#it goes into great detail just how fucked up the us government was in this time period for the sake of national security

[myvirtuesuncounted]

y'all should definitely watch this docuseries, i'm so serious

[cardboardqueen]

ok so i read The Goblin Emperor recently (absolutely recommend) and it's given me some thoughts about a:tla specifically post canon zuko

he is the very young very new leader of a nation that's very abruptly lost its previous monarch. He's spent the last few years away from court and almost certainly isn't used to using his court manners even if he does technically know them. He's taking the country in a very different direction than his father with bold new political ideas and radical friends. The only heir to speak of is someone he'd really rather not pass the throne to. While he does have some support from his elders he was absolutely Not trained to take the throne and certainly not with so little warning.

sound familiar?

so now I'm thinking of a post-canon zuko fic of epic proportions that goes into as much detail in the world building and politics as TGE does.

Zuko finding a good secretary jesus christ please

Zuko slowly learning how to talk to his cabinet members as an adult, trying to balance being their Fire Lord, trying to be seen as an equal in competency and not a boy king, and acknowledging that he really isn't up to speed.

Zuko learning all the servant's names

Zuko's struggle not to lose himself in the overwhelming force of being The Fire Lord

learning regular teenage emotional regulation but instead of telling your dad you hate him because he asked you to turn the music down you're screaming at your minister of agriculture in front of the whole cabinet and you can't remember why it was important

he was expecting the assassination attempts and even the coups. He wasn't expecting the more subtle attempts to lock him out of his own government

look i know we all love ignoring the political implications of gay shipping, but zuko is absolutely not in a stable enough position to be the first fire lord to get gay married. we're ignoring the opportunities presented by a well suited marriage of convenience. are they co-conspirators in world betterment and shenanigans? does the fire lady get him to take a fucking break for once? is it a slow burn where they eventually fall in love but like, 7years into being married? do they have elaborate arrangements of 'cultural informants' and ladies in waiting that are just a stream of consensual lovers? some options for your consideration under the cut

Yue (in a yue lives au)

most reassuring to an international audience

nonthreatening to a domestic audience

the optics of marrying the NWT princess are great and logical without requiring too many mental gymnastics

has spent her whole like preparing to do something unpleasant for the sake of her tribe and would probably consent to the marriage

politically powerful but a non-bender, very low chance of a waterbending heir

zuko has grown up around girls that could kill him and respects women, the fire nation might be an improvement on the NWT

once she breaks out of her shell she'd be a snark machine

the in world artists would get a kick out of the water/fire symbolism. there would be so many plays and paintings and poems

i understand that her death has symbolic and narrative importance but let me play here

Mai

relatively reassuring to a domestic audience

minimally objectionable to international audiences

marrying into a family that was powerful and favored in Ozai's time would pacify traditionalists without requiring zuko to actually make traditionalist political decisions

Mai can play the court game even if it drives her mad

azula would have an internal fit but they may be able to maneuver it such that it manifests as azula being driven to make Mai the most successful fire lady that ever was

Random Earth Kingdom Noble

afiak neither bumi nor kuei have children. idk what the heir situation is but i know there's an earth prince in alok so idk

'marrying an earth kingdom noble is a very logically and politically sound move' says zuko's cabinet. 'ok' says zuko, 'which one?' chaos ensues

someone tries to propose mai as an earth kingdom noble because her father was governor of New Ozai. the eyeroll is audible

great potential for OC shenanigans

Suki

sokka would throw a fit

potential for lovely zukki ot3 a la many of erisenyo's fics

allying with an important figure from mostly neutral kiyoshi island might translate to a mostly neutral political move and minimize outrage on all sides

she can make very heavy handed speeches about 'if we can forgive him so can you' when the earth kingdom representatives start getting mean

gives her an excuse to stay and keep and eye on zuko (and keep some warriors around to keep an eye on him too)

even if she didn't grow up in court suki is sharp, she'd pick up on the important bits quick and the rest she could pass off as her quaint provincial upbringing

imagine how the fire nation court fashion would respond to the Fire Lady in the Kiyoshi Warrior Gear. the heat exhaustion alone

Toph

objectively hilarious

i don't actually think it fits with her character arc about independence and growth but it's not significantly worse than making her a cop sooo

i really don't ship them so i'm imagining this for practicalities and logistics only but you do you

it would be absolutely hilarious for the bei fongs to go from 'no we have no children' to 'yes we would like to propose that our daughter marry the fire lord' overnight. even funnier if it's toph's idea and she has to wrangle proof that she is actually the heir of one of the wealthiest families in the earth kingdom

relatively reassuring to an international audience

the domestic audience doesn't know what to think. on paper she's a foreign merchant's daughter which is fine. in reality didn't she destroy like 10 war balloons? is that a war crime? she won't stop jump scaring the treasurer?

she'd get a kick out of redesigning all the parts of the palace that make zuko sad

the agni kai arena is now her earthbending practice ground, i hope you weren't attached to those tiles!

zuko's cabinet is free of secret loyalists in a week. toph spends her first month there roaming the halls listening for lying hearts

minor concern of earthbending heirs? she gets a kick out of all the anxiety

toph and azula would be hysterical to see interact. like introducing two cats through a bathroom door. maybe they fall in love idk. they almost certainly fuck at least once. their sparring matches threaten to destabilize the architecture and also the rim of caldera city

[sweaterkittensahoy]

For anyone wanting an idea of what the Band of Brothers, The Pacific, or the Masters of the Air lads may have read during the war, this is a list of books put out as Armed Services Editions.

They were specially printed copies of books of meant to fit into a fatigue pocket and be easy to swap around. When Books Went to War goes into the deep details of how the program came to be. The basic idea was that the troops were fucking bored, and so many, many books were printed as quickly and cheaply as possible to send them over.

Several books we now consider classics of the American story were brought into that level thanks to the ASEs. The Great Gatsby wasn't a hit until it was an ASE. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was very well-liked when it came out, but soldiers DEVOURED it and sent Betty Smith scads of fan mail about how much they loved it, and it was there love of it that's made it into the titan it is.

In fact, if you haven't noticed before, there's a copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn that seems to be making the rounds in Easy Company on Band of Brothers. It shows up a few times. That's accurate to the book being very popular and getting passed around. It wasn't uncommon for the book to get passed around in pieces. You'd slice off the part you'd read and give it to a buddy so he had something new to read while you were reading the next bit.

Of note, Rosie reading Native Son is accurate to the time and his own background. It's also important it's a hard back. Soldiers on bases had an easier time getting books in regular format because they were in one place. Publishers sent tons of books to service men, so it makes sense Native Son (published in 1940) was available on base or from a bookstore nearby. Paperbacks as an option weren't a wide-ranging option until the ASE books led to civilians going, "Wait, we can get paperbacks???"

Anyway, this is just a piece of the war I find extra-interesting (especially the parts where the US government said "We must give books to our men to show how we are not censoring thought like the Germans and then they also went "Oh, wait, not those books that tell truths about America but we don't wanna admit to."). So, I hope this is interesting for you.

