#hilary western

[sleepy-bebby]

[qqueenofhades]

I'm sure it's only a coincidence that a few days after Putin says Biden "needs to be undermined from the left" to help Trump win, noted Russian agent Jill Stein, who the Kremlin already extensively promoted in 2016 in the successful effort to hurt HRC, and who already endorsed fellow pro-Russian tankie Cornel West, jumps back into the 2024 race as the "Green Party candidate" talking about how "the two-party system has failed us."

For the love of fuck, let's not do this again.

[intersectionalpraxis]

Hilary Clinton is a perpetual disappointment. I have had sympathy for her in the past given the rampant sexism and misogyny she has had to face -directly from her colleagues to mass media, and especially considering she's had to navigate decades of a career where mostly men berated her and many women for getting into politics because women are 'too emotional.'

Given the history of the Clinton's even their evils and complicity in US imperialism, Sana calls this out perfectly -Hilary, like her fellow politicians who weaponize feminism across the political spectrum in order to push their agenda is both vile and counter to the heart of feminist movements -which is challenging and dismantling powerful institutions/structures/governments that oppress people -in order to create real systemic changes.

Hilary, you cannot sit there and tell people you care about women and girls when Palestinian women and girls are being disproportionately and PURPOSELY targeted by the IOF. Hilary, you cannot look away from the sexual violence and abuse Palestinian women have and continue to face (the recent UN report is ONE example). Hilary, you're a hypocrite whose own 'sympathy' only extends to those apart of the empire you work for. Hilary, while you're standing on the side of the oppressor, you're simultaneously becoming one yourself (or to be quite frank -you already are one).

[bottombaron]

you know, i can handle a little bit of fun "Nandor is dumb" talk, but i have a net-zero tolerance for any implication that Nandor is not educated.

Nandor would have been incredibly educated in his lifetime.

even (or especially) as a soldier in the Islamic World. being a soldier was more like getting sent to boarding school that's also a military camp. they weren't just concerned with creating loyal fodder for war. they were building the next government officials, generals, accountants, advisors, etc. it was important that young men knew how to read, write, speak multiple languages, learn philosophy...sometimes even studying art and music was mandatory.

if he was nobility (and its most likely he was), take all that shit and multiply it exponentially. Nandor would have been reading Plato at the same age most people are still potty training. he would have been specifically groomed in such a way to not be just a brilliant strategist and warrior, but also diplomate and ambassador of literally the center of scientific and cultural excellence of the age.

so like yeah, he can be a big dummy sometimes, sure. but that bitch is probably more educated than any of us will ever be.

[hwathwugu]

Working on my western Durge (and Tav) designs! I’m thinking Durge is a Horned Toad-style white Dragonborn and an old-timey boxer.

Their ice breath comes in handy during the day to keep everyone cool, but at night they sleep as close to the fire (or Karlach) as possible. They are proud to have the highest bounty in the group.

[yellowocaballero]

So fucking glad to see someone talk about SSS Class revival hunter 😭 I lived it so much and I feel like no one ever mentions it against more popular titles like ORV or even The Lout of the counts family, so I'm so glad to come here and see your amazing takes :>

Thank you for the ask which lets me talk about SSSCRH (the version I read was titled 'Suicide Hunter', which tbh I like more - no beating around the bush).

It's hard to draw an accurate comparison since I'm going off just the webtoon for SSSCRH, while I'm going off both the webtoon and the webnovel for ORV. And I love ORV, ORV is my media blorbo right now, it hydraulic presses my brain, I am writing ORV fanfic - it's, like, funner to enjoy. But SSSRH is just better. In the vast majority of ways it is is better. It's better than the holy trinity by a wide margin. TW talk of suicide obviously.

I can't believe I'm saying this but you need a basic understanding of Buddhism in order to understand SSSCRH. It's not about Gongja's suicides - he doesn't suicide from depression or lack of self-esteem. SSSCRH is about suffering in the Buddhist sense - dukkha. I don't want to make this an essay, so I might reblog this with more information, but extremely shortly:

The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism is the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. You've heard that Buddhists say 'life is suffering'. To put it one way that doesn't require defining a lot of words: the cause of suffering is experiencing the world as we percieve it instead of how it truly is. Suffering isn't just being miserable and in pain, and life isn't suffering because life sucks and global warming exists and people voted for Trump. Life is suffering because we can experience beautiful and joyful moments in this world, but we do not exist in the moment of that happiness or place our ego/'self' between us and that happiness. Living in that moment, accepting the moment as it is unconditionally, is freedom from suffering. The Buddha tries to free people from suffering through teaching Buddhism.

