#the west being the west i guess

[kvtnisseverdeen]

Where is the International protection the Palestinian people is entitled to when the occupying power violates international law and harms those it is obliged to protect. Aren't Palestinians lives worth saving?

-Riyad Mansour (Palestinian representative to the UN)

[bowandbrush]

I walked into Goodwill.

walked out with a pair of genuine Sai

[robo-dino-puppy]

*kiss*

[bleaksqueak]

While i work I've been listening to an LP of the Telltale Walking Dead Games (the ones with clementine, I do not care about the others lmao). Ages ago when I played these I was well aware/amused that part of season 2 takes place in Parker's Crossroads/Parker's Run because I grew up right next to it and the detail stood out to me. But I never caught the line of "We'll head to parker's run. It's just up the road from here" until just right now. So I had a sort of "wait, where the fuck are they supposed to be right now?" (search)

ARE YOU SHITTING ME LMAO So by process of elimination, since it's the only city with anything even remotely resembling a large home supply store, that would mean they're in my literal hometown. My tiny hometown in the middle of nowhere that's never in anything that barely anyone knows of. How in the fuck lmao

[capr1x2]

we sweeped but at what cost

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

Hi, im researching for a fic im writing, and i want to ask if you know whats up with Jai's messed up connection to the speedforce? and also how the fuck do they use the speedforce to get super strength? how does going fast translate into being strong? Do you know what issues to read to learn more about this? like why do Jai (& Jesse?) have super strength, how did they do this? Why did they do this?

So Jesse's strength is a very quick and easy answer so I'll address that first before jumping into Jai's whole thing.

Jesse's mom is Liberty Belle, a hero with super strength. Jesse inherited her father's speed and her mother's super strength. She's just... I don't want to say that she's better at being a speedster but high key she is. Jesse only figured out her super strength recently and it's still pretty touch and go. She used to only have the speed and then that fizzled out and she only had the strength for a bit and then it switched back to just speed again. She seems to have both powers now though and she seems to know how to use them both so fingers crossed 🤞

Jai is a whole different ballgame.

So Irey and Jai were born as fraternal twins. There were two things wrong when they were born.

A) Only Irey was born with a speedforce connection. Jai technically wasn't born with powers at all. Irey had wrapped her speedforce connection around Jai to share her powers but it was significantly damaging to both of them.

and

B) Their shared speedforce connection was tainted with Black Flash energy. (Negative Speedforce)

So let's talk about the Negative Speedforce energy. This is the stuff that turns speedsters into Black Flashes. This is what permanently killed Johnny Quick. One touch of this stuff will obliterate a speedster entirely. It's one of the only ways to permanently kill a speedster because it corrupts their speedforce energy in a way that cannot be undone. So there isn't anything left to bring back.

And this stuff was creeping through the twin's shared connection like a virus. That's what caused their fatal aging disease. Their speedforce connection was so out of wack and their bodies didn't know how to fight off this energy and their metabolisms went into overdrive. Aged them both to 100 within six months. Thankfully Wally figured it out and was able to absorb the Negative Speedforce energy. This cured the twins and deaging them down to five ish (but caused some serious problems for Wally).

Okay so back to point A. Their shared speedforce connection. Irey was sharing her powers with Jai subconsciously and that's why she couldn't run. She didn't have enough energy to. She could only vibrate through stuff. Jai also didn't have enough energy to run but he had other serious issues because he wasn't a speedster like Irey. His body wasn't built to handle that much energy.

As a result Jai had some weird stuff going on. Jai's main power was to hyper accelerate the growth of his muscles. This would give him temporary super strength. I say 'super strength' but realistically Jai on par with extreme weight lifters. He wasn't Superman levels of strong. But, again, Jai's body couldn't handle this so everytime he used his power he had about five minutes until he passed out. Then someone would have to feed him or he'd go into shock.

He also had some other strange things. Like his DNA mutating and devolving when he got stressed. Basically his DNA went 'back in time' and Jai shape shifted a bit. This wasn't something he could control and it was very very very bad.

