#by 'dominant' I mean 'everything can kill you' not most populous

[yieldfruit]

Recently we have seen in the Middle East what is the purest form of Islam. The leader of Hamas is not some guy in a cave, he is a man wearing a grey suit and he hops on a video and says that it is Allah's wish that what happened in Israel will happen to all of the infidels all over the world.

The stage and the theater of attention in our world is not Finland, it's not Norway, it's not Thailand, it's always been and always will be what's happening in the Middle East because that is the land of Genesis, Genesis meaning "beginning" and that is where everything began, that is where everything is focused right now, and that is where everything will end in the battle of Armageddon which is modern day northern Israel. The world's events around us consistently propel us and catapult us into the land of the Bible. What you are witnessing in our culture is the testimony of the fact that man is not basically good, man is basically and fundamentally evil. In Genesis chapter 3 sin enters the world and in Genesis chapter 4 you have the first murder; Cain kills his own brother, Abel. Men have been murderers from the beginning and they have been restrained by law and by standards of morality that have been imposed on them.

In the beginning God places his people in this rich land between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers and that is the land called Mesopotamia which is modern day The Middle East. God promised this land to Abraham and his descendants and Abraham messed up this promise in a way when instead of trusting that God would give him a son through his wife Sarah, he slept with Hagar and now the battle that takes place in our modern world is a battle between two former sons of Abraham: Isaac and Ishmael. The sons of Ishmael represent the Arabic world; the sons of Isaac, consequently the sons of Jacob, are the sons of Israel. The sons of Ishmael were unified by a common religion in the 7th century BC under the leadership of Mohammad, the greatest Muslim prophet. And now the hundreds of millions of people that live in the Arab states all hate with a passion and are intent on killing the people of Israel. It's a land mass of Israel that is the size of New Jersey with a Jewish population roughly the size of the greater Phoenix area, but it dominates the media.

All false religions are bad, but Islam may be amongst the worst and most powerful because it perverts the nature and person of Jesus Christ. Islam believes Jesus was a mighty prophet, subject and submissive to Mohammad and he did not die on the cross, he did not die at all, he was taken up to Heaven like Elijah. In the Muslim faith there is no assurance of salvation, but there is a single way you can know for sure you are going to Heaven and do you know what it is? To die in jihad. The only way you can know for sure you are going to heaven if you are a Muslim if you are killed in action, is slaying the infidels. When men die in jihad, as you can imagine there are no shortage of volunteers in a religious worldview like this, when men die in jihad they go immediately to paradise and it says in the Quran that when they are there in paradise they are greeted by 72 beautiful virgins of whom they have eternal sex with. That is the promise to 11-year-old's growing up in the Gaza strip; if you grow up and you blow up Jews and Christians you will enter heaven and be greeted by your own harem of virgins. All non-believers in Mohammad are infidels, but in the Muslim faith, the little Satan they call is Israel. And do you know who the great Satan is? America, because we protect and stand behind Israel. One Muslim on the voice of Palestine radio says, "The Muslim loves death and martyrdom just as you Jews love life."

There is a great difference between he who loves the afterlife and he who loves the world, and the Muslim loves death and seeks martyrdom. One boy after 9/11 is recorded, his name was Ahmad, and he was going to a school on the Gaza Strip and he says this to reporters, "I will make my body a bomb that will blast the flesh of Zionists, the sons of pigs and monkeys, I will tear their bodies into little pieces and cause them more pain than they will ever know." He is 11-years-old and his classmates respond and say, "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar," god is great. And the teacher says, "May the virgins give you pleasure."

The Quran has 123 verses that call for fighting and killing anyone who does not agree with this statement, "There is no god but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet." Quran Surah 5:33 says about infidels, "They shall be slain or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off"; Surah 9:5 says "Slay the infidels wherever you find them and lie in wait for them and establish every stratagem of war against them"; Surah 47:4-9 promises paradise to whoever cuts off the head of an infidel. Sometimes we call this radical Islam, I want you to understand this is just Islam. That's just what they believe. It's not a peaceful religion. It's a religion at its very core, the first thing Mohammad does, is slaughter all the infidels. It's those who walk in the ways of Mohammad that subscribe to this thinking. You don't just have a different belief system than them if you're a Christian, you're their enemy. And they are commanded by god to fill the rivers red with the blood of infidels. Hamas, or I would say obedient Muslims, could be described as merciless, heartless, violent, wicked, evil, lovers of pleasure.

