#especially in the first example…

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Danton breaking up fights between Robespierre and his soon-to-be ex-boyfriends compilation

The surveillance Committee launched an arrest warrant against Minister Roland; it was the 4th (September), and the massacres were still going on. Danton was informed of it, he came to town hall, he was with Robespierre; […] I (Pétion) had an explanation with Robespierre, it was very lively. I tell him: “Robespierre, you are doing a lot of harm; your denunciations, your alarms, your hatreds, your suspicions, they agitate the people; explain yourself; do you have any facts? Do you have any proof? I fight with you; I only love the truth; I only want freedom.”

”You allow yourself to be surrounded, you allow yourself to be warned, he replied; you are disposed against me; you see my enemies everyday; you see Brissot and his party.”

”You are mistaken, Robespierre; no one is more on guard than I against prejudices, and judges with more coolness, men and things. You’re right, I see Brissot, however rarely, but you don’t know him, and I know him since his childhood. I have seen him in those moments when the soul shows itself entirely; where one abandons oneself unreservedly to friendship, to confidence: I know his disinterestedness; I know his principles, I proclaim to you that they are pure; those who make him a party leader have not the faintest idea of ​​his character; he has enlightenment and knowledge; but he has neither the reserve, nor the dissimulation, nor those lively forms, nor that spirit of consistency which constitutes a leader of a party, and what will surprise you is that, far from leading others, he is very easy to abuse.”

Robespierre insisted, but confined himself to generalities.

”Allow us to explain ourselves,” I told him, ”tell me frankly what is in your heart, what you know.”

”Well!” he replied, ”I believe that Brissot is at Brunswick.”

”What mistake is yours,” I exclaimed! ”it is truly madness; this is how your imagination leads you astray: wouldn't Brunswick be the first to cut his head off? Brissot is not mad enough to doubt it: which of us can seriously capitulate! which of us does not risk his life! Let us banish unjust mistrust.”

Danton became entangled in the colloquy, saying that this was not the time for arguments; that it was necessary to have all these explanations after the expulsion of the enemies; that this decisive object alone should occupy all good citizens.  Discours de Jérôme Pétion sur l’accusation intentée contre Maximilien Robespierre (November 5 1792)

Robespierre: Camille's writings are to be condemned, no doubt; but nevertheless it is necessary to distinguish the person from his works. I consent freedom to treat Desmoulins like a spoiled child who had happy dispositions, and who has been led astray by bad company. His head sometimes wanders, but his talents are precious. But we must demand of him that he prove his repentance for all his thoughtlessness, by quitting those companies which have ruined him. We must crack down on his acts that Brissot himself would not have dared to admit, and keep Desmoulms in our midst. All these truths are not flattering for an author: but if the vanity of Camille Desmoulins is offended by them, he considers that he has attracted a small admonition sufficient to correct it. When he sees that he has deserved still more severe reproaches, he will feel the necessity of rallying to principles, and removing from himself all causes of an error that we are willing to forgive him for. Let him examine that his writings are the pain of patriots and the joy of aristocrats, and he will be grateful to us to see that it is only for him that we can forget them. I end by asking that his numbers be treated like the aristocrats who buy them, with the contempt that profanity deserves. I propose to the Society to burn them in the middle of the room (There is applause several times; Robespierre's speech was interrupted by applause and bursts of laughter).  Desmoulins: That's very well said, Robespierre, but I'll answer you like Rousseau: "To burn is not to answer."  Robespierre: How dare you still want to justify works that delight the aristocracy? Learn, Camille, that if you were not Camille, one could not have so much indulgence for you. The way you want to justify yourself proves to me that you have bad intentions. To burn is not to answer! But can this quotation of the sublime philosopher of Geneva find its application here? WelI, I retract my last motion; I ask that Camille's numbers not be burned, but that they be answered. Since he wants to, let him be covered with ignominy, let the Society not restrain its indignation, since he persists in supporting his diatribes and his dangerous principles. The man who clings so strongly to perfidious writings is perhaps more than misguided; if he had been in good faith, if he had written in the simplicity of his heart, he would not have dared longer to support works proscribed by patriots and sought after by all the counter-revolutionaries of France. His courage is only borrowed, he detects the hidden men under whose dictation he wrote his diary; he detects in Desmoulins the organ of a villainous faction which has borrowed his pen to distill its poison with more audacity and certainty. Desmoulins, who sees himself blamed by the patriots, finds himself compensated by the adulations of the aristocrats he frequents, and by the caresses of many false patriots, under which he does not perceive the perfidious intention of ruining him. You must know what he said in response to those who blamed his writings: Do you know that I sold 50 000 copies! I would not have said these truths if Desmoulins had not been so obstinate, but the point of order has become necessary. I therefore ask that the numbers of Camille Desmoulins be read from the rostrum: if there are individuals who defend his principles, they will be listened to, but there will be patriots to answer them.  Desmoulins: But Robespierre, I don’t understand you. How can you say only aristocrats read my paper? The Convention, the Mountain, are they composed of aristocrats? You denounce me here, but was I not at your house? Didn’t I read you my numbers, asking you, in the name of friendship, for your advice, and to trace the path that I had to take?  Robespierre: You didn’t show me all your numbers, I only saw one or two. To avoid quarrel I didn’t want to read the others, it would be said that I dictated them.  Danton: Camille mustn’t be frightened by the rather severe lessons Robespierre’s friendship has just given him. Citizens, let justice and cold-headedness always preside over our decisions. In judging Camille, be careful to not strike a deadly blow against the liberty of the press.  [A secretary reads number 4 of Vieux Cordelier, which excites reclamations, the reading is at several times interrupted by marks of improbation. The club, at the proposal of Robespierre, decides that it will hear the reading of Camille’s third and fifth number tomorrow, where he will justify himself.]  The Jacobin Club January 7 1794

