#(but like. just looking into the history of american police and also the way police systematically cover up the brutal murders of largely

[spider-gem]

Alright, you know what time it is: THEORY TIME!

In Hazbin Hotel, everyone’s name correlates to their character (such as Angeldust, Vox, Sir Pentious, etc). As a writer and reader, I firmly believe that names are important and can give us a deeper look into characters. Alastor, despite keeping his real name from life, is not an exception.

In a series where names reflect their characters, I would bet that Alastor’s gives us a hint into who he was before he died. This, along multiple other reasons, leads me to believe that Alastor only targeted guilty or corrupt people in power.

Hear me out:

We don’t know much about Alastor’s past, as nothing has been confirmed in the show. So for now, let’s analyze the lore we’ve gotten from Vivziepop over the years and the context clues in the show. Let’s look at the hazbin wiki:

Now, that “weird moral code” could be directed at anyone, but here’s my reasons for believing he went after corrupt people with power:

1. I’ve never seen the show, but I know that Dexter was about a vigilante serial killer that targeted criminals that haven’t been punished by the justice system due to corruption. So I would say, seeing Alastor is being compared to Dexter, Alastor likely went after the same type of people.

2. He grew up and lived in New Orleans, Louisiana in the early 1900’s as a mixed man. If you don’t know much about American history, just remember that this during a period of segregation and heavy discrimination against Black Americans, and Louisiana was one of the most racist states at the time. I’m not going to go through a whole history lesson right now, but note that lynchings reached their height by the late 1800’s to early 1900’s as a way to enforce white supremacy and intimidate minorities. Some cases, if not most, were not regarded as homicides by police and the overwhelming majority of lynching perpetrators never faced justice. Even if they were tried, all white juries ensured that they wouldn’t be convicted. Seems like a good target for a Creole serial killer, right?

3. In the series, so far, we’ve seen that Alastor’s closest connections are with female characters, such as Rosie, Mimzy, and Nifty. He’s also been described as a “momma’s boy” before, so it’s safe to say he has high respect for women. During the period of his life span, women had little rights. Sure, they gained the right to vote in 1920, but that was about it. It wasn’t even until a few years after Alastor died before women had the right to divorce their husbands, and were often stuck in abusive households. For this reason, I could see Alastor going after domestic abusers as well.

4. He probably killed bigots that attempted to tear down his radio show as well. I don’t really have much evidence for this claim, but note that Alastor was a famous radio star. He’s also Creole. While some Creole people were considered as “white-passing”, interracial marriage was prohibited in Louisiana during this period. Alastor very likely had to struggle to succeed, and there’s no doubt that certain people in power attempted to tear him down because of his heritage.

5. Let’s look at his life in hell now. Who has he been rumored to have targeted ? That’s right, powerful overlords. Even in hell, Alastor still went after people in power. Sure, this was arguably to gain power, but the point that he only went after corrupt powerful figures still stands. Anyone else we see him kill, such as the loan sharks or the angels, threatened him and the hotel first.

To conclude, there’s no saying what sent Alastor on his path as a serial killer. I personally favor the popular fan theory that his first kill that sent him on this path was his father, likely after his father harmed/killed his mother, but anyone’s theory is as valid as that one at the moment. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.

It could just be the social justice warrior in me saying, “Oh yeah, Alastor TOTALLY killed corrupt cops and domestic abusers”. However, I do believe that my theory on Alastor’s moral code is true based on my observations.

#this has been rotating in my mind for a while #so i finally decided to write an analysis #because i’m bored and maybe a little insane #hazbin hotel #alastor #hazbin alastor #the radio demon #hazbin hotel alastor #long post #hazbin hotel theory

[robertreich]

The Hard Hat Riot: A Forgotten Flashpoint in America’s Culture Wars

Missing from most history books is a key moment leading to the culture wars now ripping through American politics.

In 1970, hundreds of construction workers pummeled around 1,000 student demonstrators in New York City — including two of my friends. The “Hard Hat Riot,” as it came to be known, ushered in an era of cynical fear-mongering aimed at dividing the nation.

The student demonstrators were protesting the Vietnam War and the deadly shooting of four student activists at Kent State University that occurred just days before.

The workers who attacked them carried American flags and chanted, “USA, All the way,” and “America, love it or leave it.” They chased the students through the streets — attacking those who looked like hippies with their hard hats and steel-toed boots.

When my friends in the anti-war movement called to tell me about the riot later that day, I was stunned. Student activists and union workers duking it out in the streets over the war? I mean for goodness' sake, weren't we on the same side?

According to reports, the police did little to stop the mayhem. Some even egged on the thuggery. When a group of hardhats moved menacingly toward the action, a patrolman apparently shouted: “Give ’em hell, boys. Give ’em one for me!”

The construction workers then marched toward a barely-protected City Hall. Why? Because the mayor’s staff had lowered the American flag in honor of the Kent State dead. In a scene eerily foreshadowing the January 6th Capitol Riots, they pushed their way towards the building.

Fearing the mob would break in, city officials raised the flag.

The hard hats also ripped down the Red Cross banner that was hanging at nearby Trinity Church. They stormed a Pace University building, smashing lobby windows with their tools and beating students and professors.

Around 100 people were wounded that day, many of whom were college students. Several police officers were also hurt. Six people were reportedly arrested, but only one construction worker.

My friends escaped injury but they were traumatized.

The Hard Hat Riot had immediate political consequences. It was, in my opinion, a seminal  moment in America’s culture wars.

Then President Richard Nixon exploited the riot for political advantage. His administration had been working on a “blue collar strategy” to shift white working-class voters to the Republican Party.

“Thank God for the hard hats,” Nixon exclaimed when he heard about the riot.

But rather than passing pro-labor policies to court workers, which would go against the values of the pro-business Republican Party, Nixon sought to use cultural issues like patriotism and support for the troops to drive a wedge between factions of the Democratic Party.

Nixon invited union leaders, some of whom were involved in the riot, to the White House. They presented Nixon with a hard hat inscribed with “Commander in Chief”and an American flag pin. Nixon praised the union workers as, “people from Middle America who still have character, and guts, and a bit of patriotism.”

Nixon’s strategy to use the Hard Hat Riot to appeal to blue collar voters paid off. In his 1972 re-election campaign against the anti-war Democrat George McGovern, he secured a victory with ease and gained the majority of votes from organized labor – the only time in modern history a Republican presidential candidate accomplished such a feat.

The Hard Hat Riot revealed a deep fracture in the coalition of workers and progressives that FDR had knitted together in the 1930s, and the later alliance of Black Americans, liberals, and blue-collar whites that led to Lyndon Johnson’s landslide re-election in 1964.

The mostly white construction workers who attacked the demonstrators had felt abandoned — and forgotten – as the Civil Rights movement rightfully took hold. They felt stiffed by the clever college kids with draft deferments, and burdened by an economy no longer guaranteeing upward mobility.

The class and race based tensions that Nixon exploited would worsen over the next half century.

I witnessed this when I was secretary of labor during the Clinton Administration. I spent much of my time in the Midwest and other parts of the country where blue-collar workers felt abandoned in an economy dominated by Wall Street. I saw their anger and resentment. I heard their frustrations.

Many Democrats, whether they will admit it or not, have not done enough to respond as Republicans have destroyed unions, exacerbated economic inequality through trickle-down nonsense, tried to gut just about every social safety net we have – and stood in the way of practically every effort to use the power of government to help working people.

Today, the right is trying to channel that same anger and violence against the Black Lives Matter movement, the LGBTQ+ community, particularly drag queens and transgender people, and whatever they consider “woke.”

It is the same cynical ploy to instill a fear of “the other” as a means to distract from the oppression and looting being done by the oligarchs who dominate so much of our economy and our politics.

As such, today we face the same questions we faced in 1970:

Will we finally recognize that we have more in common with each other than those who seek to divide us for political and economic gain?

Can we unite in solidarity, and build a future in which prosperity is widely shared by all?

I truly believe that we still can.

