#even in other countries those who oppose them are arrested and even killed. but sure. theyre both equally in the wrong

[effervescent-fool]

funny how he ends the conversation just as I'm about explain the entire timeline of the isreali occupation

[creepymutelilbugger]

hey I got a question about your "bunch new followers, if you pro/anti x then fuck off" post, and while this is probably not the best place for constructive criticism or discussion, I'll just give it a shot:

I consider myself very leftist, anti capitalist, much in the queer/trans bubble, anti car, pro choice, pro nuclear and very pro "the end justifies the means" (in terms of violence/militanz). but one thing I never understood is "pro cop = bad". sure, cops as the concept they are today is clearly not working because people with violence "tendencies" who are greedy for power are in such positions, while those should rather be occupied by people who really wanna help others, and not give them a felony for a gram of green - not to even mention murdering black people. but not having an executive/police at all is also not really an option, is it? in a perfect world, where you have all the power to change anything to your liking, what would it look like? or is anti cops really just the anti bad cops who are greedy for power and abuse their position, but not anti those who actually help and care for the people? While anarchism is a interessting thought, it would just not work out. Unless you stone every racist to death... then the whole world would probably be a lot better but I sadly don't think that'll happen (soon).

anti cop for me is a way of saying i hate and want to defund the police. the police eat up enormous amounts of the budgets of a huge amount of cities across the usa and they use that money to terrorize the people. im not a political expert but i have had enough bad encounters to hate the fucking cops . my own brother has been shot with rubber bullets after being corralled into a block by three walls of police officers who then opened fire on the peaceful crowd he was in with 'non lethal' munitions and tear gas (this was in Oregon a few years back after George Floyd). i am not opposed, on paper, to the presence of an effective and fair police force, but that is a distant fantasy right now. cops in this country arrest innocent people to make quotas, kill innocent people, hurt innocent people, scare innocent people, inconvenience innocent people, and harass innocent people. even if they actually properly did their jobs in addition to all that, that would be unacceptable, and grounds to push a police reform. fuck pigs. hope this helps

[qqueenofhades]

Russian here. While I totally agree with you re Baltic countries not letting us in, I totally disagree with your comparison of protesting in Russia and protesting in the USA. I’m not downplaying the bravery of BLM protesters in any way, but your jailing system (while horrible and especially dangerous to black people) doesn’t mean that you are definitely going to get tortured in some way or another, that you are very likely going to be raped and going out to protest doesn’t mean that you are going to get 15 years in prison (where again you are going to get tortured this time 100 %) with total disregard to any special needs you might have and basically left for dead (Sasha Skolichenko wasn’t even protesting by the way, I think she was doing what people in democratic states might call minor misdemeanor and she is now being purposefully held in such a way that will make sure that her health will deteriorate). The protesters were sent to the army yesterday btw. Those who were arrested yesterday were sent to the army.

USA is a democratic state. I live in a totalitarian dictatorship. I am being photographed by the police in Moscow metro on the daily basis, while going to work. With all due respect (and I have a lot of respect, I’m being serious) I have a suspicion that USA Americans are not accustomed to living like I do.

Like, I am completely at peace with the prospect of being hated for the rest of my life by other nations. I might even deserve it. But I am foaming at the mouth when people try to present that the current wave of protesters are people who have been pro war before. No. Just no. These are people who were celebrating the victories of Ukrainian army a couple of weeks ago. And these are people who are protecting their right to not be criminals.

There are a lot of people who changed their opinion on the war because they might get hurt, yes, but I assure you they are not the ones protesting right now. Cowards are not part of protest movement here. They just can’t be, the stakes are too high.

I would tend to agree with this, yes, and I apologize for making a somewhat too-broad comparison in my previous post. As you point out, a flawed liberal democracy (well, for the moment, since we have a very active movement trying to turn us into a fascist one-party state as well) and a totalitarian dictatorship are not the same social environments and do not have the same response to/expectation of protests. And yes, as I also said, it absolutely takes a great deal of personal courage to protest in Russia, which I have recognized from the start and continue to admire. I'm definitely not trying to come off as arrogantly ordering ordinary people to sacrifice themselves en masse in the teeth of a totalitarian state that will use all the amounts of force available to it and then some, and then (as you note) send them to the army to get killed anyway. Two for the price of one! So yes, your point on this is definitely well taken.

As I said in another recent ask, this whole thing is a tragedy on every level, not least for the untold, unmendable, and totally unnecessary damage that it's doing to Russia as a state and to the Russian people (yet again). There were so many choices that could have been made differently, in regard to Russia's post-Cold War path and regression under Putin, and... well, we're now all dealing with the consequences. There are absolutely some extremely brave people in Russia who have opposed the war from the start and continue to oppose it now, in unimaginable circumstances, and I'm not downplaying that in any way (and I really hope you guys can keep it up). I think some of my frustration is just a reflection of the fact that the world is wondering when or if that internal/domestic Russian resistance is ever going to reach critical mass, because -- as noted -- you're the only ones who can solve this mess, regardless of the terrible odds that are facing you. So yeah, the situation is absolutely terrible, and I'm not asking anyone to suddenly rise up and be a hero, but... still.

I hope you hang in there, and I hope you can find the strength to continue living somehow. Thanks for this perspective.

[dramioneasks]

HP FESTS: DramioneFanfictionWriters (Part 4)

DFW's Deal or No Deal: Famous Shakespeare Lines, February 2021:

Short Life For A Daffodil by KrysKrossZee - T, one-shot - Hermione and Draco have a wild daughter who likes to pull up daffodils and frustrate her parents, but the duo wouldn't be without their children.

Friends Dont by Lostinthenightrain - T, one-shot - "You don’t choose who you fall for!” “No, because I sure as hell wouldn’t be standing here now would I?” Hermione mourns the loss of a relationship.

The Malfoy Mistress by ThebeMoon - M, one-shot - Unable to bear the sight of Bellatrix carving into Hermione Granger at Malfoy Manor, Draco Malfoy whisks his hated former schoolmate to safety. He should have known better.

Rules of Engagement by Art3misiA - T, one-shot - Lucius just had to be difficult about the idea of Draco and Hermione getting married. Will Draco and Hermione allow him to throw his weight around, or will they bring him to heel?

DFW's Deal or No Deal: Popular 90's TV Shows, March 2021:

The Death of Theo Nott by Lostinthenightrain - T, one-shot - “Hermione.” Her head whipped up to see the broken expression in Draco’s eyes. “He wouldn’t kill himself.”

The Night of the Rats by rennaissance_woman - not rated, one-shot - What happens when a prank war goes too far?

Perfect Harmony by Talonwillow (TalonWillow) - T, one-shot -Professor Slughorn's star Potions pupil Hermione was tired of being the ugly duckling, so she created a potion that would transform her into a beautiful swan. Everyone seemed to like the shiny new version of her... Well, except for herself and maybe one other. Would Draco Malfoy convince her that what everyone else was seeing was what he saw every day, and would Hermione finally be able to live in Perfect Harmony?

Dramione Go Star Trekking by KrysKrossZee - T, one-shot - Riker has made a pass at Hermione and she doesn't quite know how to deal with it.

Bloody Colonials by Maira - T, one-shot - Hermione Granger has had a long week, and the last thing she wants to do is leave the comfort of her home. But when her best friend asks for her help in dealing with a possible cursed object, what can she do but help? Brownies, Potion-making robe etiquette, and a cursed Nigerian mask all add up to a typical night at Hogwarts. Written for the DFW's Deal or No Deal challenge.

The Latest Teenage Drama by Art3misiA - T, one-shot - Teenagers. Gotta love em. Teenage dramas? Not so much. Draco and Hermione navigate the perils of unwanted teenage behaviour - 90s family sitcom style.

DFW's Deal or No Deal: Around the World, April 2021:

The Assignment by Art3misiA - G, one-shot - Hermione and Draco, Aurors, have been sent to Cape Town on a top secret assignment - to track down a former Death Eater.

Finding Them by KrysKrossZee - T, WIP - After not finding her parents in Austrailia, Hermione enlists Draco's help and the two make their way to Vancouver when they have a new lead.

DFW's Deal or No Deal: The Language of Flowers, May 2021:

Spilled Ink by Maira - M, one-shot - It's nearly Christmas, and things aren't great. Draco Malfoy is still on house arrest due to the Wizengamot being a bag of dicks. Hermione Granger is out of the country on a job, which means he won't see her for a few weeks. And to top it all off, Hermione has sent Draco a plant. A green, spiky plant, for no reason that he can fathom. Oh, and a spelled journal that he's now supposed to write in. Because nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan. Written for the DFW Deal or No Deal Challenge!

Forever by Art3misiA - M, one-shot - Though they may be gone, our memories of them remain forever.

The Little Things by KrysKrossZee - T, one-shot - When Hermione buys Draco a cup of coffee and leaves it on his desk, it throws Draco through a loop and he wonders what he should get her in exchange.

The Climbing Vine by rennaissance_woman - not rated, one-shot - After receiving some startling news, Draco runs out of the house. He receives some advice from a surprising source.

Changing of the Seasons by Lostinthenightrain - M, one-shot - Hermione & Draco find a local park and two unlikely faces to greet them.

DFW's Deal or No Deal: Draco's Birthday Soundtrack, June 2021:

Straight to the Heart by AdAsttra - T, one-shot - Draco's ready to tell Hermione how he feels, but Cupid has other ideas.

Stick Around by KrysKrossZee - T, one-shot - Hermione doesn't know why Draco is the only one who makes her feel safe, but she is glad that she is able to get some reprieve from her brain.

Wild and Wired by Maira - M, one-shot - Need your lovin' here beside me, Need it close enough to guide me, I've been hopin' you would find me, You're the biggest part of me. - Hermione was expecting a fun night out with her boyfriend and her friends. She was not expecting ice cubes, sick ponies, and a serenade beautiful enough to melt her heart. Written for the DFW's Deal or No Deal challenge.

Let's Get Serious (Please, for the Love of Merlin!) by Art3misiA - G, one-shot - Draco wants to get serious, but Hermione isn't so sure. Will their opposing views make or break them?

DFW's Deal or No Deal: Magical Monsters, July 2021:

There's A Zouwu In My Basement by KrysKrossZee - T, one-shot - When a creature has broken into the Malfoy Manor dungeon, Draco has to call for help.

Miseria by crochetaway - T, one-shot - Hermione tames a Dementor.

Aegis by Maira - M, one-shot - Their world is in ruins, and their only protection against creatures wanting to kill them is about to fall. They make a plan to trek across the country to Hogwarts, where others have gathered to make a new home within the castle. There, they will be safe. One problem - before they go, there's a queen to kill. Written for the DFW's Deal or No Deal Challenge.

Fear & Desire by myladymay - T, one-shot - Draco Malfoy wants to change his life. He returns to Hogwarts for Eighth Year and finds himself confronted with both his biggest fear and greatest desire, all wrapped up in a Gryffindor tie.

Innocent Monsters by itscometothis - T, 12 chapters - Draco Malfoy thought he had reasonable expectations for his mandatory Eighth Year at Hogwarts, where he would be confined to the grounds as part of his probation. Isolation, hatred, and passing his NEWTs were really all he had in mind. What he wasn't anticipating: 1) Having a small firstie latch onto him like a bloody koala 2) Said firstie adopting an erkling as if they didn’t feed on children. To protect his little nuisance, he’ll have to seek help from uncomfortable places, including the Swottiest Witch of Her Age. Joy of all joys.

Transformed by Art3misiA - T, one-shot - Draco and Charlie have a dragon to catch, and time is running out. Meanwhile, Hermione is missing, adding to Draco's woes.

DFW's Deal or No Deal: Legendary Duos, August 2021:

Three's a crowd, four's trouble by AnnaRitaLi - M, WIP - p>My sister is right. My life did change that evening. I just don't think Rosalind meant for me to steal her boyfriend, or I don't think I stole him, Draco, not precisely. You cannot steal something that doesn't want to be whisked away. That's my experience, at least, and I've stolen quite a few things over the years. So I can say this with confidence. You can't lose something you never had. But you’ll have to read it in the book, dear. While the Crown doesn’t wish for me to speak out in public, I have been silent for too long. You see, There were three of us in this marriage. And people, the press, have assumed many things over the years about Draco and me. So this book, as you’ll see, it’s my attempt to set the record straight. Yes, there were three of us in this marriage, but there were also much more going on than that. -- This is the story the Crown never wanted to get out. In other words, I bring you the x-rated version of the book ‘Diana - her true story - in her own words’.’ It’s the Dramione as Charles & Diana AU you didn't know you needed.

The Marquess and the Kitchen Girl by Art3misiA - E, 8 chapters - Draco Malfoy is the son of the most powerful Duke in Wiltshire. One day, he will be the ruler of a large duchy. Hermione Granger lives happily with her parents - that is, until tragedy strikes. Two children will become friends, and gradually discover a forbidden love that seems as if it might one day defy the odds. Alas, this is a tale of doomed lovers.

In Her Arms by KrysKrossZee - M, one-shot - Draco's worked his way up through Voldemort's ranks but it would seem that all of his work has been for nothing when Dolohov captures a new prisoner.

The Happiness I Seek by Maira - M, one-shot - To those without a soulmate, the world is devoid of colour. They say that if you are lucky enough to meet your soulmate, everything changes. The world is brighter, food is richer, and you find a love you never knew you needed. Draco Malfoy has never been lucky. Written for the DFW's Deal or No Deal challenge.

darling! by itscometothis - M, one-shot - When Draco and Hermione are invited to help demonstrate a path forward for Wizarding Britain and its reconciliation, neither really feel like they can refuse - Hermione for moral reasons and Draco for practical ones (read: Azkaban sounds bad). But they have very different ideas on how to play up this fake relationship. Written for DFW's Deal or No Deal: Legendary Duos - Kermit and Ms. Piggy. It's as ridiculous as you expect.

A Thousand Ships by floorcoaster - M, WIP - Draco Malfoy knows what he wants, and he's not afraid to reach out and take it.

Quiet My Demons by Lostinthenightrain - M, one-shot - “Unhappy, darling?” He murmured, his cigar placed on its resting dish, dashed out - a little puff of smoke rising into the air between them before disappearing. “Yes, completely.”

I Love Draco by crochetaway - G, one-shot - A few slice of life scenes with Hermione, Draco, and Scorpius ala I Love Lucy style!

