#Imperialism fuck yeah ?

[tennessoui]

AU where Obi-Wan is like, "Maybe dumping him on a terrible desert world under his real name isn't the best idea. Obviously not everyone can be adopted by wealthy, doting rulers, but maybe Luke should have, like, health care?" And then because he's Obi-Wan, he's like, well, really all children here should, time for a revolution. Again. Sigh.

haha i think we have very different ideas about what obi-wan post ROTS is capable of during his time on tatooine — even if it’s an au where he raises luke as his under a name that isn’t Skywalker, you can’t convince me numb crying and nightmares and going through the motions isn’t at least his job 5 days out of 7. the man cannot start a revolution he can’t even keep his beard neat and tidy. he’s too worried about trying to remember what babies eat to worry about the state of the tatooine health care.

imo, au where it’s decided that they can’t let Luke keep the name Skywalker and be raised on tatooine so obi-wan takes him and goes to another small and inconsequential planet, one with less ghosts. one that he’s never set actually foot on (that he remembers)….Stewjon

meanwhile the Kenobi family on stewjon thinks it’s the most Kenobi thing to not speak to your family for 38 years and then show up heartbroken on the run and with a baby. obi-wan doesn’t MEAN to rely on the Kenobis for help, but he’s just so tired. and there’s something so nice about the community of Kenobi’s who come forward to help him with luke. Younglings are supposed to be raised communally - that’s the only thing obi-wan knows.

#asks #also all Kenobi’s look very similar #so Luke stands out like a sore thumb #but everyone in their town would be like no that’s a Kenobi if I’ve ever seen one #to any imperial soldier sniffing around #imp: he doesn’t look like a Kenobi clan member #Kenobi clan: yeah and our long lost boy ben kenobi talks funny but he’s still a Kenobi fuck off

[cherry-bomb1985]

I keep thinking about Hell's words: "This is the only way it should have ended."

Should. Not could. *Should*.

Like V1 should have been mass produced, obliterated all the Earth Movers, and then the next machine should have come along to counter it in turn and continue the war. Like all that fighting and the cycle of violence should have been perpetuated.

Like Mankind should never have finally gotten their act together, and tried to continue on even in the absence of divinity and in the face of total climate collapse.

There's a notable difference between 'could' and 'should', and the fact that those words are spoken by the only one who would've been *extremely disappointed* by this outcome has me raising eyebrows.

#ULTRAKILL #fuck it I'm putting this in the main tag #something else I don't really see talked about much (or at all really) is all the shit that happened leading up to The Great War #Yeah some guy getting shot in the head was the spark that lit the powder keg #but nobody ever mentions the fact that all that tension coming close to boiling over had been primarily because of /imperialism/ #which as we all know--and are seeing LITERALLY IN REAL TIME--profoundly benefits from war and violence #Just like there were “suits” with something to gain from digging into Hell and sending people there #oh I bet it was /delighted/ when that happened #Anyways I refuse to take the words of a superorganism who gets its jollies from the spectacle of cruelty and violence as** #**the end all be all meaning of the game #The themes here might be nihilistic but they're sure as fuck not doomerist

[unforth]

@esper-aroon has enabled me, so here let me scream at y'all about The Imperial Uncle.

Okay, so I recently read The Imperial Uncle (Huang Shu) by Da Feng Gua Guo from Peach Flower House and I really loved it??? It's first person pov, mlm, about the Emperor's uncle Jing Chengjun, who is mistrusted by everyone simply because of who his parents were and his position, and so he's basically given up on trying to convince people that he's actually a nice, decent person without ulterior motives. He's super trapped by his position, and there's so much he can't say and do, and he's also a hopeless romantic, like, from his own mouth all he really wants is to sleep beside and wake up next to someone who actually gives a shit about him, and even that is basically out of reach in his life. Like, the book starts with his wife (who he has never once had sex with) storming into a meeting he's having and announcing he's a cuckold and she's pregnant.