#youtube #history #politics #Republicans #Richard Nixon #Donald Trump #Video #Videos #Economics

[tammyoshanter]

I am seeing posts bullying and even telling others to kill themselves because they plan to vote for Biden, despite Biden's blatant endorsement of Isreal. I've even seen people saying things like "even as a non-American, I know you guys have a Socialist party. Vote for that" as if that's an option. Personally, and I am certain several of my other fellow Americans feel this way as well, I would LOVE to cast my vote to the Socialist party. But living in America, that's just not possible. We do not have the luxury of voting for the people we want to. We live under a government that has spent decades dividing the nation so that the two-party system is seen as the only viable form of democracy to the American people, while simultaneously meddling in world affairs and overthrowing small socialist nations with capitalist coups and then forcing their economies to tank just to show the American people just how bad the big bad S is. And we have slurped it up. As someone who has had leftist ideals for more than a decade, I have only within the past few years felt I could use that label because even I was afraid of the capitalist's boogeyman. A majority of the people I know wouldn't dare consider socialism or even leftism a good, citizen-friendly political system. And so, they are going to vote on the two running for office, which is looking to be Biden and Trump right now. Yes, Biden is a racist pedophile with very a questionable ability to cognitively navigate a presidency, and who also supports a full-on genocide. I would not want to vote for Biden in a million years. He's a shit guy, and has been for his whole career and likely before that too. Trump, however, is significantly more alarming. Trump is the person Netanyahu is drooling over to win the election, and let me tell you why. If you haven't, please do your research on Project 2025. If Trump or another Republican wins the primary, the Republican's plan includes a very alarming, and blatantly fascist playbook. The most notable pages include placing the entire executive branch under direct presidential control (eliminating the independence of the Department of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and other agencies), further militarizing the police, cracking down on immigration (some are predicting our own genocide, beginning with our management of the US/Mexico border), placing a nationwide ban on abortion and undesirable media, targeting LGBTIQIA and other marginalized communities, and ultimately destroying the wall between church and state to create a Christian nationalist government. They are not being subtle about it; you can read the manifesto here. America, a leading world power with an obese military and other friends in low places, is set to become very fascist if the Republicans win. This could ultimately change the course of world politics as many other countries within the West are increasingly leaning fascist. Americans are not going to suddenly discover the third party and vote for it. They will be participating in the two party system. We have no choice to do so as well, or it may be decades before we get it turned back around. By then it will certainly be far too late for Palestine and all the other lives that will be lost along the way. Don't even get me started on climate change. The stakes are immense. Americans, It is your right to choose not to vote, or to vote for a third party during this primary. But this will be a slap to the face of POC, immigrants, LGBTQIA, people with disabilities, the working class, and several other targeted groups, of which there will be many. Bullying people for trying to prevent this is not going to put you on the side of history you want it to. When I vote for Biden, I will absolutely be thinking about how much I detest his stance on Isreal and the rest of his presidency and personality to boot. But I will be hoping against all hope this action is able to curb the right before they place us all in chains, if they'll have us alive at all.

#i rant #apologies guys but CAN WE PLEASE #I'm not trying to have my life or the lives of others cut shorter than they already have been #this is truly life or death #politics #american politics #us politics #biden #trump #fascism #project 2025 #isreal #palestine #free palestine #free gaza #genocide #please suggest other tags if this is found to be lacking

[a-humble-bagel]

i could be wrong, but i’m pretty sure that “Wednesday” is the first form of The Addams Family that isn’t satire (I haven’t seen the 2019 and 2021 movies and idk if I ever will).

This just leads to some interesting new perspectives because now a lot of people are trying to rationalize/moralize some of Wednesday’s actions which is interesting because no one’s ever had to do that before. 

I think the lack of satire also makes some of the Addams’ actions in the show a little confusing, like how they seem to love all things dark and murderous but then when Gomez gets accused of murder they act as though it’s a terrible thing (I know this can be rationalized by saying that they were scared of the consequences he’d face, but honestly it would’ve been nice if it didn’t have to be rationalized in the first place). 

The thing with satire is that their actions never had to be rationalized because it was funny. Sure, it was dark humour, but you could tell that it was a joke. It was obvious that the point of those dark jokes was to entertain, and those weren’t the morals the story was preaching. Take this scene in “The Addams Family Values” for example where Wednesday sets Amanda on fire: 

It’s obvious that the movie isn’t telling you “set the people who bully you on fire”, because it’s obviously satire. To find the actual message, you have to look deeper into the dark campiness to find the heart of what the story is about. Satires are exaggerations of real life problems, and The Addams Family looks at the flaws within the “ideal American family”. This scene is telling the audience to stand up to bullies, that adults can be blind and part of the problem, not to bully outcasts/people who seem weird, that history is often sanitized, and that colonialism is bad. It’s also a badass moment that feels great because Wednesday and the other “weird” kids are finally getting revenge on a bunch of rude and horrible people.

Now compare that to the scene in “Wednesday” where Wednesday tortures Tyler. True, the scenes take place in very different contexts. Tyler is someone who has physically hurt people, including Wednesday’s friend, so it’s more personal. In this scene, it isn’t just justice she’s after, it’s cold-hearted vengeance (that may be mixed with some feelings of being hurt).. With Amanda, it’s more lighthearted as Amanda never killed anyone. Nevertheless, in both scenes, Wednesday gets violent revenge on someone who’s wronged her, but the message in the TV show is that torture is bad. The Nightshades turn their backs on Wednesday, and she faces consequences for her actions. And that brings me to my next point: consequences.

In “Wednesday”, The Addams family has to face actual legal consequences. In the 90s movies, they only had to face social consequences. Even though they did all those horrifying terrible things, the only repercussions they got were disdain and annoyance from the other characters, which isn’t much of a repercussion. Even in “The Addams Family” when Tully throws them out of their house, the police are never involved, and the thought of the Addams’ going to jail doesn’t even cross the audience’s mind. This is partly what allows them to wholeheartedly engage in macabre and murderous things: the narrative doesn’t punish them for it, and they never face serious consequences. 

After all, if the Addams’ in the 90s movies faced serious consequences, the narrative wouldn’t go anywhere. If the storyline allowed the Addams’ to be arrested, then the judge at the start likely would’ve called the police when Gomez kept hitting golf balls through his window. Gomez would’ve been arrested, and the story couldn’t progress. As a satire, the 90s movies require there to be a lack of police in order to convey the messages of the films. That way, the Addams’ can do all of their usual spooky and dangerous things, which convey the deeper lessons of the story. However, “Wednesday” took away the satire and added in the police.

From the start, the Addams’ are treated as not “ordinary” people, but they no longer exist outside of the law. This is shown in the very first episode, when Wednesday puts the piranhas in the pool. Morticia later mentions that “the boy’s father wanted to press attempted murder charges”. That is a huge difference from the 90s movies. If this was a scene in one of the 90s movies, Wednesday likely would’ve still been expelled, but it would’ve been something she was smugly satisfied about, and there would be no the threat of legal actions. 

In other words, the previous versions of The Addams Family were all treated as satire characters, which allowed them to get away with things that they wouldn’t be able to do in the real world (playing with death/dangerous activities/torture) without the narrative punishing them for it, and without them facing real consequences. Satires require exaggeration, so extremes had to be allowed. However, “Wednesday” treated The Addams’ as regular characters, and had them face consequences like being arrested and jail. This makes it feel like they’re all bark and no bite: it seems like they talk about death and violence but deep down, they abhor it.

This is what made Gomez’s arrest seem somewhat contradictory. The Addams talk so much about how they love death, so why did Wednesday and Morticia have to go to such lengths to prove that he didn’t kill anyone? And Wednesday’s comment at the end of the episode about how she knows Gomez couldn’t really kill anyone just reinforces the idea that the Addams’ are all bark and no bite.

 Besides, whether or not the Addams’ themselves actually disapproved of Gomez murdering someone, the narrative disapproved of it. The story punishes Gomez for potentially being a murderer, just like it punishes Wednesday for torturing Tyler. Since the Addams’ aren’t satire characters in this interpretation, it can’t allow them to go to the same extremes as satire characters, it has to punish them, otherwise it would convey the message “torture and murder are good”.

