#like freedom of speech and all that

[katlandry]

I just think at least 95% of you shouldn’t be allowed to speak on Nancy Wheeler

[hussyknee]

[swampthingking]

andrew’s definitely gotten in trouble with his pr manager for tweeting things along the lines of:

“no mania inducing medication will compare to the euphoria i will feel the day donald trump drops dead”

[voiidorwhatever]

a lot of people have already said similar things, but i'm just gonna throw my own two cents in the mix as well. the fact that fnv gives you more freedom than fo4 is already so glaringly obvious in the set-up for your character. for many reasons. but one of the really annoying ones - for me - is the job the main character has. sounds trivial, i know, but starting a new fo4 playthrough just to be met with nate's soldier ramble or seeing nora's laywer certificates (whatever those were, i have a bad memory lmao) already kinda spoils the fun to me. i've seen people do great things with those concepts, but i feel like in the game they just fall flat. being a lawyer has the implications of going to a good college, being rich, having higher social status. being a soldier. well. *insert military propaganda here*. the picket fences, the forced nuclear family. it's such a rigid starting point that i have to imagine most of it away to play a character that is interesting to me. courier six on the other hand - well, they're a courier. that doesn't have many implications. i feel like it's such an easy start into a game. it's a job they could've picked up recently, a while back, or practially forever ago (lets ignore old world blues for a second there, i think this point still counts). you don't have to study to be a courier, no special social class is assigned to it. it seems a part of your character you can reliably choose to give as much or as little importance as you want or need to. of course, courier six has picked that job up in the wasteland, not before the war like the sole survivor has, but i still feel like nora and nate have too many ImplicationsTM attached to them for rpg main characters, jobs incluced

[my-pjo-stuff]

"Hey Kamiko why do you hate the PJO gods so much?"

Because they'd be the litteral scum of the earth if you'd make them mortal.

Litteraly.

Just take away the "godly" and you are left with what is basically a single aristocratic family rulling as a monarchy with Zeus as the matron of the family and king.

Said monarchy has made and upheld a system in which they exploit a lower class for their own gain. There is basically no social mobility, rendering the lower clasess basically condemed to serve the rich upper crust ignoring them if they do not activley want something from them.

As if that wasn't enough they have also been shown to be completly aware of and okay with the fact that the practice mentioned above leads to the lower class generally not living beyond the age of twenty.

There is no concept of democracy or free-speech. The lower class has basically no human rights as the monarchy is allowed to pretty much just do whatever they want with them with no fear of punishment- that also included killing them or inflicting them with fates worse than death.

Ontop of all that the monarchy has also proven itself untrustworthy on multible occasions, as they have broken promises on multible occasion and show no reason to be trusted whatsoever.

The most famous of a similar irl situation ended with the french monarchy's heads in baskets.

[singingcicadas]

"Rodimus joining the Autobots in Autocracy and being supportive of Optimus makes no sense and is just an example of successful Autobot propaganda b/c he's been exposed to Autobot crimes his whole life and the Autobots forced him to bomb Nyon" will forever be a wild take to me cuz his complete reasoning process is pretty clearly spelled out in the comic? It's like, the main focal point of his entire screentime in Autocracy. For Rodimus there's never been any confusion about the perpetrator behind the "Autobot crimes". There’s Zeta’s crimes and there’s Orion. With a massive distinction between the two. With said distinction being extremely important, because one the first things he says to Orion is literally:

And why does he believe that Orion's different? Because of Orion's speech to the Senate.

Guess what was in that speech:

The origin of the Autobot name. Orion's idealized vision of the freedom and autonomy that the name was meant to represent. Rodimus knew what the true Autobot values were intended to be before the government took the name for their own purposes, and he identified with those values enough to straight up put his life into Orion's hands:

Not just his own life. Everyone in the Acropolex. Everyone in Nyon. Betting on nothing but Orion's conscience. Why would he do this if he didn't already believe Orion to be a good person worthy of a gamble on his trust? If he didn't believe that Orion still held true to his words in the Senate? He knows that Zeta's out for his blood, that Zeta cares nothing about his citizens except bleeding them dry. He's always known the true depths of government atrocities, he lived in the worst of it his whole life. It's why he wired the whole city with bombs as contingency, he always knew it would come down to something like this. But if he thought that Zeta and Orion were no different for their part in the "Autobot crimes", then why would he take Orion to the Acropolex, to see the most vulnerable suffering of their people, and expect him to care enough to side with them against his own government?

