#yeah i don't like the military as a concept and i do not like war

[cardiac-arresting-sweetheart]

people are often so ungrateful

especially people my age like teenagers... at least i think i notice that more often. wish it were more important to people to be grateful. and respectful as well. it's not that hard...

/nbh

[qqueenofhades]

Do you think we romanticize the concept of revolution (especially violent revolution) out of some weird offshoot of our tendency to romanticize and propagandize war/the military?

Like, we treat war/the military as a good thing, so when we turn against it, we basically just apply the REVOLUTION coat of paint over the "military is great and just" framework? or something?

There are a few reasons. First, America itself is totally beholden to the idea of the Glorious Populist Revolution that overthrows the tyrants and brings Freedom (TM), thanks to the American revolution. That is why the right wing has spent endless time cosplaying "1776" and "Founding Fathers" and all the other cosmetic trappings that they put on their fascism project, and keep threatening to have a "new revolution" or a "new civil war" if Trump isn't immediately reinstated to the presidency for life. Because they are steeped in the paradigm of "messianic militarism," which has a long and inglorious history in the West and is based in Christian imperialism and colonialism, they just think that The Right Kind of Violence will overthrow the Evil Oppressors and everything will then be glorious! Of course, this has been a recurrent theme in human history and it has never, ever worked.

Because the so-called progressive left often takes deeply theocratic and fascist/conservative concepts and then just changes the wording/rationale/costume dressing, they have therefore become attached to the idea of "guillotining" all the oppressors (like the French revolution, which famously worked out fine and was definitely not followed by the Terror and did not at all end with the country lapsing back into absolute imperialism under Napoleon barely a decade later!), like we can just kill all the right people and then the world will be fine! Which uh. Yeah, that's a hard no from me. I dream as fondly of Elon Musk getting into a Tesla and suddenly blowing up as anyone, but I don't subscribe to the repurposed genocidal fantasy that "killing everyone is right when My People do it!," and I don't think that this would remotely result in a better world the end, because again: Historian talking here. It literally never, ever has. There are no magic shortcuts to making things better. It only happens by doing the work and not fantasizing about how much easier it would be if all the bad things abruptly disappeared in a splendid shower of blood and gore. Because a) that's not gonna happen and b) we don't fucking want it to! What is wrong with you?! Do you think only the Deserving Sinners will die in your Progressive Rapture and everyone else will be fine??? Because! Yeah! NO!!!

[thepaintedsable]

Sketchbook page, but this time I think I've found a thing I like. That's Not My Neighbor OC and a few extra worldbuilding concepts for them + a little sketchbook Journaling to commemorate the northern lights being pushed down across the entire US!

Talking headcannons/fun concept stuff and closeups under the cut:

Have I played TNMN? No. Do I think I'd even like playing TNMN? Probably not for more than a few minutes or when I need a repetitive task to procrastinate or something. Not a fault of the game, just not my style haha. Does the concept of postwar/Cold War era monster horror intrigue me to no end? Hell yeah.

I'm not too into history, really, but I don't think people are digging into that fact enough. It is Febuary of 1955. Nineteen. Fifty-five. The Second World War was only a decade ago, the second red scare and McCarthyism is still on fire in the states, the US-soviet arms race is in full force, the Cold War is still weighing heavy on citizens minds, and a lot more stuff I’m not educated enough to remember!!! But what's this? There's non-human creatures of unknown origins preying upon citizens, often attempting to take the form of a human being but failing and producing horrible, mangled excuses for the human form as a result? To the point where we have a whole new protective service to deal with their capture and new jobs formed to watch communal living facilities?

Are apparement complexes more or less popular, considering the risks of living without a doorman and those of living in a highly populated area? Is the arms race contributing to more weapons being created for the common citizen, for the DDD? How does this change the political situation, the rumors, the drama? Gosh, the world must be on fire in that regard!

Why, the draft is in very recent memory. Why wouldn't they employ it to instate their doormen? I mean, not many would want to be face to face with a traumatizing, intelligent monster, even behind glass.

Meet Doorman #365, an unfortunate fellow drafted to be locked in the building, forced to wear a gas mask used in the last great war, and entrusted with a dozen human lives!!! Yay! He's been nicknamed "Leroy" by his residents, to give him a more... human touch. Really, they find the masks and military nature of this new batch of doormen to be highly unsettling, but it must be for their own good, right? I mean, just look what happend to the old doormen who didnt have these safety measures, the old tenants...

Drafted and unhappy about it, he is basically on house arrest within the building, and what used to be just an office space and surprisingly large janitors closet is now officially his apartment. Whenever out of the enclosed parts of his room, he is expected to be in full uniform, mask included. He is currently one of two Doormen stationed at his building, the senior of the pair. Neither knows what the other actually looks like. Doormen are escorted by DDD to new complexes and should not be allowed to enter otherwise.

The masks were found to confuse some of the less intelligent doppelgangers, producing much more obvious yet twisted forms as they attempted to replicate what they believed to be extra or less eyes (glass visors), intestines (breathing tubes), etc. at the residences that employed them. It swiftly became policy. With some tweaks, the old gas masks of the war could also mask voices as well. To avoid further issues of doormen being copied, doormen were bid to stay indoors and stay covered at all times. Being extremely unpopular job, a draft was set.

Doormen must appear friendly, though! So styling and care of uniform also became extremely important. This is mostly up to the doorman (to increase morale, of course!) so each uniform, and therefore each building, will have its own personality :) DDD graciously supplies all uniform pieces, room decorations, and weekly rations for their Doormen, selected from the catalog! Residents are encouraged to increase connection to their doormen, though, so home-cooked meals and outside trinkets are not uncommon.

Leroy is not... enthused about this job. Hes not even allowed to use his actual name outside of his coworker, and he thinks he might be going a little stir crazy at this point. He certainly wouldn't have chosen this position for himself, but his birthday was picked, so what can he do? Desert? And be hunted down like a doppelganger? Hell no. At least he gets to sit behind some hopefully bulletproof glass and surely reinforced walls all day. His residents aren't too bad (he thinks some try too hard at not seeming suspicious, though), his coworker is... undecided, and even though the doppelgangers are, well, scary they haven't been too clever at his location. He often gets handed newspaper clippings or used wrappers instead of the entry forms and IDs. They're getting smarter, just very slowly. He hopes he isn't around when they wise up.

I really enjoy thinking about all this lol.

[highfantasy-soul]

Moments I loved from NATLA Episode 4 - Into the Dark ❤️️❤️️

Aang and Iroh interacting more - love that they're not friendly to each other, per se, but it builds a foundation that makes their later respect make sense

The Earth Kingdom being harsh with their 'fallen foes' is nice to seed in here as in the animated version (season 1), most of the 'bad' stuff was relegated solely to the Fire Nation

The Earth Kingdom is no pushover and it's nice to see that early

Sokka defending his dad "My dad would have never done what you did" even after he commiserated with the Mechanist about his dad 'not valuing' what Sokka could bring to the table.

Though Sokka is frustrated that his dad doesn't see "him", he knows his dad is an honorable man doing his best and when Sai tries to use him as an example of 'doing the wrong thing just to survive', love that Sokka calls him on it

SECRET TUNNEEELLLL!!!

Like them introducing this now - all old buildings have secret passages - it's just a law

Teo's "its time to fight!" attitude - love it. He's so ready to stop cowering and wants to hit back

Flopsy statues!!!!!

Rolly ball throne? Nice touch

"Bumi? BUMI!!" :D

"You did 🤨" Love how Aang keeps his "I'm just gonna say the truth and I don't care if that's 'not allowed' I'm gonna do it anyways because your social rules are stupid" attitude

Katara's water pouch!!

Love the shake in Jet's voice as he tells Katara "I am nothing like the firebenders"

Katara's assessment is shallow on her part, but the core has a ring of truth - no, freedom fighters aren't the same as their oppressors, but when you start harming your own people to hurt the enemy, then you really have lost sight of what's right and wrong - why you're fighting.