This isn’t a criticization of how the show interpreted the Addams’, it’s just a neat thing I started thinking about and then decided to write out. 

tldr: The Addams’ aren’t satire in “Wednesday”, so while they still have the same values/talk the same way as their 90s movie counterparts, the narrative has to have them face serious consequences so it doesn’t convey the wrong message.

#wednesday netflix #the addams family #the addams family values #wednesday addams #wenclair #wednesday x enid #gomez addams #morticia addams #tyler galpin #sheriff galpin

[uselessheretic]

but also bouncing off of this with ed, racialized masculinity, and rage (and i'm using that term specifically and for a reason) one of the other parts i think is fascinating is the way that rage is dangerous. not to an individual but to the oppressive structures surrounding us.

moc and anger is something that has always been policed and their image in media has to be crafted to fit a specific ideal. i'm taking a look at this through the lens of a biracial african-american, but if you look at the history of how black men are depicted in media you see a stark change occur upon the abolition of slavery. during slavery, the image of enslaved people that was promoted were those of a happy and content group of people. they were infantalized and portrayed as child-like and mentally deficient. you can see gone with the wind as an example of "the happy slave" myth. there's a great teen vogue article you can read if you wanna see more about the myth and how it relates to current pop culture. you can also read more about caricatures and the way they're still normalized currently with mascots of aunt jemima and uncle ben in this op-ed. but like all caricatures, they serve a purpose and fulfill a need of white supremacy. when it came to the happy slave, it was to push the idea that black people were content in slavery, that slavery was a civilizing process that was actually white people helping them, and that the only kind of work black people were capable of is physical labor, that any other kind would make them unhappy.

you can see similarities actually with the way māori men are spoken about and locating their use to physicality. when māori schools (in traditional western sense) were first opened, māori students scored just as well as the european lead schools. white people actually literally forced them to change their curriculum to be labor based completely because anything else was thought of as too complex for their simple minds or some bullshit like that. there's a great paper by brendan hokowhitu "The Death of Koro Paka: “Traditional” Mäori Patriarchy" that goes in depth about the white supremacist fetishization of māori physical labor.

in the same way that māori school curriculums were changed, the happy slave myth was a way for white supremacy to maintain a status quo that naturalized using poc for hard labor while patting themselves on the back for doing them a favor. for a long period of time in america, black rage and anger was erased. it was hidden from white eyes to shield them from having to face the reality of their brutalization. this is why frederick douglass was so revolutionary, btw. he pulled back the curtain on the myth, showing these caricatures as the shadow puppets they were, forcing white people to look at the brutality they were inflicting on real human beings.

the abolition of slavery changed this image. it's like it underwent a PR campaign overnight (which it kinda did) where suddenly pictures of slaves singing with huge grins were replaced with the image of animalistic, out of control, absolutely furious black men. part of this was from a white paranoia projecting their anxiety that black people will come at them for revenge from slavery. but the main reason for this was because of a caveat in abolition that still allowed slavery in the case of incarceration. (the 13th is a documentary on netflix that goes in depth on this!) you can't say that you're enslaving people because they like it and it makes them happy anymore, so what do you do? you change that narrative. it's not to keep them safe, it's to keep you safe especially your women safe. jim crow laws are rolled out, black men in the south are either incarcerated or lynched (the great migration from the south was fleeing white terrorism!) the myth of the angry, violent, savage negro takes form.

the point i'm making related to ed, beyond the history lesson, is related to that idea of white fear of moc's anger. when we talk about the anger of moc, we don't erase it. that's already happened before, and it was used against us. instead we lean into the idea of what makes white people so fucking shook at the idea of an angry moc.

a huge part of this that i think is very relevant to ed is the need for the state to control him. piracy is disruptive as fuck. a huge portion of pirates were ex-navy who left because they no longer wanted to put up with how fucking shitty the navy is to their men (no, it wasn't for radical reasons 😭) piracy also had a large amount of black people fleeing slavery too! one of the reasons black pirates were so scared of capture was because unlike their white counterparts, they wouldn't be hanged, they'd be brought to plantations. if you want to read an interesting article about piracy and race i'd suggest this one! it's untrue to say that piracy was an aracial utopia, but the history of it is complex and fascinating. (fun fact, blackbeard actually gets cited sometimes as one of the pirate ships that were a lot more equitable with race where the famous pirate black ceasar served upon his ship. this does not mean blackbeard wasn't horrifically racist. he still sold slaves and raped black women. do not mistake this for him being an antiracist legend)

pirates were able to operate outside of state control and this was terrifying. at times, they would work with the navy, also a fun fact. hornigold is famous for attacking spanish ships and leaving the british ones alone, meaning england just kinda looked the other way lmao.

but for ed (the character) i think this is what grants blackbeard so much power in a way that just plain old edward teach would never be able to harness. all the way up the chain, blackbeard is feared, and blackbeard is respected. the mere chance that blackbeard would be willing to take an act of grace and concede that power to the king is so lucrative that even an admirals subordinates are willing to go against him for it. to have blackbeard under english control is the greatest propaganda anyone could've offered them.

i think i said this yesterday, but as a powerless child being told that he can't have fine things, that's just how it is, it can feel like your only two options are either anger or despair. ed chose anger, and by doing so, ed chose survival. he can despair over his surroundings or he can get angry, say fuck this, join a pirate ship, and go ham. he can despair over his mother's abuse, or he can get angry. angry that she's treated like this. angry that his father is so cruel. angry that there is nobody who is willing to help them. angry enough to kill your father. not because ed is, at his core, a violent person, but because, at his core, he's a loving one who will kill off a part of himself if it means keeping his mother safe. ("when you kill, you die as well.")

and not just anger, but rage? it's powerful. it's the natural conclusion for having even the slightest awareness of your circumstances as a moc, and it's in the states best interests to quell that as much as possible. not to be like "malcolm x said" but also malcolm x said "Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change." and i think there's something to that with ed, where he's trying to change the circumstances of his life to no longer be a nobody. that anger has served him well over the last few decades, his path has scorched a legacy, but it's also burned him out on the way. something stede offers to him alongside retirement is the possibility that he may be able to let that go. doesn't have to hold onto that anger anymore and wield it like a weapon. maybe love can be enough?

and in this case, it doesn't work out for him. there's many reasons why, but a big one is that ed hasn't yet done the introspection necessary to move forward. he struggles with acknowledging his past (he frequently forgets his acts of cruelty) and although he may be ready to let that go, it's not so easy. it clings to him. also why i think izzy's role is so important and not just black and white villainy. what he and izzy had worked. for decades it served them both well. but now it doesn't anymore and ed wants to let that go, but it isn't that easy to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened. izzy is his reminder of that, good and bad.

i mentioned malcolm x earlier, and it feels worth it to bring up how much a disservice history does to his legacy where he's painted as angry with no other nuance. they called him the angriest negro in america. there's also a fascinating legacy within the black male community of attempting to claim him for black masculinity at the expense of others, but malcolm x was also a loving husband and father, and a huge proponent for self-love. his love was complex, and it was only after he began to start making connections globally and start advocating for a more nuanced approach of black radical politics that he was assassinated.

ed is angry, and in that anger is power, but it's also exhausting. he wasn't wrong that love and vulnerability is something that will heal him, but he also hadn't yet done the work of examining his own internalized self-hatred, despair, loneliness, and anger. he's not going to have a fairytale ending where stede swoops in and rescues him from the evils of piracy, but will need to dig deeper into his emotional roots and connect with that same complexity of love that figures like malcolm x embodied.

this will probably look different for ed though since there are māori practices specific to that self journey of healing. Te Whare Tapa Whā is a model of health and wellbeing that takes a holistic māori and indigenous approach to health that positions five tenets as necessary for one's health.

i don't feel like i can do it justice summarizing it since it's focused on five culture specific concepts, but here's a neat link!

this is something i try to keep in mind when writing ed and his healing. even if i'm not naming the model specifically, i think it's great to check back in on "is ed getting these five needs?"

i would highly recommend reading more about māori approaches to mental and physical health where the trauma of colonization is something that is brought to the forefront of needing to be addressed to heal. not only that, but how strong a backlash this receives from white groups because acknowledging that pain and history is dangerous to white supremacy.

but ed's relationship to emotion is something i really love about the show. rage and anger threatens the control of the british empire. it wreaks havoc across the seas and makes a mockery of their power. with ed though, when he's able to take control over the navy and for a brief moment becomes the most powerful person on that naval ship, is the act of grace. an action born from his love of another person. it feels so? hopeful and kind. and it wouldn't hit as hard if there weren't those moments of pain. after all, ed's desire for softness becomes all the more meaningful when we know he's use to only being treated roughly. that contrast is what keeps us feeling.

