#imagine that civil war meme

[cherikdogfood]

Anyone remember that meme/joke from Avengers Civil War? The one where Natasha looks at her teammates, and everyone has suits except her, and she's kinda glaring?

Yeah well I was watching X-Men 97 and I thought about it. In ep. 8, Jubilee complains that everyone in the team can fly except her.

Then in Ep. 9, Magneto asks the X-Men who would like to join him. I know she wouldn't do this (I mean this post is just crack, okay), but imagine if Jubilee agreed to Magneto's proposal.

It would go like this:

Magneto: So, who will join me?

Rogue: *flies to his side*

Roberto: *flies to his side*

Jubilee: I'll join you.

Magneto: Then come here.

Jubilee: ...

Magneto: Having second thoughts?

Jubilee: No... I can't fly damn it!

Magneto: ...right, I forgot. *Levitates her to him*

[taviokapudding]

Hey 2010-2013 tumblr residents who have never left, I don’t have the poll function on this blog but as one of you, I would like us to gather ‘round and discuss something. I know the Onceler gets the title for the first documented tumblr sexy man, but given the chokehold Cecil Gershwin Palmer has had on here as a whole these last 11 years & his debut coinciding alongside the Onceler fandom domination, would it be more accurate to call him the standard?

I know I sound like I’m speaking blasphemy but hear me out. Many of the base line traits past winners of the tumblr sexy men generally have are actually closer to Cecil’s canon outfits, hair style, power scaling, sass, & personality as a whole (especially in fan works). And, tbh, past polls staff made went by most used tags at the time rather than long term lasting impact (which is one of the many reasons why Sans has been a power house for several years now despite the very obvious lull in Undertale fandom activity). If Onceler was truly the standard, Sans would have never qualified on the grounds of a lot of people want to fuck him as a skeleton rather than as a human & Reigen doesn’t have nearly as many aus to qualify in comparison to the majority of his past competitors. Furthermore a sexyman is supposed to be evil OR have a unique trait, which the Onceler doesn’t even meet because his power of being big oil is temporary & he guilt’s himself out of evil. And no- playing guitar isn’t unique when you think about all past winners; Sans and Reigen could sing and play the guitar but the Onceler can’t throw hands without needing money to hire people to do it for him. If you make Cecil the standard, there is no contradiction nor issue with the rules.

Anyways everyone chew it over, doubly those of us who could qualify for a veteran’s discount, because the new polling system made me realize staff kinda ignored Cecil & many other men properly for a while now on the grounds of trending popularity within the prior year instead of the actual requirements a character has to meet under the “Onceler” standards. And shout out to all the Onceler fans- sorry if I made you mad with this but we’ve needed to all collectively reconsider what the winners are actually referencing for a while now.

[lloydfrontera]

You know, regarding Lloyd's achievement in history and whether ordinary citizens know him or not made me crave post canon modern au.

Imagine seeing an in universe fanfic authors notes in ao3 or twitter crying about how they simply wanted to write a story set in Lloys time but they just keep diving into rabbit holes.

Kinda like

"So i was writing an historical au set in Alician era where the MC had a detour in Cremo and he was admiring a statue by the sea with a local explaining its history. Of course, I needed to do some research only to found out that Lloyd Frontera, YES, THAT Lloyd Frontera who made the Pantara railroad defeated some sea monster, nearly died and got statue for it"

Maybe someone from Beneto Kingdom being so confused because all he learned from history in school (Beneto history) is that Lloyd is just some brilliant engineer so he got specially confused on why in the movie he was watching set in Alician era is Lloyd fighting a goddamn bone dragon.

I'm interested on how scholars and political figures bemoan and analyse Lloyd's action and achievement but ordinary people's Internet discourse could be so much fun as well.

Javier and Lloyd getting the Alexander and Haphaestion treatment on whether they were lovers or not. The discourse would be so toxic lol.

oh my god forget changing the history of civil engineering forever, sparking the nastiest discourse ever on history/fandom internet forums is lloyd's true greatest achievement akshfksdg

he's the go to historical domain character used to set the time period for a historical movie/book/series. he's the guy writers insert to give their work a more period accurate vibe. everyone knows just enough about him to make really passionate history nerds very angry about all the inaccuracies and made up facts that are taken as common knowledge.

i'm thinking people of completely different online circles all knowing about lloyd in some capacity but regarding completely separate facets of his life and work and being so surprised when they accidentally find yet another whole field lloyd revolutionized. like.

a sword nerd who's really into the concept of the asrahan core technique and knows perfectly well that lloyd helped invent it getting gobsmacked about the fact that's the same guy that laid the ground for modern sewer systems.

a fan of historical romance stories who is used to seeing lloyd as a fun cameo in the background of stories set in the alician period being really confused when they open their book on thermodynamics and see there's a whole chapter dedicated to a method lloyd figured out to create ice without the need of magic.

a train enthusiast who is really fascinated by the rudimentary switchback system lloyd frontera implemented when the concept of a train wasn't even known in the empire being completely dumbfounded when their friends invite them to see a movie about that one time lloyd frontera and his knight defeated a knight of hell in namaran.

i think it's definitely a meme to post "so i was doing research for my asfahan au and went on a rabbit hole and guess who fucking built the qanat that's widely regarded as the only reason the kingdom didn't fall into civil war. take a wild fucking guess" "was it lloyd frontera" "IT WAS FUCKING LLOYD FRONTERA OF COURSE IT WAS"

i'm also certain there would be some guys who think he's overrated and people should really stop talking so much about him when there's so many other historical figures who are just as interesting and not as recognized 🙄. to which people immediately go "mad cause your history blorbo didn't defeat a bone dragon aren't you" at them

Javier and Lloyd getting the Alexander and Haphaestion treatment on whether they were lovers or not. The discourse would be so toxic lol.