[dreamyeyedrose]

read this if you're confused about the current discord arbitration clause update bullshit going on right now, or if you use discord and have no idea what I'm talking about.

hey so I'm linking the article that Polygon wrote here

BUT TLDR, if you are in the United States of America, this is relevant to you. if not, don't worry about this article, the update is not applicable to you.

discord changed its TOS to make it so that if you're reading this and you currently have a discord account, you have until May 15, 2024, to opt out of their arbitration clause update.

the update in the arbitration clause means that, unless you send an email to the email discord has provided, you revoke your right to publicly sue discord or join any class action lawsuit against discord. LUCKILY discord has stated that, if you don't want that to apply to you, all you need to do is send an email to their specific arbitration opt out email address, the article I linked gave the process.

however, if you're still confused, I'll break down a little more about why discord might have done this, why it's a smart idea and while it's not great, it's not as underhanded as it may first seem.

let's get into it.

why would discord do this, and is it fucked up of them?

simply put, they're doing this because they don't want to be liable for the stuff users do, regardless of why.

say someone makes a threat in a public discord, it gets reported, and discord ignores it, and then that person actually goes out and hurts people. that sucks. that's awful, if anyone ever actually announced that they're going to hurt people, and then they actually go out and do it, that's tragic and horrible all around. and when awful things happen, people want to hold someone responsible. hopefully the person that's actually responsible, but when there's tragedy, sometimes it's hard to tell who's responsible and who's not.

if someone wants to make discord as a company answer for their part in that tragedy, they can just go to the courts and tell the government that hey, people reported the threat, and discord determined that the threat of harm wasn't legitimate. the person that wants to sue them can go to court and say "hey, this guy said he was going to do xyz in this discord server, discord knew and didn't do anything, and then he went and did it, which means they implicitly agree" and under default arbitration laws, the court can go "wow, fucked up of you to just agree with people getting hurt discord, time for app jail" and then the public court gets to force discord to drag everything out in public and defend why they didn't think it was a legitimate threat. now they have to prove that, no, discord as a company does not support hurting people, and the fact that they didn't take this specific bomb threat seriously doesn't mean they support hurting people. regardless of if it's obvious, discord has to prove that they as a company don't condone what happened in this instance. it has to prove used its best judgment to determine if the threat was legitimate or not before it can even clarify if they agree with the events of what happened. when someone turns out to be serious about threats, it can be very hard to prove that when you didn't think it was legitimate, and that you used your best judgment to come to that conclusion. regardless of if that's the case, hindsight is 20/20.

which is understandable! think about how many discord scams there are, the ones that hackers use to get into your account and that type of shit? people who know cybersecurity threats generally know what to look out for, but unfortunately, even if you know what to look for in order to avoid giving a hacker access to your account, you can still get tricked here and there and lose access to your account.

imagine if someone, say, hacks your account, and before you can get back into it, they use your discord account to send a bunch of bomb threats with specific details to the most public discords you're a part of, and then the things happens. shitty, right?

now imagine that the thing happens, and they deleted your account before you were able to get back into it. that rando who only knows you from that one discord server thinks that you were secretly a part of that entire thing and, because your account is gone and you never return to set the record straight, that person thinks you were a sleeper cell asshole. if you didn't approve of the person hacking your account, if you weren't sympathetic to the cause, and if you're never able to get back into that discord and set the record straight, you're going to live in their head rent free as someone who helped plan that awful horrible thing and they were just in a regular discord with someone like that. even if you make a new account, and unless you're able to get back into that discord, whatever user or server nickname you used is now registered in that person's mind as someone who turned out to be A Terrorist.

that's what discord faces, on a company scale, if the wrong people are allowed to publicly sue discord. if enough bad faith actors come together, hack a bunch of accounts, and use discord to announce a terrorist attack, do that, and then delete those accounts, even more bad faith actors can come forward and decide to round up and sue discord. now discord is now on the hook for people who want to hold someone accountable because why didn't they see this coming? discord knew that people were going to die and did nothing? how fucked up is that?

the current laws assume that the person that is pursuing the legal case is acting in good faith, and the person being sued has to prove that they're not acting in bad faith. that assumption inherently makes discord's survival harder, because not everyone that sues someone else does so in good faith.

the way the laws are currently set up, discord has an uphill battle to face all around: that if they did know, why didn't they do anything about it? if they didn't do anything about it, it means that either they didn't take the threat seriously, or they agree with what happened. so which is it? does discord not only negotiate, but go so far as to agree with terrorists?

the issue is that to even get there, we have to decide what terrorism is. and a lot of dangerous people on the internet make threats about doing terrible things, and regardless of how serious they are about the threats they make, a lot of those threats don't come to fruition, either because they were never serious, or bc they were stopped in time. is someone an asshole, a terrorist, or someone who tried to be a terrorist and was bad at it? how is discord supposed to know just by someone saying something in a discord server whether that person is serious or not?

if you don't agree with terrorists, and you're not a terrorist yourself, good news! discord doesn't want to hurt you! they just want to make sure that if someone does something shitty that they don't agree with, that they as a company won't go under because of it. and if anyone tries sue discord for someone announcing they're going to do something that discord doesn't agree with, discord can just say "no, we don't approve of what happened" and thus they avoid being the messenger being shot.

if you don't trust discord to not help people you think are terrorists, then you need to keep your right to sue discord. the Polygon article I linked at the top of the article can give you the email you need to send an email to and a template to use for what you want that email to say.

do what you want with this knowledge.

[humankarkat]

@zebsfloppyears asked for more details on Kallus' arc in the MOTW au, and I'm more than happy to oblige.

Kallus starts off as your run-of-the-mill FBI agent sent off to the butt crack of nowhere for a wild goose chase of an assignment, but pretty quickly gets tied up in the whole "monsters are real and the government is collecting mediums for unethical experiments" deal. His arc progresses fairly straightforward for the first bit of the AU, but then we reach the problem of, well. The US government is bad, but it's not "obliterate whole planets just because they looked at us funny" bad.

So when he ends up stranded on the side of a mountain outside a Utah ski resort called Behryn along with a handsome man who also happens to be bigfoot in disguise, that breaks some ice (haha) but it isn't quite enough to fully radicalize him.

But it does mean that, when he wakes up several weeks later handcuffed to the same radiator as Kanan Fucking Jarrus, he's a bit more equitable to working together to get out. Sure, it's a bitch off, how could it not be with those two, but they don't kill each other, and Kallus lets Kanan go once they've dealt with their captors.

So when Hera makes eye contact with him at a party they're both under cover at the next month, she remembers how he spared Kanan. It's not like she could say anything, anyways, since confronting him would break her cover, and if Kallus confronted her it would break his cover, so instead they silently agree to a truce, and unfortunately have a great time together.

And see, now he's fallen into the trap. Now he's actually a bit fond of these people. Now he's willing to give them grace when before he was only doing his duty. Unfortunately, he does still have a duty to perform, so he begrudgingly works with the CIA agent he's been paired with to finally track down and corner Ezra Bridger. Except, then the CIA agent pulls his gun, and Kallus reminds him that Ezra is 16, still a minor, and that they're to take him in alive, because why on earth would they kill a child? But then the CIA agent tells him that his orders were to eliminate their target, and Kallus sighs and pulls his own weapon, but it isn't Ezra he points it at. And Ezra makes it home safe, and he tells them what happened, and oh, maybe that FBI bitch isn't as bad as we thought?

Which is Sabine's first thought when she comes home one day to see a familiar car parked next to the Ghost, the one Ketsu had been driving last year when they'd reconnected, but Sabine really isn't ready for that conversation yet so she turns around and goes back into town to clear her head. And when she sees a familiar mutton-chopped fed sitting on a nearby park bench she remembers how he'd treated Ezra, and she really needs someone to talk to besides the spectres (she's sure they wouldn't understand, since they were the ones who were probably eating dinner with her sorta-ex girlfriend right now), so she plops down next to him. He's confused, yeah, and he asks her if she wants to be arrested, but when she shrugs and says might as well, it's better than going home right now anyways, well, Kallus has sisters of his own, and she's so small sitting next to him, and god dammit if he doesn't ask if she's hungry, tells her there's a pretty good diner around the corner. And Sabine grins at him and says as long as it's on your dime, fed, and all of a sudden they're eating together and talking about their exes and, well. It's all over from there. The spectres have caught him, hook line and sinker.

None of them are surprised, later, when Kallus helps Sabine break those poor cadets out of the Air Force testing facility, or when he tells Kanan and Ezra in the weapons factory that he's been the one supplying their most recent leaks. He may be a fed, but he's their fed.

[mazzystar24]

@hermioneindisguise this had been in my drafts for ages and our conversation reminded me abt it

Y’all ever stumble on some of your old class work from English class (which you kept cos you’re a massive nerd and actually like some of the stuff you wrote) and then when you read over it you immediately start to wonder HOW THE FUCK DID MY TEACHER NOT SEND ME TO THE GUIDANCE COUNSELLOR???