DFW's Deal or No Deal: The Final Word, September 2021:

Crime & Punishment by itscometothis - T, 12 chapters - TRIAL TRANSCRIPT OF DRACO LUCIUS MALFOY DRACO LUCIUS MALFOY IS FORMALLY CHARGED WITH THE FOLLOWING: CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT MURDER AIDING AND ABETTING A MURDER USE OF UNFORGIVABLE CURSES: IMPERIUS (2 COUNTS) USE OF UNFORGIVABLE CURSES: CRUCIATUS (47 COUNTS) PARTICIPATING IN A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION -- I don’t regret hoping. I thought I might, at the beginning, do you remember? But I don’t. I regret nothing about you, my love. Eternally yours, Draco -- A story of hope, punishment, and the nature of justice told in trial transcripts, visits in an interrogation room, and letters.

Boats Against the Current by AlannaTCooper - T, one-shot - Draco Malfoy is trying to escape his past by running as far away as he can. But the past - and his nightmares - keep pulling him backwards.

By His Side by KrysKrossZee - T, one-shot - Hermione is lonely but there's at least one person who can break through her loneliness.

Trying To Live by IzzieStellar - T, one-shot - After her husband dies, Hermione can’t seem to remember how to live and her friends vow to help her.

In the Dead of Night by AdAsttra - G, one-shot - Hermione and Draco are some of the last people to leave Hogwarts under the veil of a cold, dark night.

This fest is ongoing.

[anti-porn-unicorn]

about your prison abolition post, my issue with specifically sex offenders is that most of them don't get caught. less than 6% of rapes end in arrest, less than 1% in conviction. when it comes to pedophiles.. they also most often don't go to jail. Epstein did all of those things and had hundreds of men involved, none of them got in trouble. prison doesn't get the worst offenders either and even the ones who go to prison they are still released. these people are returning to society and becoming worse after prison, they are released and become members of communities while being worse than before due to their prison experiences. so to me it seems like this just isn't working and we need to figure out how to deal with all of these things

do we start hunting them down harder and overpolice communities in doing so? do we continue to have a punitive prison system that creates even worse people than came in? what about those that don't get caught, how do we deal with them? should we extend sentences so they never leave? should we just kill them? do we want to give the state the power to do these things to people so tht they can just do it to whoever they want?

my suggestion is obviously not to immediately release all sex offenders and abusers lol, but rethink about how we are dealing with these societal issues as opposed to what we are doing now which is just catching a couple, throwing them in a cell and then letting them go back. i understand being wary of prison abolition, who would want to imagine a society where u just let everyone in there go. im not trying to convince you to believe in it either, just to think about your view of prisons and consider what they could be and how you think these things should be solved

I completely agree. People seem to think that because I don’t support prison abolition, I must support police. It’s not that black and white- I’m still very much ACAB.

I think we can both agree this is a massive systemic problem that isn’t cured by just one issue.

The CDC made a pretty comprehensive package for communities, and I’m sure countries other than the USA have done it better.

It’s super long but if anyone wants to read it:

[midethefangirl]

Captain America: Civil War - My Thoughts

I know this is like 5 years late but for this, I’d like to resurrect a barely dead discourse that succeeded in not just dividing the Avengers but also dividing the fandom. Before we start, content warning for spoilers and let’s dive into this mess.

So, basically, the entire conflict of civil war stemmed from General Thaddeus Ross (who is a hypocritical dick, btw) coming to lecture the Avengers on being destructive despite conducting destructive experiments (ahem, the Abomination and the Hulk) but I digress. Then, Ross presents the Sokovian Accords which is really lengthy and we see Steve reading like a few chapters(?). Now, let us note that the Accords were presented to the Avengers after a mission-gone-wrong killed about 11 people in Lagos (lay-gos, not lah-gos that pronunciation gave me headaches as a Nigerian).

So, the Sokovian Accords were written by 117 countries and vetted by the UN asking for the Avengers to be under oversight (which SHIELD would have done if HYDRA hadn’t infiltrated it in the first place but it is what it is). Somehow, Steve made it about “our right to choose” (how?! Cause I’m not understanding) and decided to not sign*.

*he later got back to sign, then backed out when he learnt that Tony had placed Wanda under house arrest (even though it was for her protection. I do believe Tony should have fully informed Wanda about keeping her in the Avengers’ Tower)

My issues with the plot of Civil War are:

1. The Sokovian Accords were not read out loud or placed on some kind of PowerPoint slide for the audience to understand why Team Cap is against the Accords. No, the fandom wiki is not a source because that one is from Agents of SHIELD and not a lot of MCU fans are familiar with that show (yours sincerely included). Assuming the contents were read out loud or discussed by the Avengers, I’d have understood why Team Cap refused to sign the accords but since none of that was given, I’d remain Team Iron Man for this one.

2. The Sokovian Accords is not the American Constitution. Then again, the MCU fandom tends to be American-centric and most Americans seem to have this belief that the world revolves around them (and it manifests itself in Civil War discourse).

3. Contrary to popular opinion, the Sokovian Accords were about 117 (mostly third-world) countries asserting their sovereignty and boundaries, not taking away rights from the Avengers. If we go by what the MCU wiki claims about the accords, yes, some parts are absurd (like asking for blood samples and using trackers, why are those necessary?). However, when 117 countries state that they want you to respect their boundaries, I think it is best to comply. Unfortunately, respecting boundaries is one thing the USA has a problem complying with and guess who happens to represent America?

4. The Accords affected only their hero lives, not their lives as a civilian. I doubt the UN would limit the Avengers’ movements as civilians

5. Let us not forget how Steve and Clint protect Wanda from accountability and responsibility. Wanda in the MCU is like y/n in many fanfics where everyone (except for the “big bad villain” who in this case is Tony and 117 countries) seems to love her and want to protect her from facing the consequences of her actions. Anyone *ahem Tony* who has a bit of problem with her is suddenly the enemy. Not to mention how Wanda seems to have a knack for causing destruction in African countries (Johannesburg, Lagos, Wakanda)

6. And fandom behaviour from the Team Cap stans

7. Also, why is Civil War not an Avengers part 3? It’s better than making it a Captain America trilogy and then trying to frame Steve as being right.

8. I do believe that the accords were sped up which left little time for the Avengers to discuss and compromise on certain issues. If they were given more time to discuss, compromise and negotiate, I think the movie would have ended better than it had.

9. In addition, I also agree with Team Cap stans on how the UN arbitrarily deciding to shoot Bucky on sight is a human right violation.

10. “The safest hands are our own” why does this sound like a white saviour talk point from Steve? The accords is about 117 countries wanting you to respect their boundaries and the best you can come up with to refute that is saying something a white saviour would say?

11. “Even if the whole world is telling you to move...” just shut the fuck up, this is no way comparable to 117 countries trying to assert their sovereignty.

12. Look if I have to choose between surrendering a few rights as a hero and just dismissing that of civilians as potential damage, I’d go with the former because the people whom I’m suppose to protect come first. For me to dismiss their deaths as “we can’t save em all” is just not it.

13. “She’s just a kid”, a few years later and I still hate that term. One, it’s infantilizing an adult white woman (something white men have historically done and we all know how that went) . Two, while Tony was obviously wrong for not informing Wanda about her house arrest, he was right to keep her in the Tower when they were people who would harm her with every chance they could find. **

** after watching WandaVision, some people might find every reason to want to harm her.

14. Let us also discuss the motivation of those in Team Iron Man vs Team Cap

Team Iron Man

Tony: feels guilty for the events of Age of Ultron, believes that he’s stepped out of line and the Avengers need oversight.

Natasha: believes that the Avengers should listen to the public and the UN after all, if they had one hand on the wheel, they can still steer.

Vision: believes that the Avengers as a whole bring challenge which brings conflict and then catastrophe.

Rhodey: a soldier; believes in following orders especially when it is from the UN and 117 countries.

T’Challa: dude is just there to kill Bucky. I’m sure if Bucky was on team Ironman, my guy would have joined team cap, lmao 😂.

Spider-Man: not really there for a reason except to bring in Steve to Ross. I do agree that Tony shouldn’t have dragged him to the fight without Peter making an informed decision.

Team Cap

Steve: didn’t want to sign because it takes away his “right to choose”. Idk what that means or how it is relevant to the Sokovian Accords but okay. However, I understand his mistrust considering a few movies ago, we found out HYDRA had infiltrated SHIELD and as much as I believe governments are corrupt and the UN is shit, you cannot just enter a country anyhow without warning ahead of time.

Bucky: was his motivation given? I mean, I believe he joined Steve’s side to stop Zeno from unleashing the other winter soldiers. Not that that’s a bad reason, it isn’t.

Sam: again, I don’t think the movie gave us a reason for him being against the Accords. Did he also believe it was taking away his “right to choose”?

Wanda: undecided as of moment of discussion. Joined team cap because Tony placed her on house arrest. While I agree that Tony should have informed her that he was putting her under house arrest and stated the reasons why, I believe it was for good reasons especially when some people might decide to carry out witch hunts (you get it, witch hunts? 😅)

Clint: only joined because Wanda was placed under house arrest. We aren’t given any reason why he would oppose the Accords.

Scott: fan boy of Captain America, need I say more?

15. Also, to Team Cap stans blaming Tony Stark for Team Cap being imprisoned, grow the fuck up. The people in Team Cap are all adults who made their own decisions yet Tony is to blame for them breaking the law (because they did break the law), wtf.

16. “Are you capable of letting go of your ego for one damn second?” Like Steve’s ego didn’t play a part in all this too, lmao.

17. Okay, the final battle was intense and while I believe Bucky was also a victim, I can understand why Tony lashed out at him. The one to blame here is Steve because even if he had no clue Bucky was responsible for the Starks’ death, he still lied to Tony by not telling him who was responsible. It is more appalling to learn that Steve, in an attempt to “protect Tony and Bucky”, was actually covering for HYDRA!

Also, the way Steve stood emotionless while Tony watched a footage of his parents being killed. Yet, he could shield Wanda from watching the news because of how it affected her, okay.

“I can do this all day”, fuck you, Steve

18. Clint exploding at Tony is so fucking hilarious. Tony is right, Clint has a family yet he decided to fight in a war that didn’t concern him. Also, his comments about breaking backs is so tone deaf after Rhodey just broke his back!

19. If Sam was Captain America, I think Civil War wouldn’t have happened at all, from the dialogue in the Raft.

20. Overall, this movie is a fucking mess and I hate it for dividing both the Avengers and MCU fans.

Before I close with this, I want to add that I am not anti-Steve but Civil War really made me hate him. I get, Steve is supposed to be a Boy Scout and shit like that, but he’s a Gary Stu in the MCU, let’s be honest about it. Civil War should have been an Avengers movie, rather than a part of the Captain America trilogy. The Avengers should have been given more time than three days to discuss the Accords and make necessary amendments; after all that went down in Lagos, Wanda should have been made to sit out missions and maybe we could have had someone like Doctor Strange help in training her; Crossbones would have made a great villain but it is what it is; Peter’s introduction to the MCU could have been as him actually interning for the Stark Industries and forming a kind of acquaintance with Tony Stark before Tony finds out that he’s Spider-Man; Steve should have told Tony about HYDRA‘s hands in his parents’ deaths. Anyway, I’ll go read Civil War fix-it fanfics and fanfics where the Avengers are more like family. Fuck Civil War and I’m outta here.

Edit: okay this was a thought I had when I was trying to sleep but it was too good to ignore. Rhodey has a point about Steve arrogance (if that’s the correct term) in saying “the safest hands are our own” and here’s why:

Like he stated “this is not the World Security Council...neither is this SHIELD nor HYDRA” (paraphrased). This is the UN as well as 117 countries. Look, I am as anti-government as one can go and I don’t believe that the UN are reliable (plus, if we really want to go by the AoS version of the Accords, the Accords are flawed and they need amendments), however, given the US records on disrespecting boundaries in many third world countries, I can understand why 117 countries are wary about a bunch of superpowered Americans entering their country.

To us, the Avengers are saving the world. To these 117 countries and the people who have families who were killed in the crossfire (Zemo is a good example), the Avengers are a bunch of nuisances who leave destruction wherever they tread.

I am still neutral on the whole Accords as I don’t know exactly what it entails but for Steve to go “we are surrendering our rights to choose” (again, how is the Accords threatening the Avengers’ right to choose?) when asked to be under oversight is tone deaf.

[vladdocs]

Part 1: The peace treaty between the Hungarians and the Turks before the summer of 1462 is another reason why Corvinus stopped the crusade and the money for it was deposited in Hungary.

Some historians, studying the circumstances of 1462, admit the possibility that Matyas Corvinus made a treaty with the Turks before the summer of 1462, which is why the Turks were not waiting for the attack of crusaders, they did not begin to strengthen their borders in 1462, pulling to the fortresses, but gathered only part of their army, went to Wallachia to settle the vassal, please both countries at the time - Hungary and Turkey. There are several reasons for this, in addition to the distrust of Pope Pius II, who suspected the Hungarian in the hypocrisy of collusion with the Turks and questioned him about both the means sent and the reasons for inaction.

Although, as usual, the Turks themselves attributed a huge amount of power to their own numbers, the authors of the 15th century edition of the Corpus Draculianum, Greek, Turkish, Byzantine and other sources, note that the total strength of the Ottoman army at that time was about 110,000-120,000, including all, guards, guards of every fortress, everything. Of this figure approximately 2/3 were ready for mobilization. However, given that it was necessary to mobilize forces in a short period, it is natural that the Turks were able to assemble only 60-70% of these 2/3. Here the authors are interested in the following question: if the Turk knew that he was going against Hungary, Transylvania, Wallachia and others, that is, according to the agreement on the crusade with Pope Pius, this is an extremely rash decision, leading to defeat. To go without gathering maximum strength against the crusaders, to their lands, for the sake of seizing one of the unstable vassals ...in Wallachia?!

Moreover, the Turks never fought with less troops, even with equal numbers they rarely went to battle, more often they fled (read Vavren, Beham, Murad's holy wars, Dukas, Halkocondil). What cannot be said of the Crusaders, for those it was beneath dignity to run away from the battlefield without starting a battle, even if their forces were outnumbered. Here the Turk had to march against a noble number of troops, here Hungary, Transylvania and Wallachia, countries that had to march against the Turk, all with the help and assistance of the Pope and others. And the Turk gathered only a small part of the possible troops and did not go to fortify the borders and fortresses, but to Wallachia, to change the ruler? Suspiciously implausible, because it meant only one thing - defeat.