they definitely get the alexander and hephaestion treatment you are so correct. they're also the achilles and patroclus of the modern magentano girlies. there's a bunch of 'queer retellings' of their lives. they're the go to example for homoerotic friendships. there's a bunch of edits that mix historical paintings of them with ship fanart with that 'history hates lovers' song playing over them. dudebros get really angry about it. llojavi truthers pull out their 20 pages long annotations that start with "they fucking slept in the same bedroom for years" and it only gets worse.

there's one poor person online who just really fucking wants to know how and why lloyd frontera changed faces one day out of the blue with no one ever explaining it. there's no official records. no member of the royal family ever made a statement about it. why is everyone acting like the frontera family didn't have one eldest son for 25-29 years and one day suddenly had a completely different one. what the fuck is going on.

so. yeah. i'm a little obsessed with this concept actually ajkshdksa

[bestworstcase]

@tumblingxelian from here

As the person who started the "Give that girl a cult" tag, I kind of disagree. RWBY Beyond already made it clear Ruby has a lot of people focused on her in a Great Uniter sense. Add in how many issues she's been having and judging by the movie continues to have with playing the role needed of her. & that there's a nationalistic/fascist movement being aided by the villains & I feel like Ruby being admired not playing into it makes zero sense. The memes of Jax just screaming in frustration cos Ruby is much, much, much closer to the icon he only pretends to be are just memes and not realistic expectations for the volumes story. I should also clarify, cult was just picked cos "Fan club" doesn't have the same connotations.

mm to clarify where i’m coming from, my main point of disagreement with the "ruby gets a [celebrity] cult" angle is with Where and How it will have narrative impact (i think ruby’s celebrity will be more of a personal stumbling block for her tied into the summer rose mystery and an issue that exacerbates the nascent civil war, not smth she can take advantage of in the political conflict vs the crown) and how prominent it’ll be in terms of the amount of specific focus put on people adoring her.

but the main bone i have to pick is with specifically the "ruby is literally going to be deified / silver-eyed ascended savior / tea as communion wine" type stuff (like this other anon) where "cult" is being used explicitly to mean religious veneration. THIS variant makes me want to bite people 

but anyway, to your actual points: i get that the jax meme-ing is largely exaggerated joking around, but at the same time the main thrust of all the real speculation in this vein is that ruby’s celebrity functions to set up a personal conflict between herself and the asturias twins and strengthens her coalition’s hand against the crown because she’s admired, an inspiration to the people, etc. 

in the same way that "salem’s gonna show up a year late with starbucks to explain her ninety step plan for beating the gods" is an unserious joke that follows from things i do seriously believe, that salem’s ultimate goal is to get rid of the brothers and the heroic side will hear her side of the story as probably the last major narrative turning point… no one is joking about jax going "NOOOO!!" while he bleeds supporters to ruby’s accidental cult of personality because they don’t think her celebrity is going to play a meaningful part in defeating the crown, yeah?

i’m also using the memetic joke phrasing in the prev post mainly because i didn’t want to just repeat stuff i’d already said in the one right before, but—well, okay:

1 - the crown isn’t a vanity project. jax is arrogant, but he does also fundamentally believe that he’s doing what is best for his nation; it’s an ideological project. and the ideology is more or less, "vacuo was broken and exploited by foreign invaders long ago. outsiders and those who aren’t willing to fight to the death for vacuo make this nation weak; to become strong again, loyal vacuans must band together to get rid of these people and fight for ourselves and our way of life." when jax imagines the "old ways," he envisions himself as the kind of king who holds himself equal to all his people ("he wasn’t going to hold himself above them")—he’s tying himself in a mental knot here to hold this belief while also putting half his forces under mind control, obviously, but the cognitive dissonance here is buried very deep. 

2 - the MAINSTREAM, NORMATIVE city vacuan cultural view—expressed by many different vacuan characters, including sun—is "we lost our identity and our way of life because people were too soft and content; we let the other kingdoms come here and take what they wanted, and then they left us with nothing but sand, heat, and bitter memories. but hardship and fending for ourselves for so long has made us strong, so we don’t need anyone telling us what to do!" <- i am condensing but much of this is lifted verbatim from the speech sun makes to rally eleventh hour support against the crown. in that speech, he rhetorically equates the twins to the "other kingdoms" who, like the crown, "promised prosperity and paradise."

3 - now. i don’t believe rwby is going to play straight this idea that vacuans were to blame for the conquest of vacuo, because a) the nomadic vacuans in after the fall hold very different cultural attitudes, b) in the 9.11 animatic oscar explicitly refers to all this as a "history of colonization," and c) rwby doesn’t blame faunus for being persecuted or the people of mantle for being repressed, why would vacuo be different?—these are cultural views that i expect to be challenged in v10.

4 - notice how similar these normative/mainstream views are to the crown’s ideology! the crown is more extreme, more violent, but it’s really not that far off from stuff the good-guy vacuans say. before the 9.11 animatic, this was the whole basis for my thinking that the crown would be the arc antagonists in v10—at the end of the book, the defenders turn the tide by flipping the nationalist rhetoric around; ideological victory to the crown. dump tens of thousands of refugees from another kingdom into this situation, and what happens? popular support for the crown explodes. 

5 - BTE is a villain origin story. it’s just the prelude that sets the stage for this explosion of popular support; the main event is in v10, and i think this time the crown is going to be much stronger. in the book, it’s a fringe movement extremists and a roughly equal number of unwilling "recruits" under jax’s thrall, but almost every city vacuan character we meet expresses hostility toward "outsiders" and "traitors" and a lot—not all, but a lot—of what the crown believes is normalized to some extent; a really significant number of vacuans were just one refugee crisis away from breaking for the crown. vacuo has had two refugee crises in swift succession and there’s atlesian and mistrali warships allied with the faction that welcomed the refugees flying over vacuo now.