But also, this poor bastard really thinks he knows what's going on and his very smart. Very unreliable narrator. He's actually kinda a hilarious, impulsive himbo. But the TL:DR is that his loneliness and isolation and the extent to which he's politically trapped routinely lead him to make absolutely terrible decisions.

E. Danglar's translation is absolutely gorgeous, too, and... idk, if you love political plots, melodramatic idiot main characters, a dose of pining, and a slow burn that eventually pays off, come take a look??? (some people think it's a love triangle??? idk, I never really got that vibe, I never felt it was really in doubt which of the two potential dudes he'd end up with, but maybe I only feel that way because I got it right, lmao).

Anyway, I can't stop thinking about how these two idiots end up finally finding each other and getting together, and I have an entire AU in my head (a modern corporate one) and part of another (canon divergent from like a decade before the book starts), and I just want people to love this book as much as I did and scream with me about it.

#unforth rambles #da feng gua guo #the imperial uncle #huang shu #the first au is jing chengjun and li ransi meet and have a fling during a vacation #and then find out that they work for the same company #hijinks ensue #the other is an au that starts with what if jing chengjun's father had actually been accused and convicted of treason #whether he was guilty or not #and his family was sentenced to death #but because jing chengjun is a youth he is instead made into a eunuch and forced into servitude to the imperial family #i know it's a stretch that someone of his stature would be treated that way instead of killed or sold off as a slave #i just don't care #anyway he's given awful jobs at first and they leave him weak and sickly but eventually it because clear he really isn't a threat #and he's allowed to help raise the princes in the next generation including the crown prince #and he also gets to know the other young people around the palace but as a subservient slightly older person #instead of as their elder of higher rank #and then liu tongyi is like okay so everyone thinks you're useless do you want to be a spy for me and help me uncover treason #and he's like FUCK YEAH #and love unfolds from there ofc

[utilitycaster]

Something that I find misses the point so completely it is breathtaking is when people are like "this player hates engaging with their backstory" about the CR cast. It's pretty much never true, and what's worst is that I've seen it the most about Travis and Taliesin, two of the players who I think have the strongest grasp on how to create and engage with a backstory.

The choice to have a character who avoids elements of their past can be a valid, informed, and deliberate character choice. People run from their pasts! People decide not to pursue things for a number of reasons - because it hurts too much, because they're scared to know the answer, because they think the people around them don't care, and because their interests change. Caduceus very much is an avoidant character. He has access to Sending by the time we first meet him, and he never uses it to try to contact his family. That's not Taliesin being stupid or avoiding. That's Caduceus making a conscious choice to not ask the question "is my family dead" because he is terrified the answer is yes. He waits for a concrete sign to go after his family to the point of deep loneliness and self-harm out of this fear. That's a crucial trait that you need to understand him as a character! Ashton is also on some level similar in that he engages in no shortage of harmful, wallowing, and self-indulgent behaviors - and that is a choice. They also have obviously messy feelings about the Hishari and it's pretty plain to see they feel extremely conflicted about their growing bonds with Bells Hells because now they'll feel bad if Bells Hells leaves them. So of course he's hesitant to bring this to Orym, because then he's entrusted Orym with this information, and he has to care, and again, this is a major part of who Ashton is.

The same goes with Fjord and Vandran (and Sabian). One of the core themes of Fjord's story is deciding whether to run from or embrace your past, and which parts of that past you want to bring forward as you change, which means that to explore that, he has to do some running! He makes efforts to learn more about where they are (going to search for Vandran during the Zadash downtime; hiring a bounty hunter for Sabian) but those get interrupted by Fjord's shifting feelings about Vandran, and fact that this is an ensemble and the story naturally shifts.

