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zeciex · 10 months

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Please don't think you're writing a predictable story just because I got lucky and figured some future plot points. I'm sure some other readers guessed as well but since most don't comment we simply aren't aware of them. Also it could be just me, but I like to think that in a good story, a good author won't make things happen just for shock value so on this basis alone I'm always dismissing certain scenarios that seem unlikely if this makes any sense.

For example, take the cheating stuff. While both Daenera and Aemond won't admit just yet their love for each other the real nature of their feelings is clear to us as readers and this is why I simply refuse to even take into consideration a future scenario where one of them will cheat on the other for any reason whatsoever. Why would Aemond cheat on her? Just because the relationship with his wife will be at a very low point after Luke and their child's deaths so much so that he chooses to deal with his grief by sleeping with another woman? And this will solve things how exactly? Of course as a man he may be able to get away with having as many affairs as he wants face to but I like to believe he thinks too highly of himself in order to do that and seem like Aegon 2.0 in the eyes of his family and of the realm (and he really doesn't seem like the type of man who deals with his grief and trauma the way Aegon does). And yes, he also won't do that because even after everything that will have happened, he truly loves his wife and won't ever hurt her in this way. Likewise, the same goes for Daenera. She'll have every reason to believe he's cheating on her with Alys, yes, and I won't blame her for it but would she take revenge on him by sleeping with another man? Absolutely no. And should she? Again, no.

I know you've assured your readers they won't be cheating on each other and I'm sorry for reopening the topic, but I've almost always found the cheating trope to be a sure way to ruin a good story if handled incorrectly so this is why I offered it as an example. No couple will truly have a happy marriage or relationship after forgiving a cheating partner. There won't be any happiness either if the one who cheated cheats back and then we'll all have to pretend that "it's all fine, they're even now!"…like, why? And why turn the person who got cheated on into a cheater as well?

Good point about Daemon perceiving Daenera giving birth to Aemond's child as a betrayal. A betrayal to her mother's cause, family and of course, as a confirmation of her having true feelings for Aemond. He's not stupid at all, he knows she would've gotten rid of the pregnancy somehow if this weren't the case, especially after seeing and realizing how she refused to give Boris a child (yeah sure she'll deny and tell Daemon this didn't happen, she'll claim she just didn't get pregnant but we know better!!). I do wonder though, will she suspect her that her mother was onto Daemon's plan to kill her child? And probably Jaehaerys as well? As I said previously, Rhaenyra would never agree to do something like this but surely there will be some doubt, no? It also makes perfect sense for Daemon to have Jaehaerys killed as well; 1. As cruel as it is, getting rid of Aegon's firstborn and heir is a smart move. 2. If you still go by canon events, Aegon will throw Aemond a feast for his kinslaying of Luke. I can't imagine Daemon will be happy when hearing about this, it seems only natural that he won't let something like this slide.

I also look forward to Daenera's time in King's Landing as a hostage basically. Most fics have their OFC fighting in the war with their dragon so this should be very different already. I think many authors are simply reluctant to portray the main female character as having almost no agency and seemingly at the whims of a husband due to how controversial this choice will be with some readers but…she's a hostage and there will be a war going on. Not everything has to be all nice and pretty and eventually she will regain her power. Having a storyline like this is very realistic for their world actually, as bad and unfair as it will be for Daenera as a person. Speaking of realism, I do also love how realistic Fenrick's opinion on her affair with Aemond was and how he always found excuses for Boris' infidelity on the basis of his gender. And I hated him for it and for essentially being the cause behind her getting married to Boris. Also, Boris himself is a realistic portrayal for what your average Westerosi man and husband would be like…usually in most fics the OFC is married or betrothed to a nice, good man (and there will be a rivalry/competition with Aemond for OFC's love) because apparently Daemon and Rhaenyra would never agree to arrange a marriage for their daughter to a bad and abusive man…which yeah I mostly agree, they won't knowingly force their daughter to be with such a man, and in this fic I doubt either of them will be indifferent at hearing how Boris actually treated her as his wife re: the marital rape and abuse BUT also considering Daemon's political ambitions and certain things he will be doing…I doubt he will truly regret for forcing Daenera's marriage in the first place and not giving her a choice, not truly…but she never was in a position to refuse the marriage anyway. And like you said, everything has consequences and her messing up with Aemond resulted in the whole thing with Boris.

By the way I also agree with everything else you wrote. Yeah, in the event Aemond decides to betray his family he won't be accepted by Rhaenyra and Daemon either. He will be considered untrustworthy, a spy and of course they will never agree to marry their daughter to him...probably the best case scenario for Aemond if he does something like this and still be spared is to become part of the Kingsguard, this way Daemon is sure he'll have no wife, kids that would be threatening Rhaenyra's future rule and the ones of her kids. I think the last chance at repairing this mess went away with Viserys refusing to do anything and with his death and Aegon's subsequent crowning - the war was always happening, it was a matter of when and who will be the one to officially shed the first blood, sadly for the Greens it was Aemond. Perhaps most of this would've been avoided, at least for this generation, if Viserys had been smarter he would've realized how deep the divide between the two sides of his family was especially after Driftmark happened and forced some strategic betrothals to unite the bloodlines between his children with Alicent and Rhaenyra's and Daemon's. They would've refused, I know, but he's still the king and should've forced the issue anyway. Now that I've written about this I wonder how the relationship between Daenera and Aemond would've been in an AU like this, had they been betrothed?

Loved the preview for the 55th chapter! I'm not worried since we know she'll get out of that and return to King's Landing buuuut…I now have to wonder whether or not Borros will ever be smart enough to suspect Aemond's involvement in Boris' death? Not now, but in the future he may be able to put two and two together and realize that that was no mere accident especially with Aemond being at the scene of the 'crime' and after hearing about him and Daenera getting married…well, one may suspect was something going on.

I fully agree with the whole cheating thing, which is why I've made it clear that neither of them will cheat because it won't make sense for their characters or what I want from the story. (And lets pretend that Aemond would even debase himself by cheating on the woman he loves, you can be sure that Daenera wouldn't EVER forgive him/trust him again especially if its after the loss of their son--and that is being said as if she wouldn't straight up kill Aemond for it.)

And yeah, Daenera will for sure have some doubt as to whether her mother knew of the plan. And Aegon will hold a feast in honor of the murder of Luke, I've already written it, though it will need editing when I get to it.

I know we all love a good girlboss that doesn't make mistakes, never lose power, and constantly has the upper hand/knows her way out of shit... But, I can't see a all of that happening when you're a political hostage during a war. I mean, look at Sansa! She had little to no agency, she was constantly under scrutiny and she had no say in anything. Daenera will be a hostage, trapped by the Greens as they fight the war, both physically fight but also PR wise. She's a pawn to them. And while she will do her best to make her own machinations, she will essencially still be very much powerless. The only true power she has is through Aemond. And since all (save for a select few) friends/servants are gone, she's constantly surveilled by servants that belong to the Queen, the Hand, Larys, whomever. She we will see her make a decision that (I intend to be) is ruthless and very dark, for the sake of securing/freeing herself. It won't be an easy one, and it will be the start of both a Dark Era, but also just... the era of desperation. (I also hope, if I can write it properly, to have a Dark/paranoid/mentally unstable era, but its not set in stone/it will be something to overcome and I hope that once she does, she'll be more assured of what she wants and what she'd do to get it/how powerful she really is)

I try and write the characters with empathy towards what/why they're thinking the way they do. As with Fenrick, he is a man, but also, he wants to protect Daenera and her reputation, and he thought that he was doing the right thing. We as writers/readers know what the consequences was and we know how deep Daenera/Aemond's connection is, but he sees it as a threat and something that could be used to tear Daenera down AND her mother. (Because it's happened before with Rhaenyra). As for Boris, I wanted him to be a realistic Westerosi man and since we know he's illiterate and how ill-tempered the Baratheon men are, I thought it was the best way to portray him. If she married Cregan in stead, things would have been different. And Daenera will confront Daemon with everything. He will be hard at first, and she'd be reluctant to tell the extent of the abuse (because that is humiliating AND it's how things were) but she will tell it. And neither Rhaenyra and Daemon will respond well. There will also be a scene where we follow Rhaenyra after the confrontation, where her and Daemon argue about it all.

--Oh, god, I'm giving out so many spoilers and what you can expect lol--

I think the only true way to somewhat avoid the war would have been if Viserys had dismissed Otto as Hand and had Rhaenyra take up a bigger part in the council. Rhaenyra would have then learned the ropes, so to speak. And then they should have married the kids. (I don't remember where in the new chapters or whether it's been posted yet, but Aegon says something along the lines of; Jace would have married Helaena and Aegon would have married Daenera (He says it to annoy Aemond)) And I think they would have been very plausible. But, I'd like to think that Rhaenyra wouldn't have had Daenera, her only daughter, marry Aegon. I have no idea what their relationship would have been like had all of this happened. I would like to think they would be happy. But the entire start of their relationship in my canon is built on animosity and lust. Hate fucking that turned into something more... then realizing that perhaps it wasn't so much hate fucking as it was angry fucking.

We will see how Borros responds when we follow Lucerys (i think) at storms end ;)

As always, thank you for your comment! I get so excited to see what you have to say that I make myself nauseous lol. I love hearing from you, and I will post ANOTHER preview of next chapter now!

#A Vow of Blood #A Vow of Blood meta #ask & answer

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stairset · 2 years

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For the record I’m not gonna add more to that post cause internet arguments are dumb and pointless especially if it’s about Star Wars and normally I just avoid them but I’m tired and got annoyed but I don’t wanna keep bothering that person nor do I want them to keep bothering me but just know that they got to the point where they started blatantly contradicting themselves and couldn’t even decide which canon they’re talking about which means I automatically win

#sw fans will have an argument stemming from a scene from a disney canon show #then i cite a bunch of examples from other disney canon materials #then suddenly disney canon doesn't matter and only lucas's personal canon matters #but then i mention something lucas said and suddenly his canon doesn't matter because uuuh death of the author #''death of the author'' isn't a get out of jail free card for not picking which canon you're going with or going by no canon at all #especially cause death of the author is controversial for a reason #some people think you can completely detach a work from the creator's intent but others would disagree with that #but no matter which way you lean you can't just say ''only the creator's canon matters''#and then say ''actually fuck the creator his intent doesn't matter'' IN THE SAME POST #you can't have it both ways you gotta PICK ONE #so no just saying ''death of the author'' isn't an automatic win #this isn't even just about that specific post this shit is EVERYWHERE in the sw fandom that's why i'm so annoyed #and i think a good chunk of the blame lies with those clickbait YOU DIDN'T KNOW THIS THIS CHANGES EVBERYTHING videos #cause i only know of maybe 1 or 2 sw youtubers that a) make it clear which canon they're talking about #and b) only present the straight facts and don't treat their personal interpretations or theories as objectively correct #most of them fail to do either of those and people take them at face value and that's why no one can agree on anything #ANYWAY now that i got that outta my system i'm dropping it now we'll return to your regularly scheduled bullshit tomorrow #shut up tristan

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witchcab · 3 years

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Restricted and Closed Practices II

Restricted Practices Eastern European Religions Eastern European religions include Catholicism and other forms of Christianity. Now, you do not have to be mentored or initiated to be considered a Christian. The restricted aspects of this are more in place for those who seek to obtain some sort of status in the hierarchy of Christianity- priest, cardinal, bishop, pope… All of these typically do require one to be baptized and chosen by their superiors in some way. Hoodoo

Hoodoo is a spirituality that was created by African slaves when they were brought to North America. It evolved based on African spiritualities, incorporating some Haitian, European and Indigenous folklore into it over time. Practitioners of Hoodoo were commonly African slaves, and due to this their work had to be kept secret from their slave owners. You could imagine what the punishments would be for practicing Hoodoo during those times, but I won’t get into that since it could be triggering for some. Although Hoodoo is dominantly practiced by black people, there are some people of other races who authentically practice Hoodoo. There are some people who find the practice being used by anybody other than black people to be controversial, but there are also black people who state that as long as you honour the origins of Hoodoo and pay respects to the slaves that developed the practice, you can learn it. Judaism Judaism is restricted, mostly for religious reasons but the history of the Jewish people could also be taken as a perspective as well. There is a process for converting to Judaism, which typically involves finding a Rabbi. The person would also need to begin studying Judaism- the religious texts, the holidays, etc… Of course there are other aspects depending on if you were born into the religion or not, as well as if you were attempting to seek placement in the hierarchy. There are more steps to converting to Judaism, so if that is something you wish to research feel free to. We also must acknowledge the history of the Jewish people. During World War Two, around six million Jewish people were murdered by Nazis. The methods used to murder these people were gruesome, so if you wish to research that feel free to. Although anti-Semitism did not begin with Hilter and the Nazis, they were one of the biggest faces of anti-Semitism in history. Anti-Semitism is still a problem today, which is why Judaism and its practices being restricted needs to be respected. Sikhism Sikhism is a religion originating from the Indian subcontinent. Although there isn’t necessarily a “hierarchy” in Sikhism, the communities are responsible for choosing five respectable people to be in place of authority. Although I was unable to find information on a specific conversion process, I would still urge you to seek out people that are within this religion to learn more about it. One particular word that people seem to find problematic that is in relation to Sikhism, as well as other Asian religions, is the use of the term “Guru”. Gurus were significant spiritual masters dedicated to their faith, and in Sikhism there were ten of them. The use of this term in modern times is seen as problematic because the Gurus of the Sikh were such important spiritual leaders, and their role in their religion was not taken lightly. Some view the use of Guru in some contexts to be disrespectful to the religion Hinduism The topic of Hinduism being restricted is a little tricky. Hinduism, like many other Asian religions, does tend to get appropriated by westerners a lot. Think of the western idea of Karma as one example of this- the original concept of karma that roots from Hinduism and Buddhism is NOT what westerners have made it out to be. Now, Hinduism is actually more of an umbrella term for a variety of sects, some of which are restricted or closed and some are not. The general understanding goes that, as long as you seek information from a true Hindu and respect the religion and its practices (especially if they are restricted or closed), you can convert. Tread carefully when getting into Hinduism- do lots of research; seek out a true Hindu to learn. Buddhism Similar to what I mentioned earlier, the topic of Buddhism being restricted is tricky. You can convert to Buddhism and use Buddhist practices, but there are certain practices that do have a limit for how open they are. Take chakras as an example- everybody has them, and you can work on your own chakras. However, you should avoid attempting to work with other people's chakras unless you seek

a mentor to teach you how to properly do so. This is another religion where you should do lots of research and seek a true practitioner from the religion. Gardenarian, Alexandrian & Corellian Wicca I’ve mentioned this before, but Wicca is a far more modern pagan religion than the rest. Wicca, generally speaking, took inspiration (in many cases, appropriated) other cultures and incorporated it into what Wicca is today. Although Wicca is generally open, these three branches of Wicca are considered restricted and typically require invitation and initiation. Shamanism Now, shamanism in particular is restricted depending on the culture. Many cultures have their own form of shamanism, and although most are restricted, Indigenous (North American) shamanism is considered to be closed. This will be explained later in the lesson, but for now we will focus on shamanism in general. As I already stated, different cultures have their forms of shamanism. The general rule is if you wish to practice shamanism, you must seek out a shaman and ask for mentorship to learn it. Although you may find all kinds of information on how to practice shamanism online, most of the information was stolen from other cultures and altered. Sami This one is particularly tricky. There is some historical evidence that the Sami influenced Norse paganism, and that there are some similar practices between them due to this. This makes the debate on how restricted Sami traditions are difficult to determine by outsiders. Yet another culture where you need to find somebody from the culture to get truly accurate information, but there are aspects of the Sami culture that are more closed than others. Closed Practices Indigenous Practices

Every Indigenous tribe has their own culture and traditions. Some tribes have similar traditions, but this happened over time through respectful teachings and trade. There are various titles within Indigenous tribes, such as Elder or Medicine Man/Woman. These titles aren’t given out easily- they are earned by those to seek them. Those who seek these titles go through years of training and initiation to earn these titles. Earning these titles means a great deal to Indigenous people, and to have outsiders take these titles and use them to scam others has become a major problem. Indigenous people do speak out about this, but they tend to get overshadowed. Beyond the cultural reasons for Indigenous practices being closed, there are also a lot of historical reasons. When Europeans arrived in North America, they also brought disease and genocide with them. Not only that, but they were forced to adopt European beliefs. This caused a huge shift in how Indigenous people practice over the centuries, and for a while they had to do everything in secret. At one point, it was completely illegal for Indigenous people to go through with their practices and ceremonies, and this didn’t change until 1978. If this isn’t bad enough, residential schools were put in place starting in the 1830s, and didn’t get completely shut down until 1978. Residential schools were boarding schools specifically for Indigenous children, where they were forced from their homes and taught how to be more “civilized”. In reality, these schools were just a hotspot for abuse and death. Indigenous children were forced to adopt Christianity, were not allowed to speak in their native language, cut their hair short and were never allowed to do anything that seems “Indian” to any extent. Punishments for breaking rules included washing their mouths out with soap, being locked in guardhouses and any form of physical abuse imaginable. Families were not able to keep their children from going to these schools because, if they resisted, the families would be arrested and forced to have their children taken away. With all of this in mind, please avoid using any and all Indigenous practices. This includes using their sacred medicines (such as white sage), using sacred tools (such as dream catchers), attempting to perform a powwow, etc… If you think you have Indigenous blood, find the name of your ancestors to prove it. Blood quantum is not relevant. Polynesian Religions Similar to what I wrote about Indigenous tribes, there are both religious and historical reasons for them being closed. Unfortunately, the historical reasons are very similar. There are different Polynesian religions, such as Hawaiian and Cook Islands Māori, and although they have similar histories each one is very different as well. Please do lots of research and avoid using their practices. Santeria Santeria is for those who have Cuban and other Latin American heritage. Similar to what I explained about African slaves and Hoodoo, Santeria grew out of the slave trade in Cuba. Today’s Santeria practices developed from a combination of the African Yoruba religion and Roman Catholicism. All Variations of Voodoo/Vodou African religions and their forms of Voodoo, Haitian Vodou, Cuban Vodou… There are plenty more forms of Voodoo/Vodou, but all are closed. All of these religions and their practices faced discrimination, racism and other acts of hate throughout the centuries. Although colonizers tried to wipe them out and “civilize” the people of these cultures, these practices still thrive today. Information about these religions and their practices that are authentic is hard to come by due to outsiders attempting to take their practices and adjust it to fit their narrative, however it is safe to say that since all of these religions have their own religious foundation and origins, they are closed for religious reasons just as much as they are because of historical reasons.