6 - it doesn’t matter that those foreign ships are there to defend vacuo too; vacuan nationalism is grounded in centuries of colonial occupation and the optics are really, really bad for the coalition. here is what jax is going to be screaming from the rooftops: "half or more of vacuo’s population is outsiders now, people from atlas and vale who never lifted a finger to help us but expect us to sacrifice everything to save them—give up our food and water when we scarcely have enough to sustain ourselves, give up our homes, spill our blood and defend them with their lives. they’re weak, pathetic cowards who came running to hide behind us instead of fighting for their kingdom, and they expect us to believe they’ll fight for us when the time comes? no, they’re just here to do what the other kingdoms have always done to us—they’re the real threat. are we really going to sit by and let these foreign invaders take our country from us again?"—and a lot of vacuans are gonna buy that bullshit.

7 - not least because a lot of it is… kind of true. vacuo has a very long, very real history of suffering at the hands of these other kingdoms whose people it is now being asked to make very real sacrifices for. both CFVY novels emphasize that food and water are already scarce before the kingdom doubles in size and vacuo is weathering onslaught after onslaught of grimm because of the refugees. it’s a really tough situation, and for someone like jax it is a massive political windfall because it’s so easy to twist that reality into a justification for hatred and violence.

SO,

here’s what really stands out to me about the 9.11 animatic and ruby’s celebrity in B4:

nora’s section: establishes that the vacuans are really angry, like "throwing junk at small orphaned children in a screaming rage" angry

oscar’s: the shade coalition is holding on by its fingernails against grimm drawn to the city in droves.

ren’s: the asturias twins get broken out of prison, and he reflects that salem has the advantage because it’s easier to exploit fear and anger than to overcome them. 

winter’s: popular support for the crown is booming ("atlas go home" and "long live the crown" grafitti)… and then the second refugee crisis arrives, provoking what is quite likely another days-long unrelenting assault of the city by grimm. also, when the shade coalition isn’t running itself into the ground fighting grimm, they’re distributing food and water to refugees. (=the crown’s talking point here is "see? they only care about helping THEM, not US")

qrow’s: he feels optimistic because he sees the refugees coming together, trying to support each other through this crisis and atone for past wrongs. the old divide between atlas and mantle is healing. every single character in this section is a refugee, and the "remember her message!" mural seems to be something the happy huntresses organized. 

"it was a relief for us," says nora of reaching vacuo, "but for the vacuans…"

and boba: yang takes ruby to specifically a boba shop that relocated from patch to vacuo after vale was evacuated; so this is likely a neighborhood where a lot of valean refugees settled and that means the vacuans who live here are going to mostly be the type of people who were willing to open their community and absorb that second wave of refugees, i.e. the shade coalition’s support base, people like the nomadic vacuans in ATF who would never be swayed by jax’s rhetoric at all because they weren’t already xenophobic… which BTE implies pretty strongly is a minority position within vacuo proper.

B4 is a character-driven piece focused on ruby’s personal struggle, and the beyond spots are all pretty light, pretty hopeful, and pretty opaque about the situation in vacuo for reasons of being optional side content.

the 9.11 animatic, on the other hand, was meant to be an episode of the show proper, so it does not hold back on the foreshadowing / setup at all: from nora to ren to winter there’s a pattern of escalation with vacuan support for the crown gaining ground, getting louder and bolder, and then qrow’s optimistic conclusion is focused very tightly on the refugees, with an acknowledgment that things are "bad, probably never been worse" beyond the small good he chooses to focus on… which conspicuously does not include any vacuans participating in these small acts of kindness or atonement: it’s klein and willow and the happy huntresses looking out for other refugees.

here’s what i think is going to happen with ruby’s celebrity in v10: the refugees from atlas and mantle will adore her—she’s the girl who rallied the whole world to come help them, and got them out alive when salem attacked and their general lost his mind. the refugees from vale will love her—she’s theirs, after all, born and raised in vale, and look at what she’s started. the minority of vacuans who threw open their doors to welcome the refugees will think the world of her—if atlas hadn’t fallen so quickly, these are the people who would have done whatever they could to send help, and her example is an inspiration. 

and the rest of vacuo is going to fucking hate her. she’s the girl who asked the whole world to come running to help atlas and then the very next day dumped atlas and its problems into vacuo’s lap. is it fair to pin the blame for everything on ruby? fuck no, but she’s the face of this crisis for better and worse.

she’s not a threat to jax; he literally could not ASK for a more perfect scapegoat. she’s the girl from beacon who abandoned her school instead of fighting to save it. (<- explicitly how the crown and basically the entire shade student body views the beacon survivors.) she’s the girl who begged the world to come help atlas and then not even a full day later ran away AGAIN, dumping atlas on vacuo. she’s the reason the sky is crawling with atlesian and mistrali warships. she’s the reason grimm attacked the city every few days for months on end. the satellite she used to send her message is a fuckoff huge battleship looming over vacuo now. she keeps asking vacuans to set aside their differences and work together with the tens of thousands of refugees burdening the kingdom, and all of those refugees think she’s the best thing since sliced bread…

i think ruby will be a polarizing figure—possibly divisive enough that her return might be the final straw that rips the kingdom in half. ’cause like. the people with the most reason to admire her are also the ones the villainous nationalist group despises and wants to get rid of, and the 9.11 animatic flags hard that the crown’s support among vacuans has skyrocketed since the refugee crisis began. they’re not a fringe group anymore.

so on the one hand, the pressure put on ruby is going to be orders of magnitude more intense than ever before because she’s a celebrity beloved by the coalition’s supporters, most of whom are refugees, and between that and finding out vale is just gone now right after getting back, to judge by her characterization in rwby x jl2, ruby is NOT going to be coping well in the wake of her resolution to be all summer was and more. 

and on the other hand, to the crown’s supporters, who could very well now be the majority of vacuans living in the city proper, she’s the perfect scapegoat and they’re going to utterly despise her, inflaming the existing divide and maybe splitting what fence-sitters still remain at this point one way or another. ruby is both the girl who united the world and the girl who tore vacuo apart—rwby does love its contradictions!—which is a) not going to help her mental health situation at all, and b) a problem she and the rest of the shade coalition can only solve by winning the ideological argument. 

to put vacuo back together again they need to beat the idea that "outsiders" make vacuo weak and therefore to be strong vacuo has to drive out everyone deemed un-vacuan. more to the point, they’ll need to overcome the feeling that vacuo is suffering because the rest of the world came together for the refugees. which… is difficult and unfair, because the crown are the ones refusing to play ball and making everything harder than it needs to be, and because if the crown goes into open revolt then the coalition is going to have to fight back and that will make it even harder to make a convincing case that the coalition really does want to be fighting for vacuo, for all vacuans, not against them. it SEEMS impossible. but saving everyone in atlas and mantle seemed impossible, too. 

also, waves vaguely, i expect the vacuo arc will mirror atlas in various ways and this is one of them: the ascendant political movement are bad guys this time, reactionary nationalists, and the heroes are going to defeat them the hard way, no cheating, which will incite the healing of vacuo.