Even on the brink of being forced to destroy his own home he's still very aware of who's the real enemy here. After their meeting he's certain that Orion's Autobots are on his side, it was their diversion that bought them enough time to get himself and the few he could out of detonation range. Zeta wants to kill all of them; they're all victims here. Rodimus never blamed Nyon's destruction on anyone other than Zeta, least of all Orion's group.

Imo this... is a completely appropriate and empathetic response to Rodimus' grief? like he does make leadership sound all doom and gloom but it is an accurate reflection of Rodimus' feelings (as well as his own) and he's telling Rodimus that it's okay to feel that way b/c he feels like that too!

The "you faced an impossible situation" bit is just stating the plain truth. Orion isn't condoning or condemning Rodimus' decision, it's not his place to do so. He wasn't the one forced into making the choice, Rodimus was. Rodimus made his choice and now has to live with it. Orion could only offer understanding. like idk what else he could have said, it's not even his place to offer absolution, because even though Rodimus feels guilty he doesn't regret anything. When he defended himself to Bumblebee he used the exact same words Orion did: he did what he had to do.

If the trust he placed in Orion before in the Acropolex was a wild bid in the face of desperation, then the trust that he's placing in Orion now—admitting his guilt and grief, showing vulnerability—is purely of his own choice. To which Orion reciprocated by revealing the weight of his own burdens. This is the kind of interaction that friends share. Which means they're friends now. Is it so unreasonable for Rodimus to want to follow the leadership of a friend, someone whose speech against the Senate that he'd admired, someone who he believed to be different and proved himself as worthy of his trust, someone who he fought beside and saved each other's lives and shared his desire for peace?

Claiming that Rodimus would be averse against joining the Autobots due to their past complicity in crimes under Zeta is vastly misunderstanding his character b/c he's not the type of person who thinks like that. Like for one thing he'd never let historical grudges get in the way of progressing towards a better future (think Lost Light and Megatron). It also completely misses the point of his scene with Orion in the Acropolex, which is about believing the best in people and making the right choices going forward when presented with past mistakes. Also Rodimus isn't stupid he's well aware that Zeta's Autobot cause and Orion's Autobot cause are two completely different things. The first thing Optimus did after becoming Prime was to renounce the old government. Being an Autobot under Optimus would be restoring honour and integrity to the name. if anything that should come off as extra appealing to him cuz he likes restoring stuff like Cyberutopia and the Golden Age.

"Rodimus should join the Decepticons" makes even less sense. Rodimus does come onscreen as an established Decepticon sympathizer but if you think about it his contact with Decepticons is limited to them providing him with weapon supplies. It's a vendor-patron relationship and their goal is to overthrow the government with propaganda keywords being "freedom" "equality" "emancipation" of course he would be a sympathizer. It's a noble cause if looked at from afar. But once the events of Nyon happens he's suddenly forced to get all up and close with Megatron and his higher-ups. and what does he see.

This is how Megatron fought Zeta:

This is what Megatron did to Orion:

This is how Decepticons treat their allies, right after announcing public amnesty:

This is Megatron's opinion of Zeta, after everything he did:

This is Megatron's idea of entertainment:

After seeing all that, isn't it perfectly natural for Rodimus to arrive at this conclusion regarding Megatron and the Decepticons:

Oh my god I can't believe I ever trusted these thugs.

Now that he's seen for himself that the Decepticons are the opposite of freedom, Orion trying to arrest Swindle at the beginning of the comic would have made sense to him. He now gets why they were fighting the Decepticons so hard.

That's basically the whole thought process for Rodimus joining the Autobots. The logic's pretty sound. There's no "Autobot propaganda" involved anywhere. Rodimus was the one who sought Orion out to make him choose his side. Rodimus was the one who rescued the Autobots from Megatron. Rodimus was the one who asked to join. The Autobots never tried to recruit him.

[boygirlctommy]

i couldnt upload the audio like a normal person so heres this. gonna try to animate to it tomorrow :P

[nosleepgummitato]

"Art isn't even that complex."

Said the boy who sits next to me in Math.

