#no enemy will succeed

[vultures-and-scavengers]

cullen is 100% unqualified.

cullen is unqualified for the role he ends up playing, but also there is NO ONE in thedas who would be qualified.

he is creating an entirely new military and on a massive scale. he is not taking a place in an already established structure. you can be a general who spent their life in the military, but if that military has been around, then you are not creating a power structure, you are taking your place in one. much of this has been organized for you.

and militaries are not just infantry. you need to set up A LOT.

you need construction. you need to be able to house your people. you need fortifications to project your objectives. you need storage space because you will need a fuck ton of supplies. you might need bridges and you might need walls and you need to be able to be flexible with what you have the ability to build.

you need acquisitions. you need to know appropriate amounts of supplies you need. you need to be able to outfit your soldiers with the gear they need, which can change depending on their assignment. you need to know the supplies you're acquiring come from reputable sources and are not sabotaged in any way. you need to have redundancies within your supply chain.

you need transportation. you need to be able to move people. you need to be able to move food. you need to be able to move weapons and armor. you need these transports to be secure and well guarded. you need to (probably) vary their routes so you don't risk predictable convoys being seized. you need animals to provide transportation. you need stablehands who also need housing and pay and food and supplies. you need to feed the animals. you need to fulfill your animals' needs adequately. you need medical care for your animals.

you need personnel management. you need to feed them. you need to manage morale and you need to manage pay. you need to know how to encourage cohesion within units while making sure those units can work with others. you need to assign differing specialties and duties appropriately and you need to provide guidance for how each role should be filled.

you need to train them. this is not just swinging a sword; this is enemy recognition, this is how to work within a rank structure, this is how to operate within a highly regulated environment. you need your people to be educated enough to handle what tasks they need to carry out. you need exercises and wargaming so your people know what to expect from the field.

you need coherent rank structure. you need uniforms so your people know who they are and who those around them. you need to plan units with different capabilities that also fall within a coherent rank structure. you need to have emblems for ranks that are easy to read. you need guidelines and standards for what is expected of different ranks because different ranks have vastly different responsibilities. you need to have standards for promotion and demotion.

you need regulation. you need to ban criminal activity. you need standards for discipline. you need to write all the guidelines and be able to provide them to your units. you need one set of rules that all your units adhere to. you need to balance the needs of the people serving with the regulations that need to be written. you need appropriate ways to alter regulations and then publicize these changes.

you need doctrine. you need to plan out how you fight and why. how do you strategize. how do your larger tactics filter down to the smallest fighting units. how centralized or how flexible is your command structure. how are you appropriately using the resources you have. how do you work with allies. why are your units set up the way they are.

you need health services. you need pest management. you need disease control. you need battlefield medicine. you need standard guidelines for triage and care that all your healers understand so they're not doing wildly different things. you need care for long term issues like broken bones. you need to consider what to do with people who are in long-term care. you need to consider what happens to those who are injured and no longer able to serve.

you need security. you need to know your communications are encrypted, obfuscated, or otherwise made difficult to intercept. you need counterintelligence. you need to have guards on patrol. you need to secure your food and water sources. you need to secure incoming shipments.

this is not at all a complete list. but cullen has to find people who can organize all of this, or he has to organize it himself. he is starting from scratch. the inquisition has nothing at the beginning. there is not a single person in thedas who knows how to come up with all this on the scale that the inquisition will require of cullen and with haste.

the inquisition's army must respond to multiple unprecedented threats: hole in the sky raining demons, tears in reality all over ferelden and orlais, red templars, a tevinter cult led by a returned darkspawn magister with a quasi-archdemon, and an army of mind-controlled wardens and demons.

respond. not plan for. they have to pivot and face these things, which all present different challenges and require different tools and methods to fix.

so yes. he is unqualified. fucking find me someone who isn't.