#baby witch #beginner witch #witches of tumblr #witchcraft #it felt appropriate

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missmcspooks · 2 years

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The Suspicious Death of Paulette Gebara Farah

This is a very controversial case that took place in Mexico in 2010, regarding the mysterious circumstances around a four year old girl's death. The case was officially ruled an accident, however it’s largely speculated that she was actually killed by the people closest to her.

Paulette Gebara Farah was a four year old girl who lived in the municipality of Huixquilucan de Degollado, Mexico with her mother Lizette, father Mauricio, and her seven year old sister. Paulette was disabled as she was born very light, so the doctors didn’t know if she would make it. Thankfully she did, but this caused her to suffer with developmental problems, and couldn’t walk by herself without assistance and couldn’t talk in sentences. She did attend a normal school, but she needed extra help in her classes and assistance walking. Her family was very wealthy, lived in a HUGE apartment, and even had multiple maids to help around the home. Mauricio took both of his daughters on a little weekend vacation to Valle de Bravo, while their mother was also away for the weekend somewhere else to visit a friend, but it was later revealed that she was actually meeting up with a man who she was having an affair with. Mauricio returned with the girls on the night of March 21st, 2010, while Lizette was already home and waiting to put them to bed. The next morning one of the nannies, Erika, went into Paulette’s room to wake her up and make the bed like she did every morning, but she wasn’t there. Erika went downstairs to notify the parents that Paulette was missing.

THE INVESTIGATION…

Erika and another maid named Martha searched for Paulette everywhere in her room. The closets, under her bed, multiple times. They went and searched her parents room and there were no signs of her there either. When they told Lizette and Mauricio that they couldn’t find Paulette, they both seemed really unphased about it. They were very calm, strangely unbothered by the situation, as if it were just another normal day. The parents didn’t even help the maids search for her, so the maids went and looked around the rest of the apartment and the apartment building with no luck. Mauricio’s brother informed his sister of her disappearance and she notified the authorities. Later, the Mayor Alfredo del Mazo Maza, notified the Attorney General of The State of Mexico, Alberto Bazbaz.

Forensic teams came in and searched the entire apartment at least five times on the first day they were there, and no signs of Paulette or any evidence of an intruder were found. There were no signs of a forced entry, no signs of a struggle, nothing. The parents claimed that there was nothing off or suspicious about the night she went missing, the dogs weren’t barking, everything just seemed pretty normal. There were many interviews conducted during the time of her disappearance, especially with her mother Lizette. There’s one interview specifically which was recorded while she was in Paulette’s room and sitting on the edge of her bed, which will be important later on. Due to these interviews, Paulette’s picture was EVERYWHERE. She was on billboards, newspapers, magazines, and on TV. It’s believed that this case was so popular due to them being a pretty wealthy family. The public started to become skeptical of the situation due to no ransom notes being left, or no calls from anyone trying to demand money, and people figured if a child from a well off family gets taken, why wouldn’t they try to make money off of it? Of course being taken for ransom isn’t the only reason children go missing.

SUSPICIONS GROW STRONGER…

On March 31st, 2010, Paulette’s body was found wedged in the corner at the foot of her bed, wrapped in her own sheets. This is the same exact spot on the bed where her mother was sitting for her interview. This was nine days after she had gone missing, and this really raised the public's suspicions on what really happened to the child. Not only was her own mother sitting on the bed where her child’s body was, but there were so many people going in and out of that room to search for her, and no one found her. The parents, the maids, the forensic teams, who claimed they searched her room, including her bed at least five times. The maids have entered the room to make the bed since then as well, and no one found her. People have slept on her bed within those nine days as well. Everyone knows a dead body produces a very unique and disgusting smell, so how could no one have smelled the body after so long of it being there? However, forensic investigators claimed that the body couldn’t have been there any longer than three days, so it had to have been a homicide. There was just no way the body could’ve been there any longer without producing a smell or being found.

However, the coroner ruled Paulette’s death to be an accident, and she died from asphyxiation from slipping between her bedpost and the mattress, and her covers compressed her lungs which caused her to suffocate. The authorities even had the nannies reenact themselves making the bed on video, and from the way they were doing it, it’s definitely possible that the nannies wouldn’t have been able to notice her body. Even with this information, it’s still widely believed that this wasn’t an accident, and she had to have been killed by someone in the home. Even if this truly was a homicide, there was no way for anyone to be able to prove it considering how all of the evidence in her room and in the home was so contaminated. Many, many people have come in and out of that home due to the property not being marked off as a crime scene. Footprints and fingerprints everywhere, DNA everywhere, it would’ve been extremely hard to try and pinpoint who the suspect(s) were. A close family friend, Amanda de la Rosa also lived with the family for several days after she disappeared, and slept in her bed every night.

THEORIES…

The main theory is that Paulette’s mother, Lizette, killed her due to frustration and being unable to handle all of her disabilities. People described Lizette as a rather cold person who lacked empathy and emotional attachment, and is someone who would have definitely seen Paulette as a burden. Lizette seemed emotionless and carefree regarding Paulette’s disappearance and murder, and was even quoted saying, “even if I lose Paulette, I still have another daughter.” Whenever she was accused of being involved in her murder, she just became angry and defensive and kind of anxious as well.

The next theory regards Mauricio, her father, as being her killer. It’s speculated that Paulette was already dead before they returned from their trip. However, I personally don’t feel like that’s the case. It doesn’t really make any sense. If they had flown there and back, she couldn’t have been dead. If they drove, where did he hide the body considering his other seven year old daughter was also with them? Wouldn’t she have asked where her sister was? It’s also believed that the Attorney General, Alberto Bazbaz covered up the murder for Mauricio since they were very close friends and the family had a lot of money and he could’ve paid him off or something like that. Alberto was also heavily accusing Lizette of the murder as well.

The next theory regards both parents being the killers. It’s theorized that the family were having some financial struggles and they were scared of not being able to afford their home or the luxurious lifestyle they lived, so they staged a kidnapping in order to get money from the government, the people of Mexico, and Paulette’s grandparents. They believe it’s possible that they stored Paulette in an air vent or something like that, told her they’d be back to get her soon, and were just so busy with the investigators, and the news press, and the interviews, that they couldn’t get back to her in time and she suffocated in the air vent, or wherever they had put her.

Another theory is that the whole investigation was rigged from the start, due to the relationship the family had with the District Attorney. It’s strange that the room and the home were searched at least five times and no one saw the body. The investigators were only ordered to look for signs of forced entry, and when they started looking for other sorts of evidence, they were ordered to stop looking.

Another theory involved the maids being the ones who killed her, due to always having to look after her, and being the ones to discover that she was missing in the first place. People also thought it was strange that they had made her bed after she disappeared and still didn’t notice the body there, but as I said early, it was definitely possible for them to not notice the body with the way they were making the bed.

Another theory was that Paulette’s sister accidentally killed her. They claim that she was probably jealous of all the extra attention Paulette received due to her disabilities, and that maybe her parents could’ve been fighting the night they got home, and it’s theorized that Paulette went into her sisters room scared and upset due to all the yelling, and her sister tried to shut her up, and accidentally killed her. Again, I don’t think this is right either, considering Paulette couldn’t really walk on her own and needed assistance, so how did she get into her sister's room?

I personally believe the theory of her mother being the killer is possible, or her father and everything being a coverup. I don’t believe the maids were involved, or her sister, and I’m kind of skeptical about Paulette being killed before she returned home. I suppose it’s possible, it just seems very odd. Or of course, it really was an accident.

#true crime #true story #truecrime #true crime blog #strange #Crime #blog #blogging #blogger #blog post #blogpost #writing #writers on tumblr #Writerscommunity #controversy

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crimsonbastard · 3 years

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Why Snape Vs The Marauders was Bullying and NOT a Rivalry:

The Status Quo:

James and Sirius: Pureblood Gryffindors who come from Prominent Families, especially Sirius who hails from one of the most ancient pureblood houses. Both of them are privileged and are loved by all(except those whom they hexed senseless).

Remus & Peter: Despite not being Wealthy both of them are Well off.

Snape: Impoverished Halfblooded Slytherin with a muggle name. Ostracised by almost everyone for being the "wierd kid" and for liking controversial subjects.

Oral accounts of Past Events:

Remus with Sirius in OOTP after Harry sees SWM:

"James and Snape hated each other from the moment they set eyes on each other, it was just one of those things, you can understand that, can´t you? I think James was everything Snape wanted to be — he was popular, he was good at Quidditch — good at pretty much everything. And Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts and James — whatever else he may have appeared to you, Harry — always hated the Dark Arts.” Smells like Damage Control

“Well,” said Lupin slowly, “Snape was a special case. I mean, he never lost an opportunity to curse James, so you couldn’t really expect James to take that lying down, could you?” Damage Control +2

“She didn’t know too much about it, to tell you the truth,” said Sirius. “I mean, James didn’t take Snape on dates with her and jinx him in front of her, did he?”

Dumbledore:

Dumbledore tells a 1st Year Harry(who only knew great things about his father till his 5th Year) that Snape and James detested each other like how Harry and Malfoy detest each other. This is coming from the same guy who has a Gryffindor Boner and didn't do anything when Sirius almost got another Student Killed.

Remus in HBP(post Sirius's Death):

Funny how Remus attempts damage control when he's with Sirius after Harry discovers James's horrible behaviour but the moment Sirius dies it's as if a shackle has been lifted off of Remus and he becomes free.

Taken that Remus didn't want to tell Harry that James's abhorrent behaviour was unjustified cause nobody wants to speak ill of a dead guy and the said dead guy in question is your "best friend" and his son recently discovered his father's shitty behaviour. But such a stark difference before and after Sirius's death is suspicious.

Psychological Trauma:

Remus and Sirius in PoA: Reminiscing about the good times and how Sirius wishes to visit Hogwarts as a free man again.

Snape in PoA:

Absolutely losing his shit as Remus, the guy who almost killed him as a werewolf and as far as Snape knows, willingly participated in Sirius's fatal prank gets hired as a professor. Keeps reminding him to take the Wolfsbane potion.

On Gaurd as Sirius, the guy who bullied him and attempted to get him killed has escaped Prison in which he was placed for Murdering 13 Muggles.

Snape also Suffers from PTSD and Depression. He's forced to work in the same place where he endured a lot of trauma. He's prone to Multiple Triggers that include: Places where he almost died(Shrieking Shack), Places of Humiliation (near the Black Lake), Anything Resembling the source of his trauma (Harry who is a carbon copy of James)

Keep in mind that after the Betrayal in HBP Snape effortlessly blocks the Spells Harry throws at him but the moment Harry uses Levicorpus Snape loses his shit.

Numbers:

The Marauders: 4 Wizards.

Snape was by himself.

The only Slytherin student who gave two cents about Snape was Lucious and he graduated when Snape was In his 2nd or 3rd year. Bellatrix clearly hates Snape whereas Mucliber and Avery only let Snape hang out with them. If it weren't for Lucious's influence then they would've ditched Snape cause there would be no reason for them to let a Poor Half-blood who's last name comes from a Muggle Family hang out with them unless a higher authority (Lucious) commanded them to do so.

The End.

PS: Feel Free to add more Snovers!

@ottogatto Thanks for the Picture!

#pro snape #pro severus snape #snape fandom #snape community #anti marauders #anti snaters #snape defence #snape deserved better

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sengokuconversations · 2 years

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Honnouji Incident: a case of one betrayal

Scene of burning Honnouji temple (本能寺焼討之図), by Yousai Nobukazu (楊斎延一)

At around 6 pm on the June 1st Akechi Mitsuhide led his troops numbered 13 000 people out of Kameyama castle in his fief, Tanba province. They were supposed to go to help Hashiba Hideyoshi with his dragging campaign against Mouri Terumoto in Western Japan, but instead turned east towards Kyoto. Only four of his trusted retainers knew the real goal, and even they were instructed on it just a day before. The rest of the force were informed that Nobunaga, who stayed with only 100 men in Honnouji temple in the capital, requested another parade there. One of the soldiers later recalled that he did not even think of the possibility of attacking their own lord. Around 6 am, June 2nd, the fight broke up. Nobunaga woke up as usual, and after the morning routine heard the sounds of a fight. Mori Ranmaru informed him of Akechi men's presence, and Nobunaga reacted very calmly, said legendary phrase zehi nashi, and entered the fight with a bow. Soon the bowstring snapped, and Nobunaga was wounded in the arm. After that, the only source on the events is Shincho koki, an account by Ohta Gyuichi - according to it, Nobunaga ordered the servants to set aflame the inner chambers and run. Presumably, he killed himself with the assistance of Mori Ranmaru. Oda Nobutada was residing in Myokaku temple, located around 600 m from Honnouji. He attempted to help his father once he found out what was happening, but Murai Sadakatsu, comendant of the capital, informed him that the temple was already ablaze. He then retreated to nearby Nijou residence - the former Nobunaga’s residence that he gifted in 1579 to prince Sanehito. This guaranteed Nobutada a worthy death instead of running away, possibly into the arms of an unknown enemy. After around 2 hours, he retreated to the inner chambers with his page Kaneda Shinsuke and killed himself, ordering his men to ensure that his head wouldn't fall into enemy hands. Nobunaga’s body was never retrieved.

This post will be summarizing in Englishan article by A.F. Prasol, titled “Oda Nobunaga's Death: Causes And Circumstances”. It is a broad overview of possible factors that influenced Akechi Mitsuhide to betray his lord.

The question of Akechi Mitsuhide’s motivation is highly controversial and leaves a lot of blank spaces that cannot be filled due to lack of historical sources, especially accounts by Mitsuhide himself, so there is still ongoing discussion on the subject. The author of the article presents hypothetical motives as falling into two categories: personal and political.

Personal motives include:

1) Drastic difference between Nobunaga and Mitsuhide's tempers and personal insults that Nobunaga inflicted on his followers.

2) Lack of career prospects for Mitsuhide on Nobunaga's service.

3) Mitsuhide's own ambitions.

Political motives include:

1) Nobunaga's diminishing attitude towards acclaimed political institutes: the Shogunate, Imperial court etc.

2) Nobunaga's policies deliberately destroying the way of life of the warrior class.

3) Differences in their origins and in self-identification.

Regarding the first point in the list of personal reasons, Nobunaga was indeed very cruel to his own vassals: various contemporary sources show him being as quick to anger as he was quick to offer rewards, and Mitsuhide experienced a fair range of insults from him as well.

To recount a few of the episodes presented in this article: - April 1582, Mitsuhide and Nobunaga talked about the latest campaign against Takeda Katsuyori, Mitsuhide praised the quick victory and mentioned how everyone worked very hard for this. Nobunaga reacted very strongly to this, an account describes him grabbing Mitsuhide's collar and hitting him on the head, exclaiming "Was it you who worked hard?" Mitsuhide was a part of this campaign indeed, but he did not participate in direct combat.

- May 1582, Nobunaga was welcoming Ieyasu and Anayama Baisetsu (former Takeda retainer who changed allegiance to Tokugawa) in Azuchi. Mitsuhide was responsible for the guest housing, and he ordered fancy fish to be brought from Sakai and Kyoto. Nobunaga accused him of feeding them rotten food and ordered Mori Ranmaru to punish him by hitting him on the head with the fan. Ranmaru was significantly younger than Mitsuhide (17 and 54 years old respectively), and it added an additional level to the insult.

There are two episodes that often are brought up in popular culture, and I really want to include them because I saw them stated as true myself, but they are not supported by evidence. - Mitsuhide's mother was never sent as a hostage to besieged Yagami castle as a guarantee of castle’s residents' safety, this part was created in the 17th century as a plot for kabuki play.

- Mitsuhide did not have his provinces taken by Nobunaga with a promise to reward him with Izumo and Iwami, at that moment (spring 1582) belonging to the Mouri, an enemy of the Oda. This episode only is mentioned in Akechi gunki that was written about a century after the death of Nobunaga, and there is no other evidence this happened. Besides, the reassignment of provinces was happening after the campaign and there are records of Mitsuhide ruling his lands up until his death.

The author of the article offers the prevalence of political motivation for Mitsuhide's actions over personal. He argues that personal insults were not out of the ordinary at the time and while they offer a convenient and easy to understand reason for betrayal, it is more likely that Mitsuhide had deeper reasons behind the attack on Honnouji that had more to do with the political landscape of the time.

First, Mitsuhide's position in the Oda hierarchy was on the decline. Nobunaga did not afford him with any personal campaigns after 1579, and he was valuing the direct results of his retainers on the battlefield most of all.