Jonny Arvadanis

[female-malice]

Where tf do you live where there isn't bag limits on large animals? I mean this genuinely, I live in a state where deer are wildly overpopulated due to lack of wolves, and even then the bag limit is pretty low, even if you have all the tags and licenses and hunt on your own land. Killing as many cougars as you want is insane.

You should not be able to hunt any cougars, wolves, or bears. None.

I do actually live in a state where you can't hunt wolves because we have only 200 in the entire state. But if a wolf eats one of your animals, you can get the state to cull the closest pack. The entire damn pack. Wolves rarely eat livestock unless they are lone wolves. But the state doesn't care about the details. They'll cull the whole pack.

And in Yellowstone states and Alaska there are larger wolf populations. And in those states, any citizen can hunt the shit out of them whenever they want.

Idiot country.

Cougars are impossible to hunt and kill without advanced tracking technology. So, in the 1800s when the US government culled all the wolves, the cougars survived. Wolves are the most important keystone predator on the continent. In the absence of wolves, cougars are really all that's left to regulate the ecosystem. Even bears depend on cougars to hunt and kill deer for them.

My state has cougars and you can hunt them. That is insane. Unlike wolves and bears, cougars are extremely hard to study. It's impossible to get accurate estimates on their population. They're sensitive, secretive, and stressed. The second leading cause of cougar death is hunting. And the first leading cause is state extermination. Why are cougars exterminated? Because people want to build glamor cabins and hobby farms in their territory. As soon as your pet cat gets eaten by a cougar, you can call up the state government. And they'll come and exterminate the cougar. And everyone does it. Nobody spares them.

Think for one moment how fucking stupid that is. Cougars are territorial and their territory is massive. You kill one cougar, you are destabilizing the entire ecosystem around you in a 30+ mile radius. And it happens every week. So I don't give a shit about your bag limit. Killing one cougar destabilizes everything. The bag limit should be zero.

But we live in a settler country where ecology comes last and dominating the land comes first. So you're free to hunt cougars. And this is why the American empire will collapse from the inside out.

#cc

[autumnbrambleagain]

So IF, say, a Marlfox ended up in Qud, this is why I think it would naturally form an army of snapjaws.

Consider. Marlfox the book literally has a part that goes:

This narrative has been edited by Florian Dugglewoof Wilffachop, Actor Manager Impresario. Who insists that the entire tale is a drama, which he will be later performing as a play, hence the three parts being named as acts rather than books. We crave your indulgence for this deviation.)

Like all Redwall books, they're post-edited propaganda made to make the landlord goodbeasts look good, and the oppressed "vermin hordes" look bad.

No, the marlfoxes weren't there to steal trinkets, they were there for medicine. Their mother was old and sick and dying, and they were sent out to get stuff to keep death away? It's a metaphor. Redwall chroniclers have twisted the truth.

No, the marlfoxes weren't constantly murdering one another. That's propaganda to make the Redwallers clean of conscience. If the books were up-rated in age I'm sure the marlfoxes would be like, committing incest with one another constantly just to hammer in how ~evil~ they are and how they don't have ~morals~ like ~us.~

The water rats celebrating the marlfoxes' deaths and becoming peaceful farmers? Really? In a series where rats are biologically impelled to be evil, selfish, nasty, mean, brutish? Aha. Tell me more about how the native populations celebrated the civilizing light of the British reaching them, Mr. Jacques.

So obviously the Marlfoxes were cool ninjas, yeah, sure, probably did some bad things, yeah! They, like all other "vermin" races, have spent their lives having the arable land owned by selfish, snobbish upper-crust goodbeasts. Of course everyone wants to conquer Redwall--they control all the good land, and refuse to allow the filthy, lower, base vermin races access to them.

Okay! Established. Marlfoxes are awesome, Redwallers are all entrenched oppressors. Let's say one gets sucked into a space-time vortex and ends up in Qud.

So, after some culture shock, there's some things they'll notice. Snapjaws will be nice to them, because the law of mimicry means they'll recognize the snout and the fur and be inclined towards it. The marlfox will see another people desperately scrabbling together a hard-fought life, and, ok, have you seen snapjaws.

They get killed by equimaxes.

They get killed by horned chameleons.

They get killed by salthoppers, dragonflies, and dromads!