[wildflowerteas]

the red camellia is undeniably soukoku's flower to me. they bloom in the cold, through snow and winter chill. they're at their most beautiful in the harshest conditions when everything else is dormant or dead. they're a symbol of perseverance and strength and passion. but at the end of the line, they 'behead' themselves when they die, refusing to drop petal by petal, choosing to go when they're still beautiful, refusing to compromise the rest of the tree by rotting on the branch.

[kawaiichibiart]

I need more fics of Zuko working at a teashop with Iroh (be it Pao's (iirc) or the Jasmine Dragon) but he's just really fucking short. Because can you imagine, be it Jet, Katara, anyone who's met Zuko (either as Zuko or as Li) stumbles into the teashop, makes a scene and comes off as a bad guy because they bullied this little boy?

I think I've read just one fanfic where this was a thing and I need more people to adopt the idea.

I just think it'd be funny if Katara tried to do what Jet did (let's say this happened a few days prior to Azula capturing Ba Sing Se), left because she realized no one believed her, returned later with the rest of the Gaang, Sokka tried backing her claim, he ALSO gets reprimanded for making stuff up about a little boy, and meanwhile this is all happening Aang and Toph are having a delightful time with their new friend "Li." Should they do something? Maybe. Will they? Nah, anyways Li what tea would you recommend?

[haven-of-dusk]

I was rewatching RotS the other day, because I'm guilty of it being probably my favorite Star Wars movie, and one scene in particular struck me in a way I hadn't really thought about before.

Order 66 is already an incredibly tragic scene, with a fantastic score, that never fails to give me chills, but in this case I was particularly hit by the short sequence where Zett Jukassa is killed by the clones right in front of Bail Organa.

At first glance, it's just a fun way to do a cameo by George Lucas' son, and that's likely all it was intended as, without an additional thematic meaning. But the structure of the moment does say something about the Jedi that I think is important.

When Zett appears, he's clearly making a break for Bail's speeder, seeing it as a means of escaping the massacre and inferno inside the temple. Given his youth, it's entirely possible the lightsaber he's holding isn't even his, it might've been his master's, or just one he grabbed from a fallen Jedi to defend himself as he fled. But with the brutal efficiency of Order 66, he's probably seen a lot of people he knows and cares about slaughtered by the clones already, and is more than likely aware of the risks involved in engaging any clones in a fight.

Yet despite all of that, when the clones open fire, Zett's first instinct isn't to duck and hide in the speeder or get himself out of danger, it's to plant himself between Bail and the hail of gunfire and try to protect Bail. It's entirely possible Zett has no idea who Bail is, and at most he probably just knows him as a Senator and occassional visitor to the Temple, but it doesn't matter. When faced with danger his first instinct isn't to protect himself, it's the selfless instinct to protect others. And it cost him his life.

(I had a paragraph here talking about the plot of 'Padawan Lost' and its relation to this moment, but this post is long enough already so I might make a separate post about that).

The reason I find this moment so impactful is that it represents the type of 'light' Palpatine wanted to eradicate. Selfless good, protecting others and putting them before yourself, self-sacrifice, they're all values the Jedi represent, and they're all values Palpatine needs the galaxy to lose hold of if he wants his grip on power to remain.

It's a running theme throughout the OT, Andor, the Clone Wars, and more, that fighting FOR others gives people a strength they wouldn't otherwise have. Han chose to come back and help the rebels in A New Hope, Luke and Anakin defeated Palpatine because they were fighting for each other instead of for themselves, etc. Tyrants like Palpatine thrive when people distrust each other, when they're driven to look out solely for their own interests, because it keeps the people separated, oppressed, and severely lacking in morale.

Palpatine didn't just kill the Jedi, he symbolically slaughtered the galaxy's hope and selflessness, setting the perfect stage for his own power. And to take it even farther, he framed the Jedi as dangerous traitors. The symbols of good were, if one believed his words, revealed to be crafty villains who had fooled the Republic into trusting them just so they could gain power. He framed the Jedi as doing the very thing he did, so that he could be the galaxy's hope, putting a stop to the 'threat' and protecting the Republic. But if you can't trust the Jedi, who can you trust? Your neighbors? Your friends? Your senators? It's terrifying how Palpatine successfully generated the environment of fear and paranoia that would keep him in power while exterminating the organization representing everything that would ideologically undermine him.