Which brings us to the practical element. Fjord doesn't want to release Uk'otoa at the time, so it makes sense to return to the mainland and process next steps, and the focus of the story then turns to rescuing Yeza, and then finding Yasha, and rescuing Caduceus's family, and changing Veth back, and brokering peace, and TravelerCon, and Eiselcross. Through this, he still in fact does quite a lot of backstory work (changing patrons and taking a paladin oath, asking Jester to contact Vandran), as well as an immense amount of character growth and engagement with the ongoing story, but Travis doesn't wrench everything off its natural course just to check off every box on Fjord's list, because that would be selfish, obnoxious, and not fun to watch. And Caduceus achieves exactly what he set out to do! He found and rescued his family and found a way to hold off the corruption! Despite his avoidance, he covers all the bases! And as for Ashton...we've had precious little time to cover anyone's backstory in depth other than Imogen's, and we've actually seen a decent amount of Ashton's backstory regardless with their contacts in Bassuras and their interactions with Jiana. There simply was not time in Bassuras to stray from the main objectives and search for the Nobodies, and I think if we had people would be annoyed since that arc already took a very long time (and, for what it's worth, rather like Fjord, Ashton has explicitly asked after The Nobodies. Do not mistake lack of payoff for character disinterest).

It is, to me, incredibly telling this criticism is most commonly seen about the two players who I think also get the most "well they had an central arc/more focus than my fave" criticism.There's no way to make everyone in the fandom happy, and I think Travis and Taliesin are the players at the table who most understand that and give the least fucks about what the fandom thinks, and who (possibly relatedly) have some of the strongest grasps of narrative and what it means to play in an ensemble. Which is in my opinion a major factor in why their characters are so good - even the ones I do not vibe with are fully realized and well-crafted, because the players are not trying to make likeable characters, but rather interesting ones, and they're not trying to take center stage, but rather be generous at the table.

#critical role #meta #truly as a fan i say fuck fandom wishes. if you're a good enough creator you'll make me like something i didn't know i would. #also lbh the fjord criticism is like 99.9% from people salty that travis did NOT lose interest in the character and had fjord romance jeste #they're like yeah he was CLEARLY checked out but it's wishful thinking. they wish he had been and they're furious he wasn't. #this also reminds me of the accursed Suvi w/o the imperialism art i've mentioned #the character was designed to engage with the idea of empire and someone raised within it. you have given her an icepick lobotomy #it's also like. sometimes backstory is a hook. sometimes it's just there to inform the present. it's okay if it's the latter!

[nulfaga]

johanson pilate...that's the post

#jesus christ superstar #jcs 2000 #love a pilate who is just completely shit scared. #partial to the second-to-last gif. it's fucked up from compression BUT i had to keep it that long for his face journey #he is seeing the future. #my gifs #ALSO. i would argue that making him a freak who sleeps beside his armor is in keeping w/ what little we know abt the historical pilate #ie a descendant of a people recently absorbed (by sustained force) into the empire; #whose family was recently raised to eques (knight) rank from the lower class #who groveled and brownnosed for the emperor his entire adult life to get his posting #and who remained insecure and deeply (painfully) loyal to the empire into his stint as governor #so. i'd buy that he sleeps with his stupid chestplate and laurels yeah. especially given imperial paraphernalia/images of the emperor #were to some degree sacred. #i don't think the directors did that for that reason...i suspect they were more about the spectacle than the history. but it's a fun touch. #anyways. i'm normal as you can tell

[lanayrutower]

ALSO does no one find it even a little weird how the old Zelda games firmly state that it's Hylia who built/was the first ruler of Hyrule (the king is just. sort of there), and then totk comes in and is like ahaaa no it's actually rauru who's so special and godlike actually. yeah, his wife was actually his priestess who once served him and then died stupidly because she wasn't paying attention. mmhm, she was also the reason ganon was able to take over hyrule and be super duper evil btw. uwu.