"What does this have to do with the webnovel and manwha about a guy murdering himself thousands of times" it has everything to do with it. Because SSSCRH is about suffering, and it is about using suffering as a tool in order to experience a world unfiltered by ego and break down the artificial boundaries between human beings. Suffering in SSSCRH is not a bad thing. Gongja has the unique capability to (reincarnate.) experience a person's suffering in unity with them, which dissolves the delusion of separation between people and puts us in touch with the reality of oneness.

The Murim arc was fucking insane because Gongja pulls a Big Bodhisattva Move and walks through the suffering of the world in order to achieve full understanding of the human experience. He takes all of the suffering of the world into himself and is liberated. You can tell it's Buddhist because death was not presented as a bad thing - death was an aspect of a happy ending for the Heavenly Demon lady, because she was finishing her life according to her own joy, and because her teachings were passed on she did not truly die.

But the purpose of embracing suffering is to discover the ability to fully embrace life, and that's where Heavenly Demon's teachings were incomplete - as the ghost dude said, Gongja hasn't even experienced his own full life and the infinite capability for his own happiness. You can only feel the depths of sadness when you've felt the depths of happiness. Sadness deserves its place in the world and it can strengthen you, but so does happiness.

Gongja is attention-seeking, envious, and unbelievably petty. When he drills down into his own desires and why he wants the things he wants, you see that he has a very strong sense of justice and right and wrong - he realizes he doesn't want to be famous, he wants to be acknowledged, but on an even deeper level he is desperate for love and to be loved. Everything he does is to experience love, and as such he learns to love others. His love for the Flamey Asshole was purely parasocial and ego-filled, with no concern for who he was as a human. Throughout the manwha, he grows to care for people as they truly are and pierce through any delusions or misleading outward appearances. He has released all attachment to life and death, and as such does not fear death, and as such has taken a step on the road towards becoming a Boddhisatva who frees others from the cycle of samsara, and as a result has learned sick sword techniques and is sooo good at beating people up.

I think the only other thing I want to mention here because otherwise this is an essay: in almost every time loop/regression story, only the final regression matters. In stories with dungeon monsters and NPCs, only the humans matter. The regressor exists in a space where there are no consequences for their actions, so they act terribly and do whatever because none of it matters. In Groundhog Day Bill Murray acts like an asshole because he can. That's not the case here. Everything Gongja does matters. The NPCs are fake, but Gongja never treats them as anything less than real people who deserve life. Once he understands a person's life he never treats them as unimportant. No loop is thrown away and no person or life is disregarded. His choices matter, the way he treats others matters, and Gongja never treats anybody as if they don't matter except for himself.

That was not short. There is a lot more. The female characters are so good and so rich. From a craft perspective it is excellently paced and has a wonderful sense of set-up/payoff and balances tone and maintains a lot of momentum, which is really hard in a time loop story. You have to do a few very specific things to write OP characters well and SSSCRH does it very well. There's more to say from a craft perspective and it's hard to judge accurately from a webtoon but it's good. I was so strangely struck the entire time about how sincere and genuine it was, how it said what it said with no trace of irony of confusion, and I think that's what stuck with me the most.

TL;DR: SSS Class Revival Hunter is good for a lot of very normal reasons, such as excellent pacing and set-up/pay off and characters, but it's also so sincerely and genuinely Buddhist that it blew my tits clean off.

[blood-orange-juice]

@narcoticwriter

Ok, this is semi-crack but if Hoyo decided to make the bad guys Russian I'm allowed to invoke Slavic symbolism.

In East Slavic cultures the hearth used to be associated with meanings you normally attach to the netherworld.