[crow-caller]

I really do think looking at bad writing is one of the best ways to learn about writing in general, especially for beginners.

the thing is, writing in general is highly subjective- a good sentence will be good in different ways to different people, or not impress someone at all.

a bad sentence? most people can spot bad sentences easy, especially if it is presented to them as 'here's an example of a bad sentence, let's unpack why.'

bad writing can also be very funny, which I think is again often more engaging than 'here's a work of literary genius go analyze it'. Like here's some bad writing from lightlark3:

The moment it was out of Horus’s grip, his body became bones. The flesh turned to ash. He became a corpse.

it's dumb as hell, but I think could foster a solid discussion when you ask 'why? what is the author intending to say? what about it makes it feel 'clunky'? How would you write the same idea?'

[littencloud9]

“top/bottom dynamics matter extremely to me because the sex dynamic changes the regular dynamic of the characters to fit into traditional BL roles and i only believe in one” i don’t know how to explain how much of a skill issue that is on your part

[fantasykiri5]

Does it still count as Mer-may if she ALSO has legs??

(Aka Hermit-A-Day May 10: Gem!!)

[sonknuxadow]

not to have two complaining posts back to back but i can't be the only person who finds the shadow loves latinas joke extremely unfunny right

[graveyard-galaxy]

You know I actually think Douglas Graves is more spineless than Andrew could ever be. Douglas seems to simply view himself as an extension of his wife, I do not think Andrew consistently views himself as an extension of Ashley.

This one’s interesting, because I do conceptually agree, but I also think I have a little more to say than just that.

Where Andrew and Ashley vs Douglas and Renee gets interesting to me is that Douglas isn’t necessarily portrayed as uncomfortable just doing what Renee wants in the same way that if nothing else, just the ____ in a box ending (Choosing Andy ending in episode 3) shows that Andrew is completely miserable just being Ashley’s plaything. It does get a little hard to say, because we are very deliberately shown very little of Douglas, typically, because the story is told from Andrew and Ashley’s perspectives, and he is completely absentee to both of them. (We don’t even get his portraits until we’re in a vision from Renee’s perspectives, for instance) I would say though, that whereas Andrew feels confined and consumed by being under Ashley’s thumb, Douglas seems to be comfortable under Renee’s direction, from what we see.

He won’t stand up to his abusive father, but Renee will do it for him. (They had a plan to kill his parents together, and though we have no idea how much Douglas really liked the idea of this, we know that he was perfectly prepared to go along with the plan before they discovered and decided to keep Renee’s pregnancy.) He doesn’t get the social mind games the surgeon plays with him, but Renee does, and he’s perfectly happy for her to just speak for him entirely in the opposite way to how the surgeon speaks to him for her. And even just in the car on the way to the grandparents! He tries to stammer out to the kids why they shouldn’t ruin the car, but they don’t respond, and then he’s perfectly happy to let Renee bark out the orders. (Only to Andrew, passing that chain of responsibility right along, as well….)