[frogblast-the-ventcore]

So I've been reading up on a very Fun™ sounding RPG as of late.

Twilight 2000 4th Edition

Basically, it's game about roleplaying as the scattered military survivors of a limited NATO-Soviet nuclear war in an alternate 1998. It's set in the year 2000, primarily in either Poland or Sweden, though much of Europe and other places are fucked. The US, for example, may or may not be experiencing a three-way civil war between the forces loyal to the rump civilian government, military forces loyal to the JCOS that formed a parallel government due to the death of the entire original line of succession during or in the year after the nuclear exchanges, and a massive neo-Nazi militia group. The first two forces at least hate the neo-Nazis enough to work together against them on occasion.

The most well-off places in Europe are France and Switzerland, where life continues pretty much the same as before, even if northern France was abandoned after a Soviet nuclear strike heavily damaged Paris (though it doesn't seem to have been destroyed entirely, as it's referenced as having been abandoned later, which wouldn't be possible if it had been destroyed) and the Normandy region (which was being used as a bridgehead for NATO forces into Europe to fight the Soviets) and France is now under military rule... but Southern France is still pretty as ever, even if it's full of refugees! And in the old sci-fi companion RPG to the previous editions, by the next century, France ends up as the major world superpower precisely because it took so little damage. Vive la France!

It's a Very Cheerful™ system in which Everything Is Just Fine™.

Oh, and it's basically a license for the GM to fill the game with weird prototypes that never got adopted or failed IRL. In the older editions, one of the effects of the alt-history of the setting was that the Germans adopted the G11 as standard issue.

You are now trying to imagine a post-apocalyptic German soldier trying to do field maintenance on this beautiful piece of Kraut Clockwork Space Magic™.

It's become a meme in the game apparently that even if your group got its hands on a bunch of G11s, you'd never have ammo for them- there's literally at least one reference table that mentions a cache of 4.7mm caseless as a "treasure trove" iirc.

Also in the older editions, literally the most valuable team member wasn't anyone who could shoot a gun, but the min-maxed Support Services guy with max ranks Repair and similar skills.

@baldy-wan-kenobi

[lightofwintersun]

Can we talk about Viserys I Targaryen's role in plot and his REAL TRAGEDY?

In the HOTD fandom, it is customary to expose King Viserys Targaryen as the main culprit of the Dance of the Dragon. All the bumps are raining down on him: "Oh, he's a weak fool, he doesn't give a damn about Alicent, why did he marry her then? ". Or "Why the hell did he makes children for Alicent if he didn't love them, and only looked in Rhaenyra's ?" "Why didn't he reform the succession by birthright?"

We blame to Viserys that if he had been consistent and far-sighted, he would have done this and that. But Viserys' role in the plot is exactly that. Sitting like a meme dog on fire.

Otherwise, the plot would not have happened.

Plus, you can also think about psychology. Some people are like that. Like Viserys. It's easier for them to pretend for years that everything is fine than to face the truth. And there are many such people. Yes, such people should not go to rule, but Viserys was chosen by the king. And his rulership is spoken of in books as the pinnacle of the Targaryen dawn. He did not waste his grandfather's legacy in the early years of his reign, at least.

But Alicent, you say. He was terrible man who married on 15-years girl, you say.

And here TV-SHOW cruelly deceiving you.

Due to the change in Alicent's age and the change in the dynamics of her relationship with Viserys, some accents have shifted. And as a result, the whole point of the situation was missed.

For those who have not read it: NEXT, WE WILL TALK ABOUT VISERYS FROM THE BOOK, NOT THE SERIES.

Viserys in the book loved not only Rhaenyra to the detriment of the rest of the children, as in the series. He also loved Alicent. Rhaenyra herself admits this, in plain text. His conflict was not in blind love for his daughter out of guilt, but in the fact that Viserys loved and his eldest daughter and his second wife. And he let the situation go because he didn't seen a way out of the rivalry that his wife and daughter had unleashed. He showered them with gold and gifts, but it didn't work. Due to the skew of Viserys' love for Rhaenyra by the screenwriters, the very essence of the conflict is missed. Viserys understood that Alicent wanted her son on the throne. But he couldn't resist her. Not because he didn't consider her a person and saw only Aemma in his heart, as in the series, but because he loved Alicent too.

Yes, he could have made a birthright reform. And that would be the right thing to do. It was necessary to do this. But perhaps he was afraid that the lords would rebel. And Viserys hated strife. And his love of family and dislike of strife led Westeros into civil war for a couple of years.

His tragedy was not only that he turned a blind eye to the traditions of the Westerosi. And it wasn't that he started a family that he didn't care about. But the fact is that he was a peaceful man who cared too much about relationships with his wife and daughter. The fact that his love for his family turned out to be weaker than their thirst for power.

Also about book!Viserys in family.

Viserys wanted to go to Dragonstone with the whole court, so that Aemond would choose an egg for himself or an already hatched dragon, so he was not indifferent to his problem.