#THIS FUCKING GAME. THIS FUCKING GAME!!!!!!!!!! stepping away from the imperialism and racism to talk about the misogyny for a bit because #haHAAAAaaa this game fucking has it all apparently!!!!!!!! #totk critical #if you're gonna be like oh but sonia very much isnt shown to be subservient to him and is actually depicted to tease him and shit #then that's good for you that you can see it that way but all i see is them realising what they did & desperately trying to course correct #while still refusing to change the power dynamic THEY created. they could have made her hylia's priestess! they chose not to! #and if youre gonna be like oh but it's the same with hylia and her chosen hero. there's a power imbalance there too. #yeah? there is?? i dont care??? i do have double standards but also please refer to systemic misogyny and women continually being placed in #positions lesser to men for my justification. but also no one is asking you to read this or agree with me and i dont feel the need to #justify myself #okay im done. sorry sometimes i remember this game exists and get filled with wrath #freya talks loz

[cognitiveinequality]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a33gj/ai-controlled-drone-goes-rogue-kills-human-operator-in-usaf-simulated-test

um hey, so that's literally the most predictable thing that could go wrong with AI controlling weapons of war and tbh it's pretty fucking concerning that the people in charge of building and testing this shit don't even have the imagination of a C-tier Hollywood screenwriter to think "hmm... what is the most ironic or 'oh nooo our hubris!' way this could backfire...? 🤔"

#AI #dumbfucks #artificial intelligence #meatheads #this is what happens when tech bro dipshits #meet ''Merica Fuck Yeah'' imperial war hawks #cog rants

[luxwing]

I just gotta fight the final boss in totk but like can I say something that really irritates me with the story is that they never actually say what Ganondorf's motivation is to be evil? They just say oh that guys evil and wants power

But like...why tho

I know, I know, pretty much every Zelda game with ganondorf as a main antagonist doesn't really give him much motivation aside from weh evil dude want power but I feel like they wanted to show people they could do more with the franchise so far as storytelling goes and then they just...did nothing with him. They just used a villain from the series and said hey we don't have to say why he's bad because you already know he's bad pay no mind to how we just gave the entire timeline the biggest shaft you've ever seen

Like yeah, I'm overthinking this 100% and overanalyzing a fucking Zelda game of all things but I also really feel like Nintendo needs to just do better writing when it comes to Zelda.

Also I'm mad that Ganondorf's character peaked at Wind Waker and just became "hey look it's the bad guy" forever after that.

Whatever tho for all the stuff the game does well and is actually fun playing through, the story really ends up just being...another Zelda story. Yay I guess.

#totk #other people have written better more well structured essays on nintendos racism with ganondorf so i wont get into that #do i feel like nintendos ingrained racism and imperialism are part of WHY ganondorf isnt given any nuance or potential for depth #yeah absolutely i do and i fucking hate it

[chai-en-kaadhale]

rebecca febecca kuang when i catch you rebecca febecca kuang.....

#this is about babel #FUKCKKKK IMPERIALISM AND FUCK THE BRITISH AND FUCK COLONIZATION HHHH #babel an arcane history #babel or the necessity of violence #rf kuang #yeah so im actually insane now #kookoo #i typed up an entire rant but tumblr didnt get my full thing in bc i put it in the tags #rip

[g-l-o-w-y-l-i-g-h-t-s]

What could you possibly have to say that would justify the massacre of over 11,500 children? I've seen plenty of Zionist rhetoric, and not one bit of it has been convincing. I find it extremely insulting to see a genocide being carried out in my name, as a queer Jewish woman. I find the conflation of Zionism and Judaism to be blatantly antisemitic. What could I possibly feel, seeing that children are being murdered in my name, if not disgust and outrage?

(Side note: wtf is someone with a fucking Harry Potter url doing talking about antisemitism? Did they go play the blood libel game to calm down after this?)