I'm sorry, I was just trying to draw my persona as a goofy clown. I didn't realize it was your businuess man, my bad. ✋️😔

[brother-emperors]

nikkicafeina said: There's just /something/ there when all our revolutionary leaders learned about justice and heroism and politics from Europe (sometimes IN Europe) and Europe learned it from Rome and in the end it just comes down to how we've never learned to say "freedom" in our own languages, and maybe we never can.

I actually have a much more optimistic opinion on this! even if our history has been brutalized four times over (spain, america, japan, and both marcos administrations), we did, as a people, learn to cry for freedom, and it did not come from a place of Roman imagery or European thought.

there were parts of the Philippines that managed to escape the full force of imperial violence due to the simple fact of geography, and they resisted tyranny as much as someone inspired by the writings of Rizal did, and there were parts of the Philippines that have always resisted the forceful reach of Manila to culturally assimilate and consume all other cultures and regions under an invented national one. these are calls for freedom, maybe without language, but it IS resistance born out of the filipino people, without the hand of europe to guide it.

even if much of our history was lost, rewritten, bastardized, the Filipino people have always resisted, even if the conclusion was tragic or forced into something else by someone's poetic but misguided bullshit, because at the end of the day, it is intolerable to be under the foot of someone else and it always has been, everywhere across the world.

the continuation of imperial visuals (whether it's the Western talking points of the government, the architecture, the Roman Empire) has a lot to do with structures of power. the government is distinctly European-Western. honestly, it's fucking American. it's driven by capitalism and imperialism, or a desire to ally with imperialist nations, to subjugate and maintain power to benefit a handful of officials who desire profit above all else. this is a tragedy, and we seem unable to shake it!

but. our students have always come forward to fight against injustice. we burned effigies, we protested, we call for justice even when our journalists are killed, our farmers are massacred in the streets, when our people are shot down by the military. many people from my province do not have a higher education, they would not know of the messy politics of imperial powers, but they do know that the elections were bullshit and the farmers are suffering and government doesn't fucking care, so they all turned out to march through the city to cry for justice, to be recognized.

today, we hold hands across seas with other oppressed people who are also desperate for freedom and peace. it would be nice to have our own words for it! but I'm not sure that we need it. it's enough to stand next to our countrymen and for others across the world and say, I got your back.

as the chant goes: from the classrooms to the streets, etc.

if our history had not been colonized, we might have had our own words and philosophies for it, instead of borrowed approximations, but the desire for freedom and justice is very much ours, and we have always called for it through action. the language now, I think, is one of solidarity. like, I think above all else, we MUST believe in a better future.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

[pericky; a look into ricky's head during their meeting.]

---

"I'm glad you came, I wasn't sure you would." The wine pours, the sound of it drowning out the missing word in that sentence: back.

Of course, is the response, and the part of Ricky that's spent twenty years tearing itself apart to understand why vibrates with relief. It doesn't matter anymore. Of course, of course, he thinks giddily along with the words. He never needed to wonder why Pericles wasn't coming back in the first place; he was always going to.

I'm happy you invited me, and of course he thinks again. A lifetime of pretending he wasn't always going to either falls away. However harsh and lonely the world has been, all's right with it again; and the shy voice of the boy inside him that he's tried so hard to kill says, so quietly, I missed you.

[vesperss]

okay I’ll share! for some context, the time limit was ten minutes so I didn’t go into major detail as much as I wanted to lol. but if yall like it I might do a part two that’ll be like an hour long of analysis.

[mazzystar24]

Do ignorant assholes realise that freedom of speech protects you from government prosecution for what you say not from people calling you an asshole for what you say?

[jellogram]

I talked to my (libertarian) father about Trump getting shot at and his take was "It doesn't matter because someone else will shoot him and not miss."

so... likes to charge reblogs to cast I guess

[illgiveyouahint]

[bumpscosity]

i'll probably liveblog a gravity falls rewatch soon just a warning

[buffintruder]

on the scale of 'monolingual english speakers assuming gender in all languages works the same way it does in english' this is so low in the importance scale that it doesn't matter

but sometimes i see people making posts on tumblr about japanese speaking characters using they/them or it/its, and like those words barely exist in that language, and any words you could use would just be weirdly convoluted and odd when its so easy and normal to not use any pronouns at all

like i know it's a joke but it is fun to imagine those conversations happening in japanese and being utterly baffled as to how it would actually work