It may seem like I'm devaluing Paddy Considine's work. No, I'm not. He did an excellent job with the task assigned to him. But imagine if we saw Viserys, who loves both Rhaenyra and Alicent and tries to reconcile them? Viserys, what helps Aemond in his trouble and propose to go to Dragonstone so that the boy can choose a dragon and an egg for himself? Viserys whose cares about Alicent? Finally, how does Helaena brings Viserys's grandchildren to him and he tells them a bedtime story, and they listen with their mouths open? Imagine Paddy Considine in it.

I'm sorry that the viewers of the show do not know such a Viserys. And already they won't find out

[argumate]

*sniffs* Let's consider Tumblr, this peculiar digital phenomenon, through the lens of ideology and psychoanalysis. Tumblr, you see, it's not just a website; it's a microcosm of our broader societal structure, a manifestation of the Lacanian Real in the virtual domain.

On the surface, it presents itself as a bastion of self-expression and creativity. Users are free to post, to reblog, to engage in discourse. But what is really happening in this space? It's a relentless struggle, a constant negotiation of identity and desire. The user is perpetually bombarded with an overload of signifiers: memes, gifs, text posts. But what do these signifiers signify? Is the meaning not always, in a way, deferred, displaced?

And consider the nature of the Tumblr aesthetic. It's a pastiche, a bricolage of postmodern excess. The very notion of authenticity is subverted, turned on its head. What is proclaimed as a space for genuine expression is, in fact, a labyrinth of simulacra, where the hyperreal supplants the real.

Then, there's the dimension of the Tumblr discourse. It's a fascinating, tumultuous arena where ideological battles are waged. Every post, every tag, is a micro-aggression, a Freudian slip, revealing the deep undercurrents of our collective unconscious. It's not merely social justice discourse; it's the very fabric of our ideological reality being woven in real-time.

In this sense, Tumblr is not an escape from our reality; it is a direct, albeit distorted, mirror of it. It's a symptom, if you will, of our late capitalist society, where even our dissent is commodified, packaged back to us in the form of cute cat pictures and fandom wars.

So, what can we learn from this? Perhaps that in the endless scrolling through Tumblr, we are, in fact, scrolling through the deepest recesses of our own psyche, confronting the contradictions of our existence, the discontents of our civilization. It's a place where the super-ego and the id dance together, not gracefully, but desperately, each trying to lead. And in this dance, the question remains: who, indeed, is leading whom? *sniffs*

[Zizek on tumblr as imagined by ChatGPT]

[vtuberconfessions]

As Uki Violeta “is racism against white people real racism” is the trending topic right now, I want to put in my two cents as a half-white person living in a predominantly non-white country.

White people receive tend to receive racism in the same way French people and English people are racist towards each other. It can be real! There can be real animosity! It can be genuinely isolating and uncomfortable to try and interact with someone who will automatically think of you as less worthy of respect and take you less seriously.

When you’re in an Asian or other non-majority white country, worse stuff can happen too. People won’t take you seriously as a candidate for job offers, possibly leaving you unemployed. When you try to date, people who thought liked you as a person may only be dating you as the “exotic option”. You’re isolated because nobody really wants to mark themselves as the first person to be a friend with the new white-adjacent guy in town.

(These all happen to black people too btw.)

That is all racism. To see the world and treat people different according to their race. Uki Violeta is in that sense racist. However, you may note, that none of the people who have ever made fun of me or excluded me in this country have ever, and this is key: been descended from someone who kept one of my ancestors in a concentration camp, or as a slave.

I am descended from Korea and Latvia. Korean women were historically kept as sex slaves by Imperial Japan during WWII. One of my great grandfathers was arrested and put in a Nazi concentration camp. Both sides experienced racially motivated, horrific war crimes. I feel very attached to both parts of my history, and if I ever saw a Neo-Nazi or Russian Imperialist say “oh, the Baltics aren’t real countries”, or a Japanese Imperialist said “those women probably liked it”, I would fucking throw hands so, so fast.

I have now listed three types of fairly serious racism, that many cultures, even white people, face:

A) Reminder of Atrocity that members of one ethnic group committed against another, with an implied threat to do it again. (Read: Anti-semitism, “Indigenous people are savage and should be Civilised”, “The confederates won/should have won the American civil war”)

B) Rejection from being part of the natural fabric of society. (Read: When you speak French in France and nobody is willing to speak to you in French and subtly belittle you for not sounding native. When people double take when you walk into a room because you don’t look like the average person. When none of your classmates are willing to take the first step to be friends with you and so you spend each lesson alone.)

C) Hostility between semi-equals. (Those annoying ass [neighboring country people], they eat [insulting food] and all talk like this [offensive accent].)

Uki Violeta is American. Unlike other places, say Ireland or Eastern Europe, White people in America have not been the victims of mass atrocities and the mass eradication of culture. Unlike China, Japan, or India, non-white people do not hold the keys to the gates of community and most social groups. The things Uki Violeta says, in the grand scheme of things, is most equivalent to those memes about how Italian people all talk like “a Mama Mia, a Pizza Pie ina my Stomacharoni!”

So yeah, Uki Violeta is racist. But because of just how much goddamn racism black people deal with in America, a lot of people seem to think that racism means “that thing when people are mean to Black People, and it’s really really bad and awful”. But like… it’s not just that. It’s just a way of being an asshole without thinking, of treating someone as a representation of the stereotypes about their race. And White Americans are pretty lucky to have their stereotypes be “kinda annoying” and “too friendly” and not “rapist”, “greedy rat”, “violent terrorist” or “inferior, disobedient slave”.

TL;DR: “Oh, what Uki Violeta is saying is racist, imagine if you replaced “White” with “Black”, then you’d see it!” I mean sure. But also, what if you replaced “White” with “The French”? It’d still be kinda racist but you can see how it’s also not that big of a deal right? Uki is an asshole and you can choose not to watch him, but if you’re not already watching him you don’t have to go on about it. Move to Japan or something and then you can complete about racist people you actually have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

.