Irey eventually took her half of the speedforce connection back, which cemented her connection and stopped them both from having seizures. Jai was not happy about no longer having powers. Even less happy about Irey being a child prodigy speedster. Although Irey shared her powers with Jai in emergencies (which gave them both superspeed because Irey had a stronger connection and more skill as she grew older), they couldn't do this without Jai being in extreme pain. Also his seizures coming back.

Now we need to talk about the speedforce surge. The speedforce surge is this insane amount of wild speedforce energy that has to go somewhere or it'll explode the world. It's an overload of energy. To explain the scale of this thing, it caused the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Wally tracked this dangerous surge down before it destroyed reality and he absorbed it until he could figure out what to do with it.

And...

Well he gave it to Jai.

Jai's speedforce connection is the surge. Jai operates on this untamable wild speedforce energy. So Jai now has A LOT of energy to work with but it doesn't really work the same way typical speedforce energy does. That's why he can't run. (yet at least. can't run yet)

Instead, the surge energy ramps up Jai's friction barrier, healing factor and his metabolism. That doesn't sound like much but hoLY FUCK it's op.

Every speedster has a friction barrier that they generate when they run. It stops their skin from melting off when they reach top speeds, the wind from tearing their bodies apart, bugs from hitting them with the force of bullets, their bones from shattering every time they take a step, ect, ect. Their friction barriers can only do so much (they act as a cushion, they don't make them invulnerable. They won't stop a bullet for example) and they only really work when the speedster is actively running.

Jai put all of his goddamn energy into his friction barrier. The child is literally invulnerable. I'm not even joking. And it's constant too, it doesn't switch off.

Jai's metabolism and his healing factor are why he has super strength. Simply put, Jai has a lot of energy. A LOT. And what doesn't go to his friction barrier, goes to his cells. His healing factor is also amped up and would take care of any muscle tears, fatigue, lactic acid build up, dead cells, ect almost instantaneously. What I'm saying here is that Jai's body is in perfect condition always and he has an unlimited amount of energy for his muscles to use.

Jai has super strength because he doesn't have limits. Jai turned Minecraft from Survival Mode to Creative Mode. He can extend any amount of force without any negative consequences on his body. He uses his strength to do his Thunder clap move which is canonically, at 8 years old, stronger than a Kryptonian's Thunder clap. It's confirmed that Jai is still figuring out how to channel the surge energy correctly, so he's not there yet, but one day he will be stronger than the Kryptonians.

Which is insane.

Honestly Wally is the embodiment of 'I will do anything for my children' because Jai was sad about not having powers so Wally gave him a dangerously unstable energy source (that's killed millions of people) that has the equivalent energy of two stars colliding. AT EIGHT. Wally gave a CHILD this unlimited unchecked power!!

Anyway, father of the goddamn year. I love that man. He would truly do anything for his children and now I'm pretty sure his son can't die so 10/10 decision.

[autismserenity]

Palestinians to platform, part 1

مؤمن الناطور / Moumen Al-Natour

@MoumALnatour

رئيس الشباب الفلسطيني للتنمية / President of Palestinian Youth for Development

Moumen Al-Natour is amazing. Not only does he run a Palestinian youth organization that is doing great work in Gaza, but he's also one of the organizers of the 2019 anti-Hamas protests.

Even to criticize Hamas, in Gaza, means to be interrogated, and potentially jailed, tortured, and/or killed. To actively protest Hamas is many times more dangerous.

To have survived that work and continued doing it? I cannot imagine the emotional strength this dude has.

Here's what Center for Peace Communications (another great organization) has said about him:

So many Palestinians, in or from Palestine, are out there talking about what everyday life in Gaza is like. About Hamas, about Israel, about what they want and what they need, about their struggles and their interests and their families.

My goal, in finding people for you to follow and platform, is to help more voices get out of Gaza after years of suppression, and to help more outsiders (like me) connect with them.