#fuck israel #fuck imperialism #fuck islamophobia #fuck isntreal #antisemitism #anti zionisim #zionism #zionistterror #social justice #yeah #the more you know #fuck you #israel #jew #jewish #jew stuff #i hate it here #what is this #please #power distribution #politics #nope #no #not cute #insult #insulated #insults #queer #concerns

[chamerionwrites]

While these protests succeeded in disrupting normal operations at the targeted arms companies, they were unable to meaningfully halt the manufacture of weapons, in part because the group best poised to shut down production was conspicuously absent from each of the actions: the companies’ workers. More than two million US workers are employed by the weapons industry, which produces over 80% of all of Israel’s arms imports, including “precision guided munitions, small diameter bombs, artillery, ammunition, Iron Dome interceptors and other critical equipment,” according to the Pentagon, as well as F-35 aircraft—the most advanced fighter jets in the world. In the past month and a half, Israel has used these weapons in a genocidal assault that has killed more than 14,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza, at least 5,600 of them children. The violence has prompted direct action against the Israeli war machine’s supply chain, with protesters targeting not only munitions factories but also ships transporting arms to Israel and financial firms with significant investments in the weapons industry. But unlike in many other parts of the world, where weapons workers have led the disruption in response to an urgent call for solidarity from Palestinian trade unions, in the US, unions in the weapons industry have so far remained outside the fray.

This is despite the presence of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of unionized workers in the US weapons industry, some of whom are employed at the very factories that protesters have attempted to shut down this fall. As journalist Taylor Barnes reported earlier this year, each of the five major Pentagon contractors—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics—employs some unionized workers, although union density at the firms ranges from as low as 4% at Northrop Grumman to as high as 32% at Boeing. Many of these unionized workers belong either to the International Association of Machinists (IAM), or to the United Auto Workers (UAW), which is part of a renaissance in the US labor movement. Both unions include employees at Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics; the IAM additionally represents workers at Northrop Grumman and M7 Aerospace, a wholly owned subsidiary of the infamous Elbit Systems, while the UAW represents workers at Woodward, Inc., an aerospace firm that gained unwanted attention last month after a viral photo from the ruins of Gaza appeared to show a used missile component with the company’s logo on it. The unions are also actively organizing more workers in the weapons industry: Just last month, for example, the IAM unionized 332 Lockheed employees in Kentucky.

For anti-war labor organizers in the United States, unionized weapons workers present a paradox: Serving such members ostensibly requires making weapons industry jobs stable and remunerative, but the principles of global solidarity call for dismantling the war machine altogether. Traditionally, US unions have only pursued the former mandate. As one anonymous local union president in the industry put it to researcher Karen Bell earlier this year, “my top priority is trying to make sure that we have work in jobs in the United States . . . I don’t make a lot of judgments on anything other than, what can you do to keep the people I represent in work? That’s my job, and to be anything other than that, it would really be a disservice to the people that are paying my salary.” Rather than questioning their role in the industry, unions have reconfirmed their relationships with weapons companies since the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza. Last month, 1,000 IAM members in Arizona and 1,100 UAW members across the Midwest separately ratified new contracts with Raytheon and General Dynamics respectively, during a period when both companies were actively implicated in the mass killing of Palestinian civilians. When the Raytheon contract deal was announced on October 22nd, one IAM leader said he was “proud to support our Raytheon members and excited for this contract’s positive impact on their lives”—a statement that highlights the seemingly irreconcilable conflict between the economic interests of weapons industry workers and the anti-war, anti-genocide movement.

#solidarity w h e n c e #you should read the whole article there's a lot more discussion of history/suggestions for the future #but also god the shortsighted selfishness of usamericans is fucking dire #the 'left' is this country is doomed to have its political hopes relentlessly thrashed to a bloody pulp as long as it is this spineless #yeah we live in a hellworld w v real obstacles against us but also capitalism and imperialism are systems unbound by borders #and neither should your organizing be bound! hang together or hang separately you absolute fools #IMPERIAL VIOLENCE ALWAYS COMES HOME #if you need a reasons that aren't. morals. #anyway. that's my thankless cassandra prophecy for the day. #military industrial complex #labor rights #palestine #news #my posts #no more war

[victusinveritas]

#comic #tommy siegel #iran #america fuck yeah #america first #imperialism #usa usa usa