[stealingyourbones]

‘tis me again, the anon from the JL time-travelers/Booster Gold prompt. This kept cooking in my brain even after I posted it last time, so here goes (I’m so sorry if this goes long and or ramble-y) —

So I was trying to think of different timeline variants of the TUE event there could be to trip up the JL, by having them act on base-different facts. Bc let’s face it, if Danny had failed to beat Dan? Instant worse outcome then what was already going to happen, bc Dan is a full adult with ten years of escalating violence under his belt in an unsuspecting, unready world, and without a Red Huntress that power-scaled with him to counterbalance. This is all getting compounded by the fact that, due to Dan literally destroying everything, no complete set of un-redacted records exist in any timeline, and what they can scavenge needs more context than they have.

So how a time-traveler from that even-worse-verse would react to Phantom first-contact would be vastly different to how someone would from the main timeline, where Danny succeeded and there was no catastrophe. Conflict is that they don’t know who’s timeline they’re in and what they should do. Added to all that, TUE takes place after Reign Storm and Danny defeats Pariah. Huh that might be why the Observants were looking into his destiny specifically. A guerrilla ghost war between Dan the Ghost King and the Observants with the Earth caught in the middle sounds like a Bad Time™️. Like, bad enough of a time that the JL time-traveler from that world full-stop wants to go with the Kill-Baby-Hitler route on Phantom, even. This can be amplified by how much or how little humanity has recovered from Dan at that point.

I still don’t know who all has time travelled in the JL, or if it’s just Bart and Booster. But then it occurred to me. It’s not just the heroes that time travel. From meme-education, I know that Reverse Flash’s whole schtick is that he’s time traveling specifically to ruin Barry Allen’s life. Which of these TUE divergent timelines is he from? How does that effect his approach to Phantom? Does he try and corrupt Danny, young and impressionable, to the dark side with the mentorship he lacks? Do other villains hear about a boy who becomes the next Big Bad, but has an open window of malleability? Do they decide to get rid of Phantom, deciding a danger to the world is a danger to themselves and their plans?

Do heroes and villains, starting with the time travelers, break rank and cross the aisle based on how they think Phantom should be handled? Who is Switzerland in this? Are the Observants not satisfied and mobilizing against Danny again? JL:D I imagine are in crisis-mitigation mode after the first time someone said ‘High King of the Infinite Realms’ in the same breath as ‘within ten years’ and can no longer be reached. Going a step further, is Danny or Amity at all aware of any of this or is it business as usual? Or, is something/someone preventing the chaos from reaching them after first contact?

TL;DR, time travelers from different TUE timelines accidentally spark a DC (civil?) war after first contact with Phantom, either wanting to pull him to the side of good or evil, kill him or spare him. Once janitor, attempted glory-hound, reluctant time-cop Booster Gold gets shepherd-hooked by Clockwork, Master of Time, to fix it.

Prev

[multi-muse-transect]

Knowing how the holonet in Star Wars is basically the internet, imagine the amount of WW3-like memes that spawned when the Clone Wars, Galactic Civil War, and the First Order-Resistance Conflict began.

[st-just]

Further random tides of history thoughts

-Obviously not even slightly unique in this, but there's a really interesting break between the modern reactionary imagining of knights (selfless footsoldiers in the Army of Christ, etc), how they seem to have imagined themselves (piety still important, ofc, but also the paramount importance of personal honor as something maintained through private violence, etc) and what they actually basically were (landowners with manors and warhorses, primary occupations oppressing the peasentry and starting penny-ante civil wars. Though given how thin on the ground states were until the end of the period 'vendettas' is probably the better term tbh)

-This is kind of pleasingly isomorphic to how Imperial Japan utilized the image of the samurai in its propaganda vs. what samurai-as-actual-millitary-aristocrats were.

-Very unfortunate that Ferdinand and Isabela were, like, some of the worst people ever. The story of their engagement/marriage really does read like great raw material for a romance.

-handshake meme between the Knights Templar and the Swiss with 'going from a reputation of being terrifying bloodthirsty warriors to a stereotype of mostly just being rich bankers' (worked out better for one than the other ofc)

-[unrelated] the factoid that until the 16th century the Ottomans ruled over massively more Christians than Muslims and largely staffed the state bureaucracy with slaves from Christian communities and the (useful, important) fact that rather than some great foreign Other they were a pretty integral part of the European state system from the end of the Medieval period has the potential to be the raw material for some horrific cultural Christianity take, I just know it.

[kookaburra1701]

For the Meme, how about. . . .Jarl Korir of Winterhold?

First Impression: I thought he certainly had a very fancy chair for a guy ruling over a population that is only slightly larger than Riverwood's.

Impression Now: It...hasn't really changed. If you listen to his and Thaena's dialogue with other residents it becomes clear that despite the title of "Jarl" and getting to sit in the big fancy chair, he doesn't actually have much power in Winterhold. All he can do is gripe about Dagur making money renting rooms to people visiting the college. Thaena and Birna snipe at each other, and in one of these conversations Thaena says "Trying to keep from freezing to death, trying to keep food on the table." This makes me think that being Jarl of Winterhold only really has any sort of power when it comes to going to Moots - that is, power outside of Winterhold. Inside of it, there's really nothing.

Favorite Moment: This conversation... Korir: "Looks to be another cold day." Thaena: "Aren't they all?" Korir: "Not like this. Feels colder than usual. Bet it's those damned Mages." ...just sums everything up about Korir. If it snows (IN A PLACE CALLED WINTERHOLD) it's gotta be those rascally mages!

Idea for a Story: Since Korir moves into Brunwulf Free-Winter's house instead of the Palace of Kings if the Empire wins the civil war, I figure they MUST have some connection. I would love to see a story exploring that, and how they navigate their relationship with Korir being even more bitter but relying on an Empire-backed friend's generosity.