FREEZE JET'S ASS!

I love Jet, especially this version of him, but yeah, no touchy

And Katara is absolutely right: Jet might have helped her through her block, but her power, that's all hers.

What are you going to do, Zuko?? What choice will you make!!??

Love that we're getting this choice of his here in Omashu

Bumi's puns 😭 kill me now - though very canon accurate

Like the vibe that everyone just has to laugh as to not anger him - there's less of a whimsical madness vibe to Bumi here and a more serious - yeah, this guy is our leader vibe that's quite unsettling

The tonal shift with Bumi did give me pause, but I like how the writers kept the jokes, the games, his eccentricities, but shifted the vibe to make them darker

In the cartoon, whimsy might work, but if you think about it realistically, that leadership style would NOT work during a war - a 100 year war, at that.

HIPPIIEESSSS!!!!

Sokka getting into that maraca - you let your little musical heart fly

"What are you doing here?" "We're doin' what we're doin'" :)

Oma and Shu lesbian supremacy!!!

Always get chills when this story is told

Lol Sokka's "There's no such thing as angry spirits." Right before the episode where they're kidnapped by an angry spirit XD

Love the switch up of the rocks not really being the path out - keeping us animated show fans on our toes as to what the lesson will be this time

Everything about the Earth Kingdom soldier's interaction with Iroh - all of it is just so good.

The cartoon glossed over Iroh's warmongering past - but he did do terrible things that hurt so many people. No, 'it was war, I was a soldier' is not an acceptable excuse (we didn’t accept it with Jet, so why the double standard for a ROYAL MILITARY GENERAL??)

The funeral scene

Leaves from the Vine

Zuko offering a soft and kind memory of Liu Ten instead of just talk about him being a soldier

Zuko sitting next to Iroh so he won't be alone!!!!!!!!!

The conversation between Katara and Sokka in the cave where she talks about how Jet helped her and Sokka how Sai helped him - then Katara reminding Sokka that when he was forced into a leadership position for the Southern Water Tribe, he didn't have anyone to help him through that

The concept of us all needing people to help us through our journeys is so important and really comes around at the end of the episode and just through the entire series

BADGERMOOOLLLEEE!!!!

Is it bad that all I could think about was how cute it was the entire time it was on screen?

Dallas Liu is so. Freaking. Good. At. His. Stunts!!!!

And the first mention of the theme Zuko struggles with of compassion being weakness!

Sokka's little 'thanks!' as Katara saves him from the badgermole XD

Seriously, all the little touches in Ian Ousley's performance are great

Idk why Sokka assumed the badgermole was a man, that's clearly a dignified lady

The power of sibling love guiding the badgermole was a great alteration from the OG - if they can be controlled through music, they can definitely respond to emotions

Bumi's whole speech here - and his willingness to get crushed - is what brought me around on this portrayal of him

He's right: it's a game where you have to make impossible choices - you have to fight even when you don't want to (a much more poignant message for Aang than 'look at things a different way')

The power of friendship saves the day!!!

"You CAN rely on your friends - and that's the only way I'm going to save the world: with my friends"

"You think like a child" (derogatory) "Is that really so bad?" (genuine)

Bumi made Appa's whistle!!! 😭😭😭😭

One last time Zuko chooses protecting his uncle over capturing the Avatar 🥲

"Everything I need is right here on this boat" 😭😭😭

[Masterlist of my NATLA thoughts]

[utilitycaster]

the thing is, the accounts on cr twitter who have these wild takes aren't even shippers

they're all about nuance about the gods, aeor, ludinus, ruby vanguard.....but then have these extreme views about orym, say he's got bloodlust and pretty much equate him to a cop/military soldier

Hey anon! So I will admit as I have in the past that I largely avoid CR Twitter because I hate Twitter as a platform and the community of CR Twitter specifically (more below) but I will say the tweets I have seen have largely been from people who are, if not the most rabid of shippers, shippers. I did in fact just go there and click on "Orym" as it was trending, and the tweets to this effect are largely from people with black and purple hearts in their names. I don't think they're necessarily conscious that this is the reason why they try so hard to discredit Liam's characters (and I think the desire for Laudna to be a Traumatized Innocent rather than a person who has done her own share of harm is an even larger factor) but I do think it is part of it.

I should note: a significant point of reference for me is that the person who famously said "do not uwuify this" re Orym post episode 63 is Wally Wests on Twitter. Look, I know I use the word "stupid" a lot, and I'm trying to reduce it not because I think it's a problem to use but because it reduces the impact and also heavily implying people are stupid without outright saying it tends to be more effective on every level but god this person is the dumbest motherfucker in the fandom and I'm not even kidding. Like, they're the "Australian white person who writes like Rupi Kaur but worse" I've referenced. Because of The Algorithm they are weirdly popular in that space and it baffles me because I honestly don't understand why every single thing they say isn't just filled with replies saying "are you fucking stupid." Like I physically cannot understand how you can have a brain and read a single word they say and go "this is a person I should listen to." They are also not a big shipper, but they do like the ship from what I understand. Specifically on Tumblr, the people echoing this nonsense are pretty much shippers.

With that said yeah, I do think it's worth addressing the soldier aspect. First off, if we're talking cops, why is Bryce, pleasant but forgettable minor NPC, inexplicably popular in this fandom despite them being an actual crownsguard of an actual authoritarian government. Like are all fictional cops bastards or no (fwiw my opinion is no, because the context of the world in which they exist is extremely important; I'm just pointing out the inconsistencies)? But also...I've run into this with Worlds Beyond Number too, and it actually came up on the Fireside chat, but there are words people hear (empire, religion, soldier) and automatically go "BAD BAD BAD" and don't spend any time thinking about how we've come to these conclusions. And for what it's worth I think Empire is always ultimately going to be bad because of its source in conquest; religion is neutral with the potential to harm or hurt; and soldier is deeply contextual and inherently gray; but all are very valid things to explore in fiction, where the war crimes and abuses aren't real. I remember seeing a take about Candela Obscura shitting on how half the party is former soldiers, and like...the messaging of this season of Candela is undeniably about the immense psychological damage of war, and the soldiers were defending their home against a colonizing force rather than doing any sort of invading, but some people are so high on a paper-thin unexamined concept of what I presume they tell themselves is leftism that they cannot see that. Orym's husband did not die trying to invade a nation for their oil. He died because people trying to unleash a horror ran an attack on their town as a practice run. Orym's experience as a soldier has always been one of defense, never conquest or destruction, and that is important to understand. It doesn't mean that in the future Zephrah couldn't become an oppressive power (and various worldbuilding in Exandria does explore the idea of small community watches or protective guards growing deeply corrupt or expansionist over time, but god knows the people saying this shit have the lore knowledge of a dead pigeon), but the aspects of being a soldier he is engaging with are those of personal sacrifice and protecting one's own, not killing for resources or ideology (which, let's be real, is usually an excuse to take the resources of those you disagree with).

[boxingcleverrr]

I feel like more people need to understand what your average boomer conservative voter is actually like?

My mom and dad are 75 and 72, respectively. Both white, dad grew up poor, mom low-middle, didn't become upper middle class until my teens.

My parents are incredibly nice people. They'll accept anyone at face value, help anyone who asks, etc. They're Christian, and call themselves conservative, but believe in personal liberties, cause Murica. They think consenting adults should be allowed to marry any other consenting adult they want, practice any religion they want, do whatever they want to their bodies (with one big caveat). They've got a lot still to learn about institutionalized racism before I'd call them anti-racist, but they're certainly anti-racism, and raised us to never put up with racism if we saw it. They support common sense gun reform, even as far as saying "Oh, that could work here" when I explained Australia's gun laws. They're even favorable to the idea UBI.

They're super supportive of my lesbian aunt running for governor of California, and vacation with her and her wife once a year. They don't really understand what being nonbinary means yet, but they grasp the concept of respecting and believing someone when they tell you who they are and have been getting their grandkids' pronouns right!

