker came after me, I can just make a sex joke and I'll have an window of opportunity to do something about him

Blitzo manages to cap off the episode with a small but still significant stupid moment. He acted shocked that Stolas could get hurt. What was the fucking point of season 1 episode 5 Harvest Moon Festival!?!?! Loo Loo Land was one thing since Stolas asked you and you only accepted at getting paid money. But then you fought off Striker so that he wouldn't kill Stolas! Why the fuck would you bother doing that if you just now realized that he could get hurt!?!?

[sporesgalaxy]

I think Puritans mostly read the Bible and other related bits of religious literature, so I think it’s safe to assume that that’s what Belos finds boring? Interesting, considering he based the Titan’s religion on what he learned about God back home…I wonder if Belos would have become an outright atheist? And if he would have found other books more interesting, like Shakespeare’s work, or what kind of literature he would have made himself?

He would've also learned Latin as a kid and been made to read some selected texts of Classical Philosophy which had been dubbed worthy of study by the Church in spite of the hethen upbringings of its authors. I don't know all the specifics, but Cicero (ancient Greek political philosopher) and Aesop's fables are mentioned a lot across the google search results I've personally dug through. Otherwise, just a general impression of lots of Ancient Greek Philosophy, but only the stuff that lined up with Protestant Christian Ideology. I looked at some of Cicero's letters and can confirm that they didn't seem terribly exciting :P

Whether he would've found Shakespeare interesting is up for debate, but Puritan cultural ideals detested Shakespeare and theater in general for being, like, hedonistic or indulgent or whatever lol!

Anyways, back to the stuff he would've read and how he might be using it-- those old Latin texts are where he would've gotten the name Belos from! So, more than likely, he based his made-up witch religeon on his conception of heathen religeon, based on his mandatory study of Classical Philosophy. That's not to say he didn't include anything from what would've been his experience living as a Protestant Christian in New England, but... I get the impression that most of the inspiration he did take from his actual religeous upbringing was more like "well, they told us that evil people, such as witches, were like [x], so I bet these wretched heathens would love it if I acted like [x]." Queue Belos building an enormous, opulent castle that ought to make any pious, God-fearing Puritan sick.

This concept interests me, because it goes along with Belos' general theme of playing a part so constantly for so long that he surely can't fully separate himself from it anymore. Would he really be happy returning to normal Protestant life after living as a Heathen Witch King for so long? Did he feel guilty for doing so, or try to take measures to live "humbly" in spite of appearences otherwise? It all fits just perfectly into the clear trajectory we can see of his constantly escalating self-justifications and excuses leading him to become the very thing he detests so much. You just love to see it.

[utopia-and-broken-cynics]

EAH Headcanons

Apple's dad helps her pick out her glasses

The Good King and Pinocchio bonded once PW was out of school. They both traveled to some of the same places and became buddies.

Pinocchio and King Charming stopped being friends after they signed the book. Destiny drove them apart.

Milton Grimm forced Pinocchio to have a kid (Cedar) and it's the only good thing he's ever done for him.

Cerise fakes having allergies to cover up her heightened senses

Giles doesn't forgive his brother for locking him in the basement

Blondie is the worst thief but she tries really hard, so people help her out and ignore it

Faybelle's mother managed to make her a birthday cake once without burning it

Faybells inherited her mother's cooking skills. She's banned from cooking class-ic

Raven has caught and prevented Apple from dying her hair more times than either of them are comfortable admitting

Snow is h*mophobic (duh)

Milton Grimm hates out of destiny romances because he got rejected once in school (in favor of his brother, who wasn't interested) and his destiny didn't force include falling in love.

Also it's because he's a jerk

Cupid's side of the room is decorated to represent the Monster World and Blondie digs it (even if it does frighten her in the middle of the night)

Hunter's allergic to bees. He likes getting Ashlynn flowers. It's a problem

Ashlynn knows how to make her own shoes (and clothes but that's whatever), but she prefers to buy them

Sometimes Holly gets jealous of Poppy basically being able to do whatever they want.

Humphrey's story was completed when he was seven and tumbled off the small stone wall by his house, but since he didn't break, it "didn't count"

Cupid pretends to be bad with a bow sometimes to sneakily get people together, and it works

Dexter and Cupid are actually really good friends. He does camera work for her like he does for Blondie sometimes.

Cupid's crush was very brief.