Like the one I just read was writing a little extract around the theme of war or a hometown hero veteran:

what most people wrote? A cute little reunion

what I wrote? three pages about an injured veteran who nearly died, came home, is currently in recovery, pushed his wife away, refused to let her stay, instead romanticising death (like as the extract goes on the language he uses for his wife starts being identical to how he talks about death/ the grim reaper) and waiting to reunite with him and be back in his arms and in this I also talk about the people in his hometown glorifying him and like probing for details and describe this as them wanting to “rip open his heart and bathe in his blood” to discover the gory details

(Also a lot of anti-war rhetoric and metaphors and fuck the government ideas imbedded artfully in cos I was always a sociology student at heart)

Now this isn’t even the tenth example of times I’ve wrote about death in a romantic view or even used gore excessively in my writing for metaphors

My official exam was supposed to be about a rescue but instead I wrote about a man in a burning building trying to get out and waiting for rescue to arrive then being unable to (turning it to a rescue gone wrong) so he pulls up a chair and lets the fire consume him (which I wrote IN EXPLICIT DETAIL) then I realised I might lose points if I don’t make him sound like he’s been rescued but the exam board would have to rip my depressing endings out of my cold dead hands so instead I made it more depressing by making it so he had survived a childhood drowning (water vs fire see what I did there?) and how he his death was just overdue and he felt thankful instead that he got decades more than he would’ve got but then I was like fuck those can be argued to not specifically be a rescue so I left it sorta open and implying he got rescued but I like the version where he dies more

Now did my exam scare whoever marked it? Probably🤷🏽‍♀️

Did I still get a great score on my English test? You already know it

To this day idk if it was cos the paper was good or if the exam markers were just afraid of what would happen if I didn’t get good marks🤭🤭🤭

[the-hydroxian-artblog]

In Hanging Out what were some of the character's childhood like, and what did they do for fun, specifically Sonic's orphan childhood.

Oh man, that's a tricky question, because my logic is taking what canon establishes and moving mostly just forward in a different direction. Commenting on their childhoods feels weirdly wrong? If only because there's so many different angles I could take.

Sonic in particular feels "wrong" to get details for, but I like to think he actually was kind of bratty? And had a habit of being a bit of a vandal for fun, and playing "extreme soccer" with random objects, kicking them far and "catching" them like a mile away. But he hashis heart in the right place and got enough experience of breaking things and causing problems early on that he eventually shaped up into the hero we know now.

All the others after the cut!

Amy was likely a very... stand-alone child who was stuck with taking care of herself. She likely researched "spells" and forms of magic for fun, though she never likely found the best uses for it beyond summoning magic. I considered a plot point of her mom being an enigmatic figure who researched Little Planet, and that lead to Amy wanting to get into tarot, but I never got very far. I think she had minimal supervision and got a small amount of wealth from an inheritance and just made-do with that. Despite that, she still stuck with being kind and doing her best to support others.

Tails likely didn't do much in particular for fun besides tinkering. He got bullied for his tails, etc etc, all kinda predictable there.

Shadow... fanon kinda came clutch and already outlined enough details there. Raised by Maria and Gerald, probably did cute slice of life stuff on the ARK at first before everything went to shit. For fun, he probably liked board games in particular. Maybe pong.

Tikal beat the shit out of people for fun, but in a friendly sparring way. In her eyes as a child, fighting should be purely recreational, and conflict should be settled with words. Naturally some aspects of that perspective got warped with time.

Mike is an interesting one. He basically got a crude simulation copy-paste of Sonic's childhood, but instead of being an orphan, he "grew up" with Eggman, who instilled a lot of obedience training. Which evidently backfired pretty hard for Hangin Out to be as it is. He likely played games like chess with Eggman for "'fun"", but he actually just prefers flying, since it's the one thing the original Sonic could never do.

Buddy was a government experiment who was actually similar to Shadow and Metal in terms of how he was "raised", so he never really got to "have fun" with any activity. Eventually as an adult though, he pursued his main hobbies, sound engineering and headphone/music reviewing. He runs a channel like a bizarro version of dankpods, where all of his humor is extremely dry and he goes into great technical detail about whatever he comes across.

Zero had the most fucked up upbringing, and likely fucking. Played knife games with drug lords for fun. That's the kind of messiness we're dealing with. He did not have a good life.

Sandy didn't get to really have a "Childhood" but her early years of operation involved snooping around different locations for archaeology and intel. From there she developed a love for music, often DJing for fun in secret.

Jeff is kind of. In his formative years, already? And we already know his deal. He plays minecraft and Civ and SimCity for fun.

Rouge stole shit for fun.

OH and CHASEY how could i forget?? Chasey is a mess lol. Chasey, um. ate food as a chao? and then enjoyed. Playing dress up with Cream. Also enjoyed dancing as a young blob.

[aniron48]

close to the sun in lonely lands

Felix decides to take Bond's mind off his troubles by taking him eagle-watching. It goes about how you'd expect.

Coming in with a 00leiter fluff-adjacent ficlet for 007 Fest 2023, just in time for Felix Friday! This fulfills the 2023 Prompt Table entry "The great outdoors: the sun, the smoke, the bugs, the scenery. bring it on," and is also a Rare Pair and an entry for a Theme Day!

I apparently cannot get enough of writing Felix Leiter in Maryland doing Maryland things, so here you go. I hope you enjoy, friends--you can read on ao3, or after the cut. 💜 🦅

James Bond isn’t the only one who likes nice things.

Felix has been known to splash out on an immaculately tailored tux, when the occasion calls for it. He found his favorite cologne at an atelier in Paris on a temporary duty assignment years ago and has never looked back, and some of his shoes are, admittedly, statement pieces. His taste for fine things isn’t limited to the things he puts on his body, either—the sound system for his home in Annapolis is so state-of-the-art it’s got its own line item in Felix’s homeowner’s insurance.

But Felix knows himself, and he also knows that he thrives on balance. He sticks to a detailed budget for grocery shopping and eating out—a government salary only stretches so far. He drives a mid-level sedan that is modest but more than adequate, thank you very much, even if Bond turns up his nose at riding in anything less than an Aston Martin. And Felix is at his happiest in a pair of trunks and a faded Terps t-shirt, taking his boat out on the harbor.

Or, on a day like today, in cargo shorts and that same worn out Terps shirt, trying to get James Bond to shut the fuck up before he scares all the birds away from the nature preserve.

“I’m disappointed, Felix,” Bond says, lowering the binoculars that were trained on the enterprising bald eagle that has taken over the osprey platform in the middle of the marsh. “I thought it’d be bigger.”

Felix snorts, in spite of himself. “And they say Americans are obsessed with size.”

Bond takes the bait, as Felix knew he would.

“You can hardly say size is irrelevant, after last night. Not with a straight face, anyway.”

Felix chucks his water bottle at Bond, catching him in the sternum.

“My face hasn’t been straight since 1982.”

Bond chuckles at that, and Felix feels that familiar sense of vertigo that they’re here, that this is how it is between them. It’s ridiculous that one of the easiest things in his life would turn out to be the sometime-colleagues, sometime-rivals, always-with-benefits thing he has going on with James fucking Bond. And yet.

“I’m not sure why you were so keen on taking me eagle-spotting in the first place,” Bond says. “They’re your national symbol, not mine.”

Felix shrugs. “Thought you could use the peace and quiet. Besides, you’ve got a lot in common.”

“What things, exactly?”

Bond’s face is doing that thing where all the softness leaches from it, as if he’s preparing to take a punch. But Felix has seen the man in a fight a time or two, and the thing is, when he’s actually throwing punches, he looks relaxed. He only looks like this when he’s afraid you might do something really stupid, like be kind to him. It’s taken years, but Felix has finally learned that if you want to show Bond any tenderness, you have to go at it at an angle.

And so Felix refrains from saying resilience or strength or determination or any of the myriad things that the noble bald eagle, survivor of decades of overhunting followed by decimation at the hands of DDT, only to rebound right off the endangered species list, actually has in common with James Bond, himself a frequent returner from the dead and persistent bearer of loss after loss, and who, on this occasion, is fresh from burying Olivia Mansfield, his mentor and the most fucked-up version of a mother figure that Felix has ever had the dubious honor of meeting.