People care SO MUCH about Palestine. But frequently, all there is to share is outrage, semi-accurate news, and more outrage. Frequently, we're not calling for the same things they are. We call for a ceasefire; they demand Hamas return the hostages and surrender. We call for Israel to let aid in; they say Israel is letting the aid in, but it's being stolen, and call for air drops rather than trucks. We call for Israel to stop fighting; they say they hope Israel takes Hamas out first.

We aren't centering their voices and experiences. We aren't lending our reach and our strength to their demands.

I want to make that possible.

Ala Mushtaha, the son of this imam, evidently said, “On Saturday December 30, our front door was busted down and twenty masked men barged in and took my father, a widely respected and deeply learned imam here in Gaza."

“One dragged him by his head and another grabbed him by his beard. My younger brother tried to intervene and reason with the kidnappers, but they beat him. I have a medical condition that makes it hard for me to breathe, so all I could do was watch as the horror unfolded.

“He wouldn’t preach what Hamas told him to. He refused to tell Gazans that violent resistance and obedience to Hamas, is the best way out of our current hell.”

ok this dude needs his own post honestly, he goes on to say so much intense stuff about their lives.

OMG his dad was actually released!

This is what I'm talking about. This is effective activism. Imagine what all these people could do if they had the entire global pro-Palestinian movement behind them.

Al-Natour posts a fair amount of political commentary.

The "we want to live" hashtag is a callback to the amazing "We Want To Live" protests he co-organized against Hamas, in Gaza in 2019, and again in the summer of 2023. Activist Hamida Howidzy (who will also be getting a separate post) wrote about them in Newsweek recently.

Some things he posts in Arabic and then in English. Some of his posts are in Arabic only. In the thread above, he actually posted a couple more that were just in Arabic, presumably aimed at Arabic-language comments.

What I like about Twitter is that you can whack the "translate post" button and get a pretty decent translation most of the time.

Translation:

"I saw all the responses... What is wrong and forbidden in reuniting the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem through elections in which the people choose who will represent them??!?? Why are all the responses offensive...a collaborator, a traitor, and contain insults that indicate that whoever wrote them needs restructuring?! What prevents us, after ending the war, from returning our choice and choice to the Palestinian people?!+

"Everyone wrote that I opened??!! how did you know???!! Stopping the war is the most important thing now... Whoever sees the condition of the people and feels all this is easy for him does not have humanity, and is not a human being... Whoever, after the destruction of more than 80% of Gaza and the North, and still writing in a way that wants the war to continue while he lives abroad, should reconsider. He accepted to live the same suffering!++"

Note: I copied the "I opened" bit and threw it into Google Translate separately, because that cannot be right. It still insisted that it meant "I opened".... but it gave me the transliterated words, "ani fatah."

Everyone wrote that he's Fatah -- the party that runs the West Bank, the one Hamas violently kicked out of Gaza in 2007-08.

"The end of my speech... I know... whoever is not with you is a traitor and an agent... shameful... by God, by God, by God... there will be an account[ing] for all of this talk... so that you understand the word agent... and the account will be through a government of law... It is clear that there are many who benefit from the poverty and destruction of Gaza, and they must be held accountable according to the law.

"Have mercy on people with your tongues"

The comment on that one is noteworthy:

"Yes, whoever is not with the resistance is indeed a traitor, and those who must be held accountable are the traitors, agents, hypocrites, liars, and racists who slander the resistance and who want to hold it accountable only because it fights the enemy of humanity and defends truth and the oppressed. If you want to apply the law, apply it to yourselves first."

It highlights how much of what we hear in the West is Hamas propaganda. That's a whole other post too. But Hamas claims to be "the resistance," to "defend truth and the oppressed," while arresting people who refuse to preach its propaganda. While jailing and torturing someone 20 times for organizing a protest.

Which are the exact tactics that make it so easy for their propaganda to reach us . And so hard for us to even know that there has been an entire protest movement against Hamas in Gaza, much less to support its activists.

I'll just cut and paste the translations from his most recent thread, above. All emphasis is mine:

"When demonstrations took place in Israel demanding that Netanyahu stop the war and free the hostages, Al Jazeera and Hamas considered it a victory and an achievement, and that the Israeli government was under pressure. But what is striking is that these demonstrations were not suppressed. They were secured. The hostage issue and public pressure were dealt with professionally.