Do snapjaws raid peaceful settlements? Sure. They have their forts and their castles, but they're rattle-skattle things shored up poorly against the salt around them. How else can they survive but in raiding? This isn't like the goats, who dominate the land. Snapjaws are forced to the edges, and everything is their match or more.

So I'm thinking a marlfox, being clever and having been in that situation most of their life, will experience a feeling between sympathy and opportunity.

While there are peaceful snapjaw settlements, how much land is there in Qud that can support a village? This is something that's finally going to come up in Proselytize soon enough--one of the big theses of the story! There isn't enough resources for everyone to live in peace. It's just a hardboned fact. The Brambled Fae is gonna have a lot to say about it!

So obviously the marlfox would accumulate snapjaws, build a castle, and history would repeat itself. But there are no Redwallers who own everything. Each village is a small center of power at best. Yd Freehold, Ezra, the Six Day Stilt, even these centers of power don't project force externally much.

And that's why it's ENTIRELY 100% CANON that my Redwall marlfox CoQ crossover OC donut steel is going to build a snapjaw empire, and bring prosperity to snapjaws everywhere. Probably at the expense of, oh, let's say, I don't know. I'll roll dice to determine who to destroy the homes from.

#caves of qud #redwall #autumn says things

[infernal-general]

Now that I have a map:

Now to the explanation; the green border on the right is the territory of the Phoenix Legion, where most soldiers (around 1 800 of the 2 042) live. Both hellborns and sinners are welcome to live here, but they must take it into consideration that it's an active military base with a distinct dominant nationality regarding population. Some of unspoken rules -which should be obvious, but since many try to justify their actions with a this is Hell- include: no means no. sexual content involving minors is forbidden both producing and consuming. trafficking of both hellborns and sinners are to be met with execution, same as partaking in cannibalism. If it can, could've, would've talked back, you don't eat it.

Drugs are present but not overwhelmingly so, the most popular drink is surprise, pálinka. The scents coming from restaurants, simple homes are mouthwatering, mostly traditional Hungarian cooking. Soldiers both in and out of duty are a common sight, they are approachable, kind, and often helpful. The ‘Military district’ as it's commonly called is the closest people could call Heaven in Pride, streets are safe, the territory itself is stable. Despite Rozália would never call herself an Overlord, she's viciously protective of the borders and the beings living within. Disrespecting it calls for a duel invitation, and she isn't called Doom Duelist without a reason. She and her higher ranked soldiers oversee almost everything within the territory, the chance something misses their attention is low.

⚔️: the location of Rozália's office, the headquarter serves a base and weapon storage. If you have any complaints regarding the soldiers' behavior, require assistance she's there to help you with most cases falling under her authority (sometimes even if it doesn't but shhh) and expecting nothing in return.

🔥: Rozy's house, way away from the noise pollution which never fails to ignite a migraine

💀 with the green border: the graveyard of the notable beings she has killed officially since her arrival, a twisted trophy garden stretching into outer parts of the town with currently 10 892 ‘residents’

🗡: hidden resupply locations; weapons, ammunition, medicine, food

💥: significant number of Hellfire mines buried below surface. Of course, not all locations are displayed

#⚔ headcanon 🔥 | nem tudom mi vagyok; de tudom 𝐤𝐢 𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐭𝐚𝐦 #⚔ alright/encourage to like and reblog 🔥 | no grave can hold me

[myrfing]

i feel like in the case of fantasy if you want to talk about genocide it has to be about or something adjacent to the need to scapegoat a group of people to elevate “your own” and about having control over land/resources/power moreso than others, because you love your homeland and its people and the outsiders are a threat to your order and stability and peace because they were not born among your chosen people. because then you get a what if the world was made of pudding situation like omg what if mariah carey chose to kill everyone on earth but actually they were reborn as catgirls because the govt was planning to sacrifice 3/4ths of the total world population to create a soul farm for the worldwide magic barrier against the metaphorical despair great filter bird making our intrusive thoughts into real beasts. and by being catgirls we could learn to go hold a bird’s hand. but it was at the cost of so many lifes </3. What if. like that’s not even. you can’t even draw a parallel to a literal real life situation. it’s such an esoteric question it’s meant to be looked at on a nonliteral level. because then you can think about the question “is the past worth sacrificing the future to because it was happier?” and “what does it mean to die For Realsies” and so much more and not just like Well it’s wrong to not just KILL but MURDER everyone. it’s like if you read moby dick and left being like “i would’ve respected him more if he just got a normal job and gave up on the whale”. if you look at this entire thing from the only applicable real world literal moral lens (which is like, killing people is bad and killing More people is worse) it’s just like. IT MEANS FUCKING NOTHING LOL? unless your worldview that dominates all else is killing many people should always mean you are completely amoral and a sociopath no matter hwat in which case the game has been at fault from the beginning for portraying any of its characters in a positive light.