Second, Mitsuhide's ties to the Chosokabe. His loyal retainer Saito Toshimitsu was in familiar relationship with Motochika, and in 1575 Mitsuhide helped to seal a treaty between Oda and Chosokabe against Miyoshi clan (not the Miyoshi trio one, this one is from Shikoku). But later on, when Chosokabe gained control over the island, Nobunaga reconsidered and allied with the remnants of Miyoshi instead, breaking the treaty. In Chosokabe Motochika-ki, there is an interesting mention that after May 7th of 1582 (Honnouji incident took place 2nd of June) Toshimitsu discussed with Mitsuhide the possibility of killing Nobunaga. There is no evidence on how the discussion ended.

Third, the disrespect Nobunaga showed to any institute of power in Japan. The main ones that influenced Mitsuhide’s decision are:

- Nobunaga repeatedly pressuring the emperor to change the calendar so it would be matching with the Oda clan calendar. It was considered an attempt to intrude on the emperor's priesthood, as the definition of the calendar was a sacred practice of the imperial family and its astrologists. In the diary of Kajuji Haretoyo, a member of the imperial court, there is a mention of emperor court officials meeting with Mitsuhide to discuss the possibility of killing Nobunaga.

- In the Sengoku era there was an expression isshou kenmei (it still exists to this day, but is written with different characters - nowadays “shou” is written with kanji meaning life「一生懸命」 , but during sengoku era "shou" was written with kanji meaning place「一所懸命」). This expression in 16th century is interpreted to mean "place of which value is life", and higlighted how much warlords valued their hereditary holdings. The land obtained in the conquest was theirs by the right of the blood they spilled, and to be stripped of it was a fate worse than death. Nobunaga practiced the rotation of the lands, taking and giving away by his own desire, and constantly moved himself, depending on where he was planning to make his next move. He gave lands temporarily, counting himself as their real owner. After Azuchi was built, Nobunaga issued an order for every warlord to leave their holdings with their families to live under the walls of the castle.

And, fourth, there is also a possible influence of Mitsuhide's possible ambitions.

- Mitsuhide was a man of the Toki family, a branch of the Minamoto clan. Educated and sophisticated man, he was aware of the clan's history and the conflict with the Taira family. Nobunaga called himself Taira (there are documents signed by him where he uses that family name), and him accepting the title of the shogun would have been a highly symbolic event, since Taira never got to hold as much power and acceptance from the court. This version has a very poetic argument - the poem Mitsuhide wrote 29 may 1582 on a poetry tournament, just 3 days before the incident. It is in the renga genre, which is full of double meaning and symbolism. It sounded like this: Toki wa ima ame ga shita shiru satsuki kana

「時は今雨が下しる五月哉」

Which can be read as “Time for the ruler to conquer the world, such is this May”. But it can be read in a different way too, “Warriors of Toki are taking power, such is this May”. Toki here refers to the Toki clan, of which Akechi clan was a branch of.

- Mitsuhide personally helped Ashikaga Yoshiaki to get in touch with Nobunaga when he needed help getting the place of the shogun. He could have felt personal responsibility for the degradation of the institutes of power that ensued after Nobunaga became so powerful.

Mitsuhide, being considered the master of political intrigue, left only one potential written evidence of his plan, and it is his letter to Uesugi Kagekatsu. In the letter there was no mention of the betrayal, but only the plea to offer military aid to Yoshiaki. The letter arrived at Uozu castle July 1st, and similar letters Yoshiaki sent himself after the incident. The vague containments of the letter can be explained by the fact that the messenger had to cross Nobunaga-controlled lands and it took him seven days. In these circumstances already incriminating correspondence with an enemy was already a grave offense. The date on the letter can let us think that the decision on betrayal was made between 17th and 25th of May.

In summary: Mitsuhide’s betrayal had complex motivations behind it. Personal reasons, like his own relationship with Nobunaga, personal ambitions and prospects on Nobunaga’s service, overlapped with political reasons - general dissatisfaction with Nobunaga’s course and, more important, his general disrespect towards the traditional hierarchies of power. But all the reasons described above alone would have unlikely resulted in any action on Mitsuhide’s part. The decision that Mitsuhide ultimately made was urged by a sequence of events which occured during spring of 1582: in February Nobunaga pressured the emperor into changing the calendar, publicly refused the offering of shogun title in april, and decided to start war with Chosokabe. In the second half of may situation was very hopeful for Mitsuhide - all Nobunaga's retainers were either away (Hideyoshi - in Bicchu in a stagnating campaign against Mori Terumoto, Katsuie - in Ecchu against Uesugi Kagekatsu, Ieyasu was in Sakai without his troops). And Mitsuhide had 13 000 people on his hands for supposed reinforcement of Hideyoshi's campaign, plus silent approval of the court and potential support of those unhappy with Nobunaga's rule. One chance in a million, who would have passed?

Sources: Гибель Ода Нобунага: причины и обстоятельства, А. Ф. Прасол (Oda Nobunaga's Death: Causes and Circumstances) https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/明智光秀

#mod 2 #Sengoku Era #sengoku jidai #akechi mitsuhide #oda nobunaga #honnouji incident #long post

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stillness-in-green · 3 years

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Ahistorical, Absurd, and Unsustainable (Part Three)

An Examination of the Mass Arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front

Introduction and Part One Part Two

PART THREE: Ethical Problems

Law Enforcement Conduct

The first thing that jumps out—the thing everyone talks about first and foremost about the raid—was Hawks’ murder of Twice. Murder is a controversial word in this context, I know, but I stand by it: regardless of his guilt or his intent, Bubaigawara Jin was a fleeing man who Hawks made a cold, rational decision to quite literally stab in the back. In that moment, Hawks appointed himself as an executioner of the state and murdered a man without due process—no trial, no judge, no nothing. It was an extrajudicial killing,[26] and while I know many people in the U.S. have gotten kind of jaded about that sort of thing, let me assure you that police brutality is still police brutality even when it’s being exercised against people who have committed crimes.

To illustrate this, allow me to share a few more excerpts from the Penal Code:

Assault and Cruelty by Specialized Public Employees: When a person performing or assisting in judicial, prosecutorial or police duties commits, in the performance of their duties, an act of assault or physical or mental cruelty upon the accused, suspect or any other person, imprisonment or imprisonment without work for not more than 7 years is imposed.

Abuse of Authority Causing Death or Injury by Specialized Public Employees: A person who commits a crime prescribed under the preceding Article and thereby causes the death or injury of another person is dealt with by the punishment for the crimes of injury or the punishment prescribed in the preceding Article, whichever is severer.

The punishments for Criminal Injury are imprisonment for not more than fifteen years or a fine of not more than 500,000 yen or, if the injury results in death, imprisonment for not less than three years. That’s really what Hawks ought to be looking at for Twice's murder, save that apparently heroes just aren't liable for this stuff, otherwise they'd be up against it all the time in the course of “fighting villains.” Certainly, Hawks doesn’t seem to have faced any repercussions thus far, beyond having to apologize in a press conference.

Now, again, many American readers of My Hero Academia are deeply embedded in a culture that normalizes police violence, and so there is a lot of callous handwaving about how Hawks did the right thing because Jin was a significant threat. In response to such dismissal, let me provide a few more numbers:

In the U.S. in 2019, law enforcement killed over a thousand people.

In the same year in Japan, law enforcement killed two. Two people.

In the U.S., a major factor in how police keep skating on these deaths is the legal doctrine of qualified immunity, which is nominally intended to protect officers from frivolous lawsuits in cases where they’re ruled to be acting in “good faith,” a vague ruling which has made successful prosecution of police brutality and negligence all but impossible.

Japan, and I cannot stress this enough, does not have this doctrine. The significance of law enforcement taking a life is not so casually brushed aside in other places in the world, so please don’t try to tell me that Horikoshi was trying to get across the idea that Hawks did the right thing, easy as that. The critical depiction of heroes and Hero Society dehumanizing their enemies is all over the manga.

When the Tartarus guards discuss what the government is doing about Gigantomachia, one of them complains that the higher-ups can’t use missiles—missiles!—on him because he’s quote-unquote-human.[27] During their battle at Kamino, All Might tells All For One that this time, he’s going to put him in a prison cell—he characterizes his attempt to kill All For One six years ago as a mistake. Even in the spin-off manga, Vigilantes, designated police representative Tsukauchi[28] looks absolutely aghast at Endeavor’s willingness to use lethal force against Pop Step, an innocent-until-proven-guilty minor, even though, at that time, they have all the evidence in the world that she is actively engaged in setting off bombs in populated areas.

Most prominent is the series’ treatment of the High End Noumu. The heroes rationalize them as corpses, monsters, inhuman, all in order to kill them guilt-free,[29] and this rationalization spills over to Shigaraki during the War Arc, as the chasm of understanding between heroes and villains reaches its most stark. Yet, that same arc was proceeded by the reveal of the truth about Kurogiri, which had Tsukauchi directly acknowledge that they may have misunderstood the Noumu as the series dangled the possibility that Kurogiri possesses lingering awareness from Shirakumo Oboro. Earlier, we had Ending, a man who wanted Endeavor to kill him and thought Endeavor would do it specifically because Endeavor killed the High End, and this act set him decisively apart from the non-murdery heroic norm. Even into the War Arc itself, we were getting new information on the Noumu: to wit, we were shown incontrovertible proof—in the form of Woman’s internal monologue in Chapter 268—that the High End Noumu do think.

Even if we assume the government has relaxed its prohibitions about public servants assaulting people in the course of carrying out their duty, it does not follow that Hawks’ extrajudicial execution was totally fine. Heroes are not supposed to kill because police are not supposed to kill, and in Japan, it isn’t assumed that they will the moment they run into resistance.

And look, this is not to say that Japanese police never get away with police brutality. Obviously, the country has its own problems with the issue, typically involving racism and ethnocentrism. But the way that some people in the fandom just brush off Jin’s death does a disservice to the way the series frames Hawks’ actions and what that framing is communicating to a Japanese reader.

Also, even putting aside the matter of his death, openly taunting a mentally ill man about how easy it was to fool him definitely pings me as an act of mental cruelty, though of course there’s no one to sue Hawks over that one, seeing as he murdered the victim and only witness. (Chapter 264)

That all said, there are other issues with the heroes’ actions during the raid. One is called out right in the text: Midnight acknowledges that the use of chemical agents is illegal, but calls upon Momo to engineer knock-out drugs to use against Gigantomachia anyway. Is that an action Momo will face any repercussions for at all? And if not, what does it imply about the setting that she won’t?

Here’s another big one: what’s the legality of heroes using their quirks against civilians? Because that’s what the vast majority of the PLF are, civilians. Oh, they’re suspects, sure, but throughout the manga, “heroes” aren’t set up as people who just fight any and every tiny crime they come across. From the very first chapter, heroes are set up as a specific counter to “evildoers” designated as “villains”—legally defined as people who use their quirks illegally two or more times.[30]

There is a very illuminating scene in the second chapter of Vigilantes in which Aizawa confronts Knuckleduster for his assault of a random businessman and, the moment he realizes Knuckleduster is quirkless, apologizes for the misunderstanding and walks away. If Knuckleduster doesn’t have a quirk, Knuckleduster by definition cannot be a villain, and thus, Aizawa is not authorized to throw down with him.[31] It’s somewhat unclear, not least because a lot of the evidence is in the more-interested-in-systemic-worldbuilding Vigilantes, but there is reason to believe that heroes are not allowed to use their quirks against people who are committing mundane crimes.[32] If anything, I should think that heroes only using their quirks on people who are using their quirks illegally is part of the philosophical scaffolding that gives heroes their moral authority—you see this argument from the first bearer of One For All, who loudly espouses that people not only should not use their quirks selfishly, but that quirks should only be used to help others. This kind of supposed selflessness is what MHA’s current society is built on.

To see the relevance here, consider Trumpet. Oh, he absolutely was using his quirk illegally, but can the system prove that?[33] After all, he only ever used it on allies—do you think they're in a big hurry to snitch on him? Do you think Mr. Compress is going to? And if the police can't prove Trumpet used his quirk illegally, then is he even a capital-V Villain? What about all those other rank and file types? Certainly we saw the ones at the villa fighting back with quirks, but what about those supporters at bases scattered around the country? Did they fight back, and if so, did they do it with quirks? If not, was it legal for them to be targeted by heroes?

More importantly, can they mount an argument on that, be it a legal or a moral one?

The Scope of the Operation

The next big ethical problem actually predates the raid itself, and it’s this: how did the Commission know where to target their raids? How did they obtain that information? Specifically, how many privacy violations were involved? It strains credulity well past my personal breaking point to imagine that Hawks and the Commission were able to get every name, every base of operations, especially given the limitations they were under—the fact that Hawks couldn’t communicate openly, the hard time limit before the PLF put their plan in motion, making sure they didn’t tip off someone in the massive secret organization that had people working in heroics, the government, the infrastructure, etc.—but let’s consider the sorts of avenues the HPSC did have available to them.

So to start with, they send in Hawks, who’s specifically trained to extract information from people without raising suspicion about his motives. Doubtlessly, he’s able to get all sorts of names,[34] starting with the higher-ups—not just Re-Destro and his inner circle, but also any of the advisors that e.g. run businesses that they invite him to patronize, MLA heroes, and so on. And with a decent crop of names in hand—let us assume for the sake of argument that Hawks had some way to communicate those names to his handlers—the HPSC can start doing background checks and digging in.

Where do these people come from? Where were they born, and, if they moved, where did they settle? Where do they work? What are their social pastimes? Trace the commonalities, look into publicly available records, use wiretaps…

Yes, the police in Japan can totally use wiretaps if they suspect organized criminal activity—it was one of the powers expanded significantly under that controversial 2017 law I footnoted earlier. One thing to note is that this does require a warrant, or at least the expectation that a judge will grant a warrant.[35] But how far does that go? Can they get a warrant for financial records? How about phone records? E-mail accounts?

Can they wiretap people for no reason save their association with a name Hawks provided? If a PLF member attends a Jazzercize class on Thursday mornings, does every member of that class start noticing a weird little reverb on their phone calls for a week? Does Re-Destro’s hometown have an influx of people poking around evaluating its potential as a place to live? If Slidin’ Go once snatched your dog out of traffic and you subsequently bought a Slidin’ Go keychain, are you and your family now under investigation?

Getting details on people like the CEO of Detnerat and the head of the Hearts & Minds Party is probably pretty straightforward; heck, investigating Kizuki Chitose’s publication history was probably a goldmine in and of itself. That sort of surveillance gets more complicated and difficult to justify—and to make credible to the reader—the further down the chain of command you go, though. Sooner or later, the HPSC would have had to make a call: knowing that they don’t have the time, freedom, and resources to perfectly get only and exactly everyone that’s a real threat, do they overcompensate or do they undercompensate?

You only have to look at Hero Society to know which answer they were going to go with.[36]

To be fair, undercompensating, while it clearly would have been easier on their strained resources, ran the risk of leaving threats out there to come back to bite them later. They likely thought that they’d done enough undercompensating for Shigaraki Tomura, compounded by the fact that apparently there hadn’t been enough done about Destro’s followers back in the day, either. I mean, better to grab everyone and then let the courts sort it out, right? Rather than risk innocents getting hurt?

Well, let’s talk about innocents. Innocents, and the costs of overcompensating.

Pictured: a man who was in daily close contact with the leader of the movement and who was at one point in time in possession of a copy of the movement's manifesto. (Chapter 218)

The problem with grabbing everyone in a group, even the most obviously PLF-aligned groups, is that there are always going to be both people who don’t seem to know anything because they’re very good at living double lives and aren’t particularly active on the recruitment front, and people who don’t seem to know anything because they legitimately don’t know anything.

The Gunga Villa is straightforward enough—on paper, it was probably reserved for a business retreat for four months, because you certainly wouldn’t want some random newlywed couple booked for a nice mountain honeymoon recognizing Shigaraki Tomura wandering around. Same story for the employees; the MLA wouldn’t have put the League up at the villa if there was a chance that anyone there would rat them out. So I think we can assume relatively fairly that anyone in the building the day of the conference is solidly implicated, whatever their claims might be otherwise.

Of course, plenty might well try to claim that they were just there for the vacation, or just started work last week and had no idea the place was a nest for conspiracy, but that was where Hawks spent most of his time, and most of the people at the villa presumably fought back against the heroes. It might be a complicated process, matching hero eyewitness testimony to every person there, but you can at least sort of see the path to it.

Other groups, however, are a lot less straightforward. Consider the following categories:

The Liberated Districts

As I discussed earlier, Deika was presumably a high watermark on societal saturation, but Deika still only counted 90% of the population as “Liberation Warriors, lying in wait.” That leaves 10% unaccounted for. So who are those 10%? Are they children?[37] Some children too young to know anything about the PLF, and some old enough to know but not yet old enough to be considered warriors for the cause? Are they instead elderly people, maybe remnants from when the MLA first started to infiltrate the town that have just never had enough close family or social life to get pulled into the Liberation Army by the usual vectors?

By far the worst option is if Trumpet’s 90% accounts for anyone even remotely connected to the MLA—that would mean one out of every ten people in Deika is legitimately completely ignorant of what the powers that be had brought in. How on earth are you supposed to tell those people apart from the other 90% when the heroes sweep in and arrest absolutely everyone? Or are we to believe that the HPSC had time to get in an agent to flash a covert L-sign at everyone in town and they only arrested people who visibly acknowledged it?

These problems only get worse for our hypothetical town that’s 70% PLF. That opens you up to far more people who have only recently started getting drawn in. Consider the disaffected twenty-something whose family has no idea what’s been keeping him out so late in the evenings. The young mother who met the nicest and most convincing people via the daycare, but whose husband is always out of town on business trips so she hasn’t had time to introduce him to anyone. The working parents who just joined up and whose kid, away at hero school, doesn’t know anything—yet.[38]

Evaluating these peoples’ social circles and financial history for other PLF attachments is going to turn up a ludicrous number of false positives unless the Commission can narrow down exactly when and where such people crossed paths with the ideology of Liberation. So many people would have been raised to it, people whose entire lives are suspect, but mistaking even one new recruit for a lifelong loyalist gives you exponentially more avenues to baselessly suspect people—and as established, the Commission just doesn’t have the time to be overly discerning.