(no one really thinks like this anymore, of course, and most city dwellers never encounter a proper hearth in their lives, but it's still there in fairy tale imagery and sometimes in language and the metaphors we use for things)

I actually don't know what the correct translation is. Oven? Fireplace? The thing is HUGE, incredibly ugly and also building one is an art (it's supposed to distribute heat in a very specific way). We do not spread this symbolism to Western fireplaces or fire in general.

It's a bit chthonic and associated with everything pagan and unclean (ritually and literally. the soot).

Very far from the cozy "sitting near a fireplace with a cup of hot chocolate", it's a place where Real Stuff Happens and most real stuff in this world is messy and unpleasant.

But also only because of it a home can be called a home. It's the heart of the house.

In superstitions it's home to a friendly fae househelper (the little dude lives behind it) and in fairy tales it's sometimes an entry point for minor demons (I don't remember if they get through the chimney or through the fire itself).

Then in other fairy tales there's Baba Yaga, The Evil Witch, who is also probably an aspect of a forgotten goddess of death (as in many other places, Christianity weeded out Slavic myths to the point of near disappearance and fairy tales were a form in which some of those survived). This lovely lady occasionaly cooks adventurers in the oven/hearth as a part of their rebirth process. Occasionally she just cooks and eats them. Folks with good work ethics are usually safe (in most tales they offer to perform some work for her in exchange for help or simply for not being eaten).

Baba Yaga, as far as I know, is somewhat recognized by the English-speaking pagan community, they interpret her as yet another name for the Crone face of the Triple Goddess (the archetype on which Hoyo likely relied when writing the Moon Sisters).

(do you see the fire and moon connection now?)

I'm surprised how well it fits a lot of Arle's themes. A fire that is otherwoldly and demonic and associated with rebirth and an almost-forgotten goddess of death and moon, but also it's just fire in a hearth, something to warm your house with.

This was probably not Hoyo authors' thought process and they just thought of rebirth, destruction and tamed fire.

But the author is dead and the hearth means what it means, and if you dig into humans' relationship with fire long enough you end with this sort of symbolism anyway, so I declare this angle valid.

[meanscarletdeceiver]

In March 1939 the LMS sends Stranraer a Class 5 to test. It goes very well and soon Stranraer is awash in secondhand Black Fives. The funny part is "a hard core of ex-Caley men" at Northern Division headquarters have feels! They are OFFENDED that the Stranraer men prefer the new engines to "their incomparable 60 class" and so they insist they repeat the test with a Caley 4-6-0!

The test appears to go sadly and Stranraer's like "Hmm yes, thank you for that interesting experience (we'll be sticking with the Staniers)" and headquarters insist, insist, "[a]s a great favour," that they keep the test engine.

[moonchild-in-blue]

Yeehaw territory is all of the USA, but mostly west of the Mississippi River (anything bought in the Louisiana Purchase that was considered the 'frontier') 🌿

@whataboutyouisamascot thank you for the history lesson! Unfortunately I have no idea where Mississipi is, and I'm way too sick to look that up, so I'm just nodding and smiling gratefully like an idiot 😃👍 <- not a thought behind those eyes

[decemberpdf]

Tumblr stop showing me posts about Monkey Man challenge

[iamalastor]

Angry bastard cowboy who wanted to kill sadistically but got stopped on the spot

[greektragedybitch]

western media: hi guys so this piece of media has the arranged marriage trope!

indians: um how is that a trope? isn't that normal?

western media: ...no?

[whentheynameyoujoy]

I don’t talk anywhere near enough about the abusive elements inherent in the endless cycle of Eastern European facing systemic and xenophobia-fuelled injustice at the hands of Western Europe, finally expressing entirely legitimate rage at said injustice, and then being confronted with a row upon row of pikachu faces and “b-b-ut why would you ever think you’re being mistreated, we’re all brothers here in Europe uwu”, after years of being allowed no doubt that no, we sure as hell aren’t. Rinse, repeat.

[kweenofponies]

I saw a comment on a post on Pinterest and I started howling and thought it was the funniest thing. Like bro, what is Jack Marston just started lore dumping about warrior cats to his dad?! AND THEN HE MADE UP HIS OWN AUS AND STARTED TO EXPLAIN THEN TO JOHN?! THAT WOULD BE SOOO FUNNY.

LMAO POOR JOHN WOULD BE SO CONFUSED BUT TRYING SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND 😭.