like I see ppl saying oh they woobified venat they should have owned her evilness. ok but like. is this that kind of game where we’re here to just gawk at the spectacle of le twisted evil or is it the kind of game that’s always tried to say something by the characters navigating their choices in their conflicts. like what is the point of them being like muahuahua im venat i trampled 73837383838363736 people under my feet because I’m a bad person. that there is no point because ummm zenos said does the ends justify the means so everything is exactly the same. so what she did was reprehensible and we should have gone with the 3/4ths solution because it was Less people dead in Longer time and we should’ve seen her as an enemy and killed her out of fury and revenge because the ancients were better and more right and deeply wronged by her the original sinner or whatever. what kind of story did you hope to hear or are you just brainpoisoned by online villain discourse where le evilness is automatically more raw and good and deep and interesting and everything is about good and evil as like weird isolated and whole concepts in themselves and it’s a race to see who mixes the most novel gray instead of those colors serving as nothing more than the beginning of or a supplement to a conversation. man i dunno how to say this better i will never get it right

#i guess people just hate that venat was just a guy who made the decision of a god #that she didn’t have a ‘right’ to make and then the story lauds her as overall sympathetic #idk im of the mind that god isnt really a thing and even if they were it’d be pointless to blame them for all the suffering in the world #but i feel like to an audience that struggles against the concept of god more actively #wants anyone and anything that takes even just its veneer or avatar to Be Responsible #and then the thought stops there even though godhood was just a means to an end for a normal person with like #normal desires against incredible circumstances #she spends the entire expac being like i want you to be free and do what you want and i know i have to die to make that happen #like she did not desire divinity any more than your character desired being the wol #she just doesn’t resent it because it serves a purpose and she’s not going to put the burden of that decision on anyone else #which is i guess odd for a community that likes to fight in blood and tears against wolhood becausd they find the responsibility to be like #arrogant and inhuman.

[nxonlxghts]

Creepypasta Crack fic

TW for like everything 😂🤣😭

A creepypasta x immortal reader :/

I DID NOT EDIT ANY OF THIS LOL

so like.... you're immortal...?

ofc after you become immortal, you have to do a bunch of dangerous stuff!

skydiving, mega deep scuba diving, owning a pet lion and all that 🙄

but in the creepypasta universe?

yea

so they live in the woods somewhere and you prob dont live anywhere near by for a while

*for a while*

they're killers afterall

so the plan for world genocide commences after zalgo is defeated and blah blah blah

major cities and towns are destroyed right off the bat

citizens report inhuman-human like beings and eventually the millitary gets involved

were talking nukes people

only the strongest, most powerful contries rise above others only to be torn down

the population dwindles and people are resorting to going underground

military are very selective with who is allowed into the underground bunkers

but pastas come in all shapes and sizes

bunkers are infiltrated and gutted out of all living beings

where were you?

chilling on some beach smh

with all the world dominating, they would need a lot of people to help

almost all criptds and criminals become pastas with those who do anything less than worship slendy sacrificed

our boy slendy has become the most powerful being on earth, killing anyone who opposes

he is very selective surprisingly

after you are killed hundereds of times, he had an eye on you

but that was your only thing

you had no skills in hunting and setting traps and overall violence

he though you would go away eventually and ignored you

you didn't want very much of apart of it

he gave you a pass though - having his proxies kill you over and over again was tiresome

btw when you "die" you dont feel pain

it has just become so eventual that your brain blocks it out for the most part

after you "die" you usually appear a few feet away - completely healed and bored to say the least

death doesn't affect you anymore

the trama of being gutted alive by a killer has become so normal and desensitizing

the last people on earth are hidden away but slend ain't havin it 💅

he wants all yall gone

so the fight isnt over until it is ig 🙄

you seem to be housed in some city when you find one of t h e m

you know the main proxies? like the originals?