Andrew wouldn’t take this from Ashley. We’ve all known for a while that his ‘doormat extraordinaire’ descriptor is a good bit of unreliable narration, and is exactly what he wants us to think, but it’s still worth noting for that all he does give into Ashley and appear to be that doormat, it’s reluctantly. A lot of the time he’s only battered down into agreeing with her, which is part of why he’s so frustrated and often times verging on nihilistic in episode 3.

So whilst, yep, I do think Douglas would be happy to call himself an extension of Renee, because when he comes home from long hours of work, feeling tired and frustrated and perhaps verging on nihilistic (note, we do not know this, but considering he has to tell Andrew in an episode 2 flashback that he isn’t about to jump off the balcony, it’s not hard to see potential parallels to our very suicidal and nihilistic Shots and Such Andrew) she makes everything right again.

But it really is more complicated for Andrew. Just in this framework, Andrew is both happiest when he has Ashley right beside him, but also at his most miserable when he’s ‘forced’ to put up with her. When he’s apart from Ashley, he feels wrong. But when he’s with Ashley, they so frequently fight and he does things that he doesn’t like. If he thinks of himself as an extension of her, it’s in a very miserable sense; he wants to be more to her than just what she wants to be, and more than just Leyley’s Andy, and feels confined as just her plaything. He views her as fundamentally incapable of drawing any kind of lines between them, so when he is Ashley’s anything, for all that he claims to be happy to be her everything, it isn’t offering any kind of safety or fulfilment in the same way that being Renee’s husband offers something to Douglas.

To put it succinctly, Andrew yearns for an equal partnership; Douglas yearns to be with Renee in any capacity.

Or, well, it’s hard to say exactly how Douglas feels, because we never see his perspective, and because most of the thoughts we have on their relationship are from Renee’s perspective. But we know that they both feel as though they saved each other — it’s just that Renee’s words about this are a lot stronger. She very fervently insists that meeting Douglas is practically the only good thing to happen to her, in her time capsule letter, but Douglas’s is more… wishy-washy, I suppose? He says that being with Renee gives him a reason to stay alive, but practically everything else he says is along the lines of “I want to do this because you do”. Even in Renee’s vision in the vision room, mostly Douglas seems to just test the waters more saying anything concrete, so it’s hard to get his thoughts on things beyond just the obvious “I love my wife”.

What I will say is interesting about that vision is how he does take some actions without Renee’s direct input. He, at the very least, is in tune with her enough to act on her behalf sometimes, as here, he unplugs the phone for her, and is the first to tentatively bring up that they don’t have to do anything about Andrew and Ashley potentially being Nina’s killers. But I think more relevantly here, we also observe he easily he backpedals. He thinks out loud about how the punishment for Andrew and Ashley can’t be that bad if they killed Nina, because they’re both just kids – very apathetic to the situation as he’s apathetic towards the kids – but quickly changes his tune when Renee snaps about not wanting to be seen as the mother of two kids raised so badly they’re murderers. After that, that’s when he starts of his casual avoidance – the “We don’t know that it actually happened, so therefore it probably didn’t” type attitude. (Curiously, this is more of a parallel to Ashley’s line of thinking about Nina with her whole “If you don’t think about something for a really long time, it’ll be like it never happened” type mentality.)

We see Andrew test the waters in similar ways, especially in episode 1, where he lets Ashley dictate a lot of his behaviour for some kind of plausible deniability (“Do we, uhh… Do you want to go check on him?” about the neighbour once on his balcony, and the infamous “Wanna go take a peek?” “Nope. But I’ll come along if you do…” about going to see what the music is about the first time) but I think this comes from a bit of a different place. Douglas tests the waters with what he says because he fundamentally trusts his wife’s judgment over his own, seemingly, and because he doesn’t want to go against her. But Andrew speaks like this because his mask is still so far up in episode 1, especially when we don’t see him from his perspective, so he’s still very much shifting responsibility for what they do onto Ashley because he doesn’t want to accept it. It’s not that Andrew especially trusts Ashley’s judgment, clearly not, given how much he doubts and insults her plans and motives in later episodes, but if she makes the decisions, then it’s just not his fault if things go wrong.