[ichorblossoms]

@magnolia-sunrise was talking abt their oc voices and asked me abt mine so i'm gonna ramble abt that under the cut yeehaw

for the most part they have unique voices in my brain, whether or not i a) have voiceclaims for them b) can articulate what those voices sound like c) can actually write them with different voices is another story but i'm giving it my best shot jfjdjjdjf

grimm- i answered this ask awhile ago and said i didn't have a voiceclaim for them and that was not entirely true bc the beginning of this song to the ~30 second mark is closeish to what i image their voice to be like. i found this song abt a month before i created honeybee so it's Embedded in my mind as a honeybee song despite it only partially fitting hdfgklfhd (timestamped where the lyrics begin)

basically low with a slight raspiness? breathiness? grimm definitely speaks with more of a drawl/twang/cowboy accent than this singer tho (its singing voice is NOT like this at all btw). it also might have some sort of almost-lisp or sound like it's talking around smthin in it's mouth bc its got bonus fangs and its jaw likes to act up

bc of said fangs it doesn't move it's mouth much when talking so that results in a sort-of mumble. concise when they talk, but not clipped unless the situation calls for it. they'll hold a conversation just fine but they're defs someone you can have a whole conversation with and only realize after the fact that you still know almost nothing about them. also will deliver jokes with a deadpan

yarrow- their voice has actually changed a bit from my initial perception in that ask bc i'd say their voice is actually more mid-range and not low, just a guy who's been on t for several years. don't have any refs off the tops of my head, but they have a situational/varying accent depending on who they're talking to, having grown up in a metropolitan area but moved to a rural one later on- smthin that ranges from a slight drawl/twang to an "average" western american accent. VERY expressive and prone to rambling and talking too fast- he's not unsure of himself when he speaks, just has a lot of thoughts all the time, so he'll backtrack to other ideas and restate things and trail off adhd-style. good at being social, and lot of his charm comes from being polite/knowing when to be nice. has definitely adopted a philosophy of "it's okay if i'm weird because people are fine with it if you're nice"

some bonus writing of these two

depending on whose pov the chapter is from i do try to make it sound like their voice/thought process but i am very much of the first draft and don't know what i'm doing ✌️✨

---

bc they've existed in my brain for so long, most of the ttw characters also have Voices and i wanna ramble abt them too hehe

serena- originally roberta colindrez' performance in alice isn't dead was The Voiceclaim for her but not quite anymore; i think there's defs a quality to her voice in that performance that aligns with serena's voice, but nowadays i imagine her voice to be a little bit lower and rougher (also timestamped)

she's pretty terse when she talks, but serena's funny bc most of her external standoffishness really is just an awkwardness that comes across as more bitchy that she'd like. but also she is Very sarcastic and has a low tolerance for ppl being dumbasses around her, so how fortunate she is to be in the company of chucklefuck 1 and 2 (pyrithaea and vance) for most of the story.

pyrithaea- there's a line in marigold by mother falcon that i animated a few years back and it's pretty solidly Her Voice. higher-pitched and can get annoying to some people, esp bc she talks a lot and too fast (also adhd style). very expressive and at times dramatic when she talks, doesn't have a full-blown "valley girl" accent but it's there

vance- the music video for still feel by half alive has been very intertwined with vance's whole vibe for like six years, and the lead singer's voice is pretty in-line with how i imagine his voice, except vance's voice might sit in his chest a bit more, if that makes sense? also talks a lot, not as fast as rithaea, but more prone to saying things that don't quite make sense hfgkfdhg. also very expressive and dramatic and gay with hints of that same valley girl accent

leon- actually funny bc the best voiceclaim i have is fucking. gerard way. raspy and kind of nasally and grating

always kind of sounds like their smiling regardless of if you can hear them. also the fucking laugh in this video is their vibe. not their laugh all the time but

skylar and phil don't have as-solid voices yet. skylar's defs smthin androgynous and phil...sounds like a zombie but idk if i want undead and raspy or smthin more light and ghostly yet

bonus ttw writings hehe

[allpromarlo]

okay i've seen people talk about the car and the dinosaur (rightfully so) but WHEN are we going to have a conversation about the cowboy. web slinger. spider-horse??