yea the kinda made a rank system and the most powerful killers are the ones who had been with big man longest

and surprise! 😀

it was rake 😬

it didn't kill you immediately though so theres that

it took you to boss man and he made you a deal

if you didnt mess with any of their plans, they would stop messing with you and just give you a spot in the list

by 'messing' i mean that you would eventually grow to get your own powers and become a worthy rival of their forces

you agreed and they did the ritual and the symbol and blah blah blah

you went back home - home being some random abandoned city and layed down to think

you just basically sold your soul to the devil

pastas live forever as long as shmender dude lives

and you were getting lonely

soooooo

ROMANCE TIME 😀😀

now theses are killers, not preppy love interests

so why are you (idiot) going to try

because you can 🙄

you think being alone forever is your fate?? (rip aros i love you guys srry)

so you find a book with all the stupid pickup lines and try it out.

on e v e r y o n e

and nobody liked you back immediately like you thought

if proxies were asked about you, you were described as "the desperate one"

that was your reputation

good job 😑

eventually someone has to date you right?

right?

you die alone

the end

#creepypasta #fanfic #crackfic

[hewholivesinhisname]

My Glasses Got Stolen

My Glasses got stolen.

It was by this security guard. He didn't need them. He was just taking them BECAUSE I was poor. He didn't like the poor. Lots of people don't like the poor. Even the poor.

He was a white guy too, which makes me wonder about whether it's true what

In white culture for instance, you always hear about how "smart" someone is, but when they say smart they don't always mean the Chinese way of doing things which is very civilized and technically complicated. By "smart" they mean "getting ahead without morality"

although, well, they did have those wars to end black slavery for instance, so maybe it isn't true.

It's hard to say that there isn't a lot of things about white culture that is not totally horrible though. For instance, whites are usually the staunchest atheists and almost all white cultures originate from Rome. Obey or be tortured.

I sometimes wonder whether I'm evil or something, but I've been pretty consistent about fighting for good causes like the environment and such so I doubt it. Not that there isn't other people in the population that don't fight for the environment or whatever.

I mean, how low can you go though? stealing a person's fucking glasses because they happen to be homeless? that's pretty fucking low. Poisoning the food. Spraying people from the sky with metals. Creating layers of lies adn then calling it "disinformation" and "conspiracy theory" when someone points it out.

It's not that there isn't people who are kind of course and you kind of have to adjust for the fact that the devil is in charge. However, it just seems that people are so.......evil.

It's hard to talk about them any other way. I mean, they just don't want to help each other really. they want to earn money, but that doesn't even make sense half the time as you can't always get things with money as most of the crap they produce sucks.

Corporations. I mean I can't think of anything so evil as creating a fake legal entity to earn money and using it to destroy the biosphere upon which everyone depends on.

And then there's the prison system which tends to criminalize the poor. You're a person, you're born and if you don't perform at the highest level in this meritocratic extremist system which depends upon doing awful shit, then you get sent to this prison hell system based on any number of bullshit crimes.

And you just know too. That these people who run the system. They would torture you as much as they possibly could. Not for anything you really did, but just for the crime of existing and happening not to be able to do anything for you. And what's worse, everyone seems to participate in it.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion based on my observations that superman is the devil and the stuff written by the Jews that the whites really are evil. They just won't acknowledge it and it really is the case that 'white supremacy' is a fucking horror show. Hitler is like, the god of the whites, because he promotes all the things the whites love: domination, antisemitism, race hatred, horrid prisons.

If they could, they would be like the Zodiac Killer I'm pretty sure, most of these people. Going around committing all sorts of terrible crimes just for the thrill of it....and getting away with it. That's what they really want to do. 1 in 3 killings go unsolved after all.

If the Zodiac Killer....well he is probably still out there, ready to sstrike again. He reincarnates probaly like the rest of us killing people. They would make him god before me. Of that I am sure. They don't want a good person to be god, they want someone who is a killer like them. someone who would get away with everything like them.

6:13, when will the wicked perish?

[kamalakhanrulesmiddleearth]

I'm having 4am opinions apparently

I feel like what most MCU movies and/or Disney shows lack nowadays is good comprehension of the villains unless they're shows about the villains, especially in genres like superhero movies. Thought of this ranking system today that might help explain what I mean with four examples. It's an axis between menace and scale.

Dr. Doofenshmirtz (Phineas and Ferb count as superheroes, right??)

low menace, low scale.

Doof is comic relief for a reason: everyone knows he's not going to succeed and doesn't have any really evil schemes (much to his chagrin) like killing or even hurting anyone. His menace is for petty vengeance at best. And he doesn't aspire to take over more than the tri-state area, and doesn't think or plan much beyond his latest inator.