Dexter threatened to smother Hunter if he didn't stop talking about Ashlynn once

Darling beats Daring in swords fights on a weekly basis, and they both think it's hilarious

Dexter destroys his siblings in races (foot, horse and bike). They always pretend to be shocked

Ginger makes her own chocolate and sells it to her fellow students.

In order to "cure" Hopper and Cedar's lack of "social ability", Milton forces them to show new students around. He says he's helping them, they both disagree.

Sparrow takes it upon himself to make Cerise swear. He's tired of her playing the "innocent Hood" (he obviously doesn't know about the wolf-dad)

Ramona has eaten poison to prove a point

Raven has been trying (and failing) to fail out of her villainy classes with the justification that "keeping you from making a villain out of me is the most evil thing I can do". Baba Yaga gives her an A just because she doesn't want Raven to repeat the classes.

Darling and Apple do not about the kiss until their next break from school; they both needed time, and Apple puts her studies above everything.

Maddie as vice-president: encourages people to relax more often, but also jumpscares them with random factoids and tea parties. Brilliant idea, really.

Cerise terrifies Bunny, and she doesn't even know why.

Cerise gets detention on a bi-weekly basis as an excuse to see her dad. Teachers really like assigning Badwolf detentions for Cerise because she comes back "to the right path"

Maddie has the best self-care, Raven and Cerise have normal self-care routines, and Cedar just doesn't

If Briar falls asleep during a test, she's allowed to take it throughout the rest of the times she's awake, until she's finished, for most classes.

Snow only ate applesauce for breakfast when she was pregnant, and Apple was born in the morning. Yes, she did call her daughter "Applesauce" for about a year. It's not on her birth certificate though.

His name is Dexterous because they ran out of "-ing" names when Dexter was born. They named Darling first

Ramona didn't eat the three little pigs, she just like likes the fear the rumor causes

Duchess is a better dancer than Justine, mostly because Justine's muscles are always tired (sleep-dancing, y'know), but also because it's one of the only achievements that she can just have

Kitty and Bunny play hide and seek, and usually Kitty wins because she cheats uses the Narrators.

Alistair translates from Riddlish to Ever After-ese easily

Alice was just kind of waiting for Alistair to come of of Wonderland from the rabbit hole he went in through, because she thought Alistair was just taking his time, and she though nothing in Wonderland could hurt him

She's in for a shock

And that's all...for now

[deadliestpieceontheboard]

Is Andrew Misogynistic? How so?

FYI: this is the second time I'm writing all this because Tumblr just. unpromptedly deleted the whole thing just when I was done, so if there's anything weird I apologize, and feel free to ask about it.

This started out as a reblog from @stuck-in-between-two-worlds that got too big and I decided it deserved it's own post, so I hope it helps :)

First of all we need to lay out that it is very clear that Nora didn't always have the vocabulary to explain the things she wanted to say. Think about Neil's sexuality, or Andrew's mental state. She knew how they worked, but not the proper names to things.

So when she stated that Andrew was misogynistic (on an ask about Neil's mom and through Renee's pov on son nefes), did she mean it as in "Think Women Are Lesser and #GenderRoles"? Very likely not.

This is what causes a lot of backlash, because today this is the definition we have for misogyny, and it really doesn't make sense for the character. But it's important to remember that the series came out almost 10 years ago, and much of it (including son nefes) was drafted even longer before that. Social issues were not talked about the same way as today, so it was very plausible then, if you didn't have the right information, to call a character that holds a prejudice against women, even if it's not based on a patriarchal view, misogynistic.

And Andrew DOES have issues with women, like it or not:

1- He had 12 therapists before Bee, many of whom straight up said they would never let him work with women again [x]

2 - This exchange with Renee

3 - His deal with Aaron was specifically about women hurting him. That's why Andrew's reaction to Allison was way stronger than to Matt, even when what she did was considerably milder. This extended to the point that "not letting a girl hurt him" meant not letting them get close to his brother at all.

These are the unquestionable examples, but some people could take how he treats Katelyn, the way he is agressive to Abby at the motel, or the justification for taking Dan to Eden's as signs of it as well, but that's more open to interpretation.

So what can we take from this? Purely from what was given in canon or word of god, that Andrew is weary and distrustful of women, but that it really is a PREjudice and he's capable of looking past it in Bee and Renee when they prove it to him that "they're not like other girls", so to say. This is a completely valid textual analysis, and, from what little she said, Nora's intention when writing the character. You can dislike it, hc it differently, but not deny that it isn't there.