Detnerat, Shoowaysha, and Feel Good Inc.

This is another line of attack that seems like it should be a bullseye, but is actually quite the opposite. Detnerat is a business that is run by the leader of the entire movement, yet the fact that not everyone who works there is a member of the MLA is one of the very first things we find out about them! Miyashita was something akin to a personal aide or secretary to Rikiya, someone Rikiya liked well enough that he was on the verge of introducing Miyashita to his other friends—and Miyashita didn’t know the first thing about his boss’s true affiliations. It’s patently obvious from that alone that not everyone at Detnerat is PLF, and it's likely that the numbers of the faithful are even thinner at Curious and Skeptic's outfits, where they're high-ranked executives but, crucially, not actually in charge.

This is, of course, complicated further by the fact that people who work at e.g. a publishing house are probably there because they agree with that publishing house’s politics, whether or not they know what’s going on behind the scenes. Ditto with Detnerat—certainly there would be people there who just needed a job and could charm their way through an interview without an inner passion for the work, but loads of people probably work there because they legitimately believe in the company’s ethos. So how do you tell people who have relatively radical personal politics without having any idea about the terrorism apart from the people who are absolutely PLF/ex-MLA but who are now lying about it because their organization's cover is blown and the response to that is, “Well, time to go back underground!”

The Hearts & Minds Party

Membership of this party would seem to be a good indicator, but using it that way too unquestioningly is also very flawed. This is because the HMP particularly is probably an excellent recruitment tool for the MLA/PLF. The note above about having radical political beliefs but still being ignorant about the planned acts of terror is especially true for the HMP. The Commission cannot just pull the voting records and arrest all of them because plenty of them are going to be totally ignorant of what was really going on with the heart of the party, only joining up because they believed in the kinds of things the HMP was platforming on—less repressive quirk use laws, prison reform, very possibly issues like the abolishment of the legal category “villain” or greater social safety nets. Just because someone votes for those things, doesn’t mean they know about or would support the MLA’s violent extremism or the PLF’s anarchic goals.

So at what level of initiation does the Commission call a cut-off? How long does someone have to have been voting straight-ticket HMP for them to be considered condemned by that association?

Over and over again, the question arises: how did the heroes and the police distinguish the initiated from the uninitiated? And given that Japan’s legal system at least nominally requires that guilt be proven, what are they going to do when huge numbers of those people claim innocence?

The Presupposition of Guilt

Let’s take a few minutes to circle back to what I talked about earlier, the presumption of guilt and how it relates to arrests, convictions, and the perception of arrestees in Japan. This is going to swerve hard back towards real-life Japan issues for a bit, but it is exceptionally relevant when examining what’s likely to happen to the people arrested in the raids, innocent and guilty alike, so thanks in advance for bearing with me.

In Japan, the rate of conviction is extraordinarily high—if you’re in anime fandom and active in social justice circles, you may have seen the tumblr posts about the country’s famed 99.9% conviction rate.[39] There are a range of explanations for this. Defenders argue that, compared to police in many other countries, police in Japan are very cautious and don't move to prosecute unless a case is all but airtight; thus, many who are arrested may well be released without charge if there is even the slightest doubt that the case will hold up in court. One can easily see truth to this by looking at the numbers on how many people are arrested in Japan versus how many are actually charged: Wikipedia notes (albeit without citation) that in the U.S., roughly 42% of arrests in felony cases result in prosecution, while in Japan the figure is only 17.5%.

Conversely, critics note that a major feature of convictions in Japan is the confession, and confessions can be coerced, particularly in the sorts of conditions that those imprisoned in pre-trial detention are kept—no legal representation, no contact with their families, loved ones or employers, no requirement that they be informed about what they’re being charged with, potential weeks upon weeks kept in isolation, sessions of questioning that can extend for most of the day.

There have also been cases in which confessions have been found to be falsified, for example by having the suspect sign a paper and then filling in or altering other details after the fact.

There are some other factors about confessions to be aware of here:

In Japan, it is not legally permissible for a suspect to be convicted solely based on their confession. The constitutional provision in this regard is something called himitsu no bakuro, the “revelation of secret.” The revelation of secret is something in the confession that is factually verifiable and which, at the time of the confession, only the suspect could have known. Common examples are things like the location of a previously undiscovered body or the time and location where a weapon used in the crime was purchased. The majority of verdicts that are overturned in Japan are overturned because of issues with a confession.

Sentencing is also very lenient compared to the U.S., particularly if the suspect was cooperative with police and admitted guilt (seen as showing remorse). Thus you wind up with a situation in which suspects believe that they’ll lose a case if they go to trial (because practically everyone does) and prosecutors—rather more aware of the weaknesses in a case than a confused and vulnerable layman—don’t want to bring a shaky case to trial, and thus both parties are invested in whatever will get the suspect out with a minimum of effort. The result of this is a high number of people released on “suspended prosecution,” which is an admission of guilt, but with a prosecutor's decision to show lenience while still establishing precedent for possible later offenses warranting more severe punishment. This is a particularly common result for first-time offenders, especially in non-violent crimes.

Note that suspended prosecution is not at all the same thing as being released for lack of evidence; a suspect is conceding their guilt by accepting the arrangement. However, many suspects who the police might not be confident in convicting are known to sign confessions and accept the arrangement regardless, because, along with fear for their livelihoods, it’s known that judges tend to view extended time in detention as a sign of guilt. Also too, if admitting guilt is seen as showing remorse, then maintaining one’s innocence is often perceived as a lack of remorse—leading to fears that fighting the charges will result not only in defeat, but also in harsher sentencing!

All of these factors combine into a problem with perception of guilt that feeds on itself endlessly at all levels. Let me use a run-on sentence to summarize: the general public views anyone who is even arrested as probably guilty, because the police are seen as generally only moving on those who are guilty, because police specifically only prosecute those who they can all but prove are guilty, but guilt can be “proven” by a sufficiently detailed confession, and while confessions are required to have some corroborating evidence, they can easily be falsified and may well be offered up with minimal resistance because the suspect is also convinced that judges will only be harsher on them if they put up a fight because suspects also believe that they will be convicted at trial because everyone knows the conviction rate is unbelievably high.

Japan likes to think of itself as a “safe” country, which is in large part why its deeply concerning arrest and detainment procedures have held up repeatedly in court. These things help keep people safe, after all, and who wouldn't want people to be safe?

Returning, then, to the matter of My Hero Academia and the Paranormal Liberation Front mass arrest, I don’t think it’s overstating things to claim that the dehumanization of villains and the glamorization of heroes has probably exacerbated these problems.

Cruel punishments are illegal under Article 36 of the Japanese constitution? But what if someone really, really deserves it, though? (Chapter 94)

You can see that willingness to shrug off civil rights violations as long as it means safety in the symbol All Might represents, a hero who is there to beat up baddies, not ask questions about why they're being bad. Ditto Tartarus, where the Bad People get put, regardless of whether their Bad really warrants so awful a punishment or whether the severity of such a punishment serves as an effective deterrent.[40]

As to the presupposition of guilt, if a hero thinks they saw someone Doing A Bad, and confidently testifies to that effect, who’s going to doubt them? It’s blunt to the point of headache-inducing that Midoriya Izuku, the boy who will be the greatest hero, who’s treated by the story as if he’s the first person in history to think about “saving” a “villain,” doesn’t even start to think about such a thing until he literally experiences a psychic impression of a five-year-old crying within the heart of Shigaraki Tomura.

At the press conference in Chapter 306, it’s illustrated numerous times that huge portions of society don’t particularly care about Dabi’s accusations. They don’t ask for Hawks to face justice for the murder he openly admits to committing; they don’t ask for apologies for the heroes’ wrongdoings. They ask for heroes to make them feel safe. Even if it means lying to them; even if it means asking Endeavor to go out there and “take down” his firstborn son. People are uneasy about the accusations, certainly, but what they want is not for heroes to take responsibility for their actions, to atone for them, but rather to deny that there’s any truth to the accusations at all.

This is not a society that, in the wake of Gigantomachia’s rampage, is going to be open to the possibility that some people caught up in the mass arrest are legitimately innocent and that everyone, even villains, deserves to be afforded the full extent of their rights.

The Dissolution of the HMP

Speaking of rights, let’s go over one that we can immediately see has been flagrantly violated in the manga compared to the state of real-life Japanese law—the overnight dissolution of the Hearts & Minds Party.

As discussed earlier, it's unlikely that every member is a dyed-in-the-wool terrorist. There are bound to be perfectly innocent people in the country who just so happen to agree with the HMP’s campaign platforms. Now, all of those people are going to turn on the evening news[41] and be blindsided with the news that their political party has just been dissolved and some enormous percentage of its membership arrested. This was not publicized or forewarned; it just happened, in a matter of hours. Do you think those people—people who are members of a party that specifically opposes the current status quo—are just going to nod and say, “Oh, wow, that sucks, but who am I to question the wisdom of the government and its agents? Time to find a new political party, I guess!” Would you?

I can assure you that you wouldn’t, because let me be clear: under current Japanese law, what we’re told happened to the HMP is unbelievably illegal—not only because they were dissolved at all, but particularly the speed with which that dissolution was carried out.

I mentioned earlier, in the section “Japan and Illegal Organizations,” that there were methods by which organizations can be dissolved. Now I’d like to look at that in more detail.

Any organization that’s been flagged as a potential threat—that “terroristic subversive activity” designation—can come under investigation from the Public Security Intelligence Agency. Their recommendations are then passed up for evaluation by a member of the Public Security Examination Commission,[42] who can pass a variety of prohibitions—the bans I mentioned earlier on printing activities, public assembly, and a few others. These prohibitions are issued in periods lasting up to six months, at which point they are re-evaluated and can be dismissed or renewed.

If the Public Security Examination Commission decides that the comparatively soft-pedal restrictions on freedom of the press or freedom of assembly are not sufficient to deter the organization in question from committing terroristic subversive activity continuously/repeatedly in the future, the Commission can elect to order the organization dissolved. This revokes their rights mentioned above entirely, and further stipulates that they liquidate their assets,[42] and that no member of or representative for the organization can take actions in the organization’s interest (e.g. things like opening bank accounts or buying property). The only exception to the latter restriction is a designated representative for the organization who is granted the right to manage its assets in the process of overseeing the dissolution.

Any of the designations above can be appealed, but dissolution is permanent until specifically overturned.

Now, it might well seem that the HMP could be targeted under the “advocating for subversive terroristic activity” criteria, but here’s the problem with that: that criteria is based on the organization engaging in/advocating for such terroristic subversiveness as an organizational activity—that is, the activity in question is a foundational, core aspect of the organization’s endeavors. And I simply don’t think that’s how the HMP operates. To reiterate, I believe they’re a recruitment tool, meant to siphon people into the MLA (later the PLF) proper, but otherwise a perfectly legitimate political party with real political aims, outreach, goals, and so on.

Of course, I can easily see the anger over all the destruction leading the Ministry of Justice to being heavy-handed in its response to the Paranormal Liberation Front and any organization even suspected of being associated with it, of which the HMP is the most prominent. I could also simply be wrong about what the HMP says at their rallies. Regardless of either of those possibilities, however, there is still the matter of the timetable.

There was a period in Japanese history that organizations—political parties especially—could be dissolved on the spot. The Meiji Constitution granted that right to the Minister of Home Affairs, a Cabinet position appointed by the Emperor, and indeed, any number of socialist, communist, or labor-oriented parties were banned and dissolved within scant months of their establishment for their alleged leftist or subversive leanings.[44] The Farmer-Labor Party of 1925 was dissolved three hours after its establishment! So clearly there’s some precedent—or at least, there was. Like many things, the power to summarily dissolve organizations did not survive the Meiji Constitution’s transformation into its modern-day incarnation after World War II.

The Subversive Activities Prevention Act, the same one that lays out the causes for dissolving an organization, also details a legally mandated process by which this dissolution is carried out. Most prominently, organizations cannot just be dissolved with no notice, no chance to defend themselves. Any disposition curtailing an organization's activities, from the bans on their printed material to complete dissolution, is required to be announced both via the government's official gazette[45] and, if the residence of a chief officer or representative of the organization is known, also via written notification. These notifications must be sent at least seven days before the hearing date—a hearing which, further, the organization has the legal right to send agents to in order to present statements and evidence in their own favor, as well as examine the evidence being presented against them.

This clearly did not happen. Bare minimum, Hanabata Koku, as leader of the Hearts & Minds Party, should have had an address the Commission could get ahold of, especially given all the snooping they so obviously must have been doing to unearth the extent of the PLF’s reach.

It’s instructive, in this regard, to look to history. To wit, I’ve said a lot about how gun-shy Japan is to dissolve organizations outright, thanks to its history of governmental repression—but how true is that really? If the government really wanted to, couldn’t it just decide to crack down on something and ride out the controversy? Has it done as much before?

To put all this into proper perspective: no. It hasn’t. The government has invoked the Subversive Activities Prevention Act against a group rather than individuals only once in all the time since the act was passed in 1952.

It was against Aum Shinrikyo, and it didn’t happen until seven months after the subway attacks. Even with nearly unanimous desire to prosecute, even though Aum had been under police surveillance prior to the attacks, even though lawsuits against them were and had been ongoing, meaning at least some measure of investigation was being done openly, it still took seven months to gather the evidence, submit it to the Public Safety Examination Commission, allow Aum their appeal, and enact the ruling. That’s because, in a society ordered by democratic processes, these things take time.[46]

But the HMP? No one who wasn’t a member knew about their affiliation with the League of Villains—much less an underground army!—until Hawks got the word out, and the Hero Public Safety Commission had to be rigorously careful that news of their investigations not leak because they knew they had their own moles to deal with. So far as we know, the Hearts & Minds Party remained a legit organization right up until the day of the raid. It is functionally impossible under current Japanese law for them to have been dissolved in the scant few hours between the commencement of the raid and the attack on Tartarus in which the two guards mention the dissolution.

Even if the relevant agency in the Ministry of Justice submitted their paperwork the absolute minimum of time in advance, there is no way the HMP and Trumpet—and therefore Re-Destro and the League and everyone else—shouldn’t have known that the government was moving against them. The only answer is that the Ministry of Justice was evading its legal obligation to notify both the public[47] and the HMP itself, or that the Japanese government, in the wake of the Advent of the Exceptional, throttled back on constitutionally guaranteed freedoms exactly the way human rights activists today are always warning about.

Stigma and Recidivism

In the same way that In Custody is not (or shouldn't be) a magic status effect preventing villains from escaping from police, In Jail is not an endgame state. Most people in prison are not there for life (or death) sentences, particularly not in Japan. Even if the majority of the PLF gets stuck in prison for decades, there will, eventually, be an “after” for them. So what happens “after”?

Well, like many countries, Japan has made efforts in the modern day to offer training classes and parole officers to help reacclimate ex-convicts into society once they’ve done their time, but it remains a difficult process, and the country has a relatively high recidivism rate. Given the stigma against criminals—present to a degree in all countries, but particularly exacerbated in Japan—it is frequently difficult for released prisoners to find stable housing or employment—both key factors helping to prevent recidivism.

So does MHA’s Japan have similar programs? Well, it’s hard to say, given that the only prison we’ve actually seen is Tartarus, which is obviously a poor model to base a lot of judgement on—save, of course, that any country that could develop a place like Tartarus is a country with an appalling deficit of care for criminals’ human rights, which doesn’t bode well for their other prisons.

Speaking of things that don’t bode well, though, we have two obvious examples in the canon of how convicted criminals fare: both Gentle Criminal and Twice are, it’s suggested, prosecuted for their foundational fuck-ups—Tobita for obstructing public duties[48] and Jin for his traffic infraction. It’s unclear whether they went to prison or not—given the relative lenience shown to first-time offenders, I’m inclined to think probably not—but even given these very mild offenses, their lives were turned completely upside-down, and no apparent efforts were made to help them through chaotic periods that saw Tobita apparently disowned and Jin losing his job.

Consider the harsh reactions they garnered and the apparent lack of assistance from any social structure despite the relative mildness of their wrongs, and things start to look very bad indeed for the PLF. Will there be any steps taken at all to deradicalize them? Does taking such steps seem likely, given what we've seen of MHA’s legal and carceral systems thus far? Further, if there is no plan for deradicalization, how exactly do the heroes propose to stop this from happening again (and again, and again and again and again)?

Here’s another alarming thought: what will be done with the children? There’s no way around the fact that the MLA, and therefore the PLF, included children[49]—and I don’t mean it in the tumblr sense of describing a sixteen-year-old as “a literal child,” though there would be some of those, too. No, I mean the grade-schoolers, the toddlers, the babies. Maybe some of them will have non-PLF family they could hypothetically go to, but as I have written about in the past, there’s a very real bias about orphans and other children separated from their parents in Japan, and even blood ties are not always enough to overcome that stigma. Alternative care is in a woefully sorry state as it is in Japan, and this would only be compounded for PLF kids—damned first for their criminal associations and again for being the children society doesn’t want.

However many thousands of them that may be.[50]

So here again, a question recurs. Where before it was, “How do you tell the guilty from the innocent?” here it’s, “How do you stop the societal backlash from ruining countless peoples’ lives both now and for decades into the future?” What kind of stigma will all these people—rank and file who come out of prison deradicalized and ready to rejoin society, children who were too young to understand why heroes took their parents away, ignorant family and friends who just lost loved ones to a massive government sweep, innocents swept up in the net and imprisoned for crimes they didn't commit—going to be facing? How long, then, before that stigma sees them radicalized in turn?