#edward teach #ofmd meta #yes i am salty and including a bunch of sources bc of that lol #long post

[theygotlost]

ok. here is my attempt to make a coherent post about the watch bbc.

my main reaction, over and over again watching the first episode, is: CHOICES WERE MADE. truly inscrutable choices for which I cannot possibly understand the rationale or thought process. If I was adapting discworld for the screen, it would ever in a million years occur to me to make these choices. some of these choices include, in no particular order:

cut-me-own-throat dibbler is a white woman with dreadlocs who uses a wheelchair. I can NOT make this up.

vetinari is also a woman. .....I have nothing else to say about this.

instead of a dragon sanctuary, sybil runs some kind of femdom petplay sex dungeon for bedraggled old men. including vimes. and this is how they meet. she traps him in her sex dungeon.

she's also skinny and average height. I repeat: sybil ramkin is SHORTER THAN VIMES.

the actor playing vimes does have a very vimey look about him I won't lie, I even like his little fauxhawk hair situation, but his performance is completely baffling. he's always making an over-the-top jim carrey face but doesn't sell it nearly as well as jim carrey so it's just awkward and not funny.

vimes' accent is also completely unplaceable. I swear it's different in every single scene. sometimes american, sometimes irish, sometimes an american doing a bad impression of an irish accent or vice versa. watching @fealtyfaggot (irish)'s face in real time as he tried to calculate this man's accent was entertaining to say the least.

honestly, every actor sounds like the director instructed them to do an irish accent except they're all bad at irish accents so they all sound weird in their own unique way.

goodboy bindle featherstone is a normal-sized, horrible cgi lizard and sybil uses him like a handheld flamethrower.

the series is attempting (and FAILING) to adapt the events of guards! guards! and night watch simultaneously. carcer is killmongerfied into a black man (not raceblind casting as ciarán pointed out to me, they specifically put out a casting call for a black actor) who is justifiably angry at the police system. and he's carcer. so he's still the main antagonist and a crazed serial killer. he's the bad guy.

john keel was also black and vimes is white, so while it doesn't actually happen in the first episode it seems apparent that CARCER will end up being the one to impersonate keel?!

AND carcer was best friends with vimes and they had some kind of ~history~ together where there was some kind of dramatic betrayal and vimes attempted suicide(?). what

I guess dwarves are.... not short? cheery is normal human height.

carrot's tragic backstory where he was thrown down a mineshaft as a baby (I laughed out loud when he said this) and his adoptive dwarf parents sent him to join the watch cause they hate him and are trying to get rid of him.

just...... why the cyberpunk angle? discworld isn't the most traditional, historically accurate medieval fantasy out there and it's not supposed to be, but.... WHY CYBERPUNK?

I almost forgot: colon and nobby are completely absent.

my only question after watching this is WHY. WHY WHY WHY WHY. why is this a discworld adaptation? why did they decide to adapt discworld in this way? there is absolutely no respect or appreciation for the source material or understanding of what makes it good. whoever came up with this does not seem to like discworld very much at all. every single second of these 42 minutes was a slap in the face.

If this was just its own show, not related to discworld in any way, it would still be pretty bad. But I could still see it having a cult following you know? there would for sure be a niche tumblr fandom for it. the best thing I can say about this show is that it would have been good if literally everthing about it was different.

#the watch watch

[charlotteharlatan]

Casual reminder that this scene in Good Omens

(The “I’ll give you a lift, anywhere you want to go” scene, the “you go too fast for me, Crowley,” scene)

Takes place in 1967.

The same year that “homosexual acts” between men were decriminalized (to a certain extent) in England and Wales.

The Sexual Offenses Act of 1967 decriminalized sexual activity in private between consenting men over the age of 21.

This law wasn’t a cure-all, obviously. It still wasn’t safe for gay men to show most forms of affection in public; you could still be charged with gross indecency, the penalties for which could be dire. (Prior to this law, even private, consensual relations could be prosecuted; Alan Turing was charged with gross indecency in 1952, and his subsequent trial, conviction, and chemical castration is considered to be a major factor that led to his suicide in 1954.)

In addition, the age of consent for heterosexual and lesbian couples was 16, in contrast to 21 for gay men. Many attempts to equalize this disparity failed in Parliament until 2000, when the Sexual Offenses Act was amended.

So, the passing of the Sexual Offenses Act “wasn’t a moment of sudden liberation for gay men,” as Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite wrote in BBC History. But it was one of the major milestones for LGBTQIA+ rights in the UK. It was a necessary prerequisite for the increase in LGBTQIA+ rights activism that happened there in the 1970s.

For audiences not from the UK (and indeed, to many *from* the UK) much of this historical context will likely be missed by viewers when watching this flashback scene. I’m American and definitely lacked most of this context the first time I watched the show. A viewer may recognize that the backdrop of late-night Soho in the late 1960s represented a very specific cross-section of British society that was considered by much of the general public to be “distasteful” and subversive (to put it VERY mildly) at the time. But that’s just the broad strokes.

Having additional historical details, beyond the broad strokes, goes a long way to deepen our understanding of the cultural landscape that Aziraphale and Crowley would have observed and experienced as residents of London during that period. That secretive rendezvous in the Bentley was not only risky in the sense that they might attract the attention of Heaven or Hell; they also risked being seen by a human, possibly a police officer. To a human, it would have looked like two gay men meeting in public, at night, in an “unsavory” part of London, and could have drawn all sorts of negative attention to the two of them.

The truth is, Aziraphale and Crowley are categorically not gay nor are they men. But they are unquestionably queer and theirs is undeniably a story of queer love. And each time they meet up throughout history, and by necessity must do it clandestinely, the historical context points this queerness out to the audience. It’s queerness the way bell hooks once put it: “‘queer’ not as being about who you’re having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but ‘queer’ as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”

In the present day (which will in large part be the time-setting for Season 2), the current social climate for the LGBTQIA+ community is becoming progressively more terrifying.

As recently as 2015, the UK was considered the best out of 49 European countries for LGBTQIA+ rights by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association Europe (ILGA - Europe). Eight years later, the UK’s 2023 ranking on the same index has dropped significantly to 17th place, mostly due to the growing anti-trans rhetoric in public life. Transphobic hate crimes have grown by 56% in England and Wales since ILGA’s 2022 report. Homophobic hate crimes have also increased sharply, up by 41% since 2022.

Meanwhile, in the US, 2023 marks the fourth record-breaking year for anti-trans legislation. So far this year, 562 anti-trans bills have been proposed, 79 of which have been signed into law, and 354 are in active debate in their respective legislatures. In Florida, a bill recently passed that criminalizes gender-affirming healthcare for children and allows the state to take children from their families if they suspect the child is receiving such care. This is not limited to hormone replacement therapy - it also includes gender-affirming talk therapy. Florida has some of the most egregious examples of such legislation, but many states - Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, Indiana, and many others - have certainly been pursuing the same path. The number of sanctuary states is dwindling, and many families in trans-hostile states lack the resources they’d need to move somewhere safer, meaning these families live in a state of constant fear. (“LEAVE TRANS KIDS ALONE, YOU ABSOLUTE FREAKS.”)

So as we get every day closer to Season 2: always bear in mind the context. Remember the past. Be aware in the present. Consider the future and do whatever work that’s within your power to make it a good one.