The Joker

high menace, low scale

Now before the comic junkies come after me, I know there are multiple variations of the Joker for which this might not be true, but most versions I've seen align with this. Joker is the bad guy in every sense of the word. He's toxic and sadistic, killing without thought. No doubt he's menacing. But he's low scale because he, like Doofenshmirtz, rarely plots beyond the next scheme or betrayal, and keeps his mayhem to the confines of Gotham City. He's a crime lord, not going for world domination, but he's well written and scary, which makes him such a classic villain.

Thanos

high menace, high scale

Thanos brings the big guns to every fight and challenges literally all of the avengers at once, which few villains can boast of. His scale is undeniable and catastrophic, not only global but universal in the MCU. Dusting half of the population of, well, everything, is a pretty big goal to shoot for. He's also fairly menacing, with the earlier post-credits scenes featuring him in the shadows and literally everything to do with Gamora and the methods he uses to take the Infinity Stones. Some people argue he's too weak or too OP, which makes me think he's pretty well balanced.

Hades

low menace, high scale

Hades from Hercules is the last example in this analysis, ik it's a kids movie so OF COURSE the villains will be less menacing but the guy is also iconic and funny and relatable. Intends to destroy the gods and Hercules, but is more disposed to bargaining like a car salesman than overt cruelty. That said, his plan does involve full Olympian destruction so he's got plenty of scale. These kinds of characters are a little less common, so harder to define, but can be very effective if written correctly.

I think Disney/MCU stuff lately has veered more towards too sympathetic villains with a ton of power or too cruel villains with not enough power. a proper supervillain has a balance of both, and I wouldn't mind seeing a few more of the high menace/low scale villains, or, even better, low menace/high scale villains who are a bit out of their league. comment with any thoughts and where you think other villains fit on the chart :)

#writing #villain tropes #MCU #superhero stories #hades hercules #thanos #the joker #dr doof #villain ranking

[perpetual-fool]

So, the plan was to find something worth living for before I have to go do the thing, and I have only today left to do it. I have thus far failed miserably, having given myself some kind of anxiety attack yesterday. So I think I do need to imagine something from scratch. But I'm not sure how that would work. Ostensibly I want to be helpful. And if I'm god of this world, the most helpful thing would be to make it a paradise where nothing goes wrong. Actually, I don't know that that wouldn't work. I guess I could try to write a short story where everything is perfect.

But to continue with the thought, maybe I need to have problems to help with to be helpful. But what does helping mean if I'm maintain the problems? And if I'm not maintaining the problems, then aren't we back to the first thing, just with extra steps?

So hypothetically, my setting is a finite land mass with magic holes on each end. One hole is the magic human hole from which humans emerge, one human per unspecified time unit (TU). Humans have to forage for food or starve, and one unspecified land unit (LU) can support one human (for whatever time frame makes sense here). The other hole is the magic goblin hole, which produces one goblin per TU. Goblins have to hunt humans or starve, so they're always going to try to kill humans. And if a human fights a goblin then it's 50/50 chance which one will win.

What could possibly 'help' here? If I say humans discovered weapons, meaning on average humans tend to win against goblins, then they overpopulate and starve anyway. If I say that humans discover farming and they can support more than one human per LU, then that just puts off the problem. And if the goblins win for whatever reason, they end up in the same situation and start starving. Is balance the only 'good'? But if say, humans have dominated the landmass and it's supporting as many people as is possible, then they'd still end up needing to do something like feed the newbies to the goblins so that the population stays the same. And if that balances out to be morally neutral, then what's left is this island of people living sustainably, and that's just a 'paradise' again.

What if it was some kind of trading situation? Like, say there's three villages. One village mines ore and sends it to the smithing village. The smithing village makes cutting tools to send to a village in the wetlands. And the wetland village uses the cutting tools to harvest reeds from which they make wicker and paper products, which they send up to the mining village, who uses it to transport their ore. Would that be helping? It doesn't feel like it.

Maybe I should start at the other end. What does feel like helping? Doing tasks for someone when they can't for some reason. Giving people stuff that makes their life easier or more comfortable. Thinking of better solutions to their problems. Or just informing them about stuff they would want. I'm not sure what you'd call that. I guess it's like finding a shorter connection to the solution? (or finding a connection at all, or finding a more optimal solution.) So hypothetically that might be a quest like "I have to take the long route to the apple tree because goblins have set up camp on the shorter path". And then you could just kill the goblins, or you could pay them to harvest and transport the apples instead, or you could convince them and teach them how to integrate into society so they can instead become caravan guards and farm hands or whatever.