All in all, knowing that 30 years ago they were in an evangelical cult, they're good people who have good core values, have come around from a lot of bad thinking, and can still learn, if at a glacial pace.

They're still gonna vote Red.

Probably not for Trump. But still.

Because their two big issues overshadow all others: They're anti-choice, and pro-militarism.

You can't even START a WHISPER of a conversation with my mom about reproductive rights: it's all murder, the end. We all know why - she regrets the abortion she was pressured into having as a young woman, firmly believes all women do, and that trauma shell is waaaaay too thick to crack. It would involve facing things she just can't, that's a whole other post. But yeah, no, that is one issue I do not see changing before she dies.

The militarism is easier to explain, they're cold war kids who think if the military lost even $50 today we'd all be speaking Russian by Monday.

And this whole post, I'm sure, describes MILLIONS of Republican voters. They're not all Trump-worshipping assholes who would like you dead.

My mother didn't even know who Marjorie Taylor Greene was, when I mentioned her in passing. Later that day she was like, "Oh wow I looked her up, she's annoying huh?" They BARELY watch the news, aside from big updates on Gaza and the local nightly news.

But they NEVER miss an election. Because they gotta keep the baby murdering down, and America big and strong, with the most bombs. They don't let themselves think deeply about who voting that way hurts, because they're not looking.

Just...please vote. Like that one post says, if you can't bring yourself to vote for the president, PLEASE fill the rest of that ballot with the people local to you who will be making a difference IMMEDIATELY. DO MORE THAN VOTE. But vote. Cause these very nice people who break my heart, and countless like them, definitely will.

[fantasyinvader]

Houses is a morally broken game. I know this is not a recognized term, but it's the only way I can articulate just what is wrong with the English translation.

Flower has this undertone that Edelgard knows more than she's telling you while she's lying and manipulating others for the sake of her war. It's worrying, especially since it also means that there's more to the story than the player realizes. And, yeah, the other routes reveal much that you're left with the fact that you went around fighting and killing the heroes of the other routes while working alongside unambiguous villains. Then you get to the end of the route...

Byleth loses their powers, powers tied to the concept of Heaven's Mandate with Byleth's Sword being titled The Sword of the Emperor of Heaven. If you S support Edelgard, she just drops that her path has been one of hadou, the type of ruler that the Mandate speaks out against. You also get that Edelgard empowers herself with her reforms, centralizing power on herself in order to impose her will and create a world where people don't rely on others. You know, the complete opposite of that speech she gave when she split Rhea's head open. Then there's details in the endings about what her rule actually is like, Hubert (population being spyed on and those deemed as “threats” put down) and Caspar's (indicating that Edelgard began ordering the Imperial Army to march on other nations, where they are said to be“often out of control,” horrifying and undercutting the idea of Caspar's merit) being the most concerning.

At the end of the day, it seems pretty well accepted in Japan that Flower is a villain route. Hell, Cipher used Silver Snow for it's Black Eagles set and linked the route to the second half of Genealogy of the Holy War. They understand that Edelgard can not be trusted. That version of the game is morally sound. You can play as a villain, but the game does enough to let most people know it's not a good ending.

But we all know that there were changes in the translation. That they tried to tone down or obscure the fact Edelgard is the bad guy, scrapping the game's symbolism and making me question whether the translators even understand what moral behaviour actually is. That last one is why I say it's morally broken rather than having broken aesops. That the translation is trying to make the game “morally grey” with all routes being heroic in their own way.

So while Claude realizes he was wrong about things in Fodlan as he learns more, it's just as good that Edelgard ignores information and continues on with her path. Claude opening up to the Deer and explaining what he's trying to do while they expose the truth is on the same level with Edelgard actively lying to, withholding information from, and manipulating her allies. Dimitri looking out for the poor while making sure that the commoners get a voice in politics is the same as Edelgard taking away anything the poor may rely on so that they are forced to rely on themselves all while only giving power to those she deems as having merit. Her “free and independent” Fodlan involves the people being spied on by Hubert and anyone deemed a threat being dealt with, but it's really Rhea that's supposed to be the tyrant. That Caspar having a successful career as head of a military that is only “sometimes reckless” whenever it marches off somewhere to do who knows what is the same as Claude and Dimitri working towards positive relations with their neighbours, or Edelgard putting the Church under Imperial control is okay just like the Church remaining as an independent ally to Byleth or Dimitri.

Edelgard is meant to be the antithesis of three routes that thematically compliment and support each other, yet for some reason instead the translation tries to prop her up even on other routes. My favorite example of this is Ferdinand, someone who views Edelgard as running amok when he's fighting her and whose paralogue is taken away if he joins her. He talks a big deal about the duties of a noble, how they must protect their people and keep their ruler from going to far like Edelgard does. Yet when he fights Hubert, where the Japanese made him say that Edelgard needs to be removed from power even at the cost of his own life, they instead make him out to be pitiful as he's just following his orders rather than thinking.

And this is all based on the idea that Edelgard's ends justify the means she used to bring them about. Her hiring an assassin with orders to kill her classmates? It's okay because it led to a happy ending. Aiding TWSITD in their experiments alongside lending out a man whose mental illness she's weaponized? It leads to a happy ending. Her manipulating others is hand-waved.

That's not even touching that her ends were altered, meaning that her original ends did not justify the means. Edelgard starts a war to force her ideals on the people, to make people not rely on others in order to make them “strong”, yet she supposedly drops those ideals during Flower meaning that all of these actions were done in the name of beliefs she abandoned after she had already went around conquering Fodlan and killing those who wouldn't bend the knee but it's supposed to be okay because now the people are “free” under the reign of a hegemon.

...Do the translators even understand what a hegemon actually is? This would also mean that the translators did understand that Edelgard's ending was bad, resulting in them trying to change it. Did they just not understand someone doing horrific things and manipulating those around her for such an end was supposed to tell us? They managed to translate hadou as “military rule” in Verdant Wind, and as I said before Edelgard herself identifies her rule as hadou in her S support. They would have realized that Edelgard admitted to being a despot, but instead they changed it to “I have walked this path all by myself...”

Do they really think that Flower has a good message? Especially in light of global events following the game's release? The fact the end product is what they consider "morally grey" is concerning to say the lest.

[radiosummons]

I don't think Obi-Wan would ever have become a Sith. Literally, one of the biggest points about him as a character is that despite all the bullshit and absolute insanity he goes through, he never gives in to the Dark Side.

BUT--

A part of me can't help but wonder what would have happened if Obi-Wan--for whatever absolutely character breaking reason--took Dooku up on his offer and joined the Sith/Separatist, how differently things would have gone down in the Clone Wars.

Because from where I'm standing, we all already know that Obi-Wan's biggest things is never half-assing literally anything he does. He always puts himself into any task he's given. He's just incapable of not seeing things to their absolute finish and then some.

I've read a few Sith!Obi-Wan AU fics and fan comics with this exact premise and I do find it fascinating how people have gone about exploring this sort of concept. There are, of course, quite a number of powerhouse Sith!Obi-Wan AUs where he just straight decimates the GAR and the Republic (usually with the intent of killing Darth Sidious in the end). But I'm also fascinated by the handful of stories I've seen where Obi-Wan doesn't necessarily become an actual Sith, but joins Dooku (whether as a voluntary double agent or due to time-travel shenanigans) in order to 1) Find out who the true Sith Lord is and take them down and/or 2) To attempt stymieing the overall devastation the war has on the entire galaxy.

So as OOC as Sith!Obi-Wan feels to me, I can't help but share the fascination that others do with the endless "What ifs?" scenarios that can spring to mind with an AU like this.

Especially, when you start thinking about the potential ways Darth Sidious would react to having a hypercompetent Force User and experienced military general "on his side."