Unpopular Opinion: Despite how cartoonishly paranoid Jarl Korir seems about the mages...I think he's right about the College of Winterhold. Not completely right - the mages are obviously too disorganized and plotting against each other (academia is the same everywhere) to actively plot against Winterhold, or Korir personally, but really the College has a SHOCKING body count. Magic entities escape and wreak havoc in town, the college is hosting Thalmor, they go grave-robbing and bring back obviously dangerous artifacts (I can just imagine the hullaballoo marching the Eye of Magnus through town caused), entire cohorts of students just disappear...some wander off, some die horribly summoning the most blood-thirsty daedric pirate Tamriel has ever known and others turn themselves into giant balls of pure energy. And they've never fixed that bridge. The college, at this point, is an attractive nuisance at best, and a death trap for talented youth of Skyrim at worst.

Favorite Relationship: We never see them interact, but I just love that his court wizard, Malur Seloth, is a totally lazy scam artist collecting a paycheck to not be a mage. We stan a quiet quitting king and his oblivious boss.

Favorite Headcanon: These go with my unpopular opinion, that Jarl Korir is correct about the college - I think the Augur of Dunlain was responsible for the Great Collapse. The collapse occurred in 4E 22, 69 (nice) years before the events of Skyrim. Tolfdir and Colette will say that an experiment went wrong, and that it happened before their time. I think the magical forces required to turn someone into a ball of purse consciousness and energy would be enough to cause some landslides and once-in-a-century storms.

[accursedkaleeshi]

His Family & Technology

Since Grievous was basically the kaleeshi Prometheus, making technology more accessible to his people (via theft & ingenuity), it would make sense that his compound, his personal family home, would have the best network connections on the planet.

This gave his children the honor of being the first generation of kaleesh to grow up around the wonders of tech. It was no surprise that some of his older children, in their natural inclination to copy their father, became avid scrap gremlins as he would call them. The older prodigious kids that had learned directly from dad would teach their younger siblings.

Things Grievous taught his children, purposefully &/or offhand, included welding, droid smithing, circuitry, & basic programming. All of that came in handy when he would explain how to hotwire ships or work around networks. His clan practically came prepackaged with all the skills needed to start trouble.

Before he exploded Grievous had been working on a way to mask his home network's location spurred on by a sense of impending doom. Ayaan & Igira spent several grief-stricken months holed up in their father's workshop & finishing his work. They were able to spoof their network's coordinates to a random directional buoy that just floated alone out in space along the Muunilist's trade route, since the Muunilist system was relatively nearby.

They didn't fully realize at the time how safe that kept them. Outside of a 5 click radius their network was, for all intents & purposes, some random coordinate buoy. Anyone that might come looking for their family would have to send people out looking the old fashioned way. The old fashioned way being much perilous on Kalee. This helped them become a hub of communications for anti-imperial activity in the quadrant.

Most of the children were preoccupied with the unlimited wonders of the Holonet (& that shitty Separatist version of the Holonet that the Bank tried to get everyone to use). They could learn anything! Many of the children took it upon themselves to learn Galactic Basic, since that was the language most content was in. Ayaan & Igira would stream & post videos to a very niche audience made mostly of other kaleesh. Some of the kids were very taken with sims (what Star Wars calls videogames, derived from simulations. Did I make that up?). Renj-are was the planet's foremost meme lord. Please imagine Renj-are trying to explain to Mertenzi what a meme is.

Many were enthralled by galactic art & music, cultures & machines, people & adventures presented to them from the fraying projections of various jailbroken data devices. But some were also scared. Historically, kaleesh were traditional & would literally fight to remain so for many years to come.

Like us millennials, unrestricted access to the internet did come with its drawbacks. Torrents of the galaxy's worst headlines, acts of violence on unfathomable scales, & unregulated spaces. Uniquely, & horribly, for the family it was very easy to access news about the Clone Wars as it was happening. If they were keeping up with it, as many felt compelled to do, they would often hear reports on or sometimes even see their late father burning his way across the civilized galaxy.

The entire family had an unspoken agreement: do not speak to the more sensitive mothers about it & ESPECIALLY don't tell Mertenzi. Mertenzi, of course, knew. She was not stupid. But the concept was so incredibly painful that she had to pretend it was not happening. Otherwise she wouldn't be able to go on &, dammit, she had things to do. The older children would get mixed answers on how to feel from the mothers that were keeping this secret (Bryaru, Jyada, & Weyla). That was when the pedestals their parents were on began to weather. Mom did not have the answers. They were just as hurt & confused. Even if Jyada would brag about their "giant undead metal husband" in jest, she was still quite somber about it.

[nirnrude]

for the dragonborn ask meme: 1, 8, 13, 18, 23!

Ooo thank you so much! (I was the anon sending you a bunch btw I think, didn't want to expose my main blog haha)

Gonna answer these with my two oldest dragonborn OCs I think, to keep it shorter. I've since made a few more but these are the ones I've written fics about, so they're the most developed ones. :3

1. Vanya Whale-Bane

A fisherman's daughter with a knack for magic who lost her parents to the Thalmor (Thalos worship and whatnot), joined the Stormcloaks in her grief only to have a change of heart after understanding the extent of the racism in the faction. Betrays the Rebellion to join the Imperials, stumbles into Helgen by accident, cue main plot, cue stumbling across Borgakh in her travels and TRUE LOVE. <3 Ravarruh'ra, "Rava"

The daughter of traveling Khajiit merchants who got to hunting on the side upon realizing the value of game and good furs in Skyrim! The hunting wasn't enough to provide for her anymore after the start of the civil war, so she joined the Thieves' Guild for extra cash on the side - cue the whole Thieves' Guild questline and a trip to Markarth where she has a fling with Cosnach and gets messed up in the Forsworn rebellion (on their side) and runs from the city along with her new hubby. They try to settle down in Falkreath but y'know, Helgen happens. Rest is history.

8. Vanya

She's very attuned to fire in general, so I feel like she'd probably invent something like... draws from the power of fire to bring warmth? Especially with how cold Skyrim is, she'd find that extremely helpful. Faad Med Yol (warmth akin to fire), possibly.

Rava

Oh she gets really into Dovahzul and at some point just wants to flex at Alduin by inventing her own shout, dunno how effective it would be but something of an insult that maybe causes a foul smell. Pook Se Praan (stink of death).