"The demonstrations that took place in Gaza demanding an end to the war and the return of the displaced...they were classified as suspicious [by Al Jazeera etc] ...even though the displaced Israeli lives in a 5-star hotel and has the privileges of the displaced, and when the Palestinian displaced in Gaza receives help, he needs a mediator, and if he wants a tent, he needs leadership intervention, and if he does not have the mediator And the intervention wants to scratch his pocket..+++

"Why did Israel allow demonstrations and look pressured, always trying to contain everything... while we have a displaced person lost, homeless, and no one is trying to contain him, and when he talks, they call him a fifth column???"

Last month, he posted about pregnancy in wartime. Note the cost of the tent later in this thread! Numerous Palestinians have posted about humanitarian aid getting stolen -- by Hamas, by NGOs, by others -- and sold on the black market. Food and tents especially get mentioned a lot. Everyone mentions the tents are being sold for more than (the equivalent of) $700, even though they were supposed to be free.

I'll leave you with this one for now:

You can read all the posts in this series in my "platform gaza" tag.

[roominthecastle]

Siegfried + (volume (issues))

“Siegfried's bark really is worse than his bite. Underneath it all, he's a good man. Stand up to him. He'll love you for it.”

bonus:

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

ok see when i say luz and hunter are siblings i don't just mean like they hang out and make fun of each other sometimes. i also dont just mean they have parent-child connections with the same adults making them "found family siblings technically" or however people describe it. they can do that sometimes but what i mean is that they are blood brothers (east asian concept)

[the-monkey-ruler]

What are Bailong Ma's siblings called in JTTW?

We have Bailong's brother's name in the book Ao Muang. He was the one to come help with the Tuolong Black River God who was Bailong and Muang's cousin, son of the dragon that was beheaded at the start of the novel and going through his 'rebel' phase for not having a father figure is his life despite being taken under the wing of

We sadly do not know Bailong's second brother's name. Which is a shame as Bailong also doesn't get an official name either. Personal headcanon that the Second Prince is named Ao Xue, which is another name that Bailong's was given in the series Westward, while the Third Prince gets the name Ao Lie.

He also has a sister as well! Ao Cinxin though I'm sure if she is older or younger as they never give an age.

So it goes

Ao Run - Dad

Ao Cinxin - First Princess

Ao Muang - First Prince

Nameless (Ao Xue) - Second Prince

Bailong (Ao Lie) - Third Prince

[six-another-timeline]

someone accidentally leaked that gabriella's second covers are cleves/howard oops

which means naomi is 2nd cover parr and 3rd cover howard, hannah is 2nd cover boleyn and 3rd cover cleves, and gabriella is 3rd cover boleyn/parr. all we're missing now is the cover order for aragon and seymour

[haunthouse]

there is absolutely zero actual reason for me to believe this but something deep in my gut tells me that i'm going to get to seattle and bounce off of it like when you try to put two magnets together the wrong way. like i feel on a spiritual level that i'm going to be allergic to seattle or seattle is going to be allergic to me. maybe it's just because the west coast scares me

[andthebeanstalk]

My gender is whatever the Monkey King has going on; my gender is trickster spirit that would make an excellent anime protagonist

[cto10121]

West Side Story: So the Jets get three songs plus a ~Here Come the Racists(tm) motif, the Sharks get one, and our side characters Tony and Maria have at least one character solo each. Oh, and two duets I guess lol whatever

Roméo et Juliette: CHARACTER SOLOS AND ENSEMBLE PIECES E V E R Y W H E R E WE MEAN IT!!!! Also R&J get at least two character solos and SIX duets including one with the Friar!!! Why? Because shut the fuck up, that’s why #R&Jrights #Toloveisthemostbeautifulthing

[eric-the-bmo]

Hey guys isn't it super awkward when you accidentally call your boss (and adoptive sire) your Dad

[rapgamelilybart]

at phantom tonight and, per the cast board, colleen is on!