Yeah, Sheev was hyperfocused on Anakin for reasons. But I can't help but sorta vibe with some of Sith!Obi-Wan AUs I've seen where Mister Sidious either 1) Realizes what an actual threat Obi-Wan is to his ultimate goal of becoming Emperor of the entire galaxy, and tries to get Dooku to get rid of him as result (similar to what he ordered Dooku to do with Asajj) or 2) Realizes that while Anakin is an absolute powerhouse in the force, Obi-Wan is sort of next level due to not having the copious, never ending layers of unstable emotional drama that Anakin is.

(Of course, being emotionally unstable is sort of the prime requirement for any powerful Dark Sider, but I raise you this--the amount of traumatic bullshit Obi-Wan has gone through is just about as insane, if not a little more, than Anakin. It would just take someone immorally depraved enough, like Mister Sidious, to really torture and drag all that trauma out of Obi-Wan to the point that he'd use said trauma to fuel his Sith abilities. Again, I don't think Obi-Wan would ever give in to the Dark Side even if Sheev was his main tormentor, but we're playing around in the Sith!Obi-Wan AU right now. After all, "The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural").

I do feel obligated to sort of mention that sheer amount of angst that naturally comes with this sort of AU, but I don't feel the actual need to go super in depth with it. Just because, well, Obi-Wan in his natural canon state is already a bottomless well of angst and sadness pfffttt

Making him a Sith doesn't really change much in that regard for me, other than for other artists and fic writers to explore the darker elements of SW. Mainly, the horrific and outright torture that comes with being trained as a Sith and, you know, the atrocities of a galaxy wide war (just typically in more graphic detail and from a far more bleak perspective).

Tldr: I don't have an issue with Sith!Obi-Wan despite how horribly OOC it feels to me. I am absolutely and utterly impressed with the writers and artists who have fleshed out this AU in the detail and depths that they have. Y'all are so much stronger than me and I am grateful to everyone who was able to answer some of the questions bouncing around in my head through their art.

*fic recs underneath*

Yeah, I went on a Sith!Obi-Wan/Separatist AU spree a while back just out of curiousity and these are what I personally consider to be some of best (or at the very least, the ones I enjoyed most). Keep in mind, these fics range everywhere from Gen to Explicit/Mature and some do pertain to particular ships. That being said, I find the way these authors go about tackling Dark Sider/Sith/Separatist Obi-Wan to be pretty compelling. So approach these fics with all of that in mind, but do give extra kudos and comments to these writers. They did all the heavy lifting here, and they deserve all the attention and praise they're owed. So in no particular order, here are the fics I'd recommend for this particular AU:

Rank, Designation, Unit Name by soft_but_gremlin

You Shall Become (Me) by jedipati

Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ambassador of Mandalore series by alexjana91

I Got My Head Checked by frostbitebakery

What came after by galateaGalvanized

Name of the Game by esama

Certain Point by esama

Cuy'kaysh Dar by mneiai

Feel free to add your own personal recommendations in the tags, if you'd like. I know there's so much more of this AU out there, but I am in no way an expert. So I leave the additional fic recs in your hands.

[dionysian-socialism]

Ted Kaczynski was an awful dude, but the amount of times I've recently thought to myself "the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race" (just that phrase, not any of his additional reactionary ramblings) upon seeing late-stage capitalist widgets, waste, and war has been nigh uncountable.

Uncritical progress narratives — upheld by both Pinkerist liberals and Promethean socialists — always presume that the good of modernity far outweighs the bad. Capitalism is seen as a necessary step in the arc of history, even as it dehumanizes billions and turns everything into a commodity at the altar of profit. People have to just "put up with it" in some sense because the deterministic march of destiny demands that humans develop the productive capacities, despite this putting the world ecologies on the brink of collapse.

The Industrial Revolution gave us polluting factories, concentrated exploitation, fascism, the nuclear bomb, state surveillance, car culture, AI art, the military industrial complex, the abstract movement of stock lines mattering more than the concrete material needs of human beings — the list goes on and on.

For the sake of balance, I don't want to act like modernity is all bad. Certain yet-to-be-realized worldviews and structures fostered in the pockets of capitalist civilization are definitely worth taking with us into a potential classless future.

Left-libertarian ideas of reconciling negative liberty and positive liberty, and reconciling the freedom of the individual with the larger collective good? Great stuff.

An internationalism whereby all people are seen as part of the same global community that can thrive via cooperation? Hell yeah.

A collection of sustainable technologies that can be used in a humanizing context to reduce toil, save lives, help us steward the Earth, or otherwise improve our lives? Sign me up.

But I don't believe that those things required dragging humanity through the slaughterhouse that was/is hundreds of years of imperialism and capitalism. We could have came to these conclusions and innovations through a different path, one that didn't put us at the mercy of industrialists and racists and bureaucrats and war profiteers. Hell, various indigenous groups and cultural communities throughout the world across the thousands of years since the Neolithic were realizing those above-mentioned positives in their own ways long before the modern west did; so the path was certainly not set in stone and the rest of humanity could have ended up following their examples. All of this outlines how west-centric progress narratives truly are — their conceptions of "development", their ideas of what structures are inevitable or necessary, their preoccupations with the dehumanizing technologies which have alienated the life out of people and planet.

We can do so so much better. And it's not because socialism will inevitably follow capitalism in some preordained script; it's because we always had the potential to realize a classless, cooperative, ecologically-rooted society by virtue of being human. Material conditions do matter, but that doesn't mean socialism requires capitalist conceptions of "development" — it doesn't mean that the good society is only possible once we've trudged through the back-breaking grind of an imperial machine at its apex, like some kind of proverbial Heaven at the close of a grueling sinful life and purgatorial repentance. Yes, it will take a lot of work to reach socialism, but that "work" shouldn't follow the dualistic laws of progress forced onto us by the civilizational leviathan presently setting the world on fire.

Socialism was, is, and shall be always immanent within humanity. Though there is no true "end of history" — no literal socio-political eschaton — socialism acts a kind of realization of our deepest and fullest potentials, as well as a negation of and ending to the eons of imperial civilization. Socialism is a metaphorical eschaton we absolutely must immanentize.

[nattikay]

Kaltxì!! i'm just here to say how much i adore your art & your content!!! it brings me so much joy to see you draw the sully family, they're just so cute :") especially the newest art of jake, neytiri, neteyam and kiri - it's just so nice to see them happy together like this <33 your ocs are amazing too, btw!

this question is kinda random but i'm still going to ask, do you have any sully family headcanons (or na'vi headcanons in general)? i'm just curious, my brainrot is way too strong i can't stop thinking about them fsjdjdh

have a nice day! :] Eywa ngahu!

Aww, thank you!

Headcanons? hmmm.....I don't think I have many at the moment, but perhaps a few:

A silly one is that Balto is Lo'ak's favorite movie no I do not take constructive criticism. How did he watch the movie, dunno, the kids seem to hang around the scientists often enough, perhaps Norm introduced them to a few cartoons one day idk

The whole family is of course bilingual but stick mostly to Na'vi by default. On that note, none of the Metkayina know any English at all; everything we hear from them is translated from Na'vi for the audience.

I know it's a fairly popular headcanon in the fandom right now that Kiri is autistic; as for me I'm a little on the fence about it. On the one hand I highly doubt that she was intentionally written to be autistic. On the other, though, as an autistic person myself who also grew up as the awkward weird kid (a tearful "why am I different?" to Grace's spirit hit kinda hard)....I can definitely understand where the theory's coming from. I know people who dislike this headcanon say that just because an autistic person relates to a character it doesn't mean that character is autistic, and yes I absolutely agree with that--I relate for many reasons to many characters that I don't view as autistic--but I can see where people are getting those vibes with Kiri and can sympathize with wanting to view her that way. So.....maybe? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Speaking of Kiri, based on what we've seen in the movie and until we get further evidence to contradict it, my theory on her origins is that she has no biological father--she's a genetic clone of Grace's avatar somehow spurred into existence by Eywa. How, exactly, we don't know, but given what we know thus far it seems to be the most likely possibility imo.