You cannot sweep 115,000 people under the rug and not expect there to be a stain—and given the narrative themes of the rest of My Hero Academia thus far, it’s absurd to think that’s even an option.

Next time: how scrapping the ex-MLA portions of the PLF undermines MHA's narrative integrity.

-----------------------------------------------------

Footnotes (Part Three)

[26] And in the legal sense, murder in the second degree.

[27] For the monstrous callousness of his comments in that conversation, said guard is immediately murdered by karma All For One. I very much hope we ever get Shishikura’s opinion on this, because I’m pretty sure the guard was his dad.

[28] Who, in Chapter 35 of that series, leads a group of police firing rubber bullets at an active villain, emphasizing that the police are trained in non-lethal tactics, and any escalation from that is not to be taken lightly.

[29] Indeed, you could make a fair argument that that’s exactly why the manga included the Noumu to begin with, though the lower-tier ones wind up captured as often as not.

[30] Vigilantes, Chapter 74.

[31] This sidesteps the matter of “rescue heroes,” those who focus on disaster response and evacuation. Note, however, that this is not a categorization that pits those heroes against non-quirk-abusing civilians. Non-quirk-abusing civilians are criminals for police to deal with, not heroes of any stripe.

[32] This would be in keeping with real-world de-escalation tactics. So for e.g. the purse-snatcher in Chapter 1, where we’re told he didn’t use his quirk until he’d been backed into a corner, I would bet that Kamuy Woods or whoever confronted the thief didn’t start actually using their quirk on the man until he went into giant mode. That is anyway a kinder interpretation than noting that he was a heteromorph and would have been using his quirk automatically just by virtue of existing in public.

[33] After digging him out from under the stairway it had a teenager drop on top of him, I mean. Did he even have much of a chance to use Incite at the villa, do you think?

[34] Though given that literally every member of the MLA we’ve met is addressed solely by their code name, I don’t for a second believe he could have gotten real names out of everyone he talked to.

[35] And judges virtually always grant warrants. It’s that presumption of guilt thing again.

[36] But that panel of the normally taciturn Edgeshot shouting at a bunch of high schoolers not to let a single person escape is pretty damn telling too.

[37] 14% of the Japanese populace is under 14 years old, so that’s not too far off, though I’d be inclined to think, based on everything we know about them, that the MLA was having more kids than Japan at large, not fewer.

[38] This should have been Uraraka, by the way.

[39] An exaggeration, but only by a handful of tenths of a percentage point.

[40] Though until recently, it’s served as a great check on recidivism, clearly.

[41] You know, assuming that they weren't all arrested in the middle of their workday or cleaning house or going to university or what have you.

[42] Both are among the agencies that make up the Ministry of Justice. I’d be willing to bet that, in-universe, the Hero Public Safety Commission is also under the Ministry of Justice umbrella.

[43] The funds are then remitted to the National Treasury.

[44] Though one thing to note for our current context is that, even when those parties were dissolved, it did not automatically follow that any duly elected representatives were expelled from office. Unless there was legal reason to remove them, any elected officials were simply rendered “Independents” rather than being affiliated with a political party. The constitution stipulates that Diet members can only be expelled by a two-thirds majority vote, though in such circumstances, most politicians choose to step down from their positions before it comes to such drastic measures.

[45] A newspaper or other bulletin officially authorized by the government to publish public and legal notices—in Japan these days, it’s an online site/newsletter.

[46] And they’re often still controversial with progressive activists, as the invocation against Aum was even contemporaneously! Incidentally, Aum’s dissolution lasted for a mere two years before the government panel ultimately declined to make it permanent.

[47] And if you don’t think the HMP had someone watching the official Japanese government website, you’re clearly not taking them seriously.

[48] And possibly more besides; the dialogue in question trails off in a way that suggests that the obstruction charge is only the first in a list.

[49] Start at Yotsubashi Rikiya being inducted when he was still in schoolboy shorts and continue right on up through the people we see in school uniforms in various mass battle scenes involving the MLA rank and file.

[50] And it easily could be thousands. If, say, even 10% of the PLF are minors, that’d be well over 10,000 kids, and thus we’re right back to overcrowding problems, except this time they’re about Japan’s child services programs, and the last thing they need is a new group of kids that numbers a full third of the number of children already in their care in real-life Japan. Naturally, the number only climbs if you think Re-Destro wasn’t counting kids in his initial reckoning of the MLA’s membership.

#bnha analysis #bnha meta #paranormal liberation front #meta liberation army #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #bnha spoilers #my writing #plf arrests #stillness has salt

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nutty1005 · 3 years

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Multitudes of Art from Wenhui Daily

Original article: Print Media by Wenhui Daily (1) http://whb.cn/zhuzhan/xinwen/20210815/415430.html and (2) http://whb.cn/zhuzhan/xinwen/20210815/415432.html

Xiao Zhan Performs in “A Dream Like A Dream”, What Traffic has Injected into Theater

Original author: 帕帕拉佐

Preface

Whether the traffic celebrity is capable is a problem, it is also another problem when there is no traffic celebrity in the theater scene. This time, because of Xiao Zhan, another group of people who are unrelated to theater started going into it. Perhaps after the indescribable wonderful 8 hour experience, some of them would truly fall in love with theater, some may continue to fork out money for her idol’s next scheduled event. But is it really that important to separate the “I’m in the same room with him for 8 hours” crowd from the theater audiences?

Theater, which used to be a niche form of art, had been breaking through its circle these two years, and causing a lot of discussions. The most recent would be “Top Traffic Celebrity” Xiao Zhan’s participation in “A Dream Like A Dream”.

In between the midst of filming a period fantasy drama “The Longest Promise”, Xiao Zhan performed as Patient No. 5, a role which Hu Ge had once performed. After the performances in the 3 stops Wuhan, Qingdao and Chengdu, at every play’s curtain call, the theater would be filled with endless applause, there was even once even covered with rousing ovation. In the cheers of nearly a thousand people, the voices of young ladies were particularly distinct.

Actually, this is not the first time Xiao Zhan’s participation in “A Dream Like A Dream” created a revelry in his fans. Early this year in March, once the official announcement that Xiao Zhan would participate in the Tour of 9 Cities, it went onto hot search immediately, and until now, Xiao Zhan’s participation in “A Dream Like A Dream” has accumulated a staggering 4.2 billion views.

Over thousand tickets were sold out in seconds, an 80 RMB ticket was scalped to over a 1,000 RMB, the tickets of the “lotus pond seats” were scalped to more than 20,000 RMB. Although Chris Li and Hu Ge both performed in this play in 2013, but since it birth 9 years ago, this magnitude of furor only happened this year.

In the midst of anticipation and suspicion, Xiao Zhan finally walked on stage. The trials of theater revealed the sincerity in him and this sincerity is Xiao Zhan’s base color, or it could even be said to be the reason he is surrounded by so much love.

This innate sincerity is a scarcity in a stage created by glorious vocals and technical construction. Many experienced actors with strong foundations would be working hard for this, but they never had it.

No one could deny that Xiao Zhan created a unique Patient No. 5, who threaded the whole play as a core character. For the actor to be a good Patient No. 5, he would need precise acting, thorough understanding of the role, firm control of emotions, and of course the blending of both the actor’s self and the character.

That year, the tranquility that Hu Ge had after coming back from his tribulations became his key to unlocking Patient No. 5; whereas for Xiao Zhan, who had went through the growth from an “idol” to a “top traffic celebrity”, who had a “unique” experience in cyberspace, the things that happened to him these few years, became his natural advantage in portraying Patient No. 5.

Last year, Yanghua held “Cao Yu’s Special 110 Year Old Commemoration Event”. Then, Xiao Zhan was still in the eye of the storm, and he had a conversation with Cao Yu’s daughter, Wan Fang, and in this conversation, Xiao Zhan did a tremendous amount of homework, and wrote down a few dozen questions regarding Wan Fang’s script “Winter Journey” and “You and I”, his questions were simple but impressionable, it gave people the feeling that he seemed to have reached the edge of theater.

In this conversation, he dazzled Wang Keran, the producer of “A Dream Like A Dream”. He seemed to have found the common point between Xiao Zhan and Patient No. 5: the impermanence nature of fate.

And once again, it proves that instincts were very useful. The intersection between the actor and the role’s life would become the crux to whether the actor is able to infuse a soul to his character. The reason he was able to establish his character was not entirely from his ability to craft roles, but more of the source came from what happened to him. In addition, Xiao Zhan’s intelligence and hard work left a deep impression on Wang Keran during the initial stages of rehearsal – while many actors had not memorized his lines, Xiao Zhan had already memorized all of his lines, and this is especially difficult given that “A Dream Like A Dream” was an 8 hour long performance and there are about 3 to 4 times more lines than a standard play.

Whether the traffic celebrity is capable is a problem, it is also another problem when there is no traffic celebrity in the theater scene. As the theater market becomes more mature operationally, more traffic celebrities would cross over to this foreign scene. At the same time, there would be controversy as well. Can the boundaries between theater and general public be broken through by “traffic celebrities”? When will theater become a “reality TV theater”? Would the audiences be looking at celebrities instead of the play? These kinds of debates had always existed. At this, Lai Shengchuan did not care too much about it. He spoke of an incident in the past, when “A Dream Like A Dream” invited Chris Li to perform, her fans did not simply watch a show, but they watched 10. During the intermission, Lai Shengchuan spoke with her fans, and he realized that hey had been watching for 5 days straight, saying “the play was awesome”.

To him, despite the difference between how traffic celebrities shine on stage and how theater is like, or perhaps foreign to then, he just has to look at how they work to know that it took a lot of talent and hard work to come this far! “Hence, don’t be too particular about whether traffic celebrities are suitable for theater.”

No matter how loud the controversy is, it is fact that theater trains people – a performance of a few hours, there is no pause, no post production, there is only one take with no chance of a retake. Hence, there has always been a hierarchy in the artistic circle, theater actors would be above movie actors, movie actors would be above TV drama actors. No matter what the actual reasons for celebrities to join theater are, Lai Shengchuan’s story proved a point, when a top traffic celebrity joins theater, an art form with high entry requirements, it would inject more vibrancy and attention to this art.

This time, because of Xiao Zhan, another group of people who are unrelated to theater started going into it. Perhaps after the indescribable wonderful 8 hour experience, some of them would truly fall in love with theater, some may continue to fork out money for her idol’s next scheduled event. But is it really that important to separate the “I’m in the same room with him for 8 hours” crowd from the theater audiences?

Let us not think too much about it, and watch the show first!

Xiao Zhan, This “Newcomer” to Theater

Original author: 贾行家

Preface

9 years ago, Yanghua Theater placed a huge bet on “A Dream Like A Dream”, it came from Wang Keran’s observations based on the changing times – China’s industrialization and urbanization created its first “middle-class” life, and for the first time the first generation who had completed education but yet who are also stuck in the “modern conundrum” – who am I, where did I come from, where do I go from here? The old answers were no longer effective. This generation’s problem was – how to face the coming of death, and how to face the loneliness that came with the inevitable death? In the hands of Yanghua, this question became – how do you use a touching story, outside of religion or philosophy, to give its audience the love of life and a sense of comfort?

As such, there exists such a different theater group, with a producer with very “un-modern” methods: front stage and backstage, regardless of matters, as long as it could not be clearly defined to a job, it belongs to Wang Keran only. He called himself an “artist + businessman”, the nature of a businessman was to be in-charge of investments, ensure profitability, so he had to consider from the business angle – whether this play could fulfill the extreme and common spiritual requirements of the current generation, while at the same time be able to continue running for a long time; he also had to consider from the artistic angle, taking risks while ensuring profitability, and create the play from his heart. The purity of drama is as such, those who are passionate about it would stake their lives for it.

The author of “A Dream Like A Dream”, playwright Lai Shengchuan had a performance principle technique called “guide the cause, not the effect”, which meant that when the director explains the scene, he does not explain the effect he wants, but instead he would explain the reasons behind this scene clearly, that is, the character’s experience and emotional state, so as to allow the actor to create a natural performance after understanding. This was very different from the rush that is in TV dramas, which would often film out of sequence, the actors might not be clear about what he is acting as, and they could only use exaggerated actions to cover their loss of direction. Worst still, there are also actors who could only count 1, 2, 3, 4 to the camera in place of lines.

However, there are also good directors who do not like to film according to logic, and film as they wanted, while the actors did not know what they were portraying, but yet they could still create a masterpiece, Xu Haofeng’s movie review on Li An’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” spoke about this – Li An felt that Chow Yun-fat’s eyes were too sharp and alert, so he kept shouting “CUT” repeatedly, until Chow Yun-fat lost confidence and his gaze became scattered, so as to get the scene he wanted. Why did he not explain the “cause” at this point? Perhaps it was hard to explain, it was like a fisherman, he had to fish for the right gaze, to wait for the right sequence.

What we said above was to explain two simple things.

The first thing: Art can be, or even must be, done in an autocratic manner, it has to set its goal based on its audience, but how the play will be like, only one person will know, and in that creative space, there is only his method.

The other thing: The status created by an actor for the role is actually very brittle, they usually only know the outcome but they rarely know the cause. The difficult part in rehearsing “A Dream Like A Dream” came from these 31 actors who had to take on more than 100 characters, besides autocracy, there was a need to protect them from interruption and confusion. Xiao Zhan, who joined in this new version, he only had Patient No. 5 on the door of his dressing room, the other roles and burden were removed.

When we were discussing Xiao Zhan, we actually saw many versions of Xiao Zhan. Going back to basics, he is a young actor and singer. I found similarities between him and Patient No. 5: They both had the same unsettling impermanence in their fate, there were things that were not caused by them, they were merely caught in between – when you take a step back, impermanence is neither good nor bad. The problem is, which Xiao Zhan is the one standing on the stage of “A Dream Like A Dream”? If we took him as actor Xiao Zhan, then there is nothing wrong with it.

As an audience, my judging criteria is very simple: How did this new theater actor Xiao Zhan do? Based on his age and experience, Patient No. 5 is an extremely complex and hard to control character, and after 3 stops of Yanghua’s tour, the audience would probably have felt: Xiao Zhan created a brand new, intricate Patient No. 5, this character was well established onstage, this meant that his understanding and analysis was also well established.

I also prepared an observer angle, that was to see if he could blend into the strict system of theater, would be he outshone by actors who had a lot more energy, foundation and experience. The result exceeded my expectations, he not only did it, he displayed clear precision in his pace and control, and realized a complete theater experience.

I do not see the problem with Xiao Zhan’s decision to perform, just like I do not see how anyone would be damaged by this incident. If it had a specific “influence” (I do not see how that is, it is just the decision by a theater group), then to me, the influence is – it allowed more audiences to walk into theaters, and let more platforms notice theater. Chinese theater really needed more exploration in terms of content and operation. As for what influence this would have on the theater scene, audiences are very simple, as long as it was a good show onstage, they would buy tickets to watch it. As an outsider, I would also want to exclaim another statement: there were those who always said they wanted to revive the theater, but when someone really worked hard at doing it, these people would always come with their senseless controversies.

From my point of view, after I met Xiao Zhan’s “A Dream Like A Dream”, I felt that my soul had been cleansed by the waters in the lotus pond, been carefully cleaned by the fluttering spotlights and shadows akin to a bright moon, I seemed to have understood many things, there were less confusion, more courage, and a lot of gratitude to lives of those from front stage and backstage of the theater.

According to Sigmund Freud’s theory, play is a child’s unique way of gaining experience in handling matters, the function of play is to vent, venting is the purification of emotions, this is slightly different from those who take themselves as the audiences’ guide to purification. Theater has created a space to help the audience to vent what is in their hearts. After becoming an adult, it seemed like besides dreaming, there are not many methods to self-purify; besides dreaming, we could also watch “A Dream Like A Dream”.

#xiao zhan #xiaozhan #sean xiao #肖战

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ignitification · 3 years

Text

Colour Analysis III: (LoV Series II) - Dabi

Yes, no - you don't have any hallucination. It's here. It is. And yes, it took an absurdly long time to, but it's here so mh, yeah - enjoy.

I suddenly remembered that an ask, long ago, asked me about the design pattern evident for Dabi. It's here in case you want to have a look at it.

As I stated there, Dabi is a living contradiction, especially in terms of colour theory.

His colour pattern is a chameleon of sorts: he both represents light and dark at the same time, as if he cannot decide which one to stick with. I think that this duality has all to do with his genealogy. Inheriting his mother constitution and his father's Quirk amplified, Dabi goes through an adaptation process, manifesting especially by the change in his hair's colour (same as Tomura, that is - you can find the link for his analysis at the bottom of the post). The dyeing hair is also part of the process, but this time it comes about with a voluntary part, which brings us to the point that even if not entirely, Dabi's personality is build around a feeling and a character, which he wants to express and contrast at the same time. This is why, as I already specified the most important colour when it comes to Dabi are Blue, Purple and White (with a sprinkle of Red).

I.) Royal Blue

More than any other colour, Blue is what fits Dabi the most. His eyes are blue, his fire is blue and his clothes are blue (different variation, but you get the gist).

Blue usually stands for coolness, loyalty, intelligence and responsibility. But pushing this aside for a minute, blue has a distinct effect on the human body: it lowers the heart rate and the body temperature and has a calming effect. It's a constant colour which represents the tide of waves and the never-ending blue of the sky. In respect to Dabi, it can be seen how this hardly applies - but, at the same time it does. As Dabi inherits Rei's constitution and her resistance to the cold - but his father's 'fiery' personality, his fire manifests as both. It creates a friction, until the burns on his body become an evident purple. This characteristic has a distinct connection to Red (section IV) - however, the leitmotiv is that Dabi's body is used to the effects that blue should have on him, and instead of seeing it realise they are brought down and counter-affected by Red (which is a metaphor for his entire persona).