Instead, Felix says, “I’ll have you know that not all of the founding fathers liked the idea of having the eagle on the seal of the United States. Benjamin Franklin hated it because they steal fish from other birds of prey. He hated it so fucking much he wrote a letter to his daughter calling the bald eagle a ‘bird of bad moral character’ that was incapable of making an honest living.”

Bond is laughing, then, his eyes wrinkling at the corners in the way Felix loves best, and after a quick check to make sure there’s no homophobic prick with a hunting license waiting in the scrub to shoot them, he leans in to kiss him. Bond’s lips are warm and chapped and familiar against Felix’s own, and Felix pours everything Bond won’t let him say into the kiss. He likes Bond like this, sweaty and slightly rumpled in clothing he’s borrowed from Felix, far away from the demands of Queen and country and all the ghosts he’s refused to bury. He more than likes him like this, he’s afraid, but that’s a problem for another day.

After a moment, Bond breaks the kiss and lifts the binoculars again, looking for the eagle.

“I’ve revised my opinion,” Bond says. “He’s a majestic bastard, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Felix says, “yeah, he is,” and affectionate fool that he is, he isn’t even pretending to look at the bird.

Title comes from the Tennyson poem "The Eagle."

[duckielover151]

Some Ep 2 Live Action One Piece Thoughts

I've been saying it since the beginning, and I'll say it again... Anyone who had reasonable expectations for this live action series being good accepted going into it that some things would have to be changed. I felt like the second episode really put that to the test for me. Episode 2 properly introduces both Garp and Buggy, after teasing them near the end of the first episode, and neither one of them is quite the portrayal that I'm used to.

Both Garp and Buggy have had some of the fun sucked out of them... But I mean that in the most positive way possible!

The live action is a slightly darker, more realistic take on the tale and the world, and the villains need to reflect that. Things were always a little up in the air with Garp. He's this leading figure of the marines... but also totally liable to let his grandson's crew get away. There's a softer side to original Garp that I'm not seeing in this portrayal of him. At least not so far.

I think the most telling scene is the one where he recruits Coby. Because in the live action, he bonds with Coby over precisely the opposite reason he takes a shine to him in the original.

Coby's really passionate about being a marine... but he's not totally indoctrinated. In the original, he and Garp basically bond over this shared acknowledgement that the world isn't black and white like the government's propaganda would like everyone to think it is. That even though he's a pirate, Luffy's clearly not a bad guy. He saved his life. He'll do what's asked of him if they ever meet on the seas professionally, but he can't proclaim to hate Luffy. They're still kind of friends. Just friends on opposite sides of a worldwide conflict.

In the live action, Garp takes him on when Coby basically denounces any continued goodwill towards Luffy. He's a pirate, and that's that.

I'll be curious to see where that goes. On the one hand, the original show's complicated portrayal of morality is one of the best things about it. I'd hate to see that lost. But I can totally understand why Garp might need to be a villain who can be taken more seriously in this version of events.

Wishy-washy, cowardly villains are fine in cartoons but don't play so well in realer worlds. Which leads into a discussion of Buggy perfectly.

Because cartoon Buggy was always a little incompetent. And live-action Buggy most certainly is not. Like, I almost don't know how to explain it except to say it's like they turned Team Rocket into Team Plasma. And it's great. I can't stress enough that Jeff Ward's portrayal of Buggy is really fucking phenomenal. Like, he better be making a reappearance in this version of events, because one episode is not enough!

I will say, Buggy expressing aspirations to be king is the only thing I'm uncertain about. The one thing that feels downright out of character. Everything else is really great, though. Seeing how he not only destroyed the town but imprisoned the townspeople as his audience as well. Really great for a villainous clown.

But there was also a softer moment I'm really curious about. When he posits that Luffy's obsession with Shanks might be about revenge... that felt genuine to me. Like he would have been willing to take him in or team up with him or whatever if Luffy hadn't immediately corrected him. That one moment was what made me sad we didn't get to see a flashback with younger Shanks and Buggy. With these characters being a little different, I think we need more of a clarification on their relationship now.

Fuck, I could use a second Keep Reading. This has gotten a little out of control. Onto details that I loved!

Nami is so noticeably traumatized by the very concept of pirates in this version. It's great. More depth than just a hard hatred for them would allow. The moment where she makes a break for it, giving up Luffy and Zoro to try and save herself... only to find herself in the midst of just what Buggy did to this town... the horror there... Genuinely gave me chills. And it made the little bonding moment when she are Zoro are locked up together pretty great also. I can already see how they're coming together to make a great team. And the way the live-action has handled the fight scenes has been all-around really great... because everyone has a role to play. I loved seeing them work together to defeat Buggy.

And, you want to talk about scenes that gave me chills? The fight between Shanks's crew and the bandits was also really badass.

There were some weaker moments there. Shanks losing his arm wasn't nearly as sudden, which took away from the shock of it a bit. (And how did he even lose Luffy in the first place? His crew was fighting in another room while Shanks was staring down the bandit who kidnapped Luffy. The chaos never seems to reach the room Shanks is in, but when he comes running out, he's lost track of them somehow? Almost like a locked room mystery; it doesn't quite make sense...)

But the music playing in the scene where he gives little Luffy the hat? Beautiful. Can't wait to see what comes next.

[morporkian-cryptid]

🇯🇵Elliott's Japan Trivia Corner🇯🇵

Today we're gonna talk DISEMBOWELMENT! 😃👍

Just kidding. I'm actually going to talk more about the cultural stuff that goes around seppuku, not the actual swish-swish. (Still, CW for suicide and graphic description of death)

For those who aren't aware, seppuku (or hara-kiri) refers to the act of cutting open your stomach, then having someone behead you to shorten your suffering 👍 It was a ritual suicide practiced (mostly) by the samurai, from the Kamakura period (12th century) up until 1991. Yup, you read that right. Seppuku was officially outlawed in 19-fucking-91.

Did you know that, in the Edo era, so many samurai were doing seppuku after the death of their lord, that the government had to ban the practice for that specific case? Fun times.

🤔 So, when can you perform 🗡seppuku🗡 ?

The short answer is: any fucking time you have a problem! 🥳 Boss died? Seppuku! Disagree with landlord? Seppuku! Bowed to someone at the wrong angle and embarrassed yourself? SE-FUCKING-PPUKU!

This form of ritual suicide is meant to either avoid dishonor, or regain lost honor. And in the Edo era you lost your honor like you lost a spare sock.

👉 Originally it was mostly done by warriors in battle to avoid being captured by the enemy.

During the Edo era, after the constant internal wars of the Sengoku period had ended, samurai found themselves without a good reason to show how metal they were by slitting their own stomachs open, and so they invented a bunch of excuses to do it anyway.

👉 As mentioned above, it could be when your lord died and you became a rōnin (a master-less wandering samurai), which apparently wasn't as cool as it is shown in anime, and kinda sucked.

(see the famous story of Lord Asano and the Fourty Seven Ronin)

👉 You could also commit seppuku to formally state your disagreement to your lord. Yes, samurai in the Edo era really went "I recognize the council has made a decision, but given as it is a stupid-ass decision, I've elected to KILL MYSELF ABOUT IT."

That specific practice sometimes even involved taping up your stomach wound, going to see your lord, telling him (respectfully) how much his decision sucked ass, and then un-taping your wound and bleeding out all over his tatami floor.

👉 Seppuku wasn't always exactly a suicide. In fact, most of the people who committed seppuku in the Edo era where condemned to do it in punishment for an offense. It was considered a way for the samurai in question to redeem himself. In fact, sometimes the "cutting your stomach" part was skipped altogether, the knife was replaced with a symbolic fan, and the guy was just beheaded. That was especially the case for court-ordered seppuku, because you don't really want to give a knife to a criminal you're about to execute.

Speaking of 🔥Honor🔥, you know who else could be dishonored forever? The guy cutting off the samurai's head to shorten his suffering! If he did it wrong, he would bring dishonor on himself AND his family for the rest of his life.