...on that note, though, can we please stop calling her "space Jesus"? I get why people draw the comparison, apparent immaculate conception and divine abilities and whatnot, but unless her purpose on Pandora is secretly somehow to sacrifice her life to atone for the Na'vi's sins (which I very much doubt is the case), the connection doesn't quite work, and feels a tad disrespectful. ^^;

Lastly, I don't think Jake became a "military dad" until after the RDA returned. I hesitate to even call this one a "headcanon" so much as simple analysis given what we saw in the opening montage, where he is shown to be very warm and playful with his kids. The military side only emerged out of necessity when suddenly the family was at very real risk of one wrong move getting them killed in the reignited war. (also there's nothing wrong with Neteyam and Lo'ak calling him "sir". Like, if Jake was strictly enforcing that they only ever call him "sir" at all times then yeah I would agree, that's kinda cold and harsh, but he doesn't, they call him "Dad" most of the time; an occasional respectful "sir" when they are in trouble is nowhere near the big issue some of y'all are treating it as).

[deluluspqr]

Greek X Roman

I made some collages for each god, roman and greek aspects, hoping to highlight some differences between aspects, differences that are part research, part riodanverse books... And often headcanons.

War ⚔️

Ares 🐗

Ares is frequently presented as representing the uglier aspects of war (while his sister is the "better god of war", for her role in strategy and in defensive war). That might be reductive, because Ares also represents valor, in a way, and because most of our sources come from Athens. Nevertheless, it can be said that Ares is sort of a barbarian god, originating in Thrace (if I'm not mistaken), gathering the characteristics of war as a chaotic force, of a rampaging invader. Riordan represents him as more of a brawler than a warrior, not very smart and not very honorable. I have chosen to highlight these aspects of Ares as a god of violence, a personification of wrath and impulse. But I don't see him as all evil, I think the point of him is that those are very human concepts and emotions (and that is true for all the gods, when we judge those characters, we judge ourselves).

The warrior is a spartan hoplite, as it seems that there was where he had a bigger cult (although it seems that it is a miscoception that he was the city's patron).

The animal is the boar, as it is his most notable sacred animal (I'm not sure there were others) and it is the one that Riordan constantly associates with him as well (and even with Mars).

I thought I had included a biker, but well, PJO readers already know what I am talking about. He is a headbanger and loves his bike more than his children.

Mars 🐺

This is where is perhaps the most clear differentiations between greek and roman religion and culture. It's the one god that seems different to anyone who looked things up a little (although I would say there are interesting little differences with all the gods, that inform a lot about both civilizations). I see Mars as more of a god of soldiers, of the army than of war, per se. He seems more like a guardian figure and a giver of victory. Not only that, he is a god of empire, of conquest and of the city, of Rome. The myth tells us it was founded by his twins sons, who grew fed by his animals, the wolf and the woodpecker (not the boar). He has a conncetion to agriculture (most roman gods have, in fact), in a fertility aspect, as the personification of virility and also as a protector of roman crops/farmers. I see him as more paternal than Ares and also as less of a brawler and more of an idealized soldier, a knight of sorts (as he was frequently represented in the middle ages). Mars was not only much more important to the romans, but also one of the three main gods of the archaic triad, together with Jupiter and Quirinus (that is often described as his son ,Romulus, deified or even as an epithet of Mars himself, to me, he is Romulus though). This triad would later give place to the capitoline, formed by Jupiter, Juno and Minerva (yeah, Riordan made the "the romans demoted her" thing up).But, in this New Rome headcanon, I picture both triads, and the aventine (Ceres, Liber/Baccus and Libera/Proserpina) coexisting (one of the military, one of the state and one of the people).

The warrior is, ofcourse, a  legionary, but also today's soldiers.

The animals are the wolf and the woodpecker, not the boar. Riordan has Mars reference the boar in his talk with Frank, but in the myths he is rarely associated with the roman god (it makes sense, a boar is an agressive, reckless animal, a wolf is just as dangerous but seen as more noble and the woodpecker has a cute litlle toppet that remembers you of a centurion helmet)

A warrior drifts thought a wheat field... It's nice to picture him with a dual nature, this connection to both battle and nature. The destruction and the growing of things. I think it highlights that he fights to protect.

A famoust roman phrase "If you want peace, prepare for war"

I do like what Riordan did to him in terms of appearance, as in he appears with the uniform of a soldier of wherever country he is at the time

[monsterfactoryfanfic]

Thanks for the tag @sohkrates! I fear my Work in Progress list is significantly shorter than yours, mostly because my tabletop work is limited to the occasional game/supplement and videos. The rest of the time I'm writing book(s)!

In Progress

Next video: ??? I spent a lot of energy on Spire and now I'm just searching for an angle. I think it might end up just being about my system-neutral supplement "Finley: A Midwest Fantasy" and how it's something of a goodbye to Indiana for me.

Next game: Not working on any tabletop writing right now!

Book: The pitch for working title Ravenous is "What if countries exploited during America's Cold War coups tried to assassinate Henry Kissinger, and also he was the pope, and also the Church created Kaiju for the US military?" Basically doing a full rewrite because the first draft was not working, but hope to have around 70k of that by November!

Trunked/Maybe Will Return To

Games: I was collaborating with Dani Belonia on a Resistance game last year, and we just never got around to finishing it, but I think a lot of the setting stuff from that was really neat. The hydraheron from Finley actually originated there. Hopefully I can continue to recycle some of those ideas in future work!

Books: I've written about a book and a half that very few people have seen. The first, The Chains Nothing Can Break was my first novel and still is the creative work I'm most proud of. Marathis colonize Britain with steampunk mechas, a satire of both steampunk and adventure stories set in the Raj. Maybe one day we'll find a publisher. The other book, which I never titled, was about paleontologist necromancers who used magic crystals to do archeological digs, selling the bones of dinosaurs to be used in a war against sexy moth aliens. It was GREAT concept with TERRIBLE execution, ended up in some not great narrative territory, so I canned it. Will try to pull some stuff from it in the future, but yeah, sometimes you gotta take the L.

Would Like to Be In Progress

Games: Would still like to work on something with the resistance system, just because I think that's such a fun way to manage damage and consequences in a narrative-first format. But yeah, unfortunately I'm just better at setting/fluff than mechanics! Been writing for 6 years at this point, and only designing games for 2 (not counting D&D homebrewing lol). Anyway, if you're looking for a setting/fluff writer, I love that shit.

Videos: I definitely want to do something with Heart, just because Howitt and Taylor do a great job of building evocative worlds, but it'll be a while yet before I'm ready for another long one. I thought I might tackle Gubat Banwa, but it seems like DragonKid11 has that covered. Plus tactical games are a bit harder for me to get into, but who knows, maybe someday! I also posited the idea of doing a Tabletop 101 series last year, where I took a look at games that were considered foundational to the indie scene as it currently stands and why they were important. I think that might be a cool project, but like, how many more dives into Apocalypse World do we need at this point?

Books/short stories: Just off the top of my head- prophesied chosen one who is Dual Eligible for Medicare and Medicaid comes to slay private health insurance; fantasy retelling of the 2nd Punic War; examination of Lord of the Rings from the Orc/Haradrim pov largely based off of Charles W. Mills The Wretched of Middle Earth

Anyway, I'd love to see what folks like @titanomachyrpg, @goblinmixtape, @cassimothwin /@chasetheghost, and @kidnickgames are working on! No pressure if you don't care for these tagging games!

[anghraine]

For the shipping ask game: Faramir and Eowyn

I don't mono-ship it like Elizabeth/Darcy, but I do ship it a lot!

1- What made you ship it?

It is about 70% the beautiful writing of their romance in the book to 30% my love for them individually and being delighted at the concept of putting them together and letting them find happiness that way after lives of such grinding hopelessness.

2- What are your favorite things about this ship?

I really like that, as contracted as their romantic narrative is (and I do wish there was more of it, pacing be damned), Tolkien takes care to establish that they're friends. They like each other as people!

I don't think Éowyn really saw Aragorn as her friend in that way—he was too glamorous in her eyes for that. She didn't truly know him. But though the overall course of her relationship with Faramir is so fast, I think she does know and care about him for his own sake and not only for what he brings to her.