Then how does that kind of scenario occur? Ignorance and cross-purposes? Like, the goblins need meat to live, of which humans and their livestock are. And they don't know that they could just trade with the humans instead. Meanwhile, the humans don't know the goblins are intelligent enough to reason with, never having tried with being horrified at being eaten and such. So how do I create that sort of conflict without contrivance? Like, I could just make my utopia and then retroactively screw it up, but that probably wouldn't end up making sense. I guess I have to just create purposes and see where they cross? Like, hypothetically, I create a version of elves which gain magic power by tapping into some kind of life force generated by living things, so they plant a lot of trees and stuff 'cause that means they have more magic. But also I make a race of dwarves which mine because.. they just really wanna know what's down there? Anyway, the dwarves start cutting down trees for tool handles and for mine bracing. The elves notice the magic fluctuations and conflict briefly breaks out where the dwarves have been clear-cutting. Once couple of enterprising individuals work out an elvish/dwarvish pidgin language and the elves learn why the dwarves are cutting the trees down, they try to introduce them to coppicing. But the dwarves aren't interested, and frankly they didn't like dealing with the trees in the first place since that deprived them of time they could've spent digging or admiring minerals. Instead they agree to trade wood products for metal and gems, letting the elves deal with it. The elves set up a small village near the dwarven settlement, so they can tend to the area that was destroyed by clear-cutting. Members of each race meet there regularly, developing a better understanding of the other's language and culture, and eventually the area develops into a trade hub.

And if I get more granular with that I'd end up on the scale of individuals. Like maybe, a primitive person is taking a break sitting under the shade of a tree, they look up and think "if I just put these branches on my head, I could take the shade with me". They break off a few of the smaller branches and twist them up, they put it on their head, and they have invented the hat. They go on to make hats for every hat-less member of their tribe, and later develop better hats with new techniques and materials.

So, does that make me feel better? Maybe? I am not thinking about stressful stuff, so I guess that's an improvement. I don't know if that will make life worth bearing but I guess there's something going on there.

That'll have to do. I have to 'wake up' in a couple hours to do the thing.

[adobe-outdesign]

best part about Pokemon is that it asks the very serious question of “what would happen if humans weren’t the dominant species on earth” and answers it with “we’d make friends with the things that are and have them protect us” and I think that’s great

#pokemon #outdesign posts things #by 'dominant' I mean 'everything can kill you' not most populous #Ask

[muffinlance]

Hey I don’t mean to be rude or anything I just have a genuine question. What is your stance on Iroh like I know that you don’t like his treatment of Azula I don’t think anyone does. But in some fics like little zuko versus the world you write him like an uncle trying his best and in salvage he’s still kind of trying his best but the faults in his methods are more pronounced. But in fics like towards the sun he seems like a complete asshole. I don’t mean this to be rude in anyway shape or form and I’m sorry if it gives you that impression, I’m just really curious on your take on him, because there’s just been a lot of Iroh hate in recent times (like some of the call outs are definetly justified while others are not in my opinion) and I was just wondering your opinion on everything. Because while I like him as a character, I can recognize where he failed but the whole situation bugs me for whatever reason.

So sorry for this long as post and I’m sorry if this reads like a call out I really am just interested in your thoughts on the subject and mean no disrespect whatsoever. Please feel free to ignore this if you find it uncomfortable.

Thanks 😊

Okay, so I LOVE Iroh, but the man is demonstrably not perfect. Which is fine! No one is, and character growth is good! But I like writing nuanced characters, not putting people up on pedestals. He can be a caring Uncle and the best, most supportive family member Zuko has and still fill a whole bucket with issues that have a solid canon basis. Issues like:

Spending two and a half years treasoning out of Zuko's ship, because you don't get or maintain a high-ranking position in most societies by doing nothing. And you KNOW Ozai would have taken the excuse to execute both Iroh and Zuko if he'd had even an inkling that was happening.

Spending the first five decades (six? age unclear) of his life being down for world domination and an active participant in the war effort. That is a lot of land conquered and a lot of people dead because of him. Laughing at the thought of destroying one of the world's most populous cities, anyone?