13. Vanya

She's very into investigating Nordic ruins, tho feels a bit bad for disturbing the dead there, what with them being her ancestors and all. But she's interested in the old gods, like Kyne and such, having learned about them from his father.

Rava

Not really, she prefers fresh air. Dungeons stink. 18. Vanya

Pale, near white scales, small in size. The scars on her side remain as a cluster of missing scales and the lighting scars on her neck become a glowy glowy pattern on her dragon form. Her horns are smaller than most dragons. No real special abilities per say.

Rava

More cat-like in shape and movement, wings aren't quite as big and better for gliding than flight, tho she can still fly shorter distances. Her fur patterns remain in her dragon form and her bites and thorns excrete toxins. She is not kind, she is not fully... there. More a feral force of nature than who she really is.

23. Vanya

She has 2 enchanted blades she carries with her at all times, one of them an elven dagger stolen from Ancano (still working to get to that part in the fic haha) with a paralysis enchantment. The other one's a fire enchanted sword given to him by Ulfric as a sign of respect during her time in the Stormcloaks. There's also a special piece of jewelry she'll hold in her person at all times when the time comes, enchanted with a very special soul gem, but... that's a story for another day.

Rava

She's not very magic tuned at all and outside of her nocturnal armor there's not really much she uses in terms of magical items, really. I'd imagine maybe she has some special fabric laced with ice enchantments to wrap whatever meat she wants to bring to city in.

[darkestspring]

Haha woah when I first sent in an ask about a son of Rhea Royce and daemon I wasn't expecting it to become a whole thing. I mean, there is au's of it now, that's insane. When I first pictured daemon and Rhea's son I was imagining him a a child of divorce in all but name. My thoughts for him, put in meme format was basically: "'ate me dad, 'ate kings landing, 'ate incest, 'ate civil war, luv me mum, luv the vale, luv me dragon, luv books, simple as."

LISTEN. I LOVE RHEA ROYCE AND DAEMON LOVE CHILDREN BUT THEIR SON, BAELON II IS MY LOVE CHILD NOW. HE'S MY BABY AND I LOVE HIM.

THERE IS A VERSION IN WHICH HE TAKES HELAENA TO THE VALE AND IGNORES THE CIVIL WAR AS A WHOLE.

[animefinatic]

Just me playing devils advocate with the Rumbling. Spoilers for aot

Since the new episode drop all sorts of discussions and memes are on the internet including once again casting judgement on Eren and the ‘Yeagerist’ both in show and fans irl.

I myself am an Eren apologist or Yeagerist. While I don’t seriously feel the need to defend myself, I’ve grown pretty grey when it comes to morals in an anime. I could simply say I have watched this man grow and suffer for too long in the series to suddenly switch on him at the end. I could say I’m loyal to a fault, where if I can justify the action I will support you regardless be it a fictional character or a real person. If I can justify the means I will probably support you and your decision.

However I feel everyone is focusing on innocent children are dying and it’s wrong(which I agree is sad). But I feel there’s some things I feel people are magically forgetting about.

Eren was just a kid when Birthcontrol, Reiner and Annie came storming in from Marley and attacked Paradis. And many many other people, children included, died in the aftermath of the wild titans that were let into the wall. On top of the following death that came when the government couldn’t hold the refugees from the breached wall and sent them on a death mission that was essentially population control. All that because they were attacked first. Innocent lives have been lost long before Eren had ever gotten the power needed to start the rumbling.

Paradis island and the Eldians in general were under a constant threat by Marley. Did we all just forget the wild mindless titans are people? Actual eldians from Marley that were punished by being forcefully turned into mindless titans and were let loose onto Paradis that have been tormenting the people on the island the entire time. Meaning this whole time the scouts have been unknowingly killing their own people for survival. And had to kill them after knowing this truth just to officially clear the island of titans for good(minus the wall Titian’s and the shifters of course.)

The people Eldians on Paradis have NO IDEA what exists over the wall. The average person was left in the complete dark and only the royals knew the truth and forced everyone to continue living in the walls. The whole argument was ‘well Eldians started it’ but the royal family just locked themselves away on Paradis and kept everyone ignorant. Eren and Armin dreamed of what was over the walls to be free of Titian’s. Imagine finally getting through the nightmare that is fighting all the Titian’s to know they weren’t the last of humanity. But CIVILIZATIONS have modernized. And not only that they’ve already labeled your kind, specifically paradis as the enemy. The worst of humanity, monsters. What would you do? What do y’all expect him to do? You think he’s going to just take that sitting down?

What other option did he have? Being diplomatic and peacefully talking it out seems good on paper. And quite honestly following the peaceful route was gonna get them all killed. That episode where they went to Marley and sat in on that meeting. Eren essentially deadass heard everyone make Paradis the scapegoats for everything wrong with the world, even other Eldians are throwing Paradis eldians under the bus. After that speech it’s no wonder he left the group to execute his plan ‘with’ Zeke (we know he double crosses his own brother). There was no hope to peacefully talk it out when the whole world has decided paradis island is the enemy. And for all the damage and distraction Eren did not attack until war was officially declared on Paradis island first. They was gonna send destruction on a higher scale to the island had Eren not made his move. He simply brought the war to them.

In the end it was literally Paradis against the world. Eren is going to choose his home and his friends over the world that’s already declared them an enemy. And frankly I can’t and won’t blame him for attacking first. In a perfect world I would have loved for all eldians across the globe to stand together. But because they’ve already been brainwashed and condemned paradis eldians I could just say their deaths are an unfortunate collateral damage. Seeing the sheer destruction and mayhem the rumbling is causing is shocking and I was left speechless. And Eren himself hates he has to do this but he’s going to do whatever it takes to make sure the eldians of paradis island are free. I can agree the rumbling is horrifying but I can see why it happened. In the new episode even the commander of the Marleain army can acknowledge this is the cultivation of all their hate being returned back to them.