Even when she thinks she doesn't return his feelings, she's quite gentle about it in a way that's pretty unusual for her. And though Faramir always has a strain of gentleness in his character, I think a lot of his sternness (though not strength) falls away with her as they become close.

I also think there's something very adorable and characteristic about their physical impressions of each other, lol. Faramir is like ... wow, she's prettier than flowers, and the women of my own people, and I'm sorry she's sad like me. Maybe we could spend some time together. And Éowyn is like, damn, he is tall, and could kick the ass of almost everyone I know. He's nice about it, but what if I seem silly and immature to him?

<3

3- Is there an unpopular opinion you have on this ship?

I think they're happy, but it's complicated by political necessity—not in the sense of them being at odds politically, but of them being in separate places for substantial lengths of time. I think this would especially be the case in the earlier years, when Aragorn is often at war; Tolkien described one of Faramir's responsibilities as hereditary Steward as "representative of the king during his absence abroad" and another as "chief counsellor" of Aragorn's council.

Ithilien, meanwhile, is in a vulnerable position with a lot of work needed to keep it safe and functional, and my headcanon is that while they do work together, there are plenty of times when it's Éowyn doing a lot of the day-to-day work of holding things together in Ithilien while Faramir is first and foremost the Steward of Gondor. Arguably, she's more Prince of Ithilien than he is.

And much later, of course, they're separated for a pretty long while by her death. :( I don't think she gets Éomer's lifespan and Faramir would still outlive her considerably if she did.

Oh, also, I like their arcs overall, but I do agree with some of the critiques of Éowyn's part in the treatment of war. It's not that she should have stayed a warrior because she's a badass blahblah (this makes zero sense in the context of LOTR), but that the totality of her rejection of her previous way of life is not fully prepared for structurally, and Tolkien's ideology of peace > war etc seems far more integral to her character's resolution than any human man's, including Faramir's.

Théoden and Éomer are glorified as warriors, and Faramir's prowess is emphasized even though he doesn't like it (and Tolkien seems to have imagined he'd continue to act as a military leader and be the one clearing out Ithilien). But abandonment of fighting is built into Éowyn's arc beyond any character's but Frodo's (and he was never a warrior anyway). Her interest in the specific future she chooses with Faramir is not much prepared for in terms of writing. And this whole part of her arc is compressed into one small part of one chapter. So, yeah, the defenses of how this aspect of their romance is executed do ring a bit hollow to me.

[marley-manson]

if you feel like it, i would very much like to see the "top 10 episodes marley doesn't care for" list. not episodes you hate, just ones you could take or leave. and not necessarily 10 if you don't want, i'm just really curious.

Ooh yeah this'll be fun, thank you! This is specifically like, episodes where I feel like I dislike them more than most of fandom, rather than known controversial episodes, or bland episodes most of fandom agrees are bland. Cut to spare others my negativity lol.

A Smattering Of Intelligence - I think this is a pretty well-liked episode since it's Flagg's proper introduction, but it's probably my least fave of Flagg's appearances. I find it a little too cartoony, and to me it almost feels like a generic satirical spy story that someone took and inserted into Mash's universe. The vibes feel off.

The Party - lol like Movie Tonight this is another episode that's so beloved I feel kinda bad for not liking it much. There's lots I do like about it (Klinger's mom!) but overall I feel like the off-screen characters are annoyingly softened and made ooc to serve an uplifting, sentimental purpose that I don't really want from Mash anyway lol. Like Margaret's divorced parents getting along for this, or Charles' parents making friends with Radar's family.

And on top of that the vibe is... again, not what I want from Mash. I don't want that sense of uncomplicatedly positive bonding outside the war. Like imo Dear Dad Three's offhand joke where everyone unanimously voted against a reunion, in which the idea of a ten year MASH reunion is inherently laughable, is miles better than this episode in its entirety to me.

Bug Out - some good moments, some great jokes, but the army good vibes are infuriating to me. Potter's "If the U.S. army wants land, we just take it!" in a totally uncritical, ha ha funny context; the end where the US beating back North Korea is played for triumph complete with military remix of the theme... bad stuff.

April Fools - I definitely see the appeal of the squad teaming up together, but unfortunately this episode failed to capitalize on it, and I hate the premise immensely. I'm sure it's intended as a simple "lol the prankers become the prankees!" reversal but Potter enlisting his war buddy to prank the draftees (and Margaret) by making them think they're going to get court martialed and sent to prison for insubordination is just not my idea of fun shennanigans lol, which makes the tone of this very incongruent and awkward. Plus more making fun of Klinger, plus Hawkeye's epic prank finale sucked and we all know he could and would do a lot better than that if he had nothing to lose. It's fun if you totally ignore the lighthearted tone and take it for the mindfuck it is though lol.

Movie Tonight - I mentioned it already but yeah, it feels like the actors rather than the characters and that's not a vibe I enjoy personally, it has its moments but it's kind of awkward and unfun to me overall.

Hey Look Me Over - I've talked about this at greater length before but yeah it's like, I definitely appreciate the sentiment of a story where a not conventionally attractive woman wins a dude over with her personality, but I don't think it accomplished what they were aiming for. To me it made Hawkeye seem like a saint for changing his mind about her after getting yelled at for friendzoning her lol, and I don't think Kellye came across well in it compared to all her much cooler brief appearances. Nice that she tells us she sings and tapdances, but I'll take watching her smoke a cigar over that any day.

Who Knew - boo hiss, I've complained about it before at length. I know a few other people who also dislike it but overall it seems to be taken pretty uncritically in fandom and it shouldn't be, frankly.

As Time Goes By - the whole concept of the capsule is bad, it would've been bad even if Hawkeye filled it with subversive jokes, but then it was taken seriously as a poignant symbol of the army... woof.

The Price - I don't think this is beloved by fandom by any means, but it flies under the radar when by rights it should be hated imo. As perfect as Hawkeye is in this episode, Potter and the war hero's storyline is one of the worst subplots of the show, and I'm not qualifying that with an 'imo.'

Taking The Fifth - I had a hard time coming up with one more lol which just goes to show how good Mash is, but I went with this because I think most fans generally enjoy it and find it fun but I dislike it. I don't hate hate it, but like, Potter and Klinger's subplot is obnoxious, Hawkeye's plot is obnoxious and I hate the pathetic failed womanizer thing, and it's my go-to example of the kind of gay jokes that don't appeal to me nearly as much as the satirical seasons' jokes.

[kamzil118]

The Absurdity of Victoria: 4th Generational Warfare

There's this book called Victoria: 4th Generational Warfare and the initial name sounds really appealing at first glance. It's a glimpse into the madness of a man who didn't like to be proved wrong and hated how the world changed.

The "novel" - it really does not deserve to be called that - was written by William S. Lind. If you watched Lazerpig, you would completely understand. Now for the uninitiated, the author was part of a military movement known as the Reformists.

So to give a bit of background, when the Vietnam War had come to a close, the US military wanted to learn what it did wrong and what it could do to improve and develop its combat capabilities in the future. This is where the Reformists came into that picture and what they wanted was to sorta look to the past and try to emulate some of the tactics of the Vietcong or refuse to adopt more modern expensive technology for the "rugged" technology - this is a key detail that gets brought up throughout the novel. We do see their influence with stuff like the LAV for the US Marine Corps or their talking points surrounding the positives of the A-10 Warthog and the negatives of the F-35.

Everything would change when the 1st Gulf War happened. Main battle tanks wiping the floor with the Iraqis at 73 Easting or the Coalition Air Forces performing SEAD - Suppression of Enemy Air Defense. The Reformists didn't want these examples to be taken to heart but the proven effectiveness of the tactics and the successful application of modern technology had settled in the minds of contemporary generals. This meant that the entire philosophy of a low-tech approach to warfare proposed by the Reformists had been discredited and their reaction to this moment in history had made most of them go off the deep end.