And another point here does not agree - the goal. Here he was not preparing to defend his borders from a coming campaign, no. Which would have been worth doing. Nor was he fortifying them in preparation for a strike. Not at all . But went with a small, relative to the whole Ottoman army, army, on foreign territory of dubious political stability? What for? To sit his vassal down for a couple of days, who will be immediately removed as soon as the Turks leave Wallachia. After all, the Turkish vassal, in theory, at the time of the actual crusade was unwanted by the Wallachians, Transylvania and Hungary. And here, having collected only a fraction of his troops, the Turk decides to send them for a dubious purpose. After all, Wallachia was not his territory, and he could not and was not going to make it his own. His goal suddenly became not protection from the coming attack of the crusaders, but the desire to settle his vassal, Radu. Very suspicious. As if the Turk already knew perfectly well that the Hungarians and Transylvanian will not be in the campaign, and the campaign itself will not take place. That's why he didn't have to fortify the borders and mobilize the troops, but instead to go to Walachia with a small number of troops (because only one ruler bravely began a crusade in 1462, only one troubled the water). knowing that there will be only Walachians, breaking the head that the army is not all there was no point, and to sit a new challenger easily, if the Hungarians agreed in advance. In this case it all adds up to one picture.

And here's another interesting point, the new Turkish protégé, Radu, was liked by the Hungarians at once, as if warmly expected. And this was even BEFORE the capture of voivode Vlad Draguli Tepes in November, BUT in August. So that the Hungarian king personally began to put pressure in letters to Transylvania (letter of August 15, 1462!), Brasov, forcing it to accept the new, careful, "dear lord Radu" and "keep a firm peace with him" (!, the letter in the article above). However.

After all, if it were not for the suspicious Hungarians' desire to accept the Turkish protege before Corvinus had to join the campaign, given the inconstancy of the Lords, their negative attitude towards Moslems, the new protege could have been immediately removed or killed as soon as the Sultan left Walachia. It would have been a waste of the Sultan's forces on Wallachia. To go for such a shaky goal against Hungary, Transylvania and Wallachia...to put his vassal down for a few days, instead of preparing for a crusader attack and strengthening the borders?

All these actions clearly indicate that the sultan for some reason was well aware that there would not be a crusade, so he did not fear it at all, knowing that only one in Wallachia would oppose him, and in that he was sure that Radu would not drive out, but hospitably received the Hungarians themselves, which made it advisable to replace the lord.

All this once again, not the first, not the second, but once again, indicates that Venice and Pope Pius did not in vain suspect Corvinus of a secret peace treaty with the Turk and tried in vain to find out the real reasons for the arrest of the main leader of the upcoming campaign Draguli. The fact that Giovanni Aymo was sent to Hungary to investigate a secret Hungarian conspiracy with the Turks, at all costs, to reveal the reasons for the arrest of Governor Vlad, as well as, if necessary, to "buy" information about the relationship between Corvinus and the Turkish protégé, Radu, also testifies to the distrust of Corvinus by the Pope himself. And if there is a treaty between Hungary and the Turks, to find out about it.

These behavioral moments of the Turks indicate that before the summer of 1462 they already knew about the true state of affairs and the intentions of Corvinus. But how and how did they go with such confidence with their vassal, as if they knew that Radu would be accepted?

*This article contains excerpts from the 15th-century edition of the Corpus Draculianum collection of sources and excerpts from the authors' comments on the primary sources. _____ Part 2: About how Matyas Corvinus, instead of the crusade, where he swore as a Christian to take part, suddenly had a Turkish protégé at his side, the new ruler in Walachia - Radu.

Letter of August 15, 1462 (note the date, this date before the capture of voivode Dragulja, in November, the date when the voivode Tepes was still waiting for the promised aid and the start of the crusade) , from Cluj-Napoca, vice-commissar Albert of Istenmezeye (secei, de Istenmezeye). In this letter, Vicecomis Matyas of Istenmezeye calls the new ruler a Turk protégé and insists that the rulers of Brasov and Castellan Bran ("castro Terch" Törcsvár) accept the new Turkish ruler, look after him and (!) maintain an indestructible peace with him. Viceromys Matyáš calls the Turkish protégé "the glorious lord Radul, the new voivode" (!) :

Sagaci viri amici nostril carissimi, Praesentium serie rogamus vestras dilectiones et prudentias, quatenus trewgas pacis cum illustri principi Radul nunc waywoda partium Transalpinarum per vos usque ad terminum praefixum dispositas firmiter et inviolabiliter observare usque ad illud certum tempus quem disposuistis velitis (!). Scripsimus enim per alias literas nostras castellanis nostris in castro Terch constitutis, ut et ipsi iuxta dispositionem vestram ipsas trewgas pacis bonomodo et inviolabiliter observare debeant et teneantur. Insuper hominibus nostris in quibus poteritis petimus subveniatis. Datum in Closwar in festo assumptionis beatae Mariae virginis, anno domini et cetera LXIIdo.

Albertus de Istenmezeye vicecomes Siculorum et cetera.

A dominis autem rege et waywoda ac regni nobilibus nihilominus formidetis in hac parte, quia aliud hinc facere.

Addressed to the judges and counselors of Brasov: Sagacibus viris iudici et iuratis ac universis consultantibus in civitate Brassowiensi constitutis et commorantibus, amicis nostris dilectis.

Just to imagine, the letter of February 11, 1462, of the governor Vlad Draguli Tepes, who was waiting for the promised forces in the crusade:

"I ask you to gather all your country, all the men able to fight, both on horseback and on foot, and bring them to our Wallachia, deigning to fight with us yourself. And if Your Majesty does not wish to come personally, please send your entire army to your Transylvanian possessions by St. George's Day (April 23rd), and if Your Majesty does not wish to send her army to our aid, then send whoever you wish, at least the Transylvanian and Secular troops. If Your Majesty wishes to come to our aid, kindly do not delay in replying, but let us honestly know of your intentions. We also ask you not to delay our man who delivered this letter this time, but send him back as soon as possible, for we intend by no means to retreat from what has already been begun and intend to go to the very end. For if the Lord Almighty hears the prayers and groanings of Christians and grants us the opportunity to overcome the pagans and the enemies of the Cross of Christ, this will be the highest honor and benefit to Your Majesty and to Orthodox Christianity; we do not wish to flee from the barbarism of the pagans, but we wish to fight them with all our might. And if, God forbid, it should happen that our little country should disappear, it would not do Your Grace any good, for it would harm the whole Christian world."

On 15 August 1462 Corvinus already urged Brasov to accept a new lord, the Sultan's henchman. Not even bothering to fight the Turks. And in November the governor of Tepes was suddenly taken prisoner on an unbelievable pretext. It turns out that he was not going on any campaign.

After all, the support of Radu guaranteed Matyas Corvinus peace with the Turks, and this is much more convenient and comfortable than a crusade to protect the Christian world. Thus Matyas himself went to make peace with the sultan, after which, after the summer of 1462, he accused Dragoole of trying to make peace with the sultan by means of a forged treaty without a signature and seal. But the forged treaty did not pass for a real treaty even then, Pope Pius did not believe in its authenticity, moreover knowing the zeal of Draguli for the Turks, and for the pope it was not enough to explain that the crusade would not take place, because he had already sent money for the crusade through the Hungarian court, that is, through the hands of Korvin, hands that this money will never leave. And Corvinus had to do something to cover the rest of the Christians who were already on the march, to cover his peace with the Turk, because he was not going to fight, it was not his business, and now, in the fall, he kept Vlad Dracula locked up, the one on whom he had placed his hopes for the coming march. And it was during this period that numerous pamphlets about the rampant cruelty of the undesirable, eager to fight, the crusader Dragoole, suddenly began to spread actively. An interesting coincidence, the dates of pamphlets and manuscripts, with the very first, begin in 1463, and then from year to year are copied.

The letter in question is in the Brasov archives.

Seal: Round, green wax, sealed on the wrap.

Text: Hurmuzaki, Documente ... XV, 1, 58 Nr. 99.

Voevoda Vlad Dragulja himself did not know about Corvinus' betrayal (not the first, but the third (!) plot with new pretenders behind Vlad's back, and not the last), he still hoped that he would keep his word given to all Christians and join with his army. From June (Mehmed was already in Adrianople on July 11) until November (! when already in August Corvinus had long been on good terms with the Turks, as the document shows) he would wait for good news, so that he could continue the campaign, to marry Justina, as had been planned. And only in November 1462 voivod Vlad will meet with Corvinus, but the results of the meeting will be different.

And although the report of the subject Petre Tomasi was accepted at the official level, on 18 April 1463, the Senate asks its new ambassador to Buda, Giovanni Aimo, to investigate the matter at all costs, to reveal the reasons for the arrest of Governor Vlad, and, if necessary, "buy" information about the relationship on the case of Korvin and the Turkish protégé Radu. And if there is a treaty between Hungary and the Turks, to find out.

"Sapientes Consitij et.

Circumspecto et Sapienti Viro Petro Thomasio, Secretario nostro in Hungaria.

Petre! Reddite sunt nobis littere tue dierum primi, tercij et XXVI. Novembris, quas in eam usque diem retinisse seribis, quia sic visum fuit Regie Majestati Hungarie ex causis et respectibus in litteris tuis contentis. Intelleximus ex eis, quecunque tunc usque occursa illis in partibus, ac casum retentionis Draguli olim Vaivode, circa quam rem idem Serenissimus Rex etiam per suas litteras nobis scripsit, et respondentes tibi dicimus, quod laudantes prudentiam et diligentiam tuam,...... "

"....infestum casum Vaivode olim Valachie, qui adversus Majstatem Vestram, regnumque vestrum tantum facimus perpetrare molitus erat "

*The article contains, among other things, notes from the observations of the historian Maria Rocha.

[imjustthemechanic]

The Price of a Soul

Part 1/? - Agent Russel Part 2/? - The Letter Part 3/? - Miss Lake Part 4/? - The Stewardess Part 5/? - An Assassination Part 6/? - Fallout Part 7/? - Face to Face Part 8/? - Deals, Details, and Other Devils Part 9/? - Baggage Part 10/? - Private Funding Part 11/? - Just Passing Through Part 12/? - Party of Four Part 13/? - Resolute Part 14/? - The Wreck Part 15/? - Body Snatchers Part 16/? - Out of the Frying Pan Part 17/? - A Miracle Part 18/? - A Matter of Circumstance Part 19/? - Nome Part 20/? - The Future Part 21/? - A Hero’s Welcome Part 22/? - Up to Speed Part 23/? - Expect Further Delays Part 24/? - The Welcome Wagon Part 25/? - Fugitives Part 26/? - A Reluctant Accomplice Part 27/? - Deja Vu Part 28/? - Interview with a Madwoman Part 29/? - Violence

Holy shit, another chapter!  This is the one where Dottie kills a buncha mobsters.

-

They did not fly to Nevada.  Kay had already been recognized on a plane once, and with all three of them together and all three of them fugitives, there was a greater chance that at least one of them would be spotted.  They got Dottie some clothes that were not a prison uniform, stole another car, and started driving.

“You know, I just realized,” said Peggy, who was at the wheel for the first part of the journey.  “We never did find the bomb on Howard’s plane.  Was there one?”

“Of course not,” said Kay.  “Why would I bother building a bomb when the threat of one would do the trick?”

“Because you’re a coward,” said Dottie.

“I’m efficient,” Kay told her.

“What if she’d called your bluff?” Dottie asked.

“She didn’t.  And even if she had, I wasn’t actually going to blow up the plane.  I needed it.  And the people on board it.  I would have thought of something.  You don’t have to kill every single person who inconveniences you,” she added, sounding exasperated.  It made Peggy wonder if that were something many of the Russian girls tended to do.

“Spoilsport,” said Dottie.

The journey had to be done in stages.  Peggy and Kay could take turns driving, but neither trusted Dottie to take the wheel, and they had to take turns sitting up and watching her during the night so she couldn’t run off.  Dottie seemed to enjoy the attention.  As far as Peggy could tell, she slept quite peacefully during the nights, and during the daytime she let her scarf flutter in the breeze with a smile on her face, and delightedly pointed out roadside attractions that Peggy and Kay refused to stop for.

While they drove, they listened to the radio.  The news talked about things like Burma joining the United Nations, and how the latter organization had established a special body dedicated to public health.  But of course, what Peggy was really listening for was Steve.  His tour of New England continued with cheering crowds all the way.  The announcers described him visiting soldiers whose lives he’d saved, and the widows of those he couldn’t.

There was even, at one point, an interview with him.  Peggy perked up at the announcement and Kay immediately turned the radio up.

Captain Rogers, the interviewer said.  Now that you’re back, what are your plans for the future?

I’m not sure, Steve’s voice replied, and Peggy’s insides twisted. He’d had plans… he’d been going to get married and buy a farm.  She was the one who’d told him he couldn’t do that.  I’m still in the army for the time being.  My discharge was issued on the assumption I was dead, and since I’m not, my service isn’t finished.

“Damn Masters,” Peggy murmured.

Kay thought for a moment.  “What if he got his tie caught in a piece of machinery and it strangled him?”

“Hush,” Peggy told her.

Have you heard the rumors that other countries have begun research on human enhancement? asked the interviewer.

I have, said Steve.  It was my understanding that everyone signed a treaty that they wouldn’t do human experimentation like that.

They did, the interviewer said, but there have been suggestions that America’s enemies think they need to find a way to counter you.

I’m not a weapon, and we’re not at war, said Steve.  When you’re not at war, you don’t need super-soldiers.

So you would be opposed to any such work in the United States?  Or only abroad?

I think, said Steve, that anybody who wants to volunteer for such a program needs to think very hard about what they want to get out of it. Even the people who worked on the serum didn’t know what its long-term effects on my body would be.  I think they’d have been shocked to learn I survived three years frozen in ice.

Peggy certainly had been, and Howard… but now she found her own thought. He’d crashed the Valkyrie fully intending to die.  He’d said he’d realized at the last moment that he didn’t want that after all, but that was before he’d found his plans in tatters.  Had he changed his mind again since?  Was he contemplating suicide, only to realize he didn’t know if there were anything that would kill him?

No, that couldn’t be.  Steve wouldn’t, not when his previous attempt was so fresh in his mind.  Not when he knew that the friend he’d intended to die for was alive and in need of help.

Even so, the idea stuck in Peggy’s mind, and made her feel a little ill. She couldn’t stop picturing him contemplating it.  She imagined him playing with a knife, examining a bottle of rat poison, spinning the chamber in a revolver, and wondering if any of them could do him irreparable damage.  A treacherous lump rose in her throat at the thought.

She wondered, too, if Steve were thinking about her while all this went on.  What with all the autographs and photo opportunities and such things, he probably had very little time to.  If he did, though, what was he thinking about?  He’d told Russel to trust her, so he clearly didn’t believe in the charges against her.  What did he think she was up to?  What had Masters told him?