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens meta #history #lqbtqia #queer #queer history #transphobia tw #homophobia tw #mention of suicide

[bengiyo]

Be My Favorite Ep 6 Stray Thoughts

Last week, this show put me on my back foot when it asked me to be kind. So much of last week was about people choosing to be kinder to one another and that choice paying forward for the recipient. Kawi is building a genuine friendship with Pear. Pisaeng went to a gay club for the first time and saw Max. Max read the baby gay for being self-centered, but then softened it with good advice. Kwan encouraged Not to give Kawi just a little bit of encouragement after asking him to sign the book she had already panned. They subverted the rooftop confession by having Kawi gently turn Pisaeng down. Kawi actually sang and now is part of a band. I’m actually invested in this show now. Was not expecting that.

Hey, Kawi’s smiles are starting to look genuine.

It’s sad that this is probably the first time Kawi ever expressed his worries about his dad.

I know we better save Kawi’s dad’s life. Kob Songsit is one of the most reliable BL dads.

I like that Max is a prickly queer. You gotta establish boundaries with baby gays because they can glomp on way too hard.

Oh. I see. Pisaeng’s family isn’t just rich, they’re “comfortable.” Curious how Max will feel about Pisaeng having a complicated relationship with his mom, or the reveal that anyone with that level of wealth is involved in crimes.

Pear’s house was used in Dark Blue Kiss and Bakery Boys I’m pretty sure.

I am having a lot of feelings about this scene with Pear asking her dad to help Kawi’s. I’m sick, and one of my friends reached out to his doctor parents to get me into care. I don’t think I’d be alive without their help.

Oh, Kawi. Now is the time to be strong and tank the embarrassment. It isn’t bad that Pear knew what you wanted to ask. It’s actually good that Pisaeng told her. She was there as an advocate with you. The mission is your dad’s health, not your ego.

Okay, I do like this show finally acknowledging that all these arguments people have are so loud that other people definitely know what they’re saying. I love Max.

Max is speaking my thoughts. I will let him write the rest of this post.

“I will not apologize for doing what I thought was best to help you with a serious problem. However you feel about it, I will accept it,” is really something I think we could use more of in the West. I feel like we as Americans are obsessed with ‘winning the conversation’ as a concept, and I think it makes us inherently combative.

This Kawi reveal about the source of his anger is giving, “I’m angry at myself.”

Not sure where I sit on Pear and Not as a pairing.

I get how repressed Kawi is and everything, but don’t kiss a man who has confessed to you while you’re drunk. There’s no turning back now. And then he falls asleep! This messy spaghetti ass boy!

Pisaeng going from an emotionally-complicated queer encounter directly into a closeted conversation with his mom as he has to figure out in the morning how to explain Kawi’s presence is giving me intense emotional flashbacks.

Okay, this show broke me. Pisaeng is not stupid. Pisaeng has always known who he is. His mother manipulated him deep into the closet when he was 15, and he knows it. His mom is using his own community against him. Some of you may be shocked that his mom has gay people turning on each other, but there is a long history of the police infiltrating gay spaces and threatening people convictions to turn them into informants. This is the sickest thing I think we’ve seen in a long time from GMMTV. I am deeply appalled. I will have to blog about this because this is so evil. The weaponization of our own community into surveilling and reporting on each other makes me so angry. That she is also publicly progressive enough that a person like Max admires her also infuriates me.

Nevermind. Fuck Not. Why is he speculating about Kawi’s sexuality to Pear? This is not how you flirt.

Ah, we’re back to the time travel portion of the plot. I’m curious what Pisaeng does with this knowledge.

I like Pisaeng. Despite everything going on, he’s still focused on the important thing: Kawi’s dad.

I do think it was important for Kawi to speak directly to Pear’s dad about getting help for his father, and not letting it just be a favor Pear begged for.

I’m so glad Kawi went to Pear as well to apologize for running out on her. She’s incredibly understanding and I hope she finds happiness and fulfillment.

I often talk a lot about the relationship with gay boys and their moms, but I also have strong feeling about boys and their fathers. Kawi admitting that he feels no need to improve himself if his dad won’t get to see it hits me to my core. I love my dad. He and I get along great. I need to call him later today once I watch Strange New Worlds. I get this.

I don’t mind Pisaeng letting Kawi know he’s willing to wait for him to sort his feelings.

I am going to have to write a separate post at some point this weekend. I am not in the read headspace now to talk about the rage flowing through my veins right now at a businesswoman with political ambitions gaslighting her own son into staying in the closet, and then using her own queer employees to surveil him. For those of you new to marginalized spaces, enforcement organizations have infiltrated our spaces forever and turned our own people against us. This was especially easy queer spaces because white men were threatened with losing access to whiteness. I cannot overstate how evil this is and how unexpected it is for me to have a GMMTV show NOT from Golf going directly into this.

#be my favorite #be my favorite meta #thai bl #bl series #Ben watches

[chamberlains-ghoul]

Resident Evil AU: Leon is President Graham’s stepson and Ashley’s half-brother who causes problems on purpose.

His parents are still murdered, just not at the same time (his dad when he was small and his mother when he was around 15), so he still wants to be a police officer and hates the idea of being in politics. Graham publicly brags about Leon becoming a police officer but he’s actually pissed that Leon never went to college and ran away to the police academy instead. Especially since they had to cover up a lot of that situation because Leon basically moved cross-country without telling anyone.

Everything in RE2 basically stays the same except he doesn’t end up a government agent. He gets a lot of military training and becomes a lab rat (look, you can’t convince me that Leon doesn’t have some kind of immunity since a bite isn’t an insta-kill) for Sherry’s protection. He ends up an all-American anti-Umbrella poster boy for Graham’s campaign. He takes every loophole and opportunity to get around that, though, and ends up being Sort Of Controversial within the political sphere. He causes drama a lot, mostly as Ashley gets older so she stays out of the tabloids. Him being the only confirmed Raccoon City survivor still does a lot for Graham’s campaign, though.

He and Ashley were never close as little kids because of their age gap, but after their mom died, Leon took up a lot of the care-taker roles. She gets angry after he leaves for the academy because she feels like he abandoned her. After thinking he died in Raccoon City, then finding out he was alive, she forgives him. However, they’re mostly kept apart outside of public appearances since Graham doesn’t want Leon telling Ashley anything about what happened in Raccoon City.

In the events of RE4, Leon accompanies Ashley to her school for some kind of student government meeting. Krauser still picks them up and kidnaps them. They’re kept apart by Las Illuminados, and Leon escapes early on and is able to hide in the village. He finds Luis the same way and they’re still chained together, but in this AU Leon is obviously a civilian. He gets his little “oh god, why is this happening again” moment (like RE8 Ethan’s little mental breakdown) and Luis feels bad enough to stick around after they find the key.

Luis isn’t able to get away to meet Ada, so she eventually intervenes and reveals Luis is working for her and separates them. She tells Luis not to worry about Leon and that he could take care of himself and find Ashley. Since Leon’s well-known for being a Raccoon City survivor, Luis goes full guilt mode after finding out who he actually is.

Hunnigan isn’t there to tell Leon that Luis was Umbrella, but Leon is distrustful after finding out he’s working for Ada and still threatens him in that cabin and his interactions with him and Ada are similar to how they are in the game. However, I like this version of Leon to be a little more sheltered and naive despite RE2, so he becomes trusting of Luis and offers to take him to an American embassy with him and Ashley so he doesn’t have to work for Ada.

Leon tells Luis what Annette told him, about how Ada worked in weapons dealing and would sell Las Plagas to the highest bidder. Luis insists that he has faith in Ada, and he believes she won’t let the world burn even if her morals are gray. Luis eventually admits his history with Umbrella and Las Illuminados in the elevator, and that’s why he has so much faith in Ada. Because he was in a similar situation himself.

I like Luis and am an avid Serennedy supporter, so this is a Luis Lives AU. I also like the idea of Leon and Ashley presenting a sad Spanish war criminal to their father and begging to keep him.