And it's even more terrifying that some viewers of Star Wars have essentially bought Palpatine's lies and uncritically act as though the Jedi were some ultra-corrupt, morally reprehensible organization.

[cuntstable]

what happened to my weird dog why does he looks so fucked up THEY SHAVED HIS EYEBROWS………

[petrichormore]

I would love for skep4halo to be real but if I’m gonna be honest I think Bad is the only one among them who would be even remotely willing to share. I would love to be wrong tho. XD

[deadwooddross]

gonna go ahead and crack pandora’s wasp nest open here—how could naruto have been good/how would u have written it

*begins chewing at my restraints and rips the iron door of my containment unit off its hinges* okay so the SHORT version is that naruto should have ENDED ssssomewhere around the Pain arc, maybe throw in one more, could probably keep..tobi...if you just make it WAY less convoluted, but. like that's it that's the wrap up on the lesson of NINJAS ARE HUMAN WEAPONS IN THE ARSENAL OF ENDLESS WAR. You can get maybe ONE more amp up, but the actual story did like 40, because it's shonen. Also Naruto could have had at least a LITTLE thought put into how he was like. raised. there is so much retroactive storytelling in this manga but apparently naruto has just been living in an apartment off his government provided milk and ramen since he was an infant. Maybe make me give a shit about Sarutobi by having had him go and bottle feed the demon baby or SOMETHING. Is Jiraiya the deadbeat sending child support checks or something? It's extremely hard to have Naruto exist at all as he is the second you put any thought into his childhood- which is why GAARA EXISTS. THAT'S NARUTO WITH 6 SECONDS OF THOUGHT. GIVE THAT BOY A FRIEND TO EXPLAIN HOW HE'S SO PEPPY!! SOME SORT OF GUARDIAN FIGURE BEFORE HE'S 12, Iruka could Almost count if he didn't act like he barely knew the little guy. Teacher Watches Orphan Go To Empty Home While Sad Flute Song Plays and says: Fuck that little kid, cant stand him, oh shit wait the author realized he needs one (1) parental figure in order to not lose his mind okay here i c Anyway, besides all that. Well for one thing Sasuke is RIGHT. Fuck Konoha! And the Government! did you see what they did to his clan!!! That one dude fucking HARVESTED them!! So you have little renegade fuck the system baby, and "If I'm king president I can fix all the problems!" baby. Good end: Naruto goes damn maybe u right and we should make some steps to try and alter the cycle of war and death and genetic eyeball supremacy. Neji voice: yeah i taught you all about weird bloodline family shit, remember that?? Bad end: The Entire Rest Of Naruto and Boruto, And No One Learned Anything. Also, the retroactive addition of GODS and PROPHECY anD REINCARNATION and MORE BLOODLINE SUPER WIZARD POWERS is so. Lame, Boring, Snore. Giving naruto a special baby background DESTROYS the fact he's kind of a nobody! He's just some kid with ONE skill he worked really hard on and he uses it in order to hack his way into doing all the other stuff he wants to do!! His only boon is haaving a LOT of energy to burn and STUBBORNNESS!! Screams in ADHD child Haku, Gaara, the Akatsuki/Orochimaru, and Pain. Are all good. Those are the arcs that stay and every one of them has a PRETTY STRONG POINT point about what happens when you smash children into little nukes. Eats that with a spoon. (PS JIRAIYA WHAT THE FUCK WHY DID YOU LEAVE THOSE INFANTS IN A WAR Z) Oh also there's a lot to be said on how to rewrite uhhh literally Any of the women characters into relevancy because as they are rn they barely even count as such. But if i talk about that I would be here for the entire rest of the y- IMAGINE IF SAKURA'S FUCKING MEDICAL JUTSU MEANT ANYTHING!! WHAT IF SHE COULD HAVE BEEN USEFUL AGAINST KONAN BECAUSE SHE CAN SEE ALL HER NERVES IN HER HORRIFYING PAPER FLESH NO JUTSU, SOMETHING, ANYTHING, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA *i am dragged back into my cell*