For that matter, what was Daniel thinking about while he sat in jail?  He doubtless thought Peggy was working on clearing both their names.  Technically she was.  Freeing Dottie would doubles have delayed the trial at the very least.  But she was also thinking about Steve’s desire to free his friend.  He’d been so broken the day after Sergeant Barnes fell into the ravine… at the time, all Peggy had been able to offer was advice.  Now that she could give him an opportunity to fix that awful thing, she couldn’t just let it lie.

Neither Steve nor Daniel had heard from her since her arrest.  Did one or both think she’d simply run off with the other?

Well, to close this on a less serious note, the reporter said.  Captain, I’m sure what the women of America are dying to know is: are you looking for love?

There was a brief pause.  I’m not sure, said Steve.  I had a girl during the war, but three years is a long time.

You heard it here first, ladies, the reporter said.  Captain America may soon be back on the market!  Thank you so much for your time, Cap.  Pleasure having you on the show.

You’re welcome, was all Steve said.

Kay changed the station, and then quickly turned the volume back down again as the Floyd Hunt Quartet’s Fool that I Am came out just a little too loud.

“Aw, don’t love make fools of us all,” Dottie teased.

Peggy didn’t answer.  She had no intention of encouraging her.

- 

Upon arriving in Carson City, they had some lunch and freshened up, and then parked across the street from Governor Strieber’s mansion.  It was a very modest place compared to some of the buildings Howard Stark lived, but still represented hundreds of possible hiding places for a large amount of money.  Especially for a man who knew that no less a mobster than John ‘Moxie’ Blumberg would come down on him if it were found.

“How are we going to find it?” Peggy asked.

“Joseph will show me where it is,” Dottie replied calmly.  “He knows I’m coming back for it eventually.”

“Will he be surprised it’s so soon?”  A smart man would have set it aside to make sure it was there for her, but Peggy’s experience was that most politicians were not very smart where money was concerned.  If he thought it might be a while before Dottie came back, he may well have spent it… especially when Dottie and her ilk were so easy to underestimate.

“Joseph is easy to surprise,” said Dottie.  “It’s one of his more charming traits.”

It was very late, almost one in the morning, when Strieber’s shiny silver Packard pulled into the driveway, and Strieber got out.  He was a very tall man but also quite overweight, with a drinker’s belly that hung over the top of his trousers.  He was dressed up as if he’d been out for a night on the town, no doubt gambling in the new casino he pretended to disapprove of.  A woman climbed out after him and took his arm. She was a brunette, dressed in a pink and black evening gown with an enormous fur stole around her shoulders. The two of them headed inside.

“Forgot me already, Joseph?” Dottie clucked her tongue.  “You’ll break my heart.”

Once the door was closed, Dottie climbed out of the car and headed towards the house.  Peggy and Kay climbed out and went after her.

Dottie took them around the back and knocked on the kitchen door.  A woman in a maid’s uniform answered it, and looked startled.

“Miss Abagnale?” she asked.

Dottie punched her in the face.

They tied up the maid with an electrical cord, and found the short flight of stairs that led up into the living area.  Light was coming around the door at the top.  Peggy opened it a crack and looked out into a sitting area… lamps were lit, but she couldn’t see anybody.

The door suddenly jerked open, and Peggy found the barrel of a revolver in her face.

It took a moment for her eyes to re-focus from the dark ring of potential death to the man wielding it.  He was a skinny guy with dark hair, wearing a gray suit and hat and a green tie.

“Come on out, sweetheart,” he told Peggy.  His two front teeth were missing.

Peggy thought fast… no idea who this man was, but she couldn’t let him reveal that they were here.  She dropped to her knees to grab him around the legs and knock him over.  At the same time, both Dottie and Kay leaped on him from behind her.  He squawked in surprise, but it was too late for him to fight back.  Moments later they had him flat on the floor.  Dottie’s foot was in the middle of his chest, and the gun was in her hand, pointed at his head.

“Carbone?” somebody asked.  “What’s going on?”

Peggy swore under her breath – she should have known Dottie would lead them into trouble!  “Let’s go, quick,” she said.

It was too late for that, though.  Another man appeared in the doorway to the siting room.  Dottie shot him, and the second one who turned out to be behind him.  She kicked Carbone in the chin, and strode down the hall like a queen.

Peggy and Kay had no choice but to follow her.

In the sitting room, Strieber and his girlfriend were on a sofa, clinging to each other in terror.  Four more mobsters were standing around them, and Moxie Blumberg himself was halfway through lighting a cigar out of a box he’d taken from the cabinet.  All of them were clearly shocked by what had just occurred, and more so to see Dottie walk in with Carbone’s gun in her hand.

The one nearest Dottie raised his own weapon.  She kicked it out of his hand and shot him.  There was absolutely nothing for it now.  One of the others pulled out a knife and went for Peggy – she grabbed a crystal decanter of alcohol off a table and smashed it over his head.  Kay kicked another one’s legs out from under him and slammed his face into the floor, then snatched the revolver off his belt and shot a third mobster in the knee. He dropped, and Dottie shot him in the head to finish him off.  The last one lost his nerve and turned to run – Dottie shot him, too, and then she was out of bullets.  She threw the gun aside and snatched up the knife the other man had dropped.  By this time, Blumberg was pulling out his own gun, but Dottie threw the knife and it embedded itself in his gut.  He fell.

That left the three women, and Strieber and his mistress.

“Mary-Ann?” asked Strieber in a tremulous voice.

Dottie smiled.  “Where’s my money, Joseph?”

Strieber ran to the bookshelf, stepped over Blumberg’s fallen body, and pulled out a few volumes.  Behind them was a wall safe.  He dialed the combination in with shaking hands, needing several tries to get it right. With each failure, Dottie came closer and closer behind him, and Peggy could see the sweat beading on the back of his neck.  Finally he got it open, and stepped aside.

“T-t-there it is!” he said.  “Take it!”

Dottie pulled out several packets of bills and tossed them to Peggy and Kay. Then she shut the safe and turned to smile at Strieber.

“Thank you, Joseph,” she said.  “I knew I could count on you.”

In a swift motion, she’d gotten a toe under Blumberg’s fallen pistol.  She kicked it into the air, caught it, and shot Strieber in the neck.  His girlfriend screamed.  Dottie turned around, and killed her, too.

“Don’t!” Kay shouted, but it was already too late.

[lady-plantagenet]

Tumblr History Ask meme, No. 30! (An AU where George was never executed but Edward IV still dies at 40, and his sons both die of the plague or sweating sickness, leaving GEORGE to be King of England! what think you? 😆)

Hohoho ho. I have a lot of thoughts on this. Hell I even wrote an entire fictional AU series on AO3 on this topic - you can find it here (please R&R I’m desperate). So yes sorry for the late reply and I really hope you enjoy my usual bursting out in an essay (as per usual). Mwah x

Without speaking about it anymore and spoiling I’ll just answer your ask straight. Ok so George becomes king. Princes dead or not this may still cause issues because technically speaking Elizabeth of York has a stronger claim to the throne (Edward IV recognised the same in 1469 and before presenting her as his true heir presumptive not George).

While on a practical level George would easily be able to hold the throne against Elizabeth of York (who on her own did not command enough support to overthrow Richard III despite the illegitimacy rumours not really being considered as true by most), if Elizabeth married and got a son it would wreak havoc. Everytime King George fails in any way people will look at Elizabeth’s son as an alternative. Sure he could pull a King John I and keep her unmarried under house arrest until the end of her days (what happened to his niece Eleanor of Brittany) but how will he manage to do this will all 5 sisters?

There are many things to consider, for one, George was popular in London and if there was an outspread plague and he gave the princes a state burial I really think people could believe him that they were not murdered. Not to mention under these circumstances, Richard III would be the protector so the blame would fall on him anyway - pretty excellent for George id say. Hell he could even use the kid’s death as some sort of God’s divine judgment propaganda against his brother’s reign. He would need to continue denigrating Edward because his daughters (as explained above) will continue to be an issue. He would most likely continue with the ‘Edward IV was a bastard’ rumour. Otherwise, George could use the ‘by law I’m Lancaster’s heir’ as some sort of further support his reign and why he can overreach his nieces and their sons.

Another question remains ~ is Isabel dead or not? Assuming you mean this is 1483 and she dies, I am certain George would get remarried once he becomes king because while his part in the Mary of Burgundy marriage shamaz remains unclear I think what it shows is that he was more likely than not to want to remarry. This need would further increase if he became king because two young children (only one of which is a boy) is no secure line of succession. George took no decisive steps to get married to Mary upon his brother’s refusal (eg scheming for a dispensation or trying to go abroad) so I will assume that in this timeline George remains unmarried until 1483 and Mary dies in 1482 as canon. Mary (and his sister Margaret behind her) would have gained him great support in keeping the throne, England and Burgundy would have pretty much united (if Edward of Warwick died prematurely and George and Mary’s son became the next king) and England may have become the dominating European power as opposed to the Habsburg empire.

However since Mary is out of question, I can’t think of some other foreign Princess at that time that would have brought with her considerable power. George seems to have had no wish to war with France so that’s nice. I can’t say that Louis XI had great admiration for him but his place in the Picquiny committee (one of the four) implies that France trusted that he would keep the peace. George (mostly because of Warwick) was hated in Burgundy but Margaret clearly would have guided Maximilian (Mary’s real husband who took up control after she died) towards good relations with England and given Maximilian’s support of the York Pretenders in Henry VII’s reign I think he was the type of man who had no strong opinions towards any individual in England so would have been fine with it.

Anything else is difficult to say. George was described by Hicks (who is very very un-pop-history in his biography/PhD thesis of George) as a man ultimately unsuited to his role because of his temperament. His actions even before Isabel’s death do suggest something like that but the way he was after her death (Dec 1476 - May/June 1477) was just so uncharacteristically erratic and one-after-another that many people (including me) think it was him becoming unstabilised by his wife’s death as opposed to a reflection of his general fortitude and decision-making capabilities. So I ask: was it a phase he would have gotten out of by 1483 or was he permanently going to stay this way even if he did get remarried? I don’t think he was mad - certainly not, but a bit perturbed definitely and I don’t know how it would affect some aspects of his reign eg being merciful, pardoning people who’ve done him wrong, giving patronage of influence to his ministers... etc. However, if he did get out of this phase (or at least calmed down a bit by 1483) I think he could have genuinely been a good king. His role as a regional magnate shows him as generous, pious, eloquent, handsome, popular, refined, extremely knowledgeable of the law and good at peace-weaving. On a downside he also seemed inflexible in his approach, disproportionately harsh on certain penalties (eg Poaching), quick to act in certain aspects yet full of procrastinative habits in others, prideful, vengeful, susceptible to flattery, suspicious and with something suggestive of an overly superstitious personality.

Nevertheless, it is one thing to be a baron and another thing to be king. George had become quite detached from the national stage (let alone the international) towards the end of his life so he would have a lot of catching up to do. And as always is the issue with a king coming from the nobility and not the crown directly, there may be factional issues and the Neville affinity might expect certain favours and privelages from him especially since his heir Edward comes from their line. As we know, Neville support for George waned after Isabel’s death but the few that remained would expect great favour from him - this being at odds with those who were in power during Edward IV’s reign eg William Hastings, Anthony Woodville etc. After all, they really saw him as their earl (Rous speaks of him in the same terms as he spoke of his predecessors the Beauchamps).

George would inherit a country full of administrative issues and as much as I believe he was genuinely concerned with ‘the common weale’ and deserved all the praise given to him by his contemporaries, I see him falling into the same trap as Edward IV. Circumstances would likely force him to strengthen the crown’s authority and people would call him a hypocrite for this. Otherwise, he would let himself become a small centre around which others revolve but I don’t know if his pride would allow that either. Nevertheless, I think he would lead England into the ‘renaissance’ culturally. He would continue patronising the printing press, continue with the previous monarchs’ cultural endowments of colleges, churches and such (as he had done in his own lands), he would also share in Edward’s popularity with the city and trade (he gave great privileges to his burgesses says Rous, his permanent retinue had burgesses in them and many other stuff point to him respecting the place of trade) - though he wouldn’t engage in them because (as according to Hicks and others) he didn’t have a good business sense. This could go at odds against him most likely attempting to retain military retention privelages to the barons which in itself was a factor which worked against the development of a early modern state. This is the odd thing about George, in some ways he appears beyond his time and in other behind his time. All we can hope is that Warwick had tried to cultivate him a bit in national leadership and that it stayed with him.

Will he reign peacefully or get deposed? It could go either way but I am certain his reign would be filled with problems. If he gets his own Bosworth (with his niece’s sons or Henry Tudor) I think he would get romanticised as the last Plantagenet king in case of the latter because unlike Richard III he wouldn’t have nephew killing as his issue. A saving grace of George was that he was a master propagandist so I have bit of faith in his posterity and image and I think it could have made his reign flow more smoothly to a degree.

[arisaint]

SOME ITEMS YOU SHOULD KNOW WHEN CREATING A TOTALITARIANISM FOR YOUR STORY

Is your story a dystopian universe but you don’t know how to begin? Are there some things missing or you feel your totalitarian government is not 1984-ish enough?

Well! I am here to give some tips based on my own experience living under a regime of this kind and reading about these systems. These are some tips for writers and roleplayers who want to create their own totalitarian worlds. So, here we go!

IDEOLOGY & PILLARS

The ideology is the base of the new order of a totalitarianism. Depending on the beliefs of the regime, the way they see the world and how it works, the nation will transform differently.

That’s why in A Brave New World, which pillar is genetics engineering, is built as a society divided in different genetical castes; or the reason why The Handmaid’s Tale world is based in a radical religious ideology that dominates women and punishes those who sin; or why The Man In The High Castle follows the nazi’s philosophy on superior races and idolizes Hitler’s figure; or why Fahrenheit 451’s books prohibition influences the roles of firefighters.

There are plenty of fictional and real (unfortunately) examples. An ideology usually has rules and laws, perspectives, a determined political and social system, a deity or figure it admires and an official truth.

OFFICIAL TRUTH

One of the main goals of a totalitarian system is changing completely the reality as it is known. For this reason, the absolute truth of certain events is a threat for the system.

For a totalitarian government, the truth expressed by the “official sources” is the only and absolute truth. Anything that comes from another voice is a lie or even a delusion. Working hard on building their own reality is the reason why they take over media and spread their own version of a story just to make the rest of the versions look fake.