That part of seppuku required great swordsmanship, as you were supposed to sever the spinal cord but leave a small strip of skin so the head would remain attached to the body (hello morbid details my old friends...). Because when you order your enemy to commit ritual suicide, the last thing you want is to be assaulted by his flying head. 👹

A little vocabulary clear-up: you've probably heard it called "hara-kiri" more often than "seppuku". In fact, both words mean "cutting the stomach" and refer to the same ritual practice, but seppuku is a formal word used mostly in writing, while hara-kiri is more familiar and used orally.

And to conclude, I am legally obligated to say: DO NOT DO THIS AT HOME! If you have a problem with your boss, resolve it like a mature adult by replacing all their pens with crayons.

[mindfulwrath]

Books of 2022

Not including DNFs.

“The Authentic William James” by Stephen Gallagher - a British show cowboy is accused of setting a theater fire that killed a German noble. Sebastian Becker, special investigator for the British Crown, must find the accused so he can be scapegoated before rumors of assassination spark a pan-European war. Along the way, Sebastian finds that the accused man’s daughter has been kidnapped by another, rather more authentic stage cowboy. This book has an awful lot, folks: murder, Theatre, cowboys, turn-of-the-century Hollywood, labor rights, addiction, insane asylums, and more! Fans of “Murder with the Devil and Friends” will probably enjoy this one (I did). Recommended.

“The Amulet of Samarkand” by Jonathan Stroud (reread) - A young magician in the heart of the British Empire summons a djinni to steal an artifact from the man who humiliated him, and fucks it up worse than any other protagonist I’ve ever read. The story is half told from his perspective, and half told from the perspective of the snarky, self-aggrandizing djinni whom he has enslaved to carry out the theft. Mr. Stroud did not pull his punches with this one, I tell you what. Still, it works infinitely better as part of a trilogy than on its own, maybe more than any other Book One I’ve read. Recommended.

“The Golem’s Eye” by Jonathan Stroud (reread) - MR. STROUD DID NOT PULL HIS PUNCHES WITH THIS ONE, I TELL YOU WHAT. Our young magician from the last book continues fucking things up, but this time while the djinni ruthlessly roasts him for his fashion sense while the two of them try to get to the bottom of a series of mysterious break-ins. We also get to spend some time with our third protagonist, a young woman who has a resilience to magic and is part of a small Resistance, whose goal is to break the stranglehold the magicians have on the government. Boy, if you thought Book 1 was scathingly critical of empires and those who run them, Book 2 doubles down on it hard. Chillingly relevant, despite being written in 2004. Stroud also does a great job writing a protagonist who exhibits the very real disease of being 14. Recommended. (Bonus points for correctly attributing golems to Jewish tradition!)

“Ptolemy’s Gate” by Jonathan Stroud (reread) - MR. STROUD DID NOT COME TO FUCK AROUND, GODDAMN. The thrilling conclusion to the Bartimaeus trilogy, and it really delivers on every front. No setup goes without payoff. Honestly, it feels like these 3 books are really just one very long book, because details from Book 1 and Book 2 come back with real significance, little fanfare, and a hell of a lot of momentum. I really fucking love this series, and this book drives home why. Recommended.

“How to be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi - Dr. Kendi defines racism, antiracism, and many related terms and intersections, goes through the origins and history of racism as well as his own journey from being raised in a racist world to choosing to be antiracist. A greatly clarifying and galvanizing read, at least for me. Dense at times, but well worth slowing down for. Recommended.

“Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Vol 2” by MXTX - Things get much worse but also much gayer for our fast-talking protagonist - although really the vast majority of this book is about side-stories that happened many years in the past. The side-stories are really good though, and add to the narrative tension rather than distracting from it. I really do think this series (and probably all MXTX novels) could be used as a masterclass in non-linear storytelling. Recommended.

“Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix” (vol. 1) by Shiro Amano - An abridged version of the story of KH1 told in graphic novel format: kid’s world is swallowed by darkness, he gets separated from his two friends, he somehow acquires a magic key-sword that lets him fight the creatures of darkness, he goes on a quest to find his friends and ends up saving a bunch of Disney worlds along the way. It’s got some interesting little tidbits and alternate translations (and very, very cute art), so I certainly enjoyed it. Recommended if you’re already a KH fan or if you want to get the basic story without playing several hundred hours of games or watching a few dozen hours of cutscenes.

“Heaven Official’s Blessing: Vol 2” by MXTX - The plot thickens and things get worse for the protagonist (and isn't that just a summary of all MXTX novels?). I had some trouble with keeping all the names straight in this one because everyone has three names and it's a little trickier when I don't have a face to pin them all to, but it's still a good read. You can feel the plot putting on weight like a teenager getting ready for a growth spurt. Plus there's a really fun scene in a gambling den that is simultaneously the most chaste and the dirtiest thing I've ever read in published fiction. Recommended.

“Dracula” by Bram Stoker (reread, via Dracula Daily) - A fresh methodology on the old classic. I'd forgotten some of the twists and turns since I read this book back in high school, and the "daily" format is something I'd long wanted to engage in (i.e., reading a book that has a set timeline according to that timeline). The community of memes and analyses was a great joy to partake in, too. Recommended, particularly via Dracula Daily (there's always next year!)

"Dreadnought" by April Daniels - A teenage trans girl inherits a superhero mantle that not only gives her superpowers, but the body she's always wanted. This causes a tremendous amount of problems and immediately flings her into a mire of political turmoil while having to navigate high school and an abusive father. This is a book that knows its stuff back to front and remixes it adeptly. Recommended, but with trigger warnings for abuse, transphobia, and some fairly disturbing gore (and that's coming from me).

"Heaven Official's Blessing: Vol 3" by MXTX - The plot thickens, and things get worse for the protagonist. No, I mean really, REALLY worse. But there's also a damn good kiss in there, and plenty of other fun stuff to keep it from being oppressively grim. Recommended.

"Ancillary Justice" by Ann Leckie - A fragment of a ship's AI, confined to a human body, seeks revenge for the murder of her favorite lieutenant. Unfortunately, the person she's seeking vengeance against happens to be the emperor of a massive, millennia-old space empire, whose consciousness occupies a thousand bodies. A sedately paced, intricately built story about love and imperialism and culture and war and music. If you like Robots With Feelings, complex political dramas, or conlangs, this book is for you. Recommended.

"Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Vol 3" by MXTX - This one is primarily flashback, although not all the same flashback (have I mentioned the whole "masterclass in nonlinear storytelling" thing yet?) and stitched together in a way that flows naturally and keeps you reading to the very end. Also, a damn good kiss in there (vol 3 seems to be the magic number for that). But also also, some really fucking horrifying gore, to the point that I went: "who looked at this and decided they could make a show that got past the censors?" I mean, they were right, whoever they were, they managed it and "The Untamed" kicked ass, but I have to wonder what kind of person rolled up their sleeves to do it. Recommended.

"The Long Earth" by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett - The course of human history is forever changed when a rogue scientist releases the designs for a device that allows people to step to parallel Earths, all of which seem to be uninhabited. A young man named Joshua, able to step without the aid of a device, is recruited by an artificial intelligence to go on an expedition to find what's at the end of the seemingly infinite stack of Earths. An interesting read with a lot of cool speculation about alternate Earths and some very grounded and unfortunately relevant observations on the nature of humanity. It doesn't read like a Pratchett, although it has some very Pratchett-esque concepts in it. I liked it okay, but not enough to particularly want to read any of the sequels.

"Moving Pictures" by Terry Pratchett (reread) - The wild ideas of Holy Wood are escaping into the Discworld and causing hauntingly familiar scenes to play out in a little spit of desert by the sea - but anywhere where Things That Don't Exist can become Things That Do Exist, there will be Things That Want To Exist trying to come through.... Dryly funny as standard for Pratchett, and probably at least a quarter written just to see how many film references he could upend in one go. Featuring (what I think are) the first appearances of Gaspode The Wonder Dog and Archchancellor Munstrum Ridcully. Recommended.

"Fadeout" by Joseph Hanson - Dave Brandstetter, an insurance investigator who is "contentedly gay," investigates the mysterious disappearance of a small-town entertainer who hit the big time. Atmospheric, noir-adjacent, and pleasantly twisty, this mystery also benefits from half the cast being queer. It would be excellent if written today, and considering that it was written in the sixties, it's in a league of its own. Recommended.