[rotzaprachim]

as a deep Jyn Erso lover I do also wonder if part of the reason she’s kind of.. written as she is in the movie and expanded materials is due to the Disney reticence at actually unpacking the base structures of having a main point pov character who’s both child soldier and a freed prisoner/death camp survivor. that stuff is there, it’s in the text of the movie, but it’s also not something that would be overly lunch-box Strong Female Character cartoon appropriate to dig into more, which is probably... kind of why they didn’t 

#literally her but with the Tony Gilroy treatment from the start u know #her AND bodhi like holy hell bodhi legit too. #IMPERIAL supply pilot whose gotten to the levels of being in contact with someone like Galen Erso who turns away and goes rogue YEAH #so much of my love for her is like well felicity jones fucking sells this character she sells it #and you know what? maybe there's something good and refreshing about some of tha #reticence. the showing not t #telling #the leaving gaps #still though #I do think it's like sometimes sw has a character and they are not a character for the Disney machine in some ways. there's this ... d #disconnect here #Jyn Erso #in many ways I am glad they did not go for the gung ho leader nor the Han Solo type

[sansloii]

“King Hatius of Namodia is the rudest man I have ever come in contact with. The fact that he is a king astounds me to no end.”

#✖ ┊ ⧼ little sunshine ⧽ ⇹ ( c. ) #⬦ ┊ ⧼ darling of meriburn ⧽ ⇹ ( c.princess!au ) #⚜ ┊ ( imperial au. ) #⚜ ┊ ( commentary. ) #.I've been meaning to post this #.but i keep forgetting #.but yeah--cassandra fucking hates Hatius jhgdgfd-- #.the sunshine girl HATES this man

[ahoneesan]

oh hey i saw that new zilla. its a fucking vfx tour de force, godzilla is fucking evil and nasty and despite being the smallest godzilla in quite a while feels FUCKING ENORMOUS. i watched it w the gfs in four dee ecks so the fucking chair whipped around and blew air past my ear which was ridiculous and for a few limited moments really did enhance the experience. mostly it was just stupid fun though. anyways. spoiler cut.

the rah rah we got beat in a war so this time well Win in a war done by Private Citizens and not the evil Government really rubbed me the wrong way. that characters are ok, acting is fun, story is melodramatic but hey its fucking godzilla. but more than any of that the Well Boy What If You Kamikazed Better And Didnt Die shit just really bummed me out. i guess its not really out of line with any other big budget blockbuster out there, but man. what a shame.

i really Really like the vfx work in this movie, its viscerally thrilling in a way im not sure ive ever seen godzilla. but that story is genuinely so distasteful to me i think i have to give it a 3/5. i can't recommend going to see this movie enough. godzilla fuckin rules in it. the actings good too! the period-ness of it plays well! its a fun ass movie! three outta five!

#like at least shingoji is nominally about like. the power of public service and noncombative solutions to problems or whatever. #it IS more complicated than that #the movie ends up being a kind of well if we just did government Better then we'd just figure it out! no more committees!!!! #but at least the last moment isnt literally 'hey our noncombative solution to this didnt work you know what does work???? #Blowing Godzilla The Fuck Up With Our Rad Ass War Machines' like not sacrificing Our citizens in our imperial advance would have fixed it #and miss me w that ohhhh but he might be coming back!!!! shit thats every godzilla movie yeah yeah yeah we all get it nothings truly solved #goji #godzilla spoilers

[autismmydearwatson]

Tbh Grand Admiral Thrawn suffered more than Jesus cause can you fucking imagine having to go back to college with a bunch of xenophobic fucks while having to learn their language as part of your cover

#yeah its funny that hes always like 'omigod this is rancid i need my beloved translator Eli NOW!!!!!!' but can you blame him? #he got JUMPED lmao #and then he graduates straight to having to answer to darth fucking vader smh #'the average Chiss spends about 600 hours putting up with Imperial inadequacy' factoid error #Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo #who spends 10000 hours cleaning up Imperial inadequacies and almost always loses his job for it #is an outlier and should not have been counted #star wars #grand admiral thrawn