An innocent man was killed by the system because he was protesting against the crisis? According to the government, “the person was killed because he was a menace to the people, he was an assassin and was trying to foster anarchy within the country. That’s why the brave authorities were obligated to shoot him”. With this version, the government is seen as the hero, conveniently. Because yes, conveniently, the official truth never soils the reputation of those in power. It usually spreads hatred on its enemies (those who oppose the totalitarianism ). The official truth’s goal and function is to change reality completely in order to achieve the absolute anchorage of the people on power. Take this always in mind because it’s probably the most important thing a totalitarianism does to stay in power. The stakes are too high to let people know the truth.

CHANGING THE PAST

As a consequence of the official truth, spreading the painted version of a current event is not enough. It’s also necessary to change the past and rewrite history. And, of course, with the same and convenient goal: making the system on power look like a hero and savior. So, any symbol, event or element that says the contrary or represents a confusion of this understanding, is erased from history books, removed from town squares (statues and sculptures are victims of the government if they don’t fulfill the new order’s values) and are eventually forgotten by future generations. Everything that belongs to the past and threats the totalitarianism ideology, even the slightest littleness, will be erased from the collective consciousness to reconfigure the thoughts of society about the past.  

Is there a hero from the past of the nation who doesn’t follow the ideology of the regime? Their name will be erased from history books and their statues will be replaced by a more convenient hero that follows the government thoughts. Eventually, the first hero is forgotten and never named again.

NEW LANGUAGE

Words are powerful weapons and totalitarianisms well know that. For this reason, they’ll always opt on adopting the “new language” that will be part of the new order with the objective of killing the unnecessary past and controlling the society even in the way they speak and what they hear.

As it’s perfectly and clearly stated in Orwell’s 1984, the Newspeak replaces the Oldspeak so the regime can dominate people’s thought. When creating a totalitarianism, it’s important to have that in mind: they will always want to control what their people say, do and think. Because that’s the safe way to stay in power, if nobody thinks different, nothing different will happen.

The new language, in many regimes, is shown as a war one. Always using words such as fight, battle, soldier, comrade, brigade or troop to make their people believe there’s a constant war, that peace can only be found through battles and that those who think different are enemies.  

BIG BROTHER

The totalitarianism needs to show a face, the face of a savior who will replace God or any other idol of the people. Even if it’s real or not, dead or alive, it’s the face of the government and its’s an obligation to pay respects to it. Propaganda fuels the omnipresence of this character, even if it’s human, they make sure the people think otherwise: that it is a deity, the hero of the society. The ideology of the regime seeks for the exaltation of this leader and make it be loved by people.  

PROPAGANDA

The official truth, the new order and the exaltation of the Big Brother of the system is diffused exclusively through propaganda. It is the precious tool of every totalitarianism and is always used to the point of being abusive and invasive. It will be on billboards, television, newspaper (if there are), bulletins, everywhere. And of course, this propaganda is designed with the new language of its governors. It’s supposed to have the same personality of the whole system. And the goal is evident: brainwashing. The propaganda of a totalitarianism has one or several messages to send to the people, and eventually, make them repeat it and believe it.

For example, the famous 1984’s phrases “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength” are meant to send that precise message to their people and make them believe these statements are actually true (official truth).

SECRET POLICE

This kind of governments eventually create their own police. And the goals of this service is not to protect people even if that’s the “official truth”. The reality of this agency is to safeguard the system and get rid of anyone who means a threat to it.

Murders will be covered as accidents or suicides, prison will be filled with protestants and detractors, there will be torture centers to make people confess valuable information for the police. This is how they act. They are hitmen, feared by the people because, sooner or later, society learns the real function of that police. Being a cop of this service turns you into the guard dog of the government, and of course, betrayal is also punished within the members of the secret police.

The Gestapo, KGB and Thinkpol are clear examples of how the secret police of a totalitarianism work. Of course, it’s not an ethical duty. On the contrary; they only care about those who order and pay them, not the people. For example, the Thinkpol’s duty wasn’t to protect the citizens of Oceania, but arresting those who attempted against the Inner Party.

CENSORSHIP

In order to spread only, but only the messages the totalitarianism needs, there has to be a censorship of the media and people. This kind of regimes will aim on media because of its influence on people. They’ll take newspapers, TV channels and radio stations and regulate what they say. There’s usually an official (TV or radio) channel from the government that announces bulletins of news and the propaganda of the regime.

Not all totalitarian governments have total control of media, some clandestine and rebel mass media outwit the regulations and censorship. But, of course, depending on how effective is the secret police, those acts will have consequences.

Regarding political parties, the definition of totalitarianism doesn’t allow the existence of opposition parties, for there can be only one, the unique political party.

BRAINWASHING & INDOCTRINATION

A totalitarian regime always needs to maintain the sheep inside the farm, and it doesn’t want questioner sheep. That’s why they recur to brainwashing, to avoid any risk that could overthrow their government.

The main reason of propaganda and censorship is precisely brainwashing. Propaganda exists to spread what the government wants their people to think and censorship exists to eliminate any tergiversation and “lie” that could confuse them. If the totalitarianism is well established, their people will be completely brainwashed.

Another way this kind of regime use to indoctrinate is schools. Spreading the messages to the youth when they still haven’t built their own opinions it’s a key strategy for totalitarianisms. This is how they secure the brainwashing of new generations.

There are many ways to indoctrinate a society, and it’s always a priority for the regime. Because people who think, will eventually oppose you. They can’t let that happen.  

OPPRESSED SOCIETY

How does a society under a totalitarian system behaves? It all depends on how strict is the system, what they promote through their new order and laws and how established are they on people (brainwashing). What we have to understand it’s that these regimes do not recognize human dignity and the person as an individual. They are just tools for their system and objectives. And, for this society, freedom doesn’t exist.

In a totalitarianism, the people blend with the rest of the collective, becoming idiot masses that just repeat the propaganda they consume. They are a collective, a mass, a medium for the government. They have no rights, they are just instruments with no dignity nor individuality. That’s why the duty of the society it’s to obey and never complain.

Do not limit yourself on making one kind of society, they all react differently to these regimes. Depending on how well established is the new order, it will be harder for people to think by themselves, and become slaves of the system, obeying the regime.

Nevertheless, if you want to create a conflict, there’s always exceptions: citizens who still think for themselves, understand there’s something wrong with the system and will fight it.

RESISTANCE MOVEMENT

And that conclusion bring us here: the main conflict of a totalitarianism it’s a —usually clandestine— group of resistance. Even the toughest totalitarianism has a resistance counterpart, because that’s how human nature is: always looking for a little hole to freedom even in the deepest caves.

Again, the size and quality of the resistance movement depends of how strict it’s the totalitarianism and how efficient it’s their secret police. However, there’s always, ALWAYS, someone who thinks differently and becomes the enemy of the regime. If you want a conflict for the government, there needs to be a resistance group, even if it is small. Also, there are many types of groups, they can be violent, pacifistss, anarchists, etc.

If your story doesn’t involve a coup against the totalitarianism, I suggest you to equally include this group, because they always tend to exist. Besides, a totalitarianism feeds itself from the drama of having enemies, so even if there’s not a big resistance group, they’ll create their own fictional enemy and blame all their problems on them. 

As a final suggestion, if you want to get involved into dystopian worlds and totalitarianisms, read a lot about them, especially I recommend you to read George Orwell’s 1984, for he portrayed a totalitarianism perfectly clear and it’s probably the most emblematic example. Also read a lot of history and real totalitarian regimes! Learn a lot from reality! It’s more akin to 1984 than you think.

Reminder: use this knowledge and write stories to always condemn totalitarianisms! Because we need to use power of literature to fight against what’s unfair. And believe me, as a person who lives in a regime like this, it’s not funny to see a story glorifying a totalitarianism.

Hope these tips are helpful for your stories!

[365days365movies]

January 4, 2021: First Blood (1982) (Part II)

Quick Recap before we go on. Oh, and SPOILERS right up top!

John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is a Vietnam vet wandering through Washington State, until coming upon the town of Hope, run by the Sheriff Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy).

Sheriff Will Teasle is an absolute dick who arrests Rambo for no real reason; just for being a “drifter.” His police force, which includes the sadistic Galt (Jack Starrett) and sympathetic Mitch (David Caruso, AKA Horatio Caine from CSI: Miami), beats John Rambo, and post-2020 me is UNCOMFORTABLE!!!!!!!

Rambo has Vietnam flashbacks (like you do) and escapes the prison, pursued by the obsessive and dickish Sheriff and his equally dickish men (except for Horatio, maybe).

Galt tries to shoot Rambo, and karma bitch-slaps him RIGHT in the face, holy shit. He dies, and Rambo is blamed and shot at, escaping into the forest.

OK?

OK. On with the recap!

At this point, all of Rambo’s actions are in self-defense. In truth, it’s been self-defense since the beginning. However, he does kill two dogs, so...yeah, can’t really justify that. That sucks. The dog’s handler gets shot by Rambo, who now has a gun, and we also see that Galt’s certified sociopathy has leaked into everybody else but Horatio upon his death, including the dog guy, who tells his dogs to straight up kill Rambo. But, as previously stated...that’s not what happens.

At this point, I should introduce the amemedala.

The amemedala is a portion of the mesencephalon (or midbrain) discovered in the brains of millennials and younger individuals, recently discovered, named, and made up by yours truly. This area, attached to the thalamus, acts as a relay center between the cerebrum and the various sensory receptors of the body, similar to the function of the thalamus. However, while the thalamus governs the broad relay of senses to the appropriate areas of the brain for analysis, the amemedala relays appropriate sensory signals to the frontal lobes, where catalogs of shared sociological trends, or memes, are housed. This relay and association generates connections between extrenal stimuli, and entries in the meme catalog of the frontal lobes. While this is technically an autonomic process, it can be suppressed with enough willpower.

Why am I ringing this up in the middle of First Blood? Because EVERY. SINGLE. CELL of my brain is working to suppress the amemedala right now. Why? BECAUSE OF THE LORAX, AND FOR WHOM HE SPEAKS.

Is it an outdated meme? Very much so. BUT I CANNOT GET IT OUT OF MY GODDAMN HEAD AS I WATCH THIS MOVIE.

OK. That is now out of my system. Anyway, Rambo continues to speak for the trees, which is understandably starting to spook the smalltown cops. This leads to the VERY surprising moment where a camouflaged Rambo appears OUT OF NOWHERE and stabs Horatio in the goddamn leg! Like, wow, he was invisible! I had to rewind the film to see where he was. This is tense...and awesome, not gonna lie. This is awesome.

And then, he gets another cop by JUMPING FROM A TREE. Well, a tree stump, BUT STILL. After he takes him out, he stands in plain sight in front of an approaching cop. That cop, subscribing once again to the shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy, fires. And I SWEAR, Rambo is FASTER THAN THOSE SPEEDING BULLETS, as he dodges out of the way, and the bullets HIT THE COP HE JUST TOOK OUT!

And then, when I didn’t think this could get any more intense, that cop triggers a booby trap, and A STICK WITH WOODEN SPIKES GOES THROUGH THIS MAN’S LEGS, AND HE’S SPEARED LIKE A KEBAB OH MY GOD

The asshole sheriff runs to the NEW set of panicked screams, and his compatriot is just Batman-ed away by Rambo. It’s just the sheriff, now. The storm is building, and the forest is getting darker. The sheriff frees leg-spike cop, and goes to find the other cop, who’s been PINNED TO A TREE LIKE A BUTTERFLY IN A DISPLAY CASE. See, look!

HOLY SHIT IT’S RAMBO WITH A KNIFE IN THE FOREST. He pins the sheriff up to a tree, then with some legitimately badass lines, threatens with the sheriff with “a war [he] wouldn’t believe,” and telling him to make like Elsa and…

I love this sequence. It is the most intense, crazy, holy shit sequence I’ve seen so far this month. Wow. I understand why people talk about this movie. Man, that was a hell of a ride! Good movie, though. All right, so, time for the final sco-

Oh. Oh, my God. I’m only HALFWAY INTO THE MOVIE?

...Wow. OK, then.

We now meet Colonel Sam Trautman, Rambo’s commander in the Green Berets. He’s come to “get his boy.” He says that he came to rescue the Sheriff’s dumb ass from Rambo, rather than the other way around. And the Sheriff is...an idiot. He’s an ass, he’s a maniac, and he’s a stubborn idiot. Even after learning that Rambo is the best, he’s unwilling to back down, the dummkopf.

Rambo kills a wild boar in the woods, which makes no sense for Washington State, but whatever, sure. Anyway, they try to get the colonel to lure Rambo out, even though that’s obviously gonna make his PTSD, just...SO much worse. Especially as he starts using Vietnam parlance in contacting him. Not gonna end well, guys. But it’s then that we learn that Rambo is now the last surviving member of his unit, contributing to his trauma. Rambo’s also been trying to get in contact with the Colonel, winding up here because he has no place to go. He says that there are no friendly civilians, and the trouble’s been caused by that “king-shit” cop. I will be using this term from now on.

Wow. Damn. Hell of a reason for that title. And I think I love this movie. Seriously, I’m having a good time.

King-Shit Cop keeps going ahead with his absolute idiocy, despite all warnings to the contrary. So, a bunch of troops now converge upon Rambo’s place, but he naturally opens fire on them, without killing a single person. In fact, he hasn’t killed anyone this whole movie, and they make a point of saying that he’s been holding back the whole time. So, they decide to use the next, most logical course of action. They FIRE A ROCKET AT HIM.

Afterwards, the Colonel and King Shit Cop catch up at a bar, where the latter exposes his full sociopathy, commenting that he just wanted to kill Rambo. This is opposed to the Colonel, who doesn’t really know what he’d do if Rambo survived.

Which, of course, he did. C’mon, you think a little military-grade propelled explosive is gonna kill John Rambo? Nah. He’s the best there ever was, and he’s gonna prove it now. He jumps into a military vehicle holding an M-60, and hijacks it. Doesn’t take long for the news to break that Rambo’s still kicking, and he’s quickly intercepted by King Shit Cop, who JUST. DOESN’T. KNOW. WHEN. TO QUIT. And I’d admire his tenacity if he wasn’t SUCH AN ASSHOLE.

The cops try to run Rambo and the truck of the road, and he plays the UNO Reverse Card on them instead. And I’m pretty sure at this point…

...that old Johnny boy’s just killed some cops. So, yeah, now there’s a bigger problem. He powers through the State Police blockade like it was a banner blocking a football team, stops at a gas station, grabs the gun from the car, and LIGHTS ALL OF THAT SHIT ON FIRE! Destroying the livelihood of an individual who had nothing to do with this.

Yeah, Rambo’s starting to turn from innocent acting in self-defense to public menace REAL quick. And yeah, it’s King Shit Cop’s fault entirely...but, yeah, Johnny needs some help, because he’s losing the train at this point. But, not to be outdone, King Shit Cop is also beginning to lose it, and it’s definitely beginning to seem like only one of them is going to come out of this alive. And the Colonel tries to give him an out, but King Shit Cop’s prepared to go down with the ship that he blew a hole in in the first place. Like an asshole.