So anyways do what you want with this AU. I might write something for it but idk.

#resident evil #ashley graham #resident evil 4 #resident evil 4 remake #luis sera navarro #luis serra #leon kennedy #leon s kennedy #serennedy

[sixminutestoriesblog]

ides of march

well, its tumblr's favorite holiday and who can blame us? The assassination of Julius Caesar is probably one of the only group projects that ever went down the way it was supposed to with, well, not complete group participation (there were said to be upward of 60 people involved but only 23 stab wounds - obviously someone was not carrying their weight) but at least a good effort was made at it. But lets take a moment, between our jokes about salad and Animal Crossing butterfly nets to look at what else has happened in history on the Ides of March. For instance, did you know, on March 15th:

1493 - Columbus returned to Spain after 'discovering' the new world.

1580 - Phillip II of Spain put a bounty on the head of Prince William I of Orange for 25,000 gold coins for leading the Dutch revolt against the Spanish Hamburgs

1744 - King Louis XV of France declares war on Britain

1767 - Andrew Jackson, who would go on to be the seventh president of the US, was born.

1820 - Maine became the 23rd state in the US

1864 - the Red River Campaign, called 'One damn blunder from beginning to end' started for the Union Forces in the American Civil War

1889 - a typhoon in Apia Harbor, Samoa sinks 6 US and German warships, killing 200

1917 - Czar Nicholas II abdicated the Russian throne, bringing an end to the Romanov dynasty

1955 - the first self-guided missile is introduced by the US Air Force

1965 - TGI Friday's opens its first restaurant in New York City

1991 - in LA, four police officers are brought up on charges for the beating of Rodney King

2018 - Toys R Us announces it will be closing all its stores

2019 - a terrorist attacks two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51, and wounding 50 others

Oof! Pretty bleak, isn't it? It would almost make you think that the day is just bad luck, start to finish and its probably just as well, we're all focusing on assassination instead of other horrors. But wait - its not all bad news! The Ides of March has some tricks up its sleeve yet (joke intended). I'd be telling you only half the story if I didn't add:

1854 - Emil von Behring is born and will eventually become the first to receive the Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery of a diphtheria antitoxin, being called 'the children's savoir' for the lives it saves

1867 - Michigan is the first state to use property tax to support a university

1868 - the Cincinnati Red Stockings have ten salaried players, making them the first professional baseball team in the US

1887 - Michigan has the first salaried fish and game warden

1892 - the first automatic ballot voting machine is unveiled in New York City

1907 - Finland gives women the right to vote, becoming the first to do so in Europe

1933 - Ruth Bader Ginsberg is born and will go on to become a US Supreme Court justice

1934 - the 5$ a day wage was introduced by Henry Ford, forcing other companies to raise their wages as well or lose their workers

1937 - the first state sponsored contraceptive clinic in the US opens in Raleigh, North Carolina

1946 - the British Prime minister recognizes India's independence

1947 - the US Navy has its first black commissioned officer, John Lee

1949 - clothes rationing ends in Britain, four years after the end of WWII

1960 - ten nations meet in Geneva for disarmament talks

1968 - the Dioceses of Rome says it will not ban 'rock and roll' from being played during mass but that it deplores the practice - also in 1968, LIFE magazine titles Jimi Hendrix 'the most spectacular guitarist in the world'

1971 - ARPANET, the precursor of the modern day internet, sees its first forum

1984 - Tanzanian adopts a constitution

1985 - symbolics.com, the first internet domain name, is registered

The Ides of March turns out to just be a day, like any other day in history.

Unless you're us. In which case -

#ides of march #happy ides of march #julius caesar #today in history #please take some of my 'bad' dates as tongue in cheek #we love you maine #and a few of my dates fit both the good and bad side of the things so I just went with whichever I was on at the time #feel free to wiggle them around to a more appropriate column

[unhonestlymirror]

Today's menu is: a vatņik soup

What an interesting three-of-a-kind. Let's look at it closer:

The first photo: a russian artist with an interesting nickname. If you transcribe it on russian Cyrillic and then go back to English, it turns out to be "moscow police." Let me remind you that moscow police is not only participating in killing, raping and torturing Ukrainians, Belaruthians, Qazaqs, Crimean Tatars, and other people who are not "Great Arian Russian", but are also the same people who kill and torture average russians, whom Americans care so much for, as well. Just like in the teract in Krokus City Hall. The moscow police is the organisation that works directly for putin and kremlin. It's like being a German artist during WW2 and having a nickname Schutzstaffel. Although I doubt people in hetalia even know what this word means because they are not interested in studying history, after all.

The more I am here, the more I believe such a kind of artist is just paid by russia to draw this bullshit. And people who share this - yeah, it's about 50-100 of them, but they are all the same faces, every time. Seems like there's an organised community that brings confusion to other people and spreads disgraceful and dangerous ideas about my long-suffering people and land. That's a thing I wish Tumblr staff paid closer attention to. I would not be surprised if the artists who promote russia here actually work for KGB (officially FSB, but it's just the renamed CSS).

"The house which Ivan built" - impressive, very nice. Now, let's see the news from my country:

"Kharkiv, April 4th, a young firefighter cries at the scene of the attack, where russians cynically killed his father, a 52-year-old rescuer, a few minutes ago. On this hellish night, immediately after the first explosions, the father and son and their colleagues immediately left for the place of impact.

Vladyslav and Volodymyr worked next to each other, literally a few houses away from each other. When a powerful explosion rang out, the son immediately understood that it had most likely flown to where his father was."

And these are the remains of a missile. In russian Cyrillic, it is written "for Krokus City Hall". A teract there was organised by.... moscow police! And some ISIS and Hamas representatives, whom moscow police carefully helped to leave the crime scene.

Second art - also russian artist (who could have thought!). They call Belarus (and, apparently, Ukraine... or maybe even all former soviet union states) "Russia's family". Belarus is holding a book "1000 and 1 reason to love the brother". Laughing out loud. Belarus never was russia's sibling, and moreover, it never loved russia. Belarus hates russia more than Lithuanians and Ukrainians hate it altogether. They just can't say it outloud. Yet.

You know? Such kind of art makes Belaruthians feel unsafe. That's why there are so many russians drawing our land and claiming we are their siblings who love them. Belaruthians just avoid anything that makes them feel unsafe. Too many Belaruthians were killed already. Belaruthians and their families are being persecuted all over the world for speaking Belaruthian language, for wearing white-red-white stuff, for making art in Belaruthian language. We feel in danger - and this website, especially this fandom with the tag of our own fucking country, doesn't help us feel safer.

Russians murdered about 60%, if not more, of all the people of Belarus, including Litvaks, especially Litvaks, just during the soviet union. Nowadays, russia doesn't want Belarus to exist either - thus, the russian artists like the fairytale about Belarus loving and wanting to unite with russia.

One day, prorussian propaganda will be condemned the same way we condemn nazis. One day, this becomes true.

Third art - the artist is... no, not russian. Chinese! What a poor dude, I feel nothing but pity, really. "Ivan is terrified" - good! :D Finally, some nice fucking art. /sarcasm. This dude is doing a great job in presenting their country as a country of uneducated idiots. The tendency is concerning.

I wish all the prorussian artists in hetalia "to taste their own medicine". To have nightmares for years. To be scared for your loved ones every single day. To lose hair, weight, and teeth. To not feel safe ANYWHERE. To see your close ones falling into depression and be able to do nothing about it. To lose your home. Your pets. Your plants. Your plans. Your friends. Especially I want this for Hidekaz Himaruya.

#stop russian aggression #support ukraine #genocide of ukrainians #russia is a terrorist state #belarus #ukraine #hetalia #hws belarus #aph belarus #hws ukraine #aph ukraine

[aikoiya]

LoZ - The Gerudo Feel Responsible For Ganondorf

Someone said something about "why are the Gerudo shamed for Ganon's actions & Hyrule doesn't have to be for the prejudice that their king committed against the Sheikah?"