Blue has the feature of being ever-changing, which, as you'll have understood by now, is one of many contrasts in Dabi's appearance. He indeed goes through an exterior change - but as blue, he remains steady on a path (which is revenge, and will to actually prove to Endeavour that he is not a mistake), making his character consistent with his ideas throughout the arcs and steady.

An overuse of blue is cold and impersonal - indicating the presence of deep dark secrets and having a connection with feelings of sadness and depression. It creates the pictures of someone hiding in the dark just not to reveal their secrets, and for a long time we see Dabi trying to keep a low profile and then approach with an attitude of uncaring and cold indifference. He has burned his eye glands, which should allow him to express this feelings - but they are expressed, on the contrary, in the strength of his fire, and causes old feeling to settle and burn their way through his persona.

Blue is a susceptible colour and it hurts deeply - because in the first place, people associated with blue tend to feel too deeply. This fits the pattern of Dabi's fire being conditioned by his emotions, and why likely it creates deep wounds on his body: as a remainder that his feelings, expressed through the fire are way too intense and affect Dabi deeply. Deep enough for him to survive an astonishing fire and to hide for years in wait of having the right opportunity, the perfect opportunity to actually redirect this feeling onto the subject which caused them. As the constant colour that it is, indeed, blue (and Dabi) lives in the past.

Light blue is associated with healing, understanding and softness (his eyes), while darker hues are instead expression of power and knowledge (clothes - as a reminder of adulthood).

Finally, back on the literal meaning of blue: blue is a giver in the relationships that matter, but at the same time this colour can be unfaithful and deceiving (and we saw this in his interactions with the League at first and with Hawks, too). It is associated with intelligence and and consciousness (and indeed, the one who sort of had the reigns of the Training Camp was Dabi, and furthermore he is the only one who Ujiko retained mature enough to control a High End). This encompasses his characteristics of being reliable and responsible - and of course, Dabi embodies the whole spectrum.

Also on a final, funnily enough note, blue is usually associated with voice communication and someone who needs order, and strives for perfection as well as tending to be the one to speak in public. It's idealistic and expresses a will to satisfy its higher needs - and by doing that it expresses devotion in these ideals. So if you think about how Dabi's character is focused on reforming society, and giving Stain's will freedom and realisation, Dabi comes full circle - with a devotion which makes him focused on his goals (Stain's will, reformation of society and the Endeavour' downfall) , the commitment to actual plan their perfect realisation, and the ability to achieve it through the right means (The Broadcast).

II.) Pure White

White. Integrity, purity, innocence. Mourning, for some cultures. In particular in Japan, it is used as a colour meaning death, and is used in funerals. Same as for Tomura, Dabi uses both White and Black to somehow mourn himself and his loss (Tenko for his family, Touya for the himself he leaves behind) and especially in his adulthood, the concealing of such a colour through pitch black, is not only an effort to hide his identity but also to express a refusal to be the same person. White represents a new beginning, a blank slate. And if we consider these two to be somehow related (because death is seen as not the end, but instead a new beginning) it is clear how this colour, has a relevance to this character. After Touya's death, and his white hair hidden - he becomes Dabi, who has no time to still appeal to the childish feeling of wanting to impress his father and instead throws himself onto a new chapter of his life, because the past he will always remember, has been burned.

Same as blue, white brings serenity and peace - and at the same time it represents coldness and emptiness. I think this somehow emphasises the change in colour from red to white, and the loss of believing in strength (read: Endeavour) instead leaving an empty space in his heart, filled with emotions which he cannot control. The loss of innocence and the acquisition of the fact that Touya will never be what his father wanted him to, and the acceptance of such a thing - further brings out the meaning of the colour blue. (As already stated before, white, in Dabi's case is of enormous relevance - because it amplifies its relation to blue.)

Finally, white brings forward independence and freedom - and it stands for perfection. And I think it's really ironic how white, is not only the colour he inherited from Rei - a cold stark white - but at the same time, Endeavour has tossed him aside for the same reason, and that is because in his eyes he could not be more 'wrong'. But when his hair settles into his ultimate colour of white, Touya also breaks free from his father's expectation (but does he, really?) to start instead a new chapter as Dabi. Hiding the mistake he thinks he is, an instead embraces the personality that has been thrown onto him.

White is also the symbol of truth - which is tied to the revelation that Dabi is Touya Todoroki, and his dyed black hair becomes white, again (revealing the truth of his persona).

II.I) Pitch Black

Just to be as precise as possible, I'm adding a tiny section on black, which can be summarised in two sentences: black is associated with mystery, sophistication, power and authority. It brings forward the symbol of darkness, rebellion and ultimately it stands as a synonym of death. It's a colour which, when considered in respect to white, stands for the struggle between right and wrong - good and evil. Dabi presents himself as someone mysterious, and he does not reveal his name until far down the line. But he is still a representation of power, in terms of quirk and his position both inside the LoV and the PFL. Furthermore, him covering up his hair colour with black, as already said, has to do with wanting to appear a villain more than it has to do with his identity. He wants to fade into background for a while, and then come from the darkness to sweep everyone away - covering himself in black so it sends a clear message to everyone looking at him: that he is dangerous, and that there is no escape from his evil.

III.) Daunting Purple

Now, this is a controversial section. When I first thought of Dabi, I associated him with blue more than anything else, because after all, even if purple is an ever-present colour, it is just a reminder of how dangerous his quirk is, and how his body does not fare well in the friction of his firepower and his constitution. However, I think it is still important to put things into perspective when it comes to Dabi.

It is not a surprise, that Purple comes about as a combination of Red and Blue. The eternal struggle - which comes forth into the most detrimental way possible, for him. The shade of this colour has different meanings (not surprisingly) but, as far as I am concerned, Dabi's is a 'darker purple' (which is the one we have figured in the pictures) and fulfils its duty to evoke sadness and gloom. This is just a constant reminder of his story, and also the why Dabi is not very big on concealing the scars: because he thinks of them as a fair punishment, and that they remind him constantly of what and when exactly things did go wrong. Purple is also a colour associated with royalty and people with authority. On this meaning, there might a controversial stake, because it would actually give a relevance (or positive connotation) to the colour, however, as already stated before - I think that the scars are not only a reminder for himself, but same as the conscious choice of wearing black, Dabi makes a conscious choice to reveal his burn marks and to stitch his skin with evident metal piercings. He is putting them in evidence for a reason, and I'd guess this is the same reason for why he sticks on wearing dark colours, and to due his hair black: Dabi's objective is to appear as a heartless villain, and usually the image of somehow badly injured and wearing dark clothes, as sad as this might be, projects the image of exactly someone you'd like to avoid on the street.

Purple is also the colour of 'Fall', with its fading light. I found this particularly poetic when it comes to Dabi, as Fall might as well be the eternal representation of his character, and the fact that instead Dabi's fire just grown bigger and bigger, hurting him even more in the process - is the total contrary of fading light. But on the other hand, the light of his own personality, and those emotions he keeps tucked away just tend to be fade, dwindle at every sign of possible emotional connection.

Purple promotes the balance between mind and emotions - between the spiritual and the physical world. The balance between Red (emotions) and Blue (mind), and to which Dabi is not accustomed, yet. Finally, purple - among others - is also a mourning colour (reminder that both White and Black are also mourning colours). And it also inspires mystery, which again the image Dabi likes to project about himself onto others.

IV.) Flourishing Red

Red is Dabi's curse and representation. The contrast to white, and also the exacerbation of Blue. Red is the colour that gets the blood going (or rather, in this case, 'The one that turns up the heat' and which contrasts the calming effects of Blue) and the one who expresses passion and strength (which is why Endeavour's personality colour is Red - it's not a case that Red is associated with violence, anger, blood, obsession of power and strength, danger and fiery passion).

Red is the colour which Touya denies, and that instead comes back to bite him back. Red is energising and full of spirit and passion - and the image of a young Touya, striving to get better and make his father proud comes to mind. It's prideful and full of power - the will of a child, and his enormous Quirk-power struggling to keep it in check. This is why, Red after a while fades to Blue - and burns even more than it used to. Passion felt too deep, the exploitation of power which brings destruction. An all clear sentence to actually see why Dabi ends up with denying the all-too-overwhelming presence of Red and its characteristics, opting instead for a more suited to him Blue, which is also highly contrasting to the pure anger and passion associated to Red. The fact that Touya's hair changes, is an indicator of how he negates his father's influence, but still insists on hanging on those feelings, because he cannot let go of them. A walking oxymoron.

Thank for staying all the way, and for reading.

P.S. The colour analysis featuring Izuku and Shigaraki are respectively linked.

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hajime-isayama-official · 4 years

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One main arguments I’ve seen from non Jewish and poc snk Stan’s and that will have that one token Jewish person or friend who says they are not offended and snk isn’t anti Semitic or Nazi propaganda. Or say well isayama isn’t a anti Korean racist or Japanese imperialist that’s all been proven fake blah blah blah. Even if it’s fake the series is still problematic stop using that one Jewish person who isn’t offended they don’t speak for all Jewish people obviously-part 1

Part 2 he also named miksasa after a imperial Japanese battle ship and dot pixels is based off of a Nazi Japanese imperialist I think? Same for Erwin I might be wrong that’s what I looked up. I’m personally not comfortable supporting the series anymore for valid reasons but it’s honestly so hard to find blogs like you who criticize the series and author I’ve only found a small amount of blogs who acknowledge the problematic aspects in both manga and anime unfortunately :(

Oh Anon, you get me going here.

Yes, Mikasa is named after a very successful battleship (it’s supposedly certain success if your manga has a character named after a battleship).

Pixis was inspired by a Japanese imperial general. He died before WW2 tho. Anyway that sparked huge controversy with the Japanese fans, leading to hate messages towards Yams for years.

German SNK Wiki claims Erwin was inspired by Erwin Rommel, a general in WW1 and WW2 who later turned against Hitler (it’s fine cause he wasn’t REALLY a Nazi, right? no.). Erwin’s Birthday is the death day of Erwin Rommel. However, since I can’t find a source I’d take that one with a grain of salt. The main Inspiration for Erwin as a character is Ozymandias from Watchmen. So only fictional mass murder for Erwin here lol

These points are already kinda icky, but can be ignored I guess. Of course SNK searches inspiration in military. It’s a series about literal Child Soldiers (which somehow is never a critic point on any anime/manga?!). However it’s also full of dogwhistles and even more uncomfortable references.

My main points are the portrayal of grey-morality on the case of genocide and the way Isayama clearly draws inspiration from Nazi Germany when he portrays Marley. The latter is not per say problematic. Fullmetal Alchemist is also inspired by The Third Reich and carries a strong anti-imperalist and anti-nazi message. SNK however falls short on that till now. I am not Jewish myself, so I can obviously not determine what is antisemitic and only point out the obvious. Plus my knowledge of things is obviously limited so feel free to correct or join in.

Isayama pretty much paints the Eldians as the Jews of this “mirror world” World War we witness since the time skip. This is clear by the imagery of the Ghettos he shows, the armbands the Eldians have to wear and much more (Short images search should do the job here). The coding of the Eldians as Jewish equivalent is complete with the Marleyan myth of Eldians ruling the world if no one does anything to hold them in control (aka every antisemitic conspiracy ever). But it doesn’t end there. We know from the manga that Paradis island is basically Madagaskar.

The Nazis planned to deport about 4 million Polish Jews to Madagaskar in the 1940′s. That plan was shortlived and obviously never put into action for various reasons. So in SNK we have the scenario that the Eldians fled to Paradis in order to get an advantage over the Marleyans. The Eldians who are not on Paradis live in Ghettos on the mainland. That’s a weird coincidence, considering how many islands our big blue planet has.

What I think is pretty bizarre is that Isayama distorts this by pairing this imo pretty obvious real live inspiration with references to Norse mythology. This is fucked up in so far that Norse mythology is so heavily appropriated by the Nazis that many runes are outlawed in Germany till today and showing interest in Norse mythology is still often associated with white supremacy (have a look at Neo-Nazi signs and see the pattern). Like, this combination of Norse and early 20th century German imagery isn’t even a dogwhistle anymore, it’s yelling “I SUCK NAZI DICK AND I LIKE IT”. The references he uses are especially Ymir and the paths, that can then be seen as the world tree Yggdrasil:

The tree connects the Eldians and the nine titans which share their number with the nine realms that Yggdrasil holds. There’s some more, tiny stuff, like Erwin being easily interpreted as a reference to the God Tyr (God of battle, who loses his right arm in the mouth of a beast) and Hanji to the God Odin (Losing an eye in a well in the pursuit of gaining knowledge and wisdom). Both of these Gods are probably the most appropriated by white supremacists. When Ymir first turns into a titan it is at castle Utgard. In Norse mythology Utgard is a place in Jotunheim, the realm of the Jotun who the giant Ymir is the first ancestor of.

In general the pairing of clear WW2 imagery and references to Norse mythology is a mixture that is VERY sketchy and should always make you suspicious. Especially since these two are not going together (as in Marley using references to Norse mythology), but against each other. So we have both sides (Marley and Eldia) associated with white supremacy. Another thing that I will never be over is that Zeke and Eren are obviously named in reference to the German words Sieg und Ehre (Victory and Honor) referencing white supremacist buzzwords.

Then we have the issue that the main conflict is not with the Marley people, who are basically our mirrorworld Nazis. The conflict is AMONG the Eldians. Liberating the Eldians form the Marleyans is not even a thing, because we’re busy keeping two Eldians from practicing genocide/euthanasia on their own kind. So in this aspect Eldians are painted basically just as bad as Marleyans (and we have that “everyone is wrong in a war” Issue again).

I think in the end Eren’s will to kill everyone will lead to Eldians and Marley people accepting their differences or whatever and leading to unision in the shared enemy (kind of already happens in the manga) and while I think that’s a possibly interesting way to go it’s imo not when one of those parties has been subjected to centuries of genocide by the other. Assistant says a good closure to the Norse Mythology theme would be the manga going for Ragnarök, so everyone, Marleyan and Eldian, dies, except for two people who start the world anew. After all anisemitism or in this case anti-eldian sentiment doesn’t just stop after a world war. I don’t really fuck with this bullshit we got in one of the recent chapters where this one Marley general was like “Oh no, they were only people after all”. Bro, your whole society is built on them not being people and all of that is gone in one day of crisis? *doubt.png*

There’s obviously more to it than that and especially my understanding of the manga might be a bit off, since I don’t read it as attentively as I used to anymore. At this point I’m so fucking suspicious of this manga tbh. I doubt that we can come out of this with an anti-imperialist or anti-fascist message.

This does of course not mean no one should read or watch the manga or anime. I read/watch it too as you see. But it’s always good to be critical of the media you consume and take concerns from others serious, when it comes to stuff like this.

#oof #long post #ppl are not gonna like this lol #Anon #nazi mention

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avenger-hawk · 3 years

Note

Why do you like Kakasasu?

I waited to reply to this because I wanted to be sure it wasn’t a troll and it wasn’t a drama starting attempt (like this or this, gems found in the sasuke/KS tag) since it’s a subject I am very interested in.

I replied to Kakashi/Sasuke related asks, shippy or not shippy, here, here and here. More about them here, here and here. Put yourself comfortable cause this is gonna be long. Not putting it under a readmore cause I remember ppl complaining they coulnd’t open it on mobile phones (?). Also, moralists who are lurking: don’t interact, get out of my blog. Youll be blocked on sight.

When I started reading N*ruto I was into Bleach a lot, and the fact that the characters were a little older and looked older made me not get into Nar that much at first, because they looked like kiddies lol. I didn’t care about Nar as a character and his initial rivalry with Sas was cute but not enough to get me interested. Only when Kakashi got closer to Sasuke I started being veery interested in the story and in the characters. What I found intriguing was that Kakashi was older and an authority figure, but also someone to look up and who helped his students, BUT at the same time he wasn’t exactly a father-like figure or a big brother-like figure, because he had his dark side, that back then wasn’t well flashed out but that nevertheless showed a closed-off person who kept everything inside, not letting others get too close to him.

(then I started liking N*rusasu mostly because there were so many cool doujinshi especially Emi10/Rankai and Engawaken, while KS doujinshi were so meh, kinda in old yaoi style like Loveless, with tiny Sas who looked even younger hahaha, not my thing)

As those who know my blog and/or my writing know already, I am not interested in healthy, cute, positive dynamics in fiction. I might enjoy them, I might be happy when there are such moments, but I can’t like a whole relationship/dynamic/story only like this because I like to explore complicated ones in fiction.Because fiction is very useful for this, it makes you explore dark, taboo things, without affecting reality (no matter what idiots say), it’s cathartic, it’s a way to do, see, experience things without doing anything.

Back to topic tho, I found their initial dynamic very intriguing. A broken, traumatized yet extremely driven Sasuke, acting as confident and strong as he can, but showing his trauma in various occasions, otherwise being mostly aloof, lost in his own thoughts, and a differently broken Kakashi, acting chill but at the same time always ready to act when needed, yet always kinda distracted, aloof, lost in his owh thoughts (and later we’ll know he took Obito’s mannerisms because he was a stickler to rules). The way Kakashi takes a special interest for Sasuke, clearly the most driven, the best of the team, with whom he holds back much less (when he trains them, like when in the beginning, during the bell test, he fights with Sas and seeing that he almost took it, he overpowers him) while he is different with the others (Nar will have Jiraiya later). The way he protects Sasuke during the chuunin exams, while he’s in the hospital and Kabuto is trying to kill him.