Or once again, to summarise, Douglas lets Renee be responsible for his actions and opinions because he trusts her and because he wants his thoughts to align with hers, whereas Andrew lets Ashley be responsible for his actions and seemingly at fault for his opinions only when it’s both most convenient for him to have her to blame, and when he’s willing to entertain her as actually Ashley – when he’s having enough fun with her to actually want to hear her thoughts.

Because if there’s one big thing that stops Andrew from being an extension of Ashley, it’s that most of the time, he doesn’t see her as her own person. Most of the time, if anyone’s an extension of anyone, she’s just some extension of him, as he’s the stand-in mother, father, boyfriend, whatever the fuck she feels like that day to her, whilst he consistently dehumanises and infantilises her. He can’t be the extension of someone he views as never having grown out being a child at the best of times, and as simply an “it” – some kind of object that can’t be consistent because it doesn’t have its own thoughts – at the worst. And when she attempts to force him into that position – when she chains him up or puts him away in the toy box – he’s miserable, because he is only willing to be Ashley’s if it’s on his terms.

[fmaandbgud]

😧i don't remember this in the anime 😨

[mohntilyet]

speaking of veilguard kind of going nowhere. i am so mad over there being no in depth epilogue. at least tell me what happens to the factions that are being led/guided by people rook influenced !!!!!! all these companions have obvious obligations outside of the veilguard, and they're all dedicated to the lives they lived before they joined this team, so of course they would go back. what effect did bellara deciding to keep the archive have on the elves? neve decides to protect dock town by any means necessary, so what does that mean for a blighted minrathous? everything to do with harding and the titans ????!!!! and solas just accepts being trapped because he's been 'outplayed' DO NOT MAKE ME LAUGH!!!! somebody has got to tell me what happens after the world gets 'saved' because the south in chaos, minrathous almost destroyed and the last of the elven gods being dead is like. crazy. and the companions just commenting things i already know is really not cutting it for me

[rawliverandcigarettes]

honestly, re: my last reblog, but it's so funny to me how unbearably annoying humans in mass effect are, like you guys!!!!! calm down!!! you JUST arrived!!! maybe take in your surroundings for 5 seconds before declaring you should be treated like the most special princesses of all and have all the advantages ever without any drawback and be recognized as the supreme leaders who have all the clarity and drive and righteousness to solve everything and be the victims of everyone's envy and meanness and the ultimate heroes who will save everyone in spite of themselves...... 😔😔😔

[stunie]

it’s so easy to forget that you can literally write whatever you want

[crows-of-buckets]

Thinking about ragbros and their direct parallel to the twins. The traveler who is widely considered a hero and spends their days protecting teyvat and their sibling who is leading the abyss who seeks to destroy that. Yeah that's a direct parallel to diluc being the protector of mondstat while kaeya is a descendant of the abyss orders founder. Like. Do you think after the traveler finds out about kaeya and Diluc's past they're just. Absolutely floored by how similar they are? And hoyo wants us to be normal about this???

[crystallizsch]

WELCOME HOME MY DARLING BELOVED I FINALLY HAVE YOUR TAPIS ROUGE CARD AFTER WAITING A WHOLE YEAR

yes sir i agree sir whatever you say sir + if it's vil-approved i agree too o777

OKAY CALM DOWN MR VIPER SIR YOU'RE HOME HOLY SHIT

[abigmessofablog]

i love you, characters who have the explicit purpose of representing entire concepts in the narrative. i love you, characters bigger than themselves. i love you allegorical characters. i love you characters so wrapped in metaphor and the creator philosophizing through you it eclipses you as a "person," i love you characters who haunt the narrative long after you're gone. i love you characters who are doomed because the thing that they represent are doomed. i love you characters who are more lesson then character.

[pureseasalt]

me personally i take anything as a win. the future is bright and the sky's the limit. today, a sydcarmy slow burn miscommunication angst fest. tomorrow, a sydcarmy pussy eating episode. the universe has set out its plans and it wants first and foremost for me to be happy

[mayasaura]

turns out I am not immune to dungeon meshi's propaganda

[loveless-in-nowheresville]

I love angry fictional characters so much like yes. I see your rage. And then characters that are really angry and try to be GOOD?!? OHOHO-I see you wanting to lash out and shred something to pieces and I see you trying to hold yourself back and turn it into something safer like a snappy comment or a bad habit like scratching at your own skin or biting your nails instead of a physical attack against someone else. You know that you’re more than your anger but it burns in you like an inferno in your blood and sometimes you must let it out. I love u so much. You’re one of my favorites.