And, I honestly got the feeling that the shame the Gerudo feel was more something that they put upon themselves.

Like, they personally feel guilty for their association with him.

Because not once have I gotten the idea that the Gerudo were looked down upon by others for their association with Ganon. At least not in the Wild series. Not even the insinuation!

Literally, the first indication of the Gerudo being in any way related to Ganon that we get in the Wild series is from Urbosa & she even says it more to herself because no one is there to hear her! Then we don't hear about it again until TotK.

And even when it is brought up again, the only people who bring up the Gerudo's relation to Ganondorf as a point of shame are the Gerudo themselves.

No one in either game seems to blame them for it but themselves. Everyone else in the games only seem to blame Ganondorf himself.

This indicates that the Gerudo have tried their damndest to either make up for their previous king's wickedness or to entirely erase their connection to him from the public consciousness. Or possibly both.

It also indicates that this is something that the Gerudo consider to be personal. Something that they are personally ashamed of. Not due to foreign heckling or prejudice, but because of generational trauma. Likely involving horror stories told to them by their own ancestors about all he did.

In a lot of ways, it's like how no one judges white Americans more harshly for what they did during their history than white Americans themselves. It also makes me wonder if it's the same way for the ancestors of the Nazis.

Anyway, the simple fact that Zelda didn't immediately connect Ganondorf with Calamity Ganon & didn't even recognize the name. Tells me that that second option is actually very possible. And the fact that the Gerudo are openly Hyrule's allies now also lends credence to the 1st one.

As such, it's likely possible that, until now, no one in Hyrule other than the Gerudo, possibly only the higher ranking Gerudo, really remembered the fact that Calamity Ganon was once a Gerudo.

And the behavior of the Gerudo in FSA, chronologically after TP, actually reinforces this idea. Which just makes the fact that Ganondorf keeps being reborn into their race over & over again & getting them into deeper shit that they will inevitably have to clean up on their own while Ganon doesn't have to deal with the full consequences of his own actions, an even bigger spit in the eye.

And there's no way that Ganon didn't have legit followers amongst the Gerudo that would stick around after shit hit the fan. Same with OoT Ganon too. The idea that all of the Gerudo were either brainwashed or coerced/forced into following him is ludicrous.

Remember, even Hitler had real followers & believers. And he was a maniac who's main campaign for getting elected was the promise of antisemitic genocide! There are people who follow his ideology even today!

And you really think that just killing some foreign queen they likely didn't even care about, would be enough to turn all the Gerudo against Ganondorf? Life ain't like that, ya'll.

People will excuse a lot of things if they think it's for the greater good. Or even if they just think it'll benefit themselves.

Just look up "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police." It'll show you just how easy it is for good, ordinary people to become monsters.

How insidious the process is.

Everyone is capable of both great good & great evil. That's why it's so important that we practice discernment in our daily lives.

You never know what the information you encounter, the people you talk to, even the environment around you is doing to you.

LoZ Wild Masterlist

#loz #legend of zelda #botw #breath of the wild #tears of the kingdom #totk #gerudo

[bunny--manders]

Some photos of Appalachia for @kjzx to set the mood as you listen to the podcast!

This is what the mountains look like. The range is so old that they've actually eroded a bit over time, so they look softer and more rounded than the dramatic ranges out west like the Rockies, Cascades, Olympics, etc.

Child coal miners in Gary, West Virginia in 1908. The coal mining industry could be incredibly inhumane to its workers, and some of the most brutal suppression of labor movements in American history happened when workers tried to fight for better conditions. The podcast goes into real life mining disasters.

One of the most famous modern mining disasters--this coal mine caught on fire and couldn't be put out, and a whole town had to be abandoned because of it. The mine might continue burning for centuries.

I can't recall if the podcast mentions kudzu--it's an incredibly invasive plant that has been destroying Appalachian forests. Just driving by an infested forest is eerie because the vines will completely engulf trees and buildings.

A "holler" is a distinctive type of settlement in mountain hollows. They have their own unique culture and accent which people outside the area often stigmatize as uneducated. People living in these areas are often cut off from the best jobs, education, infrastructure, and healthcare and their state governments have done very little to help them for centuries.

I'm very interested in historical stories about bootlegging, and you'll hear a lot about people hiding stills for distilling liquor in the mountains so that they could make alcohol during Prohibition or during times of high taxes on liquor. It's very hard to police a whole lot of small, isolated towns in the mountains where the locals know the forest much better than federal agents coming in from out of town. My home state's official anthem, Rocky Top, actually has a verse implying that federal agents were murdered in the mountains while they were searching for an illegal moonshine still.

An example of music from the area. It's influenced by a combination of British immigrants, other European immigrants, and traditional African and African-American music.

A photo from the Appalachian Trail, a trail built in the 1920s that runs over 2,000 miles through the mountains. I'm biased because I love the forests where I live now so much, but I still think the Appalachians are some of the most beautiful parts of the country.

A storyteller talking about the very long history of Appalachian folk stories and repeating a story passed on through the oral tradition. Some of the stories still told in Appalachia are hundreds of years old and come from a blend of European and African folklore. I really love the way the podcast captures that beautiful style and cadence. It very much fits into the long history of ghost stories set in the mountains. I'm intrigued that you picked up on similarities to Russian storytelling traditions. I bet there are a lot of similarities with the way working-class families living in remote mountainous areas pass stories from generation to generation.

That's just a little taste of Appalachian history and culture! Basically: It's one of the most beautiful parts of America, but also one of the most badly treated by companies that exploited its people and natural resources and state governments that didn't do much to help people living in the area. I grew up in a city near but not in Appalachia, one that made a lot of money selling its culture to tourists but ultimately didn't give as much back as it should to the people living there. Parts of Appalachian culture have definitely become folksy novelties.

(BTW, if you've ever heard of Dolly Parton, she's probably the most famous modern celebrity from Appalachia and she's done a TON of work helping the communities she came from, which is part of why people love her so much!)

#old gods of appalachia #Youtube

[specialmouse]

I absolutely agree on white LGBT people not appropriating black activism for their own causes. I think another cause for that line of reasoning is that, simply put, white LGBT people essentially choose to be oppressed. White gay men have the option to remain closeted and retain that privilege, white trans women also have that option. They only become oppressed when they make that choice to come out, and to transition. So it's unreasonable to compare it to the oppression black people face, as that oppression is based off of a factor that the black person has absolutely no agency in- i.e. their ethnicity.

YES 100%! it's a very hard thing to stomach for us i think, because many of us (especially those that were raised religious) are told that it's a choice. it's not a choice to be gay, but it's a choice to be gay in public. it's not easy to remain closeted and it does end up driving a lot of people to suicide, it's not to say "oh you have it easy, just don't be __!" as bigots do. i'm not saying that at all. i'm a closeted trans man and it hurts a lot to be perceived as a woman. i also have the choice whether or not i want to say that i'm asian; it doesn't feel good to do that, but i can do it. what's being said here is that black people generally don't have that option at all unless they can pass as white; they are visibly black in every area of life, in public and private. we also have to factor in generational trauma. lgbt people do not have genetic and pervasive cultural generational trauma from being lgbt. black people (i'm going to stick to saying black people because its their collective struggle and history that white americans try to align ourselves with) do, almost as a rule. when you are a black person, and you're having a child, you know before that child is born that it's going to face an immense amount of bigotry, that the mother of that child is going to face an immense amount of bigotry just trying to deliver it and has an increased risk of dying from negligence steeped in medical racism, all because of the color of her skin. you didn't face transphobia as a baby. you were not, more than likely, a gay toddler. your bio parents were, statistically, not lgbt or queer. you are, more than likely, not related to those that were affected by the aids crisis, or someone who was beaten for being trans (not saying you can't be, i know people who are. i'm just saying more than likely, and one doesn't necessitate the other). that doesn't mean those events aren't traumatic to you, knowing that people like you were brutalized and abandoned like that. but look at it this way: every black person in america whose family has been here for more 60 years is related to someone who went through legal segregation, police brutality, medical racism, interpersonal racism, hiring+housing discrimination, environmental racism, etc. etc. forever... and that person is related to someone who went through jim crow, who is related to someone who lived in constant fear of being lynched and seeing it happen constantly, of someone who couldn't vote, couldn't own land... slavery wasn't even 200 years ago. it wasn't even two. hundred. years. ago. i don't think white people understand how fucking recent that is. like you might think i'm going off on a tangent rn about how pervasive antiblackness is in this country but i'm trying to hammer home that, if you are a white lgbt, it just does not COMPARE. yes, there are black people out there who are living more comfortable lives than you, and maybe you are very poor and have gone through a lot because you are gay/trans... but systemically, institutionally, historically, your suffering is not only more of a recent phenomena, but also far more contingent on your socioeconomic status than your sexuality. this is not to sayyyy that you aren't suffering, that trans and gay people aren't suffering because they're trans and gay, but if you try for a second to say that it's anywhere close to the collective suffering of black people... you're fooling yourself

#i want to add something to this but i need to be very careful about the way i word it and i'm tired

[myemuisemo]

It's time to learn from Letters from Watson "What John Rance Had to Tell."