"Are Prisons Obsolete?" by Angela Davis - A novelette-length essay on the origins, consequences, and possible alternatives to the prison-industrial complex, as well as a litany of reasons why it's imperative for the health of our society that the carceral state be dismantled. Thought-provoking and perspective-shifting in many ways. Recommended.

"Station Eternity" by Mur Lafferty - Mallory Viridian seems to constantly be followed by murders - and constantly finds herself solving them, too. She thought escaping Earth to a sentient space station would free her from her 'curse,' but, whoops, it doesn't. Featuring multiple sentient alien species, military interferism plots, eighty percent of a romance, and several murder cases across space and time, this felt like a book trying to do too many things at once, each interfering with the execution of the others. The detective story got lost in the space station story, and the space station story suffered from having to serve a detective story. The dialogue and the plot both clunked audibly at times, although the third act featured a clever twist and a fairly satisfying finale. The book wasn't so grating that I gave up on it, but I was glad to be done with it.

"Iron Widow" by Xiran Jay Zhao - A young woman living in a world that’s a milieu of ancient and modern China seeks vengeance against the celebrity kaiju pilot who killed her sister. And then seeks vengeance against the system which allowed said sister to be killed. And then decides: "since this system is fucking over everyone and everything I care about, how about I fuck it right back?" It's like Pacific Rim meets Handmaid's Tale meets real Chinese history, and that’s not even getting into the nuanced and incisive meditations on gender and sexuality. Recommended, but with content warnings for body horror, familial abuse, heavily implied sexual assault, and hardcore misogyny.

[bowtied-pasta]

All the characters in my canon and what the fuck they’re doing here with some factoids sprinkled in for fun 🎉

This is a very long post… so….

Splendor (Oliver) - Owner of a small but growing candy store and bakery that creates sweets and treats that contain magic and are often incensed with emotions for enders to feed on. His hands were cursed to look the way they do now, hence why he wears the gloves. Has been best friends with Fen since childhood.

True - My self insert oc. She gets to marry Splendor because I simp. 👉👈

Kevin - Splendorman’s proxy. The very first of all of them, he is very much a basement lurker. He’s rarely seen, though he’s basically just a tech guy that gets to live in Splendor’s basement for free as Splendor’s way of apologizing for how Kevin became the way he is.

Nina - Splendorman’s proxy. The newest of all of them, she is also the youngest at 19. She was found roaming around the Veil in the woods by Splendor, who decided to take her in as a proxy when he discovered her prior operator had somehow gone and disappeared. She was one of several proxies that had scattered from the unknown ender’s residence. She now manages the social media page for Splendor’s candy business.

Finley, Gage and Damien - Splendorman’s proxies, but oc’s. I actually use them to display different personality traits of Splendor in more detail in the stages of True and Splendor’s relationship where they aren’t very close at all. 🤷 You may see more of that when I get more fics out.

Fen (Adonis) - Owner of a nightclub that has entrances in each of the realms, but in order to keep the humans out of the loop, only visitors capable of glamour are capable to move about as they please between the different sections connected to each realm. (This mostly only applies to associates of the club anyway, as they’re the only ones with reasons to switch it up.) A stalwart, which means half ender and half incubus. Polyamorous. Has been best friends with Splendor since childhood.

Kagekao - He has no paying job, but he has snatched so many wallets and is so good at stealing that it doesn’t matter. Dating Fen. Comes and goes as he pleases though, and is often very difficult to find unless Fen’s the one looking for him. Knows Fen is polyamorous and doesn’t really care.

Lorelei - Not really a dancer at Fen’s club, more of a soloist that works on her own and takes gigs where she likes. Animalistic (cat)/succubus. Not “dating” Fen, but a relationship in the sheets is definitely happening. Knows Fen is polyamorous, and is really only interested in more “open relationships” herself.

Trender (David) - True’s (whole lot of greats) great grandfather. He is… very old. Was exiled from the Veil a long time ago, having broken the law by unintentionally impregnating a proxy. He closely monitored the bloodline when the child was born, but lost track after several generation showing no signs of any abilities. He is currently a very successful designer.

Jocelyn - Shadow/Shifter demon that works for Trender, sometimes as a model and rarely as a secretary. Closely enough that she would ordinarily be labeled a proxy, but since Trender has been exiled, he rarely cares enough to follow traditional rules regarding work partners that are “below him.”

Zalgo - King of the Abyss (the underworld). Governs over all of the Abyss, though will often leave actual law making up to a very diligently and carefully chosen group of delegates, but every law written goes through him before it’s approved. Blah blah blah, he actually gets to fuck around a lot and is basically only there to sign papers and look official so the grumpy old delegates don’t have to.

Dark Link (Erembour) - Zalgo’s main guard and lover, not that it’s a publicly announced thing, but it’s also not like they’re doing much work to keep it a secret. A shadow demon. One of very few demons trained on the ability to destroy a soul.

E. Jack - Zalgo’s medic, otherwise known as the royal medic. Animalistic (wolf) demon. His “demon puberty” hit a few years into college, forcing him to disappear. After several years of causing chaos in the form of organ theft, Dark was sent after him and brought him to Zalgo.

Dina - Zalgo’s judge, also known as the royal judge. Abrahamic demon. Her father was an abrahamic demon, but seeing as these things are genetic, she became one too. Her abilities made her perfect for being a judge, as she can tell with 100% accuracy if someone is telling a lie. She was found by Dark after she had raised a lot of chaos and drawn a lot of attention.

Tenderman - Slenderman’s younger brother. Lives alone in a comfortably reserved home. Not many know, but he’s versed in dark magic, as well as some other more friendly things. Has not ever taken proxies and never will.

Slenderman - Tenderman’s older brother. Runs a small and secretive hit man for hire business, but otherwise runs an also very secretive dark magic side gig. A lot of what he does is illegal and the only reason he gets away with it is because the elders all love him for how traditional he acts.

Jeff, Jane, Ben and Toby - Slenderman’s proxies that run errands and complete tasks and missions for him.

Phosphorus - The older twin. Feeds on serotonin, the happy chemical in the brain. He manages the day shift at the fairgrounds for this reason, as it allows him to more effectively feed on the reactions of the patrons.

Hesperus - The younger twin. Feeds on cortisol, the fear and anxiety chemical in the brain. He manages the night shift at the fairgrounds for this reason, as it allows him to more effectively feed on the reactions of the patrons.

Laughing Jack, Helen and The Puppeteer - associates at the twins’ fairgrounds. LJ during the night shift, Helen during the day shift, and Pup switches it up from time to time.

Kat - Singer/Idol in the Abyss. As a shifter demon, she is able to perform sets of stars that most demons are not able to go and see for themselves, as they lack the ability to glamour themselves.

Tim and Brian - Cryptid/monster hunters. Theyre life was effected horribly by an ender and they set out to hunt him down, only to find the operator was not the only one of it’s kind.