[lab-gr0wn-lambs]

To be honest the dialogue in twd is absolute ass sometimes but the actors deliver their lines with so much conviction that it kinda slips by. You yell that convoluted sentence with your whole cunt, girl.

[hephaestuscrew]

I posted recently about how, when Minkowski tries to send Eiffel back to Earth on the Sol in the finale, she doesn't directly express her more personal emotional reasons for this decision (see this post for more detail). But the contrast to that is how Eiffel only gives personal reasons when pleading against her decision.

As he's desperately telling Minkowski not to send him back, Eiffel doesn't say that he wants to help fight against Cutter's plan (although I'm sure it's on his mind). He doesn't try to convince her that he can make an important contribution to that fight. He doesn't attempt to argue the importance of having as many people as possible trying to stop Pryce and Cutter.

Instead, he protests "Not without you!" when she says that he's going home. He tells her "I'm not leaving you behind!" In contrast to Minkowski saying that she wants "one of us... someone" to make it back, Eiffel doesn't shy away from addressing Minkowski directly. He says "you". It's not that he doesn't want to leave the Hephaestus or the crew behind in a vague general way; he makes it clear that he doesn't want to specifically leave Minkowski behind. His attempts to persuade Minkowski not to send him back are largely focused on his bond with her and his unwillingness to return to Earth without her (and the rest of the Hephaestus crew). Those are the most compelling reasons to him.

The only other argument he gives in trying to persuade Minkowski not to send him back is "you can't - you have no right!" This is less about his bond with Minkowski, and more about his own individual agency and his objection to Minkowski making this decision for him. But it's still ultimately a personal reason. None of Eiffel's voiced objections are about the big picture at all (unlike the explanation Minkowski gives to Hera, Lovelace and Jacobi afterwards for why she sent Eiffel back).

In that scene, both of them are acting from a personal emotional place of care for each other as individuals. But in terms of what they actually say, Eiffel expresses this kind of motivation much more directly than Minkowski. He admits to the specificity of it in a way Minkowski doesn't know how to. Eiffel appeals to Minkowski's personal individual motivations, which she hasn't really admitted to. His final plea is to call Minkowski by her first name for the first time.

[celestialtrolls]

*barely resisting urge to type that rennra has hacked his way into knowing nuclear launch codes*

[iniziare]

Tag drop: Jing Yuan (incomplete, but the rest will be added behind the scenes) (... and a little return of Yelan's aesthetic, for I've missed her desperately)

[thecodeveronica]

You know, I'm gonna justify my decision to replay Code Veronica again rather than any of the many games in my backlog by saying it's research for fic writing

[ardenssolis]

[Ozy admiring good-natured souls...-falls on my knees -- holds my head-]

[tedthetalk]

Antagonist exists as a lot of things, a shadow on the narrative, the rot in the foundation of the industry, someone to have done it first and give a path to follow — but the most visceral truth of him is the living bleeding proof of what mecha do to a person, and what happens when the iron control it forces on pilots on pain of death either snaps or is willingly tossed aside

[starburstgalexies]

today i finally counted aether's boyfriends for an exact number. he has fourteen so far, excluding fuckbuddies and hatefucks, those aren't boyfriends.

[c4rdsharp]

     meechi. i constantly think about the fact Firo & Luck took down an entire syndicate in one night, and that wasn’t even their original intent. no, they went to Mexico to go question some guys who stole money from their individual organizations ; the whole ‘stopping an enemy syndicate’ was basically like a whole side quest interrupting their main quest. absolutely hysterical to me.