Yeah, they went on a massive binge of coping with reality proving them wrong. This should really set the tone of what this book is about... among other issues that have not aged well.

So our first scene begins with the protagonist burning a woman at the stake. Her crime? There's no such thing as a female priest.

Welcome to Hell, ladies and gentlemen, where even the Devil would hold your hand to protect you from this nonsense.

Now I won't summarize the entire book in a single post because we could be here all day. If you want to take a look but also don't want to spend a penny on absolute trash, there are a couple of Let's Reads on the xenoforum of SpaceBattles. There, you can get some entertaining reactions from the posters there with a few gems of my own.

So, where would you like me to begin with the nonsense? Let's start with the author's hatred for modern technology and boy does it show up here. There's a concept in the book, "Retroculture" meaning that anything after the 1960s is invalid and not worthy of true civilization both technologically and socially. So picture that level in the original Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 where the Russians invaded the United States. If Lind was in charge of America's defense, he would try to issue out M1 Garands with iron sights and World War Two flak jackets to the infantry to face off against kevlar-wearing Russian paratroopers with assault rifles and modern optics. Then declare that the average American infantry would win because the Russians were a bunch of pussies for relying on modern technological advances.

This even applies to vehicle warfare on land, sea, and air.

Federal troops have Bradley IFVs? Deploy the T-34s with the shitty gun sights.

Pirates on fast-moving boats with machine guns and RPGs? Send in the torpedo boats of the 1870s.

Multirole fighters with anti-air heat-seeking missiles and autocannons? Bring out the airships of World War One.

Hell, the author has gotten to the point where he treats video games as morally horrible as drugs. The novel has a moment where you have hidden alleyways where shady-looking gentlemen in cloaks are trying to sell you hard copies of God of War 3 or Fallout New Vegas because the fun police think it's unChristian.

Do not get me started on the tactics and strategies.

It really comes down to Lind trying to peddle his Reformist nonsense. Even if you might find some form of meaning in supporting his points, he's incredibly selective about it. He will look at the Taliban's efforts in Afghanistan or the Toyota War and shake his head screaming, "They don't count!" because they're not white Anglo-Saxon protestant Americans.

The book has its moments where the characters emphasize light infantry to such a degree that they are practically the mainline fighting force because Lind doesn't want them to be bogged down by dragging helicopters and artillery. He forces the protagonist to relinquish the skies because he truly believes that air support is stupid. Yet, it has a funny opportunity that any air transports have to be escorted in friendly airspace because those "Muslim terrorists" have Ace Combat/Project Wingman pilots who can perform air operations deep in hostile territory. Shame that he doesn't realize the flaw in that part of the story. To go even further, the protagonist has to invade feminist California from New England and the most optimal choice is to go full Oregon Trail with authorial fiat despite the state's military having one of the best air forces in the region of Warlord America.

Then there are the action scenes. They're so god-fucking-awful to read through. I've put more effort into my fanfiction involving Frozen and Metro 2033. The reason he doesn't have good combat scenes is that he needs more room to make statements like how African-Americans have a natural affinity to agriculture thanks to their racial upbringing or women having a purpose in the kitchen unless they want to be shipped as an Arabian sex slave to break their independent thinking. It's also not helped when there's the inspiring "assistance" of the Russians and the Chinese because he would rather sell out parts of the United States to foreign authoritarianism than let it live with its "Marxist culture" within the borders.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by a man who slept through briefings and has a massive distrust of the officer corps of all the branches.

[mechanicalinertia]

Bubblegum Black: For A World Without Gold - Chapter 3 & Author's commentary

This is the longest chapter I've written for this fic, despite it being mostly characters talking to one another. 11k words of this shit, man. That's either great or terrible, depending on who you ask. Anyway, here we go!

Doctor Hartland: Relatively obscure character, the guy who provided Roberta with her murder-meds during the Blood Trail / El Baile De Muerte IIRC. He, like many such characters Cyberpunk 2020 would call 'ripperdocs', is what I assume is the front line of medicine in a city like Roanapur. I imagine a city where hospitals are either for syndicate soldiers or extremely rich people, and everyone else can rely on doctors who import or print any medicine they can get their hands on. Presumably 'Traditional Chinese Medicine' is pretty popular, too (did you know that the Chinese government, at least in Hong Kong, prescribed traditional remedies for COVID awhile ago? It did not, of course, help, but it was an alternative to Decadent Western Pig-Dog Medicine I guess. Eugh.)

Revy's Custom Ammo: Delayed-fuse HESH rounds, truly terrible fleshripping monstrosities, are actually something I got from Masamune Shirow's work. You know how in the original manga and in the 1995 movie, Motoko goes "Oh, is that so", shoots up the one guy, and then it takes a second before his cyborg body is blown to bits? That's the effect I'm going for. The tungsten tip is to penetrate body armor and dig into a target's vitals, although that doesn't work 100% of the time with heavier armor. Still, even if there's no penetration, damage can still be done. HESH rounds were originally designed to kill a tank crew through spalling, hitting the armor with shockwaves such that slivers of metal inside the tank would break off and kill the crew. This is something one can easily mitigate with composite armor and a Kevlar inner lining in the tank, but to translate that back to body armor is probably a little more difficult. One can imagine shockwaves and slivers of armor lining pulverizing human or light Boomer innards even without penetration.

Seburo M-057: A completely fictional Seburo handgun. For those readers who don't slobber over Shirow's non-porn work the way I do, Seburo is a Japanese gun company built up after around World War Three (in the 1990's in Shirow's timeline). Apparently it might also be a subsidiary company of Poseidon Industrial, the megacorp that becomes the entirety of Japan by the time Appleseed rolls around. Either way, it's a famous Japanese arms company, which makes one wonder: Are handguns legal in Japan in Shirow's world, where they are not in ours? For the sake of lore, let's say that Japan allows organizations like GENOM to possess and manufacture weapons for security purposes, but not individuals. Remember how in BGC2032 there was that whole subplot about how military-grade Boomers in Japan were technically illegal and ideally should only be manufactured offshore? And GENOM just ignored that law for the most part? Well, fuck that game. In the 2060's GENOM happily supplies the JSDF with whatever Boomers they want, the better to defend against China. Anyway, yeah, the M-057 is a caseless pistol, ammo stored in the gun's handle like normal, but a whole lot more of it, we're talking 18+1 per magazine. In the 2060's, caseless weapons are juuuust starting to make a comeback as a concept, aided by new chemical configurations with higher ignition temperatures and better structural integrity. Revy's handguns are the equivalent of a high-performance electric car compared to everyone else's Toyota Corollas, is probably the best way to think about it.

Second-Highest Boomer Per Capita City: First is Anchorpoint.

Lightning Hawk: A silly Resident Evil reference.

The Master: Okay, this is going to take some explaining. Or at least a picture:

Yeah, okay, you see that gun Priss has? Sure looks like a laser magnum to me, doesn't it? And, hey, look closer, that's definitely its name on the side alongside the name of the sight! So, since no one has never done anything with this information, I have decided to do it my goddamn self. Now, as I've said before in the Hardsuit Tech document, laser weapons are actually pretty viable so long as you dial down the pulse train to femtoseconds and thereby jack up the pulsed power to the gigawatt or terawatt range. I do not know what the effective overall damage of a tactical-vehicle mounted terawatt laser would be, so in the end I settled on measuring the gun’s stopping power in joules, easy enough to compare to ballistic weapons. For the record, that max power level, 5KJ, is more stopping power than even 7.62 NATO. Which might be overkill even for futuristic high-density capacitors, but what the hell.