Mostly, the controversial moments...like I said I live for these kind of things. where he both protects and threatens him...like when he does that seal to Sasuke, for his curse mark, and he tells him that if that curse mark takes over he’ll kill him. Or when he ties Sasuke up so he won’t join Orochimaru.

Before someone says bs like *you’re not Sas fan if you like that scene* (I know there are many like this and I want all of them out of my blog btw) uh, it’s not how it works guys. You can support a character and still be intrigued by scenes where said character is tied up/in a forcibly submitted position and so on. Guess what, some of those scenes are made for fanservice even (and Sas has many of these, so if you don’t see the appeal/refuse to admit that there is appeal, it’s you who have a problem). So even tho I disagree with Kakashi not wanting to listen to Sasuke’s reasons for revenge (and later supporting SHikamaru’s, I replied to this in one of the asks I linked) I do find that scene interesting...I mean Sasuke tied up in a very suggestive way and yet defying him and threatening to kill his loved ones and Kakashi opening up in a very weird way vaguely replying that he lost those ppl already? It shows a lot about them, their personalities, everything.

I am sticking to part 1 because there are more meaningful interactions between them, I wished there were more in part 2 but kishi shifted Kakashi’s ‘interest’ to Nar, making him one of Nar’s followers...even so, the intractions they had were very interesting. Their fight after Sasuke fights Danzo is one of my fave moments in the whole story tbh, much more than the later confrontation with Nar. Kakashi for the first time has an inner only, yet strong, emotional reaction, having to fight and supposedly kill his former student who became a rogue with a death sentence on his head...he realizes this is how Hiruzen felt against Orochimaru. It’s a strong realization from someone like him who was always so closed off and aloof that he totally lacked empathy.

On the other hand Sasuke is in a different mindset. He’s sort of high for having succeeded in eliminating the one who made Itachi suffer so much, he’s thinking about killing the elders and destroy the village, so he’s basically lost in the recent past of Danzo’s death and in the future plans he’s making, he’s not in the present moment almost...but he has to fight anyway, and it’s a cool fight, also because he’s weakened already and Kakashi is strong...and then he gets blind, totally, and it’s an amazingly intriguing moment, the kind of controversial stuff I’m interested in, because that’s when he could be totally overpowered by Kakashi, if the story didn’t have other priorities (putting Nar in the center of attention with their confrontation).

Their later moments, like during the war, are meh cause the interest shifted already completely, but their moments in jail (anime only ofc) and their Shinden interactions (only through messages) are interesting to me. Very much so, because they show power dynamics very well, with Kakashi as THE authority and Sasuke as the one submitted. In jail it’s even more evident with him looking down at the younger tied up and blindfolded...like, wow. It’s like fanfiction material (in fact I wrote one (ff.net/a03) and there was the coolest fanart inspired by it! here..there were more but this came on my dash today so).

You mentioned power dynamics...their dynamics are all power dynamics because Kakashi was never at Sasuke’s same level and he never acted like he was, and when Sasuke was stronger, during the war, they basically didn’t interact, and when the war was over and Sasuke was brainwashed and tamed into submission the power dynamic remained the same.

The difference imo between them and other power dynamics based pairings is that they are closer than what could be defined rare pairings such as Obito (they had a very interesting one tho, if only it was developed), Madara (the story was already developed in a pro Konoha-anti Uchiha way but it would have been so cool to have the 2 Uchiha interact more), or other older and stronger characters, so the dynamic could be written in a cool way in a fanfiction but in canon Kakashi created it already. So, while I can imagine something like Shisui/Sasuke, Obisasu or more, in my head, and I can come up with some AU or canon divergent/canon behind the screen (like when Sas stayed with Obito after the transplant), Kakashi and Sasuke had canon interactions that showed power dynamics already.

(Then there is Itasasu, which is a huge power dynamic based relationship, that also had amazingly strong feelings though, and those who know me know that for me Itachi will always be Sasuke’s most loved person, and that he was the same for Itachi. So ofc imo IS is a much stronger bond compared to KS but still. Also I remember in the beginning how many fics I read where Itachi was abusive to Sas and Kakashi stepped in lol. And it’s not a mystery that even though I think the IS bond is the strongest I find other pairings and character dynamics very interesting, so much that I like to explore them even more than IS, which, imo, is almost a given fact so I don’t always feel the need to explore it)

Another thing I find intriguing is that Kakashi always saw Sas at his ‘worst’...in Konoha’s terms I mean. When he wanted revenge in pt 1, after he killed Danzo and he was weak and so desperate and hysterical that they thought he got crazy, when he was jailed. It’s a big power he has, to be able to see someone like this.

Tbh it’s a pity that there were no post war moments (B*ruto shit doesn’t count) where they interact ‘normally’ cause I would have liked to see them, both as normal interactions where they get closer again, now that Sas is older, where they train and they get physical (and Kakashi has a lot of repressed anger, jealousy and possessiveness to let out on the one who betrayed his sensei and went to another...not my opinion but it could be Kakashi’s pov) because I think power dynamic would come up a lot, even from apparently cute moments.

I’ll end this super long essay hoping that you didn’t fall asleep lol, and adding that Kakasasu was the first Nar pairing I shipped, which it speaks a lot about why I get so irritated when someone mentions it negatively.

#kakasasu #unfollow me or block me if this bothers you #even tho I want to be the one blocking you guys who have something to say against this #vivalarevolution #vivalarevolution: bonds

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cheesyradfem · 3 years

Note

History will leave you behind and you TERFS and transphobes will go down as just another hateful group of oppressors. Science, history, and the LGBTQ community stands with trans people. This blog is absolutely disgusting and anti-science.

...do genderists just put buzzwords in a blender and think they've made a point?

I don't even know why I'm gracing this with a longer response, since it's a rather ridiculous case of projection.

My header says I'm a radfem sideblog and most of my content is just reblogs. If you want to claim that my blog is "disgusting", take it up with the original posters.

"Another hateful group of oppressors" an oppressor is someone who holds institutional privilege over the oppressed. TERFs are by definition women, who are oppressed for their biological sex. A group cannot be privileged and oppressed on the same axis. Hence radical feminists do not oppress transpeople, especially not transwomen, who are biologically male and therefore oppress women on the basis of sex.

"Science" is an objective field of study that seeks to understand our natural world. It cannot stand with anyone (much like history), as it is not a person with feelings or opinions. However, science has consistently proven that mammals (a biological class that includes humans) are sexually dimorphic. There are only two types of mammal gametes, sperm and egg, Y and X. There are some controversies over the idea of brain sex; some creative misinterpretations of data led some to draw the conclusion that men and women have different brains (based on gray matter, brain size); but more studies proved this to be untrue, and the minute differences can be explained by social conditioning. Gender is a social construct, and therefore does not exist in the realm of natural science. So I can't really say scientific research supports your argument.

History is another field that has been subject to some horrifying misinterpretations by genderists to support their arguments. Women such as the warrior Joan of Arc, the doctor Margaret Ann Bulkey, the Mexican Revolutionary colonel Amelia Robles, the artist Hannah Gluck, lesbian author Radcliffe Hall and even lesbian activist Storme deLarverie, have been posthumously transed simply for being gender non conforming (pursuing careers women "shouldn't") in eras even more viciously misogynistic than our own; that about half of these women are lesbians and some of them butch indicates how lesbophobic this interpretation of history is. Women can't achieve great things or love other women without secretly having a "male soul", is the logical conclusion of transing these women. Male historical figures get transed much less often; Malcolm "Marsha P" Johnson is the most common despite having stated 11 days before his death that he was "a man" and "just a transvestite" aka a man that dressed in women's clothes. Ignoring the context and even the very words people in history have said in order to prop up transgenderism is revisionism. Historical analysis doesn't support your arguments either.

It only stands to reason that, with the denial of observable biological sex which has led to the horrific "cotton ceiling" (that lesbians must be open to dating people they cannot be attracted to, males), the appropriation of lesbian historical figures as trans men, the no-platforming to outright physical assault of lesbian feminists on college campuses, the protests of libraries and domestic violence shelters because of "anti trans books" or that they don't allow transwomen to work with vulnerable women, the attempted silencing of detransitioners (many of them butch lesbians)...that lesbians are simply tired. They are tired of having to support people that would throw them under the bus the moment it's convenient. They are tired of having to redefine their homosexuality as "non-men attracted to non-men" or "queer", or their womanhood as "uterus bearers" while men get to keep their language. They are tired of having their foremothers that inspire them called men based on regressive gender stereotypes. They are tired of being silenced when trying to talk about their female bodies and experiences. They feel dismayed when they see the rapidly dwindling number of lesbian-only spaces in the US, from over 200 lesbian bars in the late 1980s to just 15 in 2020, and feel hopeless when those reporting on it claim this is a good thing because it "makes them inclusive." Well, lesbianism is a sexual orientation, and sexual orientations are by definition exclusive. If you don't feel included in the label, then it's because you likely aren't a homosexual female. The homophobia and misogyny of the genderist movement has caused many lesbians to "peak" and become gender-critical feminists because of their personal experience with harassment bordering on conversion therapy in LGBTQ groups simply for being lesbian. Other women have become gender-critical as they fear that their biological sex will no longer be a protected category under the law. Even some gay men, disgusted by the homophobic entitlement of trans men on Twitter/tumblr (called the "jockstrap ceiling"), have peaked and decided to stand with women.

So, keep the TQ community. The LGB will be there to rebuild our community after the mainstream finally realizes the anti-science, anti-history, anti-logic, of the trans movement and apologizes for ever having supported it thinking they were helping gays and lesbians. It has already started. Don't be so certain the radfems, some of whom were fighting for women long before you were an idea in your disappointed mother's mind, will be the ones history leaves behind.

#rants #my discourse #terf discourse #hate mail #fragile genderists

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trainsinanime · 4 years

Text

Here’s a Miraculous Ladybug story idea that I may write some time, but probably not, because I only really care about chapter two of what would probably need to be at least ten.

Chapter one features Lila going after Marinette full-force. Not the weak boring „she rips up her notebook so hard that Marinette has to move to Gotham“ crap. We’re doing this properly: Lila convinces the Mayor that Marinette is planning to resurrect Napoleon and bring him back to power. So the Mayor has Marinette imprisoned without trial, because apparently he can do that in the Miraculous universe, and not even her friends or family know what’s going on.

Chapter 3 and later will detail how Marinette managed to escape the prison after fourteen years, with the help of a professional hypnotist. She discovers a pirate treasure on a small uninhabited island off the coast of Italy. With the money from the treasure, she buys the island and the title of nobility that comes with it, and returns to Paris. Rich, and now officially a countess, she will reward those who were loyal to her, and destroy all her enemies. (I haven’t yet worked out what that means in detail.)

But the really interesting part for me is what happens in those fourteen years. Here are my notes. Content warning: Dark, Major Character Death, Intended as over-the-top and silly but maybe not over-the-top enough, and of course, Adrien/Lila:

With Marinette gone, a lot of joy drops from the class immediately. Everybody loves her, and they only have weird rumours about what happened to her, rumours that they can’t believe even if the source is Lila. (No, we’re not doing class salt. Yes, that means my options for enemies in the later chapters are limited. I don’t care, I love Alya and the rest of the class and I am not throwing them under the bus.)

The first time Ladybug doesn’t appear to a fight, everybody is pissed. The second time, they’re even more pissed. The third time, they’re worried.

Chat Noir does his best. He decides to capture the Akumas, so Ladybug can cleanse them when she returns. For now, he stores them in mason jars. After a bit of thought, he decided to just store them in the cellar of the mansion, in a box labelled „Adrien’s favourite toys“. Nobody ever looks there.

No Ladybug means no cleanup. (The ear rings are kept in the warden’s office in Marinette’s prison, so Ladybug is out of commission for fourteen years). Adrien again tries to help, spending way too much time cataclysming debris. A child has lost their favourite plush shark in a river of chocolate? Chat Noir manages to „find“ and „clean“ it. No, it’s totally the same shark, not a new one that he just bought, believe me. The child is happy, but clearly it’s not enough.

The first time the Eiffel Tower is destroyed, rebuilding it is a matter of national pride. If Ladybug is gone, then France will step in. Gabriel donates a lot to the effort.

The second time the Eiffel Tower is destroyed, authorities decide to leave the debris as a monument. The statue for Ladybug disappears.

With no Ladybug, Hawkmoth realises that he can’t get the ear rings. Attacks decrease, to once a month, then once every three months; apparently just to check whether Ladybug has returned. Around Adrien’s eighteenth birthday, it seems like Hawkmoth might retire for good. On a completely unrelated note, Gabriel appears to have lost all will to live.

Adrien can’t escape Lila, who continues to be employed by Gabriel, despite her not being very good at photoshoots. But he does his best to keep his distance.

Shortly after Adrien’s birthday, he is away, while Lila has a meeting with Gabriel and Nathalie. But tragedy strikes: Lila arrives and witnesses Gabriel shooting Nathalie and then himself. Why would he do such a thing? Good thing Lila is such a reliable witness. The case is so clear that the police don’t even have to check the gun for fingerprints.

Adrien is stricken with grief. He tries to call his friends, but nobody will reply. It’s almost as if someone with access to Gabriel’s computer had used the spy software on Adrien’s phone to disable it. But that’s clearly absurd. There is only one other person who is there to comfort him: Lila. Adrien doesn’t like her, but she is someone familiar. She spends the night.

The next morning, Adrien is disgusted, and the two part ways. But two months later, she reappears and tells him she is pregnant and it’s his child. She has a whole speech prepared about how he needs to take responsibility, but it’s not necessary: Adrien will not let his child grow up without a father.

The next month, the wedding is a weird affair. Lila wanted something grandiose, and she got it. But all their friends know that this is anything but true love.

Alix wonders aloud what Marinette’s role would have been if she had been here. Alya jokingly says that she’d be the bride. Adrien overhears, and he realises: Yeah, she would have been. He loves her. Always had. This moment is when the only wedding picture is taken where Adrien smiles.

Seven months later, Gabriel Agreste Junior is born. Adrien loves his son with all his heart, but he has questions. But Lila and her top-notch expensive doctors assure him that this is perfectly normal, sometimes pregnancies take a month longer or two. Adrien is not fully convinced, but he doesn’t want to cause a fuss.

Around this time we also get a new Hawkmoth, who is much meaner, but doesn’t seem to have as clear a goal. Everybody’s best guess is that this Hawkmoth is just going after whoever last pissed them off. (Totally forgot this one in the original version of the post, sorry)

Two years later, Lila’s daughter Emma Marinette Agreste Junior is born. Adrien picked the second name while Lila was asleep. Since Lila is not involved with her kid’s upbringing at all, she has not yet noticed. This time, Adrien is convinced that something is up and Lila is lying to him. The reason: He has recently learned how babies are made, and he knows for a fact that he never did that with Lila.

He confronts her. Lila isn’t concerned, though. What’s he going to do? Divorce her? Then he’s never going to see the kids again. The things she could make a court believe… Adrien is horrified by that thought, especially since he knows very well that he’s the only one in the marriage who loves these children.

Meanwhile, Lila’s own career as an actress isn’t going well. She’s a great natural talent, sure; she can make anyone believe anything. But to be a great actor, you still have to turn up on set every day, and not just when you feel like it. Oh, sure, she has great excuses, but the jobs still dry up fast. And while you can make up a story that makes you look good about one make-up artist you made cry, maybe two, there is a point where it becomes a problem.

She blames Adrien for this, mostly because he will generally not back up her lies about where she was. He doesn’t really care, though. Despite her threats, what’s she gonna do, leave with the kids? Thanks to his father, Adrien had some top notch lawyers, and the pre-nup agreement is watertight.

Unrelated to all this, behold Paris’s new mayor, Chloé Burgeois. She’s been embroiled in controversy from day one. Some say she’s too young. Others say she only got the job because her father was mayor before her. Yet others point to her publicly difficult relation with her constant partner and off-again-on-again girlfriend Sabrina. But perhaps the biggest talking point is that in her office, she has a big painting of a certain heroine in red with spots, with the words, „what would Ladybug do?“ underneath. She’s never lost trust, and the press hates her for it.

One day, her old school friend Alya visits. Alya’s own relationship to Ladybug is difficult: Part of her still holds out hope, just like Chat Noir. Another part of her curses Ladybug for just leaving. Her goal now is completely unrelated to Ladybug, though. She has uncovered new things about the Napoleon Resurrection Conspiracy: The main witness (Lila) and the supposed ring-leader: Marinette. That can’t be right.

She wants Chloé to reveal the truth. Chloé herself has no idea, and very little interest in investigating. Her father told her that this was all secret, and that she should never touch this subject.

But she knows very well what Alya is asking for here. Alya got her big break as a journalist by uncovering the files on the Napoleon Resurrection Conspiracy in the first place. The revelation that it had all been swept under the rug was what caused the old Mayor to step down in the first place. If Alya is now saying that this might all be wrong, that means she’s placing her whole career on the line. That level of commitment means something.

For her own part, it took Chloé a while to admit it, but she was shocked and heartbroken by Marinette’s sudden disappearance as well. It was the first step to becoming a somewhat nicer person, and forming real bonds with her classmates. She has the access to the archives. She could uncover the truth, and maybe even find out where Marinette is now. It wouldn’t be popular, and it might be dangerous… but what would Ladybug do?

Chloé is all in, and it doesn’t take long until she meets Lila. Chloé would not consider herself a fan. She knows the difference between Adrien’s real and fake smiles. Lila refuses to clear things up, though. Instead, she tells Chloé that the french secret service does not allow her to say anything, and that Chloé better drop it if she knows what’s good for her.