Now, his reasoning for these beliefs is something we do not have explained anywhere, so while I (or anyone) can guess at it, this is where we enter personal interpretation / meta / headcanon territory, and you can choose to completely disregard my take.

If you ask me, I see it as a personal bias formed from his trauma. (which doesn't excuse his actions in any way btw).

Between Cas, Tilda, and what we can assume are many foster homes, Andrew sees women as a threat he can't predict. Men hurt him explicitly and outwardly, they hit him and slip in his bedroom, and these are all very palpable dangers. Women were the ones that abandoned him, turned a blind eye, neglected behind smiles. How do you protect yourself against that besides being careful? It's not something you fight with your fists. (honestly i can expand on that but this post is long as it is and idk if anyone is really interested)

So, TLDR: Is Andrew misogynistic? By the understanding we have of the word today, no. But I don't think it's fair to ignore all this facet of the character just because the author used the wrong word to define it, right?

Don't you think his flaws make it all much more interesting?

[patrocles]

What did you think about the show confirming that the targs conquered the 7K to prepare Westeros for the long night

So I'm kinda back and forth on this. When Viserys told Rhaenyra in the first episode I just burst out laughing like??? It almost feels jarring that after years of GOT not caring about prophecies and certainly not the BIG one, it feels weird to include it now especially since Arya killed the Night King anyways??? (But tbh I don't consider that ~~canon~~ anyways, so maybe the real long night will be the Jon Snow series?) I DIGRESS.

There's a lot to consider, so here's kinda where my brain is at:

If Aegon knew about the Long Night, and used that as an excuse to conquer Westeros, that doesn't make him a Good Guy. There's this idea that before the Targaryens, the Westerosi kingdoms were nothing more than a fumbling band of hill tribes that he and his sisters had to unite. But you could argue that it was precisely Targaryen presence that halted progression in the country. If anything, I think knowing about this apocalyptic-level threat and not really telling anyone about it (except your heir?) and using that as a secret justification to do the mass-murder conquering he wanted to do anyways makes Aegon even eviler than he already was. Because what did destroying Dorne or the Field of Fire have to do with helping save Westeros?

But I think that's also precisely what makes the Targaryens such a flawed and goofy-ass dynasty? We know from literally every other character that's had a prophetic dream that they're often vague and easy to misinterpret. And characters will often interpret them in a way that they want to. So there's no way of knowing that Aegon even interpreted his own dream correctly. But it is EXTREMELY within the Targaryen nature to center themselves regardless; What Viserys tells Rhaenyra in ep1 is basically "Aegon had this dream of a world-ending apocalypse and it can only be stopped if we're on the throne" and what's inscribed on the catspaw blade in ep4 are TOTALLY different.

I think the way it was interpreted was more about ensuring that someone of his bloodline was The Last Hero, but not about protecting Westeros. Because if he truly knew about this Grade-A level threat... why not at least share it with the Starks who've had a longer history with the Others and have been benefactors of The Wall for THOUSANDS of years longer? Why not come together like "Hey, you have this knowledge, I just had this crazy dream, lets share what we both know to come up with something that will benefit us all in the long-run." But he didn't do that? And none of the subsequent Targaryen kings did that, short of just pissing the Starks off like Ole King Joe. Only Queen Alysanne made it a priority to reach out to the Starks and try and build some kind of relationship. (Hell maybe Silverwing did leave some eggs in Winterfell as a failsafe in case something happened to the Targaryens in the future, and maybe Alyssa was actually Alaric Stark's to make sure there was someone in the bloodline with Ice and Fire ((this was a crack theory until i realized she's the only one of Joe and Alys' kids without silver hair and had some particular Stark traits in looks and temperament and her birth was right after Alysannes progress north))

But either way, I don't think all the Targaryens kings after Rhaenyra knew about it, as it seems like it was lost at some point and rediscovered by Rhaegar as a child. It actually gets really messy when you then think about Aegon IV and Summerhall, and the alleged Maester conspiracy that they helped kill dragons and their ALLEGED conspiracy to get the Targaryens off the throne? It just feels like there had to have been a better system of making sure that there was a failsafe in place beyond just a game of telephone and a knife. But I don't think that's a narrative or writing flaw, but just further proof that the Targaryens are kinda Not Good At This Whole Ruling Thing if they can't even handle something as serious as this.