[giomagnetism]

pantomime

ok this one's gonna be fun! and long! let's talk about sprite's mimic abilities!

sprite is a mimic octoling, but is rather remarkable for not servicing the military—mimics are often recon agents, sometimes spies, or otherwise deployed to get a foot in the door of inkopolis culture and report back to the underground. their flexibility is extraordinarily useful and they are not the majority population, so (although there are of course civilian mimics or those who just never lived underground in the first place) their recruitment is a priority. they are trained to inhabit one or two guises completely, prioritizing detail and replicable results, with identities and personal histories fabricated and thrust upon them by the octarian government. despite their extraordinary nature, most mimics' daily lives are characterized by a pretty mundane routine and utilize one persona. but, none of that goes for sprite.

while he is native to the domes and has a familial history in the military, sprite got moved to the surface before he could get more than basic training and fundamental education. for most of their life they've relied on teaching themself how to navigate their abilities, and have taken it in a very different direction from the traditional path. whereas most mimics inhabit one or two persons to great depth, sprite really leans into their flexibility and has no eye for perfection, and for that reason, can manage a lot of things that most other mimics don't or even can't. i.e., most mimics don't dramatically change their height, or even hairstyle. but sprite's whole form is malleable, including their face, although they don't usually opt to change their features because they tend to forget to maintain that and ruin the illusion. oops.

his whole shtick is making up a person to live as for a day and then causing them to vanish into thin air once he goes home for the night, but he can also mimic existing people, if he wants. the only rule sprite abides by is the law of conservation of mass, ex., they have too much to make a convincing ness, but not enough to make a convincing marlo. funnily enough, they COULD manage a reasonable spencer or shiloh, or even bernadine, but it also turns out that memorizing the details of another person's physicality is really hard and requires an unreasonable amount of exposure. if you catch them in the act of this, you're gonna be uncanny valley'd real hard, because they're always just a little off, and if you look away and back again their features might have shifted in the meantime. they're mischievous, but not malicious, they don't ever do this for any reason other than fucking around (and if they're not careful, finding out).

sprite is a storyteller, theatrical and most often with an eye out for a good hook and a strong presence. very few of his "alts" are meant to last or weather examination (even the ones that do are playing to some sort of effect, including the one named "sprite", constructed, deliberately, to be a fly on the wall.)—which has proved both a good thing and a very bad thing.

[mcrcki]

Was that [ALBA BAPTISTA]? Oh no no, that was just [ELLIE WILLIAMS], a [CANON CHARACTER] from [THE LAST OF US]. They are [EIGHTEEN] years old, use [THEY/SHE], and [ARE] aware that they are not actually from Washington DC. Too bad they can’t stray from this city for long.

** the last of us hbo series spoilers **

how long has your character been here -

around two months? they’ve gotten settled out of the government housing, thank god for that cause that place reminded them too much of fedra school. they’ve moved in with their new roomie, sarah. still haven’t asked their last name, but ellie’s okay with that. they’re still getting settled and don’t really talk about their life much either.

what is your character’s job -

gremlin child idk ??? honestly , i think they’d end up going back to school, figure it out from here. i really don’t think she’s well adjusted enough to hold down like any steady job right now.

where has your character been pulled from in their fandom -

end of season one of the hbo series. this is where i show my fake fan vibes and say i have never played the games gkfdjg but im waiting for the release on steam, but for now, i will be playing ellie as fully from the hbo show.. that also means that i do not know tlou2 so pls no spoilers until i play it kgdfjlg

has any magic affected your character -

nope! their memories are fully intact!! though, they’re kinda wishing they got some of those fake memories cause that would make adjusting to a non apocalyptic world way easier

other notes -

i present a completely different vibe that you have never seen from me ever before! apocalyptic brat with a disgruntled found family father figure. how original, i know!!! anyways, here’s ellie williams, my favorite little demon child

insert the ‘i’ve had arlo for a day and a half’ meme cause that’s how i feel about ellie. even though i only know them from tlou show, i would die for them. how do you meet them and not want to commits multiple murders across state lines???? the ppl want to know joel.

gonna give a cliffnotes , look out of for spoilers im so sorry kldjfg

either way, ellie is a child born after the fall of the world as we knew it, she is raised within fedra’s QZ’s, and when she was a teenager, she went on a date with her best friend/**girlfriend** thank u , and then they were attacked. one of the infected came after them and bit both ellie and riley. 

fast forward, ellie does not!! turn!!!!! how !!!!!! inquiring minds would love to know

but bestie is immune to the fungus, and is then brought into firefly custody, to be shipped to a lab across the country that they’ll be able to use her to help form a cure. enter joel

joel gets fucking thrown into being the delivery person for ellie, and highjinks ensue. aka, you have one hell of an emotional development of found family !!! it’s beautiful, it’s great, ellie and joel would both fucking die or kill for each other and they have on multiple occasions. 

a lot of it comes down to the fact that joel with kill to get back to ellie, and ellie will kill to protect herself to find him again. 

i could really sit here and give so many details about the two of them, about how ellie goes from being just cargo to being baby girl, but i really do not want to give it away. it’s just 9 episodes i will give you my hbo login pls go watch it

basically, this is my pun loving, sarcastic, every other word is a swear, heart of gold, but will absolutely choose her own, and joel’s survival above anyone else, child. 

i am going to be taking my time getting their voice right, because i really do love this character, i want to do them justice when i am coming in on just a little bit of the media, so bare with me lkgdfjkg im also keeping out some more serious details about what happens to them for tw purposes.

also they have their shitty pun book here because i say so and im sad it seems like they lost it in their pack at the end of the season

connections :

✩ friends

pls they need friends, they are kinda rough around the edges and will pick a fight so easily but they really do just need a good group of friends to break past that

✩other apocalyptic besties

if anyone else has been through some kind of apocalypse and wants to trade stories, they got you

✩ coworkers

i’m considering them maybe working in an arcade, or music shop so if that’s something you can see your characters working at hmu

✩ potential ship

my love is a lesbian so just a heads up, but this would be based off of chemistry, mainly cause idk if i wanna go with canon ships gkldfjg i definitely would be willing to explore but that would be a super slowburn situation and i will probably be holding off on plotting it for a while. 

[namorlei]

2024 republican platform

YES, THIS IS IN FACT THE OFFICIAL 2024 RNC GOP PLATFORM, LIKE WHAT THEY HAVE ON THEIR PDF...

look at this shit, an actual child wrote this what the fuck. lets go over this one after the other shall we

1: "SEAL THE BORDER, AND STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION"

they want to stop central and south american refugees and migrants from coming to america through mexico/ the carribean. who would have thought that the country which was founded on, and has only and will continue to only grow because of immigration would be so against people coming into the country. i wont go into too much detail but its just ridiculous

2: "CARRY OUT THE LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY"

nazi shit, straight up nazi shit. what they mean by that is deporting anyone without citizenship. its just evil. thats tens of millions of people right there

3: "END INFLATION, AND MAKE AMERICA AFFORDABLE AGAIN"

inflation is already ended? its at 3% which is a normal amount for a country. and for that affordable part, raising wages is what will make america affordable. which republicans have shown time and time again they are against doing

4: "MAKE AMERICA THE DOMINANT ENERGY PRODUCER IN THE WORLD, BY FAR!"

odd punctuation aside, this one is like... okay? i mean that would require much investment into green energy and nuclear energy which the fossil fuel lobbying republicans dont want but theres nothing inherently wrong with that ig

5: "STOP OUTSOURCING, AND TURN THE UNITED STATES INTO A MANUFACTURING SUPERPOWER"

the trump campaign outsourced production of biker shirts to an offshore copany bc they knew that republicans would be unwilling to pay that much more for specialized trump clothing. but i mean yeah outsourcing is bad but also im not an isolationist so idk

6: "LARGE TAX CUTS FOR WORKERS, AND NO TAX ON TIPS!"

how do these people think the government gets funded... tariffs? this isnt 1790 anymore you need more than just that to run a government and bureaucracy as large as the united states. but yeah this one is whatever

7: "DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTION, OUR BILL OF RIGHTS, AND OUR FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS, INCLUDING FREEDOM OF SPEECH, FREEDOM OF RELIGION, AND THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS"

from who? the constitution is already there... all the amendments are already encoded into law...? but yeah the only threat to the constitution is the republicans. reminder, it is now legally mandated you have to put the 10 commandments up in school classrooms in louisiana. also project 2025 literally goes against the 10th amendment in every way but... whatever ig

8: "PREVENT WORLD WAR THREE, RESTORE PEACE IN EUROPE AND IN THE MIDDLE EAST, AND BUILD A GREAT IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENSE SHIELD OVER OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY -- ALL MADE IN AMERICA"

.... no words. this is such an arrogant mindset its insane from top to bottom. yeah lets just bring peace to the middle east bc that worked so well before hasnt it. also yes lets just bring peace to europe, im sure putin is deeply concerned what america has to say on this and yknow... less on the actual battlefield

the "great iron dome missile defense shield" is the icing on the cake. pure gold. sounds like some shit a child would say. we have THAAD, use real terminology ffs

also not to play devils advocate bc i like taiwan but, if you want to avoid ww3 wouldnt that mean not going to war over taiwan? like if thats what it takes to avoid ww3 than that would be what you would do... right? again i like taiwan but im just using their logic

9: "END THE WEAPONIZATION OF GOVERNMENT AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE"

saying this while also saying you want to deport tens of millions of people using the government as your method of doing so is deeply ironic, tho ig it makes sense considering the republicans dont see those being deported as human

also this means they're gonna defund the police... erm based department? not actually ofc just having a bit of fun.