Chloé ignores it. She also ignores it when she gets a threatening letter. After all, Ladybug was up against powerful people, too, and she never let that stop her. She even ignores when her own personal Yacht sinks for unexplained reasons, until her Butler and Sabrina explain to her some things about the history of the french secret service (actually I’m not sure whether this is too much in bad taste; the alternative would be that her vacation home gets set on fire).

She tells Alya that there is nothing to know, and blocks her cell phone number. The next day, workers remove the Ladybug painting. After all, what Ladybug would do is just disappear, right? Only fitting. Sabrina laughs a little too artificially at the joke. Yes, indeed. Ladybug would just stop doing her job when the people needed her. Perfect analogy.

With that, the basic outline is set. Chapter three would probably be short and tell the story of Marinette’s imprisonment. Chapter four is then where the real revenge starts.

Other points:

At various points, Luka is sadly strumming his guitar.

I’m not sure what to do about Marinette’s parents. The mean option is that they die, full of grief over their missing daughter. The very mean option is that they end up separating first. I’m not sure Marinette’s revenge spree works if they’re still around, and I definitely don’t ever see them turning away from her.

Nino and Kagami could do with an arc here.

Anyway, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, but since I don’t know how to turn this into a full story, this is as good as it gets. If any of you guys want to borrow parts or all of it for your stories, please go ahead.

#miraculous ladybug #story idea #lila rossis lies get exposed eventually #mlb story ideas

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longgae · 4 years

Text

Feeling like debating with relatives/other weird people? Here is a list of controversial topics to discuss (and what to say) :)

Made because I am very tired andddd I had coffee today.

Gun Control - Gun violence has been a heated debate topic in the U.S. for years. Mass shootings and other acts of gun violence kill nearly 40,000 people every year in the U.S. The gun control debate largely hinges on interpretations of the Second Amendment. It reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Advocates for gun rights argue the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" means that the government cannot control the possession of firearms. Thus, they oppose any laws that impact their ability to buy, carry, or accessorize guns. By contrast, gun control advocates focus on the part of the Second Amendment that says gun rights are meant to be "well regulated" by local, state, and federal legislative bodies. They push for stricter gun control laws, including more extensive background checks, regulations on assault weapons, and banning high-capacity magazines. Today, the debate has escalated due to the high rate of gun violence and the rising frequency of mass shootings. In 2019, there were 417 mass shootings in the U.S., according to data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive (GVA). The increasing prevalence of mass shootings has sparked fierce debates about the sale of assault rifles, background checks for gun buyers, and the connection between gun violence and mental illness.

Abortion - The pro-life perspective argues that life begins at the moment of conception, and therefore abortion is equivalent to murder. It is seen as an act of violence that can have physical, emotional, and psychological repercussions, even if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. Pro-life supporters believe that government intervention to prevent abortions is justified. On the other side, pro-choice argues that people have the right to choose to have an abortion because they have bodily autonomy — complete control over their own bodies. They believe that it is immoral for the government to make medical decisions on behalf of pregnant people. Thus, the pro-choice perspective opposes federal, state, or local laws that restrict access, impede funding, or create legal obstacles for getting an abortion.

Religious Freedom - Religious freedom is considered a fundamental human right for every American. The First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Yet, religious liberty continues to be controversial in its execution. Discussions about religion and politics are often polarizing because they dig deep into how people view the world. As the adage says, "don't mix religion and politics." The First Amendment compels the government not to show preference to a specific religion or take away an individual's ability to exercise faith. It also ensures that neither the state nor the church has the power to rule over each other. Under the First Amendment, Americans have the right to practice any faith or to have no faith. Legally, they can do so without fear of government coercion, even in public. In practice, the fiery disagreements over how freedom of religion can and should be expressed have led to clashes over God's mention in the Pledge of Allegiance, displaying the Ten Commandments in public spaces, and businesses denying service based on religious belief. The issue is particularly prevalent around Christianity, which appears in many aspects of public life in the United States, despite not being the official religion. Many people with pro-religious views argue that religious freedom means they have a right to make choices about who they serve or employ and what they display or do based on their religious values. Others argue that religious freedom means not having to follow the trappings of a specific religion in public spaces or required pledges, and also not being denied access to goods, services, or jobs based on their religious beliefs.

Vaccines - Vaccines have revolutionized global health with life-saving immunity from certain diseases. Polio, smallpox, tetanus, and other infectious diseases are no longer deadly because of innovative vaccines. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), vaccines prevent thousands of Americans from getting infected by diseases each year. Immunization is the best protection against these diseases, especially for children with weak immune systems. They may also help bring the COVID-19 pandemic to a speedier end. But there has been some opposition to vaccines in recent years. The push back against vaccines comes for different reasons, including fear, misconceptions, and mistrust of science. Anti-vaccine activists are often referred to as anti-vaxxers. Some of the most persistent arguments against vaccines include a widespread fear that vaccines cause autism, that natural immunity is better than being inoculated, and that vaccines contain harmful chemicals. Over the years, public health officials, physicians, and medical experts have debunked these claims. Despite that, anti-vaxxers still argue that vaccines can be dangerous and contain hazardous or poorly-researched substances, creating risks that outweigh the benefits. Meanwhile, vaccine supporters believe all parents have a responsibility to comply with medical advice on vaccine administration, protecting their children and strengthening herd immunity for society as a whole.

Marriage Equality - In 2015, the Marriage Equality Act made same-sex marriage legal everywhere in the United States and was later upheld by the Supreme Court. Even so, the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) [YASSS QUEENS] individuals to marry still lead to heated debates, especially within religious communities. Those who support marriage equality believe gender and sexual orientation should not affect access to rights under the law, including marriage rights. They believe all couples deserve access to the same recognition, legal rights, and tax benefits. Opponents of marriage equality argue that marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman, and allowing any other type of union undermines the institution of marriage and should thus be sanctioned by law. Most opponents of marriage equality have a faith-based viewpoint, arguing that non-heterosexual romantic relationships contradict teachings in the Bible, making them sinful in the eyes of God. They believe the government is obligated to prevent these marriages, triggering further debate about the separation of church and state. While marriage equality is the law in the United States, the debate over LGBTQ+ access to equal treatment continues.

The Trump "Presidency" - Donald Trump's presidency has been a constant source of controversy. His abrasive leadership style, tone, and methods in office are dramatically different from his predecessors, drawing an unprecedented level of ire from citizens who oppose him. He was impeached in 2019 after he pressured Ukraine to smear then-Democratic-presidential-hopeful Joe Biden. As of July 2020, President Trump had made more than 20,000 false or misleading claims. This included falsehoods about the coronavirus pandemic, fringe conspiracy theories, his impeachment trial, and protests over the death of George Floyd. He's also clashed with world leaders, openly supported white supremacists, and ignored evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Those who support President Trump claim the media misrepresents him — despite evidence to the contrary — or deny his past statements. Trump supporters embrace his policies, which include more substantial immigration restrictions, protections for the Second Amendment, and nationalist identity politics. They also view the president as a political outsider whose unconventional style and behavior are a needed disruption of traditional politics. Trump's opponents have fiercely criticized him for mishandling the coronavirus pandemic, race relations, and constitutional law. His opponents also view his presidency as a dangerous deviation from normative American values about executive authority, democratic rule, and general political civility. Trump's opponents advocate for progressive policies that clash with his conservative viewpoints, including humane immigration reform, enhanced environmental protections, and stricter gun control laws.

Transgender Rights - Transgender rights aim to protect individuals who identify as a gender that is different from the one assigned to them at birth. They argue that human rights should apply equally to all people, including those who are transgender, cisgender, non-binary, gender fluid, or intersex. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), transgender people face discrimination in education, housing, military service, credit access, and healthcare based on their gender identity or gender expression. There are 1.4 million trans adults who live in the U.S. Nearly half the United States does not have legal protections for LGBTQ+ employees. In June 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that it is illegal for employers to fire or discriminate against an employee because they are LGBTQ+. The 6-to-3 decision was a landmark victory for transgender rights. Transgender advocates work to strengthen and expand legal protections in schools, healthcare, the workplace, and common law. Opponents of transgender rights push back against the idea that people should have the right to identify as a gender other than their assigned birth gender. Religion is often a major source of anti-transgender sentiment. According to the Pew Research Center, 63% of U.S. Christians (ew) disagree that someone can be a gender different from the sex assigned to them at birth.

[I'm Christian, don't attack me for saying ew ✌️]

White Supremacy - White supremacy is a belief that white people are a superior race with the right to dominate society at the expense of other racial and ethnic groups. White supremacy has morphed into a political ideology that affects socioeconomic and legal structures within the United States. In recent years, white nationalism has gained political traction in the United States — even in the White House. "President" Donald Trump is widely condemned for promoting racism, bigotry, and hate speech through anti-Black, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim sentiments. White supremacists often clash with people of African ancestry, indigenous peoples, Muslims, and Jewish people. This racial violence has led to numerous acts of right-wing terrorism. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), right-ring extremists killed 38 people in 2019 — 76% of all extremist-related murders that year. These perpetrators typically self-identify with ideologies that include neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, and neo-Confederates. White supremacists heavily coalesced around the removal of Confederate monuments amidst the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. The monuments have long drawn ire for honoring the institution of slavery. Opponents of the white nationalist movement typically advocate for stricter hate crime laws, open immigration reform, and protection against racial or religious discrimination. They also push for greater access to economic power for marginalized racial groups and for reparations for slave-descended Americans. There is also an ongoing debate over how to classify white nationalist violence and activities, with opponents of the white nationalist movement calling for such actions to be classified as domestic terrorism.

Aaaaand, last but CERTAINLY not least ...

BLM (Black Lives Matter) - The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is a political movement to resist police brutality against Black people. BLM began in response to repeated instances of law enforcement facing little to no legal repercussions for use-of-force incidents that resulted in a Black person's death. BLM has grown into one of the most massive movements in U.S. history. Recent polls found that between 15 to 26 million Americans participated in BLM demonstrations in 2020 over the deaths of George Floyd, Elijah McClain, Breonna Taylor, Emmett Till, and other victims of police brutality. Supporters of the movement consider police brutality to be a form of oppression against Black people, arguing that it is one symptom of inequalities in legal, judicial, and socioeconomic status. Advocates also believe that failure to prosecute officers for using excessive force demonstrates that Black lives are less valued than white lives. BLM has proposed defunding police, reforming law enforcement, investing in underserved communities, and holding officers accountable for racial bias and brutality. Critics believe that BLM is an unfair condemnation of law enforcement. They argue that defunding police or changing their tactics would undermine their ability to uphold the law under dangerous circumstances. Others point to Black-on-Black crime as justification for anti-Black attitudes, while dismissing or ignoring acts of violence by white people that specifically target Black people. The Blue Lives Matter (BlueLM) and All Lives Matters (ALM) slogans were adopted to reflect this pro-police stance.

Hopefully this helps someone! Remember, always have a cool head when debating ignorant others :)

I believe in you!

#controversial topics #politics #disscussion #the umbrella academy

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antilagardelle · 3 years

Text

My Conversion To Catholicism

Given the nature of this piece I will largely stay my usual impulse to abide by strict writing formalities. I will likewise employ a great deal more pathos than usual, albeit still less than most people, especially with respects to something as profoundly epiphanic as a conversion. That said, I reckon the best point of commencement for my story is at the beginning. I was raised Catholic from the cradle, but around the age of fourteen I fell away from the faith. Now I never became an atheist, although I did have a phase where I believed that God was evil and he created us as his guinea pigs for the mere purpose of torturing us. This belief was largely reflective of my domestic situation at the time.

As far as God’s existence goes--a subject which I do not have time to cover in this piece beyond a cursory review of thomist apologetics--I had always felt that these arguments, to which I was exposed at an early age, were essentially irrefragable: that a belief in any cause and effect without an uncaused cause at its outset was effectively an open rebellion against arithmetic, as was any belief in motion without an unmoved mover at its outset. Over the years I debated many atheists, all of whom advanced countless counterarguments to these undeniable verities. Yet not one of these rebuttals ever proved to be substantial argumentation, but rather clever forms of intellectual obstinacy; nay, that they never once posed an argument that both delegitimized these truths, and did not in so doing, delegitimize epistemology on the whole. So I was always convinced of the existence of a sentient uncaused cause: aseitas.

Now it occurred a couple years after I graduated high school in February of 2018 that I was quite spontaneously driven to look into the controversy of whether or not Jesus actually existed. I found that there were in fact extra-biblical references to Christ from trusted historians such as Tacitus and Josephus. And upon reading these references, and further finding that all attempts to repudiate their veracity, or even to argue that they were insignificant to prove that Jesus existed, were eristically facile. And it was upon this realization that I then knew that Jesus was a historical figure. When I was younger my stance on the story of the crucifixion would have been that the story accurately reflected the human tendency to hate that which is righteous. To hate that which is good, and love that which is evil. But as to the historicity of the texts I would have taken a neutral stance: I didn’t know. But after researching the matter, I now knew. The thing that I had been raised to believe, happened to be objectively true regardless of my having been raised to believe it. The values I was raised to believe were objectively true. And this was somewhat astounding to me. It was as if I no longer believed... I knew.

A couple months later, when Good Friday rolled around, I watched Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of The Christ. I had watched the film before, but this was the first time I watched it knowing beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt, that the events depicted were verifiably historical. It was real. What I was watching really happened. And as such, I was so profoundly impacted by what Christ voluntarily underwent, and that through it all, he deigned not to provoke or to strike back, but instead to simply say “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” An innocent man, who did absolutely nothing, chose to undergo this torture anyway, without complaint. I was so deeply impacted by watching all this that I cried quite profusely. And I can remember thinking to myself that I wanted to be part of that man’s church. Whoever this man was, and whatever church he instituted I wanted to follow. And how could I not? The thought was burning through my mind, that if I had lived and seen what this man did, there was no way conceivable that I could choose not to follow him. And precepts such as saving sex for marriage, and going to mass every sunday were a small price to pay in comparison to how profound it felt to be numbered among this man’s followers.

Moreover, I recall the thought that I could not get out of my head for several months thereafter, was just how incredible the scriptures really were. In other words, the story of Christ was a story that on all accounts should have been a fairytale. I mean you’re telling me that the son of God came to earth and turned water into wine and he was crucified and the temple split down the middle and the vail rent from the top down upon his death, and the earth shook, and on the third day he rose again from the dead and is seated at the right hand of the father and he will come again to judge the living and the dead? But that’s just it... it was true. It was all real. It was as real as my own two hands. This story which on all accounts should have been the biggest fairytale of human history, just so happened to be objectively true regardless how surreal or mystical it was. Far from dismissing the scriptures from reality as some outlandish fairytale, it elevated the status of reality to that of a fairytale. This was my realization: reality was a fairytale. And it is no surprise then that the marked trait of reality is its need for fairy tales to express it. The modern idea that everything can be reduced under a “rational” system devoid of all numinous or esoteric qualities is flat out irrational. In fact anyone who impartially observes nature and the universe sees esoteric qualities all over the place: namely the Fibonacci Sequence, the fact that the moon wanes and waxes in 28 day cycles mirroring the menstrual cycle by sheer chance, the perfect transition of the four seasons(four being a symbol of wholeness). Now what’s the immediate conclusion of all these occurrences? The most immediate answer, if I am to forego relating these mystical realities to intelligent design for the sake of argument, is that the world is inherently esoteric. If your version of reality does not include ineffable, mystical, numinous doctrines, it isn’t reality at all. This was the conclusion that my conversion brought me to. And I distinctly recall thinking, “the things that are true, the things that are true, you wouldn’t believe the things that are true.”

It was not until late December of 2019 that I began to shift from a sort of vague unitarian Protestantism to Catholicism. My heart was no longer hardened. It had softened at this point in time, due largely I believe to the fact I had just moved out of my Parents’ house. My conversion to Catholicism from Protestantism was based on two principle truths that I had long known, but suppressed or ignored out of a fear of coming back to Catholicism. That fear was now removed. The two primary truths were as follows:

1. That Protestantism is merely moral relativism with a Christian flavor. As bluntly phrased as that is, it’s true. The scriptures on their own cannot adequately constitute morality without a central magisterium to interpret them. Without a magisterium, stoning gay men, raping women, and flogging would all be justified. And many Christian movements have done such things which were made excusable by the mere fact that they had no papal authority to condemn them. The magisterium mediates the meanings of the biblical passages. Discussion about infallibility is for another occasion.

2. That biblical canon is an unattainable standard where there is no central church to delineate between those books which are doctrinally adequate and those which are not: namely The Gospel Of Judas, The Gospel Of Thomas, The Book Of Enoch, etc... Without a central authority, the very notion of a uniform bible vanishes completely. One of the attacks on the bible made constantly by atheists, is just how various and contradictory the literature is that claims to chronicle the life of Christ, and of the individuals and events in the old testament. That these chronicles are so varied and contradictory that there can be no canon. This argument holds sway as long as one refuses to believe that there was an actual central church that went through all these varied accounts and pulled out only those that were coherent, and in line with the Church’s doctrine, and I had to accept this in order to properly defend the truth against the assault of atheists.

I have now been Catholic for over a year. I recall it started as an inkling. In late December of 2019 I felt like I was being pulled that direction, but I still didn’t consider myself Catholic for certain. I started going to mass every now and then. This eventually became every sunday. I went to confession so I could start receiving the eucharist. Month by month, week by week, day by day, I became increasingly more devoted to being Catholic. I went from saying that I thought I wanted to come back to Catholicism but was hesitant to call myself Catholic, to boldly considering myself Catholic. I hope this piece has been informative, helpful, or enlightening to fellow Catholics, as well as others of all creeds and philosophical beliefs. God bless all who chose to read this!

#catholicism #catholic #christian #christianity #protestantism #bible #scriptures #philosophy #religion #jesus #atheism #skepticism #literature #history #conversion #hermeneutics #epistemology

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