Chiborgs: Abbreviation of Chinaborgs. In this particular iteration of the future, following World War Three between the US and China's respective power blocs (and all the ruination that has brought upon the earth), Cold War 2 has been going on ever since neither side could claim absolute victory due to climate change-induced mass crop failures starving their armies out. So GENOM has one big rival in the 'Sinobloc': The China World Prosperity Corporation, a conglomerate of old State Owned Enterprises that privatized themselves following the war, rolled themselves up into a separate power structure, about as independent from the CCP as one can get, and resumed Chinese imperial efforts in the old Belt and Road bloc. But - but but but - they've never quite managed to emulate the entirety of Boomer technology. Oh sure, they've got robots, but Boomers are biomimicry nanotech down to the cellular level, a common platform for alternative life. WPC doesn't have that, so they've aligned with the turbo-Leninists in the Party, arguing that GENOM's Boomers alienate the proletariat from their labor on a societally toxic scale, and simply continued the use of prosthetics and augmentations coupled with inferior robotics to an absurd degree. A Chiborg, then, is a WPC-produced set of augmentations designed for relatively specialized labor, turning a human into a near-machine relying on constant maintenance and subject to constant surveillance. It’s not like these ‘shells’ are expensive, or cheap but low-quality. The WPC is more than happy to sell, as per Party directives, at an ever-so-slight-loss even in economically turbulent times. The insidious part, besides the addiction to maintenance and the monitoring of every micro-movement the brain orders the body to make, is who ends up with these things permanently grafted into themselves. Migrant workers in the bottom tier of the hukou system; ethnic minorities treated as culturally and mentally inferior to the Han majority; Taiwanese or Koreans or North Viet treated as near-slaves, the ‘curse’ of their WW3-era resistance against the benevolence of True Socialist Xi Jinping Thought with Chinese Characteristics For The Eternal Bright Future having marked entire families with generations of debt only payable by concentration camp labor. Voluntary, of course, but, y’know, not really.

Mycoplastic Packaging: Fungus-derived materials that have replaced most petrochemical-based plastics by 2060. In the case of easily-biodegradable packaging like what the Master comes in, it's more akin to a sort of micromesh made from hymenophore tubes. Check out this Vice article about more high-performance materials that fungi could help make. It's not really the same principle, but I imagine it's... plausible, to grow the right materials with some funky bioengineering.

Singto Phumici: Proud Lion in Thai. Note how some districts have English names and others have Thai. You could, I imagine, track the economic bracket of a given district, or perhaps who it relies on for authority, by the language used in a name. Might throw a Cantonese name or two in there later. We'll see.

Sawyer's Bloody Business: Yes, most of the meat in the 2060's is lab-cultured tissue or an imitation thereof, 3D printed into a meal. And yes, Sawyer feeds human corpses to flesh-eating bacteria which are supposed to build up a nice big blob of biomass that can then be fed to meat cultures. One meat becomes another, just with more extra steps and less maintenance than feeding human remains to pigs as one might do in the old days. You know, they've managed to print lab-grown Wagyu. How much longer before Mickey-D's is marketing luxury synthmeats in its products? I wonder.

Sawyer In General: The idea of Sawyer being an obsessive Priss fangirl has been a fairly crucial part of this crossover ever since I started thinking about it in early April. Perhaps it runs against her canon characterization as a stone-cold killer in Gore Gore Girl, but all we have to go off of for G3 so far is chapter summaries on the wiki, and it strikes me as a somewhat sillier spinoff than mainline Lagoon. Which is fine, but then what the hell, I have license to fuck around with what we're given in terms of Sawyer, because It Is Fanfiction. I guess I find her at once intimidating but kind of pathetic? I mean, those scars on her arms definitely aren't something someone else did to her, if Hiroe's claim that she was based of a friend with depression is to be believed. Without spoiling anything, suffice to say that in earlier drafts of this chapter Sawyer was even more of a mentally unwell gore fiend than she is here. My beta took issue with it, said that there was no way that what I want to do with the character in the long run made sense if she was like that. And you know what, he was right. We haven't seen the last of the Gore Gore Girl, not by a long shot. I didn't write that scene to set a big ol' nothingburger up. You'll see.

Priss vs. Revy: Okay, could Priss actually beat Revy in a shootout, even by one point or whatever? Hard to say. Priss's skill as a marksman is more up in the air just because we've seen less of her overall, and less emphasis is placed on her ability to shoot well. But I think that she's got some skill, at least, from her time as a bosozoku and from having to make crucial railgun shots as a Saber. Also... she kind of cheated. A little. Not a lot, but enough to win. Those who have read Anatomy of a Lovedoll, or remember a little side bit from Chapter 2, will recognize how.

Fediverse: Mastodon is the most famous of these platforms, but the fediverse is more than just 'the open-source Twitter replacement', it's more... federated networks are disconnected communications networks that can still talk to each other over a common platform, so the idea behind the fediverse is a galaxy of 'instances', small servers run by a person or organization that can all share common accounts with differing rules of operation and moderators and stuff. No one company owns the protocols used, and so it's a lot more of a wild west - plenty of people who were kicked off Twitter for good reason (Nazis) have taken root on fedi instances - but the idea in mentioning fediverse-like platforms in the noosphere of the future is that they're sort of the alt-internet, the cyberpunk-y version of the internet that has otherwise been carved up by big platforms and those Everything Apps I was talking about in the Chapter 2 notes (even more prescient now that Twitter-cum-X is being set up by Elon to be Explicitly That). Forums that run the gamut from respectable to shady; software and 3D printing libraries of varying quality and trustworthiness; piracy and crime and all the corrosive forces that eat away at the respectable foundations of the Noose - these are the kind of networks Benny and Jane love to hang out on. In other words, the only ways to use the internet of the future are Facebook, Amazon, and 4chan. God, don't you miss the days of nonplatformed webpages? Let's bring Geocities back, guys. Let's do that to save the internet.

Tewwowizm: Are the Knight Sabers terrorists? In the eyes of many, they probably are, a menace against the prosperous GENOM-lead global order that... you get the idea. The hope is that enough people can recognize that the Sabers mostly kill GENOM execs and blow up GENOM assets like industrial facilities and Boomers, and avoid killing innocents for the most part. To make them superheroes and not supervillains in the eyes of the body public. This was something I wanted to play around with in this conversation as it organically unfolded. At least, I think I did. This conversation textually pulling double-duty as a way to lead Eda off the trail of the Sabers working with the Lagoon Company and also letting Dutch get all weird and philosophical... I'm happy with it, but it's weird all the same. Either way, it does get to the desired outcome, highlighting how easy it is to needle Rock now after... well, have you Lagoon manga readers figured out who died yet? Yeah, I bet you have.

Eda's Pet Naming: Not in the manga, but I think it's funny and kind of mean-spirited on Eda's part, so in it goes. Okay, what else to put in here...

What I'm Stealing From: You may have noticed, dear reader, that I'm writing a lot of Rock. Hell, the next chapter is mostly his perspective again. This is probably not a good thing, because even if I find him super interesting as a character, most people are probably here for the girls, not him. Too much Rock, too much of the Lagoon cast in general and the Sabers risk being only bit players in a larger drama, which they should not be. So that's a balancing act I haven't quite gotten the hang of. Anyway, there's one Lagoon fic I want to bring up real quickly that has had a major impact on how I think about the franchise. It's called Apotheosis, which is, in my opinion, perfect in every conceivable way. While it lacks the balls-to-the-wall super-action of Lagoon as we know it, it makes up for that by having really interesting prose, heartfelt character development, firm grounding in late 90's history, and really getting inside Rock's head, both his best impulses and his worst ones. It almost made me cry at the end, and the only reason I haven't reread it extensively is because I'm afraid I'll either succumb to Fic Envy and start kicking myself, or I'll just rip off chunks of characterization and plot wholesale. Which is kind of what I'm doing now to navigate the Lagoon cast as people, but to a lesser degree. The Sabers have to provide a catalyst, a reactant, stuff like that - that means the plot can't be the same thing beat-for-beat. It better not be. Are there other fics that have made me think about this franchise deeply? Yep. Sure are. But I don't think any are going to be as radically influential on this fic as Apotheosis. We'll see. I have high hopes for this project.

Anyway, rough draft of Chapter 4 is already done, it just has to get edited but it's pretty short. Next time, a deal will be made that will change the way you think about Roanapur forever...