10: "STOP THE MIGRANT CRIME EPIDEMIC, DEMOLISH THE FOREIGN DRUG CARTELS, CRUSH GANG VIOLENCE, AND LOCK UP VIOLENT OFFENDERS"

there is no migrant crime epidemic btw. migrants per capita commit less crimes than american citizens. also for the other stuff its just useless key jingling. it doesnt mean anything its just saying shit

11: "REBUILD OUR CITIES, INCLUDING WASHINGTON DC, MAKING THEM SAFE, CLEAN, AND BEAUTIFUL AGAIN."

when they say this they are speaking through the mouth of car and gas companies, more roads! more cars! also why dc specifically? dc is literally one of the nicest cities in the country why tf you signaling it out specifically? dont you think other cities could use it a bit more like detroit, chicago, san francisco, portland, new orleans, jacksonville, etc..?

12: "STRENGTHEN AND MODERNIZE OUR MILITARY, MAKING IT, WITHOUT QUESTION, THE STRONGEST AND MOST POWERFUL IN THE WORLD"

more key jingling, it already is the strongest. next question

13: "KEEP THE U.S. DOLLAR AS THE WORLD’S RESERVE CURRENCY"

no comment idk that much abt economics

14: "FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE"

tell your republican senators that before preaching to the choir. republicans constantly vote against these social spendings

15: "CANCEL THE ELECTRIC VEHICLE MANDATE AND CUT COSTLY AND BURDENSOME REGULATIONS"

like i said earlier, thats the car and oil companies speaking. cars cost us so much money every year that just banning them altogether would save us so much money in the long run. ofc i wouldnt ever advocate for a complete ban, america is too big for that, but even just more restrictions on cars in and around cities and the construction actual public transit would help so much

16: "CUT FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ANY SCHOOL PUSHING CRITICAL RACE THEORY, RADICAL GENDER IDEOLOGY, AND OTHER INAPPROPRIATE RACIAL, SEXUAL, OR POLITICAL CONTENT ON OUR CHILDREN"

yawn im getting tired of this. so much for muh freedom of speech right? why are you tryna stop kids from learning stuff? what are you some kind of authoritarian (yes)

i dont have to explain why this is bad, this is fucking tumblr we all know why its bad

17: "KEEP MEN OUT OF WOMEN’S SPORTS"

my favorite i love being singled out as a target of discrimination. joyous. not that i am big into sports anyway but still. its incredible how much they're leaning into the transphobia angle when its been proven before this isnt a winning electoral position? like 70% of americans just do not care... why tf they making such a big deal about it. oh wait! culture war bullshit why of course

i shouldnt have to say what they mean by 'men' here but i will anyway, they're referring to trans women obviously

18: "DEPORT PRO-HAMAS RADICALS AND MAKE OUR COLLEGE CAMPUSES SAFE AND PATRIOTIC AGAIN"

so much for freedom of speech huh... i could have sworn they were just yelling about that a few bullet points ago. im not pro hamas in any sense from an ideological standpoint however i would be considered a hamas supporter because that just means in opposition to israel committing genocide.

19: "SECURE OUR ELECTIONS, INCLUDING SAME DAY VOTING, VOTER IDENTIFICATION, PAPER BALLOTS, AND PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP"

this topic is long and very complicated, far too much to condense into a few sentences but know this, they are saying this so that poor and older people as well as immigrants cant vote. thats all its about

20: "UNITE OUR COUNTRY BY BRINGING IT TO NEW AND RECORD LEVELS OF SUCCESS"

more key jingling, its meaningless.

this whole republican platform document reads like a twitter user wrote it its embarrassing that these are the people most likely to win the election. again i cant get into too much here because this is already way too long but the fact that we're even at this point is just insane to me

[tailsrevane]

[movie review] injustice (2021)

i watched all the cutscenes from the video game in preparation for this, and my biggest problem with it was that even if lois died (and even if clark was responsible for it), i just can’t see him going off the deep end like this. but in the video game all of that happened in the past. the movie is all about him getting to that point, and that’s actually drastically worse because the whole time it’s happening i’m just not even slightly buying it.

you just can’t turn clark into a dictator without him being a completely different person. the things that make him him could only be changed by a drastically different nature or a drastically different nurture, and this movie doesn’t suggest either of these. it just completely uncritically buys in to joker’s “one bad day” theory from the killing joke, and there’s nothing else to it.

there are actually a few things i like about this. dick and damian’s relationship is great, and has a lot of carry over of what i liked about their relationship in some of the batman movies from the previous run. i especially loved dick calling damian “little brother.” i’m also honestly super impressed that that did strike a chord with me considering that nightwing’s ghost being called “deadwing” made me giggle inappropriately every time he appeared.

i also liked how everybody picking a side was handled in the movie quite a bit better than in the game. the people who fall in with superman are never wholly complicit with his bullshit, and the one who comes the closest to being is diana (and frankly she’s almost as out of character as clark at times), and even she is genuinely horrified when confronted with unmistakable evidence that he’s gone off the deep end. also catwoman doesn’t side with clark to keep an eye on him and try to protect bats or whatever the fuck was happening in the game to set up bats being all butthurt about it and refusing to forgive her. that was dumb.

speaking of selina, the bit where clark sent her to check on bruce after dick died was extremely good. and although i already talked about how much i appreciate this movie’s take on dick and damian’s relationship, i also really appreciate it making it obvious how fucking important dick is to bruce. seeing him literally crying over him was… a lot. and selina does such a good job of comforting him, telling him not to be batman, to just let himself be a mess just for one night. that was exceptionally good.

i was also impressed that the u.s. is portrayed fairly accurately in this, with them freaking out the second superman seems to be challenging their authority and saying the quiet part out loud when they say, “superman’s bringing down governments. fine when it’s in our interest, a mighty big problem when it’s not.” they also jump right to siccing the cops on superman’s father. so, yeah. some points there.

unfortunately there’s also some serious bullshit here given that the u.s. government isn’t literally the first one supes goes after when he decides to start unilaterally taking down governments. plus there’s some tone deaf “both sides”y shit about israel’s occupation of palestine, and a throwaway reference to north korea’s nuclear program being disarmed but no mention whatsoever of any other country’s nuclear program like, oh, i don’t know, just throwing one out at random, the fucking united states. i mean, it’s not like they’re the only country in the world that has engaged in acts of nuclear war and–wait, hold on, i’m getting new information… huh. well, hey, they probably don’t blatantly bully other countries using their nuclear arsenal as a cudgel to uh… what’s that? … all the time?

huh. well, that’s awkward.

and yeah, given that supes is obviously the bad guy here, none of that would be a huge issue except for the fact that the movie isn’t really shy about what it thinks is right and what it thinks is wrong, and it doesn’t seem to be terribly upset about either of these throwaway details? and for that matter, no one ever actually articulates a counterpoint to superman’s bullshit? no one ever says, hey clark, funny thing is, when you prevent people from using violence to resist, you allow the everyday violence that oppresses them to continue unabated just because it doesn’t bother you. no one says anything other than, basically “nuh-uh.”

okay, there is one pretty good scene where mister terrific kicks clark’s ass rhetorically while simultaneously kicking his ass at chess. but even that doesn’t actually articulate a positive ideology to contrast with supes’. it just boils down to a slippery slope argument.

but that still isn’t the biggest reason why i didn’t like this. it just circles back around to the fact that they never, at any point, sell me on superman doing any of this. i was just constantly mentally shaking my head and saying “nope.” you didn’t make it believable, guys. a switch doesn’t just go off in your head and make you a totally different person because something really bad happens to you. and the whole story just falls apart if you don’t believe that. c-rank