But here we go, the finale. John Rambo vs. King Shit Cop (whose name, by the way, is Will Teasle. I just like Rambo’s name for him better). KSC’s on the roof, Rambo’s on the street. Rambo causes more property damage, possibly because banks also give him PTSD (I joke, but PTSD is no laughing matter, John clearly needs help), and then finds his way to a store that has just all of the ammo a psychologically-damaged Vietnam War veteran on a revenge quest could ever need.

And then he BLOWS. THAT. SHIT. UP.

And he does this...ALL of this...just to lure KSC out of hiding. This man DESTROYS A TOWN because this idiot, sociopathic, unhinged, King Shit Cop, won’t just STAND. THE FUCK. DOWN ALREADY.

Rambo enters the police station, where KSC is on the roof. And, like the Colonel and the rest of us guessed, KSC gets shot in the process. And as Rambo stands over KSC, the Colonel finally shows up and does what literally everybody else should have done.

Talk. He just...talks to Rambo. He talks to this mentally ill man, and that mentally ill man responds, espousing his pure anger at the war, the public, protesters, work, the country, the town, himself...everyone. And goddamn, is that shit palpable.

This man can no longer fit in the world that he was forced to leave, and forced to return to. This poor, poor, poor man. It hurts. And it sucks. And he pours his heart out to the Colonel, and to us, and...you feel it. You feel his trauma, you feel his pain. You feel the aftermath of war. And it’s been seven years at this point for the Colonel, but no time for John. Not Rambo. John. And it’s just...never over.

Damn. Goddamn.

This...this is one hell of a good movie. And not just a good action movie, either. A damn good movie.

And that’s it. That’s First Blood.

[canchewread]

Editor's note: this journal is original content (written by myself, of course) and has not appeared elsewhere online before today. I should also note that because this is both an opinion piece and an informal journal, my level of commitment to providing citations for the disingenuous wasn't particularly high; if you're looking for formally documented evidence that we're currently in the middle of a fascist takeover, I encourage you to check out my academic writing about the subject on ninaillingworth.com instead.

Journal 09/09/2020: Looking the Beast in the Eye

When I originally sat down to pen this journal, my intention was to call it something along the lines of “advice to a young leftist” which is probably in no small part, the reason why it's taken me three days to write this piece. This is because unfortunately I do not have very much good advice for a young leftist today in two-thousand and twenty, or at least much advice that isn't going to sound rather a lot like “quit before what you believe destroys your entire life.”

As I've written (extensively) elsewhere, we're in the middle of a fascist takeover that is more or less succeeding across the entire Pig Empire, and what passes for the liberal (read: capitalist) establishment in our respective nations seem quite content to try and appease the beast by feeding them the entire left and any marginalized group “uppity” enough to demand justice, equality or representation. There is not a lot of upside to being an open leftist right now and understanding what I know about both the history of fascism and the history of reactionary crackdowns in America, it's awful hard for me in good conscience to advise any young person to willingly subject themselves to the tender mercies of an uncaring state and its fascist cutout vigilante groups.

Let's talk a little bit about what that history, including very recent history, can tell us and why what it tells us isn't very good for the American left. Here in particular, we as both a class in American society and a people that believe in a more equal, compassionate and humane way of life, stand at the intersection of state power, class oppression and the homicidal revenge fantasies of a fascist political order that has seized power throughout much of the United States. The fact that this is not understood by our milquetoast Dem Soc allies and the bougie “progressive left” is completely irrelevant; as any Ferguson activist (who is still breathing) can tell you COINTELPRO never ended, performative liberal anti-racism stops well short of opposing police repression, and genteel society will respond to violent reprisals against activists by the reactionary right with either dead silence or some mild clucks of disapproval at best.

Are the liberals aware that when the increasingly fascist American right says “the left” they mean liberals and suburbanite Democrats too? On some level I'm sure they are, but clearly the threat of increased taxation and social programs for the poor terrifies them far more than the possibility fascism will progress to the point that they're next in front of the firing squad – I've been told the liberals of Weimar Germany felt much the same way during Hitler's rise; which merely demonstrates that the liberal capacity for coddling fascism if it's profitable knows few limits. Furthermore the nauseating truth is that many of your misguided and misinformed liberal allies in the working class simply don't understand that the fascist right always seeks to eliminate the militant left first simply because those are the people who're going to fight back when you start loading Muslims, Latinos and lanyard Democrats onto cattle cars.

This historical process of fascism of course intertwines with the American establishment's history of ruthlessly repressing, criminalizing and even murdering the left. As I detailed extensively in a prior essay called “The Inversion Perversion” the state's war against Americans who want a more equal society (in any number of ways) predates the rise of Nazi Germany, the American Civil War and as those who've studied colonial America might argue, even the foundation of the country. Between the mass deportations of anarchists, suppression of left wing literature through the mail, two Red Scares, anticommunism, Hoover's COINTELPRO war against the civil rights movement, the black power movement and the American student left, or all the way up to the Obama Department of Justice's ruthless oppression of the Occupy, Ferguson and North Dakota Pipeline protests, I could easily spend this entire essay demonstrating that when it comes to persecuting, destroying and yes even murdering the left, there is a long and storied history of bipartisan consensus in America – I see no reason or evidence to suggest that has changed much in our modern times.

In other words history, even recent American history, says that this story ends in a jail cell or a shallow grave for some of the folks reading this journal right now and I don't know how to sugarcoat that for anyone, let alone a young person with their whole life (such as it is) ahead of them. The plain, god-awful truth is that the American right wants you dead, and the center-right American liberal establishment simply doesn't care, just as it has never cared, because they also want the left destroyed and fear sharing their ill-gotten wealth more than they fear fascism. Furthermore, this same elite “liberal” establishment is actively engaged in splitting the component parts of the current American uprising up into acceptable and non-acceptable targets; that's why Joe Biden keeps yammering about police funding, anarchists and “looters.” Democrats in particular are doing this even as fascist militia vigilantes are starting to execute antifascists and protesters in the street, might I add.

Did I mention that it's a really bad time to be an open leftist, or even just someone who passionately feels cracker murderpigs shouldn't get away with murder because some fascist gave them a badge? And yet of course therein also lies the rub; just as there is danger in resisting the imposition of a fascist order there is also danger in refusing to resist.

Turning once again to history, we know that the fascist creep isn't going to stop itself until well after it has killed millions of people and destroyed everything about our lives that contains any meaning whatsoever. The reactionary backlash will not stop with silencing, arresting and/or killing teenage anarchists, African Americans protesting against racialized police violence or Portland soccer moms who've had enough fascism for a lifetime. The fascist mindset and method of societal control dictates that there must always been more enemies both within and outside of the state who represent both an abomination that should be destroyed and a threat to everything good and pure in the national character. Right now, the waking dragon of American fascism has cast a laser-like focus on those brave few Americans who are willing to physically resist the transformation of the country from a corrupt Oligarchy to an overt fascist police-state with rigged elections. Once that enemy is crushed and defeated, the beast will turn its eye to others – unions, teachers, and yes even Democratic Party politicians who've always been friendly to the fascist capitalist billionaires running much of the reactionary American right today.

Whether you choose to fight, hide or run, it has become crystal-clear clear to me that we are all headed towards dark days in the very near future and the only variable left to be determined is which segments of the audience reading this will be thrown onto the pyre first. What we know today as “Western Society” is blindly crashing through the kinds of barriers people who desire peace, comfort and security simply don't breech without expecting violence, bloodshed and a whole lot of rain.

Perhaps in light of all this my advice to the young leftist should be to harden oneself for the torrential downpour of violence, repression and yes death that lies ahead, regardless of whether or not you choose to resist the fascist creep. Perhaps the best thing I can offer a young person staring directly into the eye of this beast is the assurance that it is not their fault, that nobody in history has ever asked to be born into the war against fascism and that ultimately the fascists cannot win because fascism is a death cult that will eventually eat itself and has done so every single time before this one. Perhaps all I really have to share with you is the hope that in the darkness and despair that lies ahead of us you will remember my words and know that no matter how much they repress, terrorize and torture us, fantasy cannot be reality, slavery cannot be freedom and life cannot be death.

And that I think is the handle and the comfort I can offer those of you reading this who’re young enough to have a future beyond the fascist order; I have no optimism to sell you but I can make one promise that may help carry you through the bowels of the hell we are all descending into after all. It might not amount to much yet, but I promise you there will always only be four lights; no matter how many of us they murder to try and “prove” otherwise. Do not give these maggots the satisfaction of seeing your fear; know that at least some of you reading this will eventually dance on their graves and take whatever comfort you are able to, in that inevitability.

Never forget - one way, or another, the future is left.

nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

[theparanormalperiodical]

Black Cats And Broken Mirrors: The Forgotten History Behind 13 Common Superstitions feat. 4 Cray-Cray Bonus Beliefs That You Didn’t Know Existed

It’s safe to say I’m a superstitious person.

I run a blog about the paranormal, for god’s sake.

Everyday I find myself touching wood, crossing my fingers, and hoping that magpie I can see just over there has a friend nearby to make a pair.

But in the same vein I’m obsessed with things that aren’t quite so lucky: I’m currently donning a pair of subtle black cat slippers, and I’m pretty damn sure my lucky number is 13.

Like most people reading this post at 2.37am when they should be having nightmares about the Mothman, I’m drawn to all things that don’t quite make sense. And people like me have been obsessed with superstitions since humans first started believing in a god of their choice.

Yet despite the long history of superstitious beliefs, there are some that still alter what we think and what we do.

Why do we pick up pennies in the hope of good luck?

Is there an explanation as to why walking under ladders can bring back luck?

And what is so wrong with the number 13?

Clutch your rabbit foot tight, and let’s find out.

#1 - It’s bad luck to open umbrellas indoors

I hate umbrellas. Like printers, they can sense when you need them most, deciding to either malfunction with the slightest gust of wind or disappear from sight altogether.

But the Victorians had it a bit worse than we do with more modern contraptions. And it’s the dangerous nature of Victorian umbrellas that explains why we are still wary of opening them indoors:

They had rigidly-spoked umbrellas which would snap open. When opened indoors, it could injure someone or hit an object as they opened with such force.

But the history of umbrella-related problems actually goes as far back as the Ancient Egyptians. The nobility would be protected from the sun with decorative umbrellas, but they believed if they opened them indoors they would anger the sun god. Umbrellas also mimicked the goddess who formed the sky so the shade created by the umbrella was thus considered sacred.

The act of daring to open one indoors could also anger your home’s spirits and causing misfortune.

So basically no living being or supernatural entity approves.

#2 - Walking underneath a ladder will bring bad luck

We now turn from one belief system to another.

This superstition relates purely to Christianity, with the claims that the ladder against a wall creates 3 points and thus represents the Holy Trinity. Walking through this triangle thus represents you - yes, you, you unholy thing - breaking it.

The Egyptians also had a thing about ladders, and like the Christians believed a triangle was sacred symbol.

It is also claimed that ladders were rested against crucifixes, and thus became a symbol of wickedness, death, and any other values that go against Christ’s teaching.

These beliefs were so prevalent, criminals sentenced to be hung in 17th century England were forced to walk under a ladder as they headed towards the gallows.

#3 - Broken mirrors give you seven years of bad luck

Mirrors have a bad reputation amongst us supernatural skeptics. Why? 

They’ve been used for divination and conjuring rituals for millenia, and that’s exactly the gripe the Ancient Greeks had with them.

Their mirror seers, as they were also known, told the future by looking at the reflection of their clients. And one of their methods was catoptromancy: the mirror was dipped in water, and you were asked to look in the glass. If it distorted, you were destined to die.

The 7 years bit is actually to do with the Romans and was introduced back in 1st AD. As they believed people's health changed in 7 year cycles, a distorted image thus meant 7 years of ill health or misfortune.

#4 - Throwing salt over your shoulder avoids bad luck

Salt is one of those things that has always had spiritual meaning.

From the Bible to Pagan ceremonies, it is known for its healing properties and has even been used as a unit of exchange. It’s these values which explain why spilling salt is considered so unlucky.

Even the word ‘salary’ can be traced back to the monetary value of what we now consider simply a seasoning.

The Ancient Sumerians were the first to think up throwing salt over their left shoulder to nullify any salt they might spill, protecting themselves from bad luck. Alternatively, in Mahayana Buddhist tradition, the same ritual is used to prevent evil spirits from entering the house.

#5 - Knocking on wood prevents disappointment

Just like salt, wood has been pretty prevalent in rituals throughout history. It’s for this reason that historians still aren’t sure which religion actually gave birth to this, but it is most often attributed to holding a crucifix when taking an oath, or how European peasants historically knocked loudly to keep out evil spirits.

Today we knock on wood to avoid tempting fate, whereas German or Celtic folklore started the knocking ritual to invoke the protection of their fairies, spirits, and dryads that lived in the trees. To follow their ritual, say your wish to the tree, knock one, and then knock again to say ‘thank you’.

The knocking stops the evil spirits from hearing you, and prevents them from interfering in your good fortune.

#6 - Open-end-up horse shoes are good luck

It’s a good luck charm gracing novelty gifts and jewellery for prep school girls who are still crying about New Moon - but like most superstitions, it once again can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks.

Iron was believed to have the ability to ward off evil, and the crescent moon was a symbol of fertility and good fortune. The twinned appeal of an iron crescent moon symbol thus suggested high levels of protection against misfortune.

This symbol was passed down to the Christians and use of it peaked during the witch trials. It was believed witches feared horses, and thus wouldn’t go near a home with a horse shoe on the front door.

It can also be traced back to a legend of Saint Dunstan from the 10th century: one day the Devil asked for Dunstan to shoe his horse. Rather than nailing the shoe to the horse’s foot, he nailed it to the devil’s foot and thus caused the entity unbearable pain. Dunstan agreed to remove the shoe only if the Devil never entered a household with a horseshoe on the door.

The way it is positioned is also important: open end down means the horse catches the luck and open end up means those entering the house get the luck.

#7 - Black cats crossing your path is bad luck

Black cats have always been considered omens - but the kind of luck they bring is yet to be agreed upon.

Ancient Egyptians revered cats and thus believed they brought good luck, whereas the British public’s fear of black cats can be traced back to King Charles I’s loss of his beloved pet. He believed when it died his luck was gone...

He was arrested the next day for high treason.

(Oh, he was guilty, black cat or not.)