But first, Holmes explains some of his deductions. He does not explain what the long fingernails on the right hand mean.

And he comes out with what is for me, as a modern reader, a doozy:

The A [in RACHE], if you noticed, was printed somewhat after the German fashion. Now, a real German invariably prints in the Latin character, so that we may safely say that this was not written by one, but by a clumsy imitator who overdid his part. It was simply a ruse to divert inquiry into a wrong channel.

What? A German fashion of writing?

OKAY. It turns out that, prior to World War II, German was written in different scripts than other European languages, which the University of Wisconsin has documented for us because German immigrants continued to use them.

Here are a snipper of UW's examples of Kurrent and Sütterlin, as well as capital letters from Wikimedia's Fraktur.

The Fraktur A looks so much like a U that I can't believe Lestrade wouldn't have read the word as "ruche" and decided the victim was a dressmaker.

Calligrascapes gives examples of Spencerian (U.S.) and Copperplate (UK) handwriting of the late Victorian period here. Lower-case A looks almost the same as in Kurrent. I feel like our wall-scrawler must have used Sütterlin.

That our killer is familiar with a German A implies he either reads German comfortably or corresponds regularly with people of German ancestry. Since Holmes says "a real German" would use Latin letters (so he corresponds with Germans or visits Germany), killer is presumably familiar with a German-American community, which is certainly plausible if he's from Ohio (or Pennsylvania, or much of the Upper Midwest).

Whew.

Holmes' passing mention of going "to Halle's concert to see Norman Neruda" is about seeing Czech violinist Wilma Norman-Neruda perform at an occasion organized by Anglo-German pianist and conductor Sir Charles Hallé (also Norman-Neruda's future second husband).

Finally, we arrive at the home of Constable Rance. Last episode, it was given as Audley Court, Kennington Toll Gate. The latter part is a real place, the site of a toll gate that was demolished about 15 years before the time of the story. Here's an old photo shared by The Underground Map.

Today the site of the toll gate is a plaza with public art.

The "long succession of dingy streets and dreary by-ways" suggests the cab ride was to somewhere near the old toll gate site (possibly just west of St. Mark's Church, which is the tower in the background), rather than directly to the triangle of land where it sat. There's not a lot of space right there, due to Kennington Park, which has a long history as a public common and site of hangings.

I suspect any police constable trying to live in London today would sympathize with Rance's living in a "sordid dwelling." Rance also takes bribes.

Rance is, of course, astonished by Holmes' powers of deduction. But what was the "drunk" man singing? I was sure in my heart that "Columbine" was "Columbia" (an old-fangled term for the United States) and searching for that made it possible to cheat when I Heard of Sherlock's discussion of this matter came up in my search results. It's "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean." Here's an audio file.

“Had he a whip in his hand?”

Where on earth did a whip come from? We've no such wounds on the victim, and the killer came with him in a cab.

I might not have gone but for you, and so have missed the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn’t we use a little art jargon. There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.

And... title drop! If this is the fates weaving the tapestry of life, surely it says something about Holmes that all the other threads are colorless besides murder.

#sherlock holmes #letters from watson

[lawlightautismtruther]

All I ever hear when talking with the girls (am I 100% girl? No, and that might be why I feel the disconnect here) is the following

- he’s so tall and big and muscular and deep voiced and UHHHH I WANT HIM TO RAIL MEEEEE

And I’m just like “good for you. Where’s my 5’5” 110 angel of a male, whom I want to carry around princess style to our king sized bed” and they all just look at me like

😨

Like are yall not aware that not EVERYONE is like you??!!!

Like I have no problem with how other people experience sexual attraction, obviously I don’t. That would be hypocritical as hell because people tend to have a problem with how I experience it (note I live in the evangelical American south and the internet is the only place that gets me) but I wish (and I’m the 10000000th person to express this, which goes to show how behind we still are) that women/women-adjacent people were ALLOWED to be masculine and be attracted to femininity without being ostracized and made to feel embarrassed. Especially for lesbians, but also for people like me. I feel like people around here can actually conceptualize a sapphic relationship better than the type of relationship I seek (but they accept neither, unfortunately).

I fear what would happen if they learned I was bi 😩

I’m not emotionally attracted to women (it’s a sexual thing), so I’d end up with a man anyway, but the JUDGEMENT I would still receive from these prehistoric brained people is CRAZY. I feel especially for lesbians and gay people because I know it’s 1000000x harder on them, even if people can conceptualize them better, they hate them even more.

Like, I constantly receive the “well if you’re so attracted to “sissy-boys” why aren’t you just a lesbian?” Which is SO stupid because it implies two really fucking idiotic ideas

1. Sexuality is a choice (specifically, gay people choose to be gay)

2. Being attracted exclusively to femininity = (or at least should equal) being attracted exclusively to women (and the inverse, which is often used to invalidate masc attracted lesbians as jaded straight women or something stupid like that)

WHEN WILL THESE PEOPLE GRASP NUANCE AND VARIANCE IN SEX/GENDER EXPRESSION AND EXPERIENCE.

I know a lot of it is the Bible and Christian culture (which is barely even in the Bible at all), but they break the rules and conventions of it EVERYDAY and find a way to justify it. Yet they can never justify people like me who aren’t harming ANYBODY

Which is proof it’s not 100% about religion, even if they’re consciously convinced it is. It’s about prejudice and ignorance.

what I’ll never understand is the motivation a lot of these people give me for being so obsessed with gender essentialism and policing others “the death of masculinity and femininity in men and women respectively will lead to the downfall of society”

LIKE BROTHER SOURCE PLEASE?!! WHATS YOUR SOURCE HELP

And for the love of God, don’t say the Bible. I’m a Christian myself, actually. But I am fully aware that the Bible was never supposed to be a source for ANYTHING. It’s simply a collection of relevant  documents to the history of our faith. That’s it.

GIVE ME A SCIENTIFIC STUDY AND MAYBE I’LL TAKE YOU A LITTLE MORE SERIOUSLY FOR ONCE (but that will never happen, so by default I will never take these people seriously. Also because if gender variance were an issue, God wouldn’t have made me (and millions of others) the way I am. There are actual problems in this world to worry about, so stop trying to convince me that by “acting like a man” and preferring men who “act like women” I’m contributing to the destruction of society. To be honest, I hope I’m contributing to the downfall of society, because this one stinks). Instead, target the rapists, the murderers, the pedos, the human traffickers, the child exploiters, the money hoarding ultra-rich, the fascists, the racists, the sexists, the homophobes, the supremacists, the nazis, the liars, the cheaters, and the media that promotes them. But most of these people are too far gone to see what’s wrong with the above. So I’m ranting about it all here in this echo chamber. I have no choice.

#rant #tw vent #vent #vent post #queer #gay #lesbian #sapphic #bisexual #bisexual butch #butch #gynesexual #bible belt #evangelicals #ex fundamentalist #ex fundie #fundamentalism #religious trauma #church hurt #gender nonconforming #nonconformity