Medieval Europeans followed a similar line of thought, but believed that they were familiars (like companions) of witches. If one was to cross your path, it meant the devil was watching you.

#8 - The number 13 is unlucky

This superstition is so popular, it’s even earnt a scientific name: triskaidekaphobia, aka the fear of the number 13. But why do we have such a phobia of the number?

Whilst many believe it is down to the Last Supper, when Judas - that guy that betrayed Jesus - sat down as the 13th guest at the table, it can also be found in a similar legend in Norse mythology.

12 gods were dining at Valhalla in the city of gods when Loki crashed the party. They tried to kick him out, but the struggle caused one of the gods - Balder - to die. But each culture has their own individual take on why the number 13 is quite so unlucky.

The Mayan believed their calendar’s 13th Baktun was the harbinger of 2012’s predicted apocalypse,  English monks disliked 13 full moons in a year as opposed to 12 as it skewed the religious holidays, and in 1307 on friday the 13th King Philip of France ordered the arrest of the Knights Templar.

Some nations take the fear so seriously that they don’t even have 13 floors. And interestingly enough, it wasn’t used in Formula 1 for 40 years. Some countries, including China and France, however, believe it is a lucky number.

#9 - Pick up a penny for good luck

This superstition is often relayed to a nursery rhyme actually referring to pins forged by Paganism, but it actually started with superstition regarding metals. In years gone by, metals gave protection against evil spirits. So, when metal began to be used from currency, it followed logically that those who had more currency had better fortune.

But what one should do with the penny is uncertain. Some say it is only lucky if it is heads-side-up, whereas others believe you should always flip it over for the next person to find.

Another forgotten ritual associated with pennies is that a bride should put a penny in her shoe on her wedding day to ensure a happy marriage.

#10 - A rabbit’s foot brings good luck

Okay, let’s be honest.

We’re all friends here.

Who the f*ck wants a rabbit’s foot? Like, what person wants an animal’s body part in their bed side table, or in their new rucksack-style handbag which you’re still not sure if the colour works with your skintone yet but you’ve already lost the receipt?

Turns out a lot of people do.

Rabbit feet are considered a talisman or an amulet which can be traced back to Celtic tribes in Britain. But on the other side of the pond, they can come from hoodoo, African-American folk magic that combines Native American, European, and African beliefs.

However, any ol’ rabbit can’t be chosen to be de-footed. It must’ve been killed in a certain way, in a certain place, by a certain person.

Under a full moon, or in a cemetery, or on a rainy Friday, or shot with a silver bullet… You have a lot of options.

The interest in rabbit feet in particular is because this is an animal which witches used to shapeshift into, and the times it should be killed, such as during a full moon, was when witches would transform.

The cemetery part is interesting, however: if killed on the grave of a criminal, they have a more effective charm applied to them.

#11 - Crossing your fingers is good luck

Like most superstitions, this one goes back to Jesus.

Crossing your fingers invokes the power of Christ as it creates a cross, and thus asks God for protection. But the first use of the gesture itself involves two people crossing their index fingers together, and can be traced back to the biblical Kingdom of Israel:

Judges would cross their fingers when they sentenced someone to death and wanted to reaffirm God’s authority over the criminal’s soul.

From there churchgoers would cross their fingers for blessings, and in the 16th century England people began to use it to ward off evil or to bless people when they coughed or sneezed.

#12 - Mirrors placed opposite each other are unlucky and might conjure the devil

We already know mirrors are highly-spiritual objects, and can be used to predict the future or conjure spirits from another realm.

But according to Mesoamerican culture, when mirrors are placed opposite each other, they create a doorway for the devil. 

Mexicans today still believe your interior design might just be summoning evil spirits.

#13 - Whistling indoors is bad luck

Our next superstition is from Lithuania, but has already made its way across Europe.

In many cultures, whistling - especially at night - attracts bad luck and evil spirits. But in England, an urban legend in the 19th century brought a whole new meaning to the superstition. The Seven Whistlers are mysterious spirits that would create spectral whistling in mines and stopped groups of coal miners going to work.

Alternatively, in Slavic countries whistling indoors can bring poverty, whereas the Chinese Daoist technique of breath yoga can summon supernatural beings and strange phenomena.

The Superstitions You Didn’t Know Existed And Will Now Probably Be Obsessed With 

#14 - If a bird craps on you it is good luck

This Russian superstition claims that if bird poop lands on you or an object that belongs to you, it will bring you wealth. But interest in bird faeces goes a bit further than this frosty nation.

Sailors believed droppings shouldn’t be cleaned off a vessel until the next rainstorm, whereas British folklore claims if droppings come from a rook (a member of the Crow family) it is a punishment.  

#15 - Yo-Yos bring bad luck

On January 21st 1933, Yo-Yos were banned in Syria.

The persistent drought and freezing temperatures the country was facing were pinned on the traditional toy, and the leaders in Damascus claimed the wrath of god was being incited by these obviously evil trinkets.

They believed that Syrians were praying from the rain to come down, but as the yo-yo comes down and then goes back up it thus wasn’t raining.

I think that’s what they were getting at.

I’m still not sure.

#16 - Singing at the dinner table is bad luck

I was once told off for singing in the middle of dinner. I must’ve been three years old, but from what I’ve read, my grandpa was probably convinced I was actually communicating with Satan.

If you sang at the table, it meant you were singing to the devil for your supper. And when you sing to the devil, it’s probably going to end badly.

#17 - Carry an acorn to stay young

According to women from Ancient Britain, acorns could keep you looking youthful - and it was all down to the power of an oak tree.

Simply tuck one into your pocket, and you too could look like you were in a magazine spread that enforces the destructive notion that women cannot look above the age of 27.

Acorns are also associated with Thor: Scandinavian folklore claims the god of thunder sought protection under an oak tree during a storm. By putting one on a windowsill, it will protect your house from lightning strikes as a sign of respect to Thor.

As we plough into Autumn of this sh*t year, it is our duty to generate as much luck as possible. We’re gonna need it.

Which superstition surprised you the most? And which ones do you do?

Let me know in a comment, and click follow if you want to hear a new article on the paranormal every week!

And don’t forget to check out the link in the bio, the ultimate collection of online real ghost stories as told by you.

[deerlyloved]

icarus rising

under cut: story about my oc bailey’s childhood in the bnha world

Bailey Shepherd could control fire. That was it. You’d think there’d be a cool name for a quirk like that, and Bailey tried and tried from the day they realized what they could do to come up with a name that showed just how proud they were of it. They tried Hellfire, and their mom chastised them for their language, so then they tried Photosynthesis since it was technically correct, but they couldn’t say it with the gap in their teeth and their elder sister teased them. Begrudgingly, Bailey decided on the easiest, and most boring choice of names, ‘Fire manipulation’. It was never really their quirk to name, of course, and the doctor had told them right away that that was the official name for quirks like theirs, but it was still a little… frustrating to have to settle on something so plain.

Lissa got to choose hers, so why not Bailey? It was boring. What they could do with their quirk, despite its name, wasn’t very boring, though. In fact, from a young age, maybe even the day it manifested, Bailey could do practically anything they wanted with it-- It just came to them so easily, there was barely any practice needed other than maintaining it rather than letting it spiral out of control. 

There were drawbacks, of course, like most clothes not being fire-proof, or the way their flames dulled and shrunk with the setting of the sun, but every day at noon you could see little Bailey Shepherd fluttering about outside their home, sticking their tongue out at their siblings below them as they stayed just below the restricted ‘10 feet’ their parents had set for them to fly-- after all, 10 feet was a broken bone or two, 20 feet was a grave.

This all meant that Bailey was talented, and despite how boring their quirk sounded, they were always proud of it. Lissa could start fires, but not control them, Max could use light to create weapons, but Bailey could fly and that was always their trump card when the group argued over who had the coolest quirk. Pride was always the greatest downfall, though.

Things got bad. By all means, their parents were professional villains, though Bailey didn’t think they should have been called that-- Some of their siblings, sure, but their parents? They were basically Robin Hood in cooler shirts! There was no way those two should be branded as wrong-doers for actually doing the right thing! Sadly, Bailey wasn’t in control of the Hero Commission in America (yet), so they had to sit by and watch as their parents snuck their gaggle of children from one neighborhood to the next, wearing costume after costume to try and keep their identities as secret as possible. They loved their parents. Things should have been fine.

Just like their siblings, Bailey should have safely fallen into the same category as their parents, ‘Villains doing the right thing’, ‘enemies to the peace’, on and on, and at first they were happy to do that until…

Until they weren’t.

Until they saw the chance to reform the system that condemned their family. Until they saw the ability to fix corruption, even if it meant taking a passive route as opposed to their family’s direct one. They weren’t happy about it, sure, Bailey believed that corruption was corruption and it should be cut off wherever it was found, no matter the cost, but some things needed to be sacrificed for the greater good, right? Right?

That was the argument they posed to their brother. Max didn’t think the same as they did, and that was to be expected, but the way he spat insults at them just made Bailey’s skin crawl. They’d spent a long, long time being the butt of all their siblings jokes, though some were a bit kinder than others. At least Lissa never made a ‘pigs can fly’ comment, at least James was quiet when he called them annoying. The rest of them had their fair share of moments, though, and you can only get so many punchlines in before your joke got old, and Bailey got mad.

Yes, it was their fault. They would admit it now, and they admitted it then, because Bailey was the one who punched him first. They just needed him to shut up, just stop talking and mind his own business for once in his miserable life-- And then he hit them back. Wouldn’t be the first time Bailey had gotten into a fist fight with a brother, but it was definitely different because before they could even look back up, Max was nocking an arrow.

Things got out of hand.

Bailey just meant to do their usual routine, jump out of the way, flutter about, just get away from him and let him cool down, but they were never given the chance. Max’s arrows didn’t pierce the same way real ones did, but they hurt just the same, just with less blood, and Bailey hit the ground just as they were about to sprout wings, a glowing arrow now just above their knee. It would be a bitch to take out, but not impossible, but that wasn’t the worrying part-- No, it was the fact that Max had actually fired. He’d never actually hurt them, never used his quirk on them, it was like an unspoken rule in the family that you could be angry but you never actually meant the things you said, and--

“You’ve been such a thorn in our side for so, so long,” Bailey was trying to get back up but it was useless, “But this is too much, Bailey, betraying the family is too much.” There was arrow pointed right at them, and they just stared at it for what felt like forever until--

Bailey’s quirk was pretty reactive, even when they would reach what seemed like full control of it. That was fire for you, always spreading, always burning up everything in sight, and Bailey wished more than anything that they could have held it back for a just a little longer. They weren’t sure exactly what happened, but they realized in a moment that they had drawn just enough fire to their hands to do something, and a moment later they had set everything around them ablaze. Their brother was knocked back, and so was everything around them. A perfect little 6ft circle, scorched and charred, and Bailey quickly focused on giving themselves a brace, fire circling around their new wounded knee as they hauled themself up, and gave a few flaps of the wings that formed on their back. Their clothes weren’t holding up very well, but they were trying to keep the fire from spreading to them as they hovered above the ground with a wince, trying to fly away.

That was always their go-to, just fly away. Max recovered, though his hair was singed and he had to pat out a minor fire on his shirt, and just as Bailey thought they were safe he nocked another arrow.

The police report says Bailey set fire to half a block. They don’t remember it, exactly, something about shock and adrenaline, how they were affected by their severed tendons and the likes. The report says Max was found, half-dead and burned, but somehow alive, and subsequently arrested after his recovery-- Technically, from an official point of view, ‘Trickshot’ was arrested, not Max Shepherd. That didn’t help, though.

Do you know how much it sucks to have your nineteen year old brother try to kill you when you’re thirteen, and then have your family blame YOU for what happened? It… Definitely hurts a bit. They were pretty unceremoniously shunned, and after a year of getting locked out of the house, bruises and busted lips going unnoticed, Bailey did the only thing they could think to do and just… Got out of their family’s hair. They applied to school overseas, in more countries than they cared to admit, and before they knew it Bailey was accepted into UA.

Their parents didn’t congratulate them. Didn’t even say goodbye when they walked to the airport. Lissa told them to not bother coming back.

But hey.

At least they weren’t a thorn in anyone’s side anymore, right?

[kob131]

https://itsclydebitches.tumblr.com/post/613974327525883904/one-of-the-worst-parts-of-the-entire-volume-7

One of the worst parts of the entire Volume 7 clusterfuck is that by not saying any of the truth about Salem team RWBY has actively helped Salem more than any other person or group in the entirety of the show through a single action and even with the Ace Ops and Ironwood "turning" on them there really is no acknowledgement of the sheer horror that should be had at what they did. They chose to let an entire nation of people blindly march off to their deaths and they have the moral high ground?

Because they didn’t, seeing as they told the truth later on. And wouldn’t Ironwood turning on them BE the sheer horror after how much we got to know him?

It really does confuse me. So many people are insisting that Ironwood is the one causing division because:

Oh this should be good.

He’s taking resources from Mantle… to build a means of uniting the whole world, an action that he believes will eliminate the Salem problem completely.

And Ozpin lied to try and unite the world and give it hope: he still lied and shouldn’t have done that because he never considered how damaging that would be to his cause. Just like Ironwood not helping Mantle wouldn’t work if Mantle’s a god damn ghost town.

He refuses to work with Robyn… even though he doesn’t refuse, merely points out that they both need to find common ground for an alliance to work, while she’s the one proving that he was right to mistrust her (stealing supplies, spying on his projects, trying to use her semblance in front of Jacques, immediately abandoning Ironwood the moment he makes a decision she doesn’t like).  

They HAD common ground: Help the people. You even admit she worked with the man the moment he proved he was trying to help. And guess what caused her to side against him? Him trying to arrest Qrow (in her eyes, an innocent man) and DITCHING MANTLE. 

He arrests Team RWBY… because they made it clear they wouldn’t support him first. They’re the ones who broke this alliance, telling him in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t do things their way they would stand against him. More importantly, they broke that alliance weeks ago by lying to him and keeping secrets right at the start. If RWBYJNR doesn’t trust Ozpin because of those lies why in the world would they expect Ironwood to trust them? Throw in Blake and Yang betraying him again and it’s clear that they were never willing to work with him. They’re only willing to use him as a resource that follows their orders, free of compromise.

... You wanna know what kills your argument before you even make it?

Being biased.

‘he didn’t do things their way’ = ‘Leaving Mantle to die to save Atlas’

‘keeping secrets right at the start’ = ‘Ironwood did the same thing with Amity’

‘’They’re only willing to use him as a resource’ = ‘Ironwood is making a decision that fundamentally goes against Team RWBY’s and his own principles.’

This whole post so far has been blaming other people or making excuses for Ironwood’s own decisions and their consequences. For people who bitch at the ones defending Team RWBY for doing, you sure are comfortable doing it yourself.

The only thing Ironwood has done to arguably divide people is decide to leave with Atlas and, as I’ve pointed out extensively elsewhere, that’s a matter of trying to save some in the face of inevitable destruction.

An ‘inevitable destruction’ they don’t know is ‘inevitable’.

What does it matter if the Kingdom is divided if the entire Kingdom is dead

Because he’s been preaching ‘save everyone’ for the whole Volume, it’s his duty as a public servant and leaving people to die will just make everyone angry and distrustful of him...which will lead them to die ANYWAY.

That’s the same issue we’ve seen in regards to his supposed dictator choices, like having a curfew and letting his robots roam the streets. Does that feel like an unpleasant thing that may infringe on people’s individual rights? Yep. Is that helping to ensure that people don’t get eaten by grimm? Yep.

Because authoritarian dictators have never used a crisis to seize power and not like America, the country PRODUCING RWBY, is fundamentally against this shit.

If you want a current semi-comparative example, look to the regulations in place due to Corvid-19. There are people going, “You can’t make me stay home. It’s my right to go wherever I please. It’s not right to demand that I stay indoors/give up my vacation/not leave the state/etc. because I am entitled to those freedoms.” But of course the obvious push-back to that is, "These rules are in place to help keep everyone alive.

At the cost of making them miserable and distrusting in the government, which leads to people ignoring ALL Covid regulations, even the non-invasive ones, and then people start dying again but no one cares at that point because they feel the government has ignored and abused them. Kind of like what happened with Ironwood and Mantle, as Mantle became hostile towards him as he never tried to understand or compromise with them.

Sometimes people in power claim that there are justified reasons for their infringements on peoples’ rights when in fact those reasons are total BS, but I don’t think Ironwood is one of those cases.

You’re so biased for the guy I doubt you would admit it even if you though Ironwood was like that. And even then, so called ‘justified reasons’ still aren’t reasons to infringe on people’s rights. 

It’s a matter of, “You might not like having robots in the street but they’re there so they can at best take out grimm and worst buy you time to run away,” which is precisely what we saw when the group first arrived.

And then they all got fucked when said regulations caused such a volatile state that when Jacques took advantage, it began a chain reaction that caused the Grimm to attack and everything in the climax to happen.

If Ironwood wanted to be a dictator he would have declared martial law ages ago. Instead his thinking has always been balanced between what is right and what is practical: what do I need to do to keep my people alive? They can be pissed at me all they want, but at least they exist to be pissed.

You don’t need a want to make mistakes and do bad shit: all it takes is being misguided. Ironwood never shows he considers what is right, only what is practical within the boundaries he thinks is right. He never listened to others until before Salem and it continuously costed him. 

You know, for as much flak he got, Ozpin shows why his way worked better than Ironwood. Yeah he lied to but he also considered the feelings of others, he listened to them, he accepted their arguments and went out of his way to try and accommodate them. Because of this, even now, everyone is still loyal to him in some way. They’re all chasing flawed versions of Ozpin’s way, because the man lived long enough to see the path that was best.

Like we’re going, “Yes, we will fine you for leaving your house without a permit so you don’t contract and spread this deadly disease.” Ironwood is going, "Yes, I will require that you keep the streets clear so that you don’t draw in and get eaten by these deadly creatures.”

And then the people said “We don’t care anymore, you have shown us no reason to trust you.”

You cannot ignore the people’s wishes forever without consequence.

The blurry line between protection and infringement will always be debated, but to my mind Team RWBY’s perspective is far too much on the other side of things.

Cool, you’ve proceeded to understand HALF the conflict. 50% is still a failing grade though.

It’s dangerously naive.

Same with you. Meanwhile, Ironwood is dangerously pessimistic, disregarding others viewpoints and feelings to march ahead, never realizing he’ll never reach his goal because his methods destroyed any chance at it. Down to even ignoring a fundamental aspect of human nature.

They want to win this war without anyone going through any hardship and, while noble, that’s just not possible.

... Yang lost an arm and they’ve watched people DIE.

That is HIGHLY reductionist of their view. 

hey can wish and strive for that all they want, but so long as that keeps them from making logical decisions—like saving at least some of the Kingdom when you have no plan to avoid total annihilation—then they’re hurting more than they’re helping.

Meanwhile, Ironwood can make all the ‘practical’ decisions he wants, but as long as he continues to ignore fundamental aspects of human nature, like opposing oppression even if it means mutual destruction, he can’t save anyone.

Ironwood, like Ozpin, understands that winning any war, let alone a war against an enemy like Salem, is going to be rife with hard and messy choices. Which means that there will always be division.

And Ozpin went out of his way to ensure UNITY. He tried to be as honest as he could be with people, consider their feelings, stand by his principles.

Let me ask you: Why doesn’t Ozpin just take away four baby girls from their parents and raise them to be the Maidens as his undeniably loyal underlings? Lock the Maidens away so no one can ever get to them, thus preventing their power from falling into the wrong hands? Why doesn’t he just declare open war on Salem and sacrifice countless lives to forever keep her in check? 

Why doesn’t Ozpin act like a worse version of Ironwood?

Because he knows better than to do this.

here’s literally no choice in existence that keeps everyone happy and safe and never feeling any negative feelings about the shit storm raging around them. Salem wins in that regard simply by virtue of the fact that life is hard and life isn’t fair. Accepting that hardships will exist and trying to mitigate the damage from them doesn’t make Ironwood a villain and it certainly doesn’t make him as bad as Salem.

Yeah, it just makes him as bad as the people he turned against.

The person causing division as an inevitable byproduct of trying to save the entire world is not the same thing as the woman trying to wipe out that world.

It does make him as bad as his predecessor.

Yeah, remember the Great War in RWBY? The one that started because of events in Mantle. Events that infringed on the citizen’s rights for survival’s sake and it did the opposite, causing a fuckton of death and destruction?

Yeah, Ironwood is doing the SAME BASIC THING the King of Mantle did. He’s REPEATING his land’s own mistakes.

When you ask that Ironwood be seen as the good guy here, you ask that people not only ignore events in the show, events in real life, the foundation of the country RWBY is made in, the foundation of the show itself but the foundation of the people he’s trying to save.

That doesn’t work.

[themesdances]

Total Exit: on the Queer Cinema

(Basis for introductory remarks given at QFFxBQFF screening ‘Burning Ones’ at the IMA, March 8, 2018. )

Already, by the 1940s, the feeling was that the cinema had become “a medium of and for bankers,” that the time had passed in which a film could be both commercial and artistic, both public and personal. (Renan 18) Doubly constrained by market concerns and the 1930 Hays code (which forbade depictions of more than thirty unsavoury topics including interracial relationships, childbirth, sexual deviance and mockery of the church), the Hollywood studio system mastered the endless reproduction of tepid, escapist fantasies sure to appease audiences and censors alike. At its peak, the studio system churned out more than five hundred such features every year—and individual screenwriters, directors and actors working in that system understood well that they were replaceable, at a moment’s notice, if they threatened to disrupt either the consistency of the product or the relentless speed of the process.

Against this stultifying current emerged the underground cinema: a loose, international affiliation of artists working totally outside and in opposition to the studio’s production-distribution-exhibition machine. Where Hollywood had perfected filmmaking as the output of a bland and homogenous product, the underground sought to challenge every preconception of what a film could be, to be both radically personal and fearlessly experimental, and to explore any and every idea and subject deemed unfit for public consumption. Underground films could be twenty seconds or twenty hours long, narrative or abstract. Images could be traditionally shot, painted or scribbled right onto the stock. They could re-appropriate footage from other films, advertisements and newsreels; they could even mock the church. In a postwar society that had veered sharply conservative, the underground cinema acted as both a venue and method for exploring new ideas and questioning societal norms without fear of public persecution.

It is no surprise then, that while the movement began as a small group of artists making and screening films almost exclusively for one another, it quickly attracted those whose identities, sexualities, loves, ideas, class or politics excluded them from mainstream representation and mainstream society alike. By the 1950s, the underground had become a vital space, not only for artists to seek new forms of self-expression, but as a meeting place for queers and commies of all kinds—one of the few spaces which permitted open communication, the exchange of ideas and phone numbers, experimentation, exploration and transgression, both on-screen and off-. The commercial film epitomised the double-ideology of the “normal person” and the “normal story”, each reinforcing the other in a perpetual, closed loop. In their works, the underground sought to break entirely from this vicious circle, and it is this exigence of total flight to which all three films on tonight’s program respond.

In Jean Genet’s ‘Song of Love’, a prison guard cruises a dark, one might say mazelike hallway, spying on the prisoners’ various displays physical and sexual release. But there is one prisoner in particular whom the guard truly desires, and his voyeuristic pleasure sours into jealousy when he realises the prisoner yearns for someone else. Two fantasies—the prisoner’s and the guard’s—bleed into one another as the guard bursts into the cell and lashes the prisoner in an ecstatic outburst in which lust and hatred, acknowledgement and punishment become indistinguishable.

For Genet, as is well known, the criminal, poet and homosexual are but a single figure: the prisoners communicate their desires in their own language of smoke of flowers. Though they are physically confined, they exude an unrestrained sexuality in every frame of the film. In Genet’s world, it is the guard, which is to say the state, who wields all the power and yet remains impotent, who cannot join the prisoners. Unable to reconcile his contradictory desires, he (the guard) is the one finally expelled from the prisoners’ erotic liminal space.

Gregory Markopoulos was one of the earliest filmmakers to take up love between men as an explicit and enduring theme. While it is true that his films are intensely personal—so much so that he tried at one point to withdraw them from circulation entirely—their autobiographical details are fragmented, disturbed by, as Renan puts it, “[an] editing technique that obliterate[s] the plot if one [does] not know it.” (87) Even when, as in Swain, Markopoulos draws directly from a literary text, story remains subservient to an almost phenomenological method which conveys above all the experience of queer desire. At a time when homosexual experiences and encounters could exist only in marginal spaces, fleeting moments and coded signals, Markopolous’s films likewise remain hidden in plain sight, unfolding in a discontinuous style in which his characters’ pasts and presents, thoughts, fears and fantasies intermingle. We find in them a yearning for an impossible domesticity—a tranquility shattered, over and over, by intrusive memories and images that spill over the screen almost faster than the eye can catch.

Jack Smith’s ‘Flaming Creatures’ has a history of obscenity trials, clandestine screenings, police raids and arrests so extensive that it would overshadow perhaps any other film. When a Belgian film festival declared it an undeniable aesthetic achievement and banned it from screening in the same sentence, a friend of Smith’s smuggled the film into the country and held packed screenings in his hotel room. When the film had likewise been banned in New York, a vigilante projectionist at a commercial theatre, barricaded himself in his booth and screened the film for as long as he could before authorities cut off power to the entire building. (Benshoff 120)

‘Flaming Creatures’s polarising influence, its history both of outraged suppression and equally fervent support, is well-deserved. Structurally, visually, and thematically, it has almost no precedent. Made a year before Sontag’s famous essay, ‘Flaming Creatures’ was one of the first films to consciously develop what we now call ’camp’, and at the same time pushed that aesthetic further than perhaps any other film since. The result is a shocking farce; kitschy and obscene, consciously—almost studiously—opposed to every dictum of good taste. Visually, it is a pastiche of rococo, orientalist, drag and B-movie aesthetics: humans of utterly ambiguous gender identity frolic about in kimonos, flapper dresses and ball gowns, costume jewellery and tumescent prosthetic noses. Their activities reach a screaming, orgiastic climax until an apocalyptic earthquake kills them all. Then, the whole thing happens again.

In his own life and writings, Smith opposed not only the white, hetero-patriarchal establishment but the so-called ‘assimilationist’ LGBT intellectuals, who argued that the only path to mainstream acceptance was meek compliance with the mainstream status quo. Smith, by contrast, saw quote-unquote normalcy  as a restrictive and repressive ideology which should be resisted and lampooned in every possible respect. ‘Flaming Creatures’ is a free and irreverant fuck-you to every preconception, expectation and standard of good taste. It is structurally and visually disorienting, a confounding and ridiculous nightmare, which nonetheless harbours a kind of utopian vision: the film’s characters are truly “creatures” as the title implies—without gender, without boundaries, existing beyond even life and death. Smith himself said of the film that he wanted to explore every conception of beauty, and, once we have acclimated to its style, the film offers just that: a joyous affirmation of both the glamorous and the tacky, of every kind of body, of cheap wigs and jiggly dicks.

Queer popular culture still echoes the innovations of the underground, in its gleeful mockery of conventional gender signifiers, for instance, or in its embrace of camp as a rejection of academic distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low culture’, or ’serious’ and ‘silly’ art. Yet, as exemplified by RuPaul earlier this week, the ultimate triumph of the assimilationist agenda over the underground’s rejectionist project has come at the cost of a reabsorption of mainstream hegemony into the queer world, and a recodification of social and sexual roles in a community that once strictly opposed performative roles of every kind: As Rees-Roberts argues, “‘Images’ of mainstream integration,“ have disproportionately favoured “conventional, straight-acting, young, white, middle-class gay boys, [reinforcing social hierarchies of] LGBT identities, racial difference, gender inequality, [and] economic privilege.” (1-2) Much of queer cinema, like much of queer culture, has likewise acquiesced to mainstream standards of normalcy and acceptability, but in exchange for an acceptance which is not offered equally to all.

What the underground filmmakers understood, what has often been obscured in subsequent, audience-friendly depictions of safe, queer love, was the urgent need of resistance to the prevailing status quo and all of its social, political, intellectual and economic mechanisms of control. The films come from a time when to be queer already meant to be an intellectual and political adversary of the state; to be experimental or personal as a filmmaker already meant to oppose the monolithic, monopolistic and moralising Hollywood system. The queer underground grasped clearly that, in every case, it is one voice which divides titillation from transgression, the aesthetic from the abhorrent, which in one decree states what is good, what is moral, what is legal and what will sell; one voice which sings the song of a tasteful society of progress and progeny. In the underground there emerged against this voice another one of total dissent, a break so radical that it still eclipses much of what has come since. Here, artists imagined utopian futures which have not yet come to pass, and, if we have truly abandoned the ceaseless critique of our own present, perhaps never will.

Cited:

Benshoff, Harry and Sean Griffin. Queer Images: A History of Gay And Lesbian Film In America. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield 2006.

Rees-Roberts, Nick. French Queer Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP 2008.

Renan, Sheldon. An Introduction To The American Underground Film. New York: Dutton 1967.