Changing his mind on the war only when his own son dies. Relatable, but still not a good look.

Being raised from birth as Azulon's preferred heir, which is a whole ton of baggage to unpack.

Not telling Zuko when his nephew is doing things that can get himself killed. The entirety of the North Pole arc is a disaster from a parenting perspective. Letting your nephew sneak aboard the ship of the man who tried to kill him, go into an enemy stronghold with no plan or exit strategy, and for what? To catch the Avatar, and return to his abusive dad who would likely look for the next reason to get rid of him? Iroh, what--and I mean this most lovingly--the fuck.

Not being honest with Zuko. Okay, don't tell him about the White Lotus while he's still daddy's boy, that's fair. But after the hair-cutting in season two? Bring the boy up to speed, Iroh! You know he needs a mission!

And don't even get me started on Iroh never clearly stating "I'm on the side of the Avatar and world peace, why don't you join me". Iroh. Iroh why did we go into the Crossroads of Destiny with Zuko not knowing you would whole-heartedly support him if he wanted to change sides. IROH.

And more!

Honestly a lot of these probably just came from the writers not yet knowing the full arc of a plot element (White Lotus probably didn't exist in a fleshed out form until season two, based on the writing) or it being a kid's show and them not thinking too hard (North Pole and Crossroads: they wanted to maintain Zuko's character agency, but they did it at the expense of his parental figure being extremely hands off, which is a common trope in children and teen media that drives me BATTY, you can still run those character arcs with the adults having their own agency, give me five minutes alone with your storyboards guys--)

But anyway. That's the canon Iroh I have to work with, and I don't gloss over things just to make him look better no matter how much I love the man. It's more interesting to explore the implications, and have him and Zuko heal their relationship.

In conclusion: I always write Iroh as loving Zuko; it's the same relationship across all my fics. But the different fic premises can result in very different ways of expressing that.

#VERY different ways of expressing that #Iroh my man #your family SUCKS at communication #and you are no exception

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Travis has had both boyfriends and girlfriends since high school. But when his coworkers discovered his dating history at a board game night, they told him he couldn’t be bisexual. “Bi men don’t exist,” they said. “You’re just a confused gay guy.” Travis, 34, had brought his girlfriend with him that night, but they started calling her his “roommate” after they found out he was bi.

Santiago got an even harsher reaction when he came out to his family. “‘Bisexual’ is just code for insincere gay man” is how he said one of his relatives reacted. “He didn’t use the term ‘gay man,’” 24-year-old Santiago told me, “but I won’t repeat slurs.”

In the past couple of months, I’ve heard dozens of stories like these from bisexual men who have had their sexual orientations invalidated by family members, friends, partners, and even strangers. Thomas was called a “fence-sitter” by a group of gay men at a bar. Shirodj was told that he was “just gay but not ready to come out of the closet.” Alexis had his bisexuality questioned by a lesbian teacher who he thought would be an ally. Many of these same men have been told that women are “all a little bi” or “secretly bi” but that men can only be gay or straight, nothing else.

In other words, bisexual men are like climate change: real but constantly denied.

A full 2% of men identified themselves as bisexual on a 2016 survey from the Centers for Disease Control, which means that there are at least three million bi guys in the United States alone—a number roughly equivalent to the population of Iowa. (On the same survey, 5.5% of women self-identified as bisexual, which comes out to roughly the same number of people as live in New Jersey.) The probability that an entire state’s worth of people would lie about being attracted to more than one gender is about as close to zero as you can get.

But the idea that only women can be bisexual is a persistent myth, one that has been decades in the making. And prejudice with such deep historical roots won’t disappear overnight.

👬👫👬👫

To understand why bisexual men are still being told that their sexual orientation doesn’t exist, we have to go back to the gay liberation movement of the late 1960s. That’s when Dr. H. Sharif “Herukhuti” Williams, a cultural studies scholar and co-editor of the anthology Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men, told me that male sexual fluidity got thrown under the bus in the name of gay rights—specifically white, upper-class gay rights.

“One of the byproducts of the gay liberation movement is this…solidifying of the [sexual] binary,” Herukhuti told me, citing the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s as a pre-Stonewall period of relatively unstigmatized sexual fluidity.

Four decades later, the gay liberation movement created a new type of man—the “modern gay man,” Herukhuti calls him—who was both “different from and similar to” the straight man. As Jillian Weiss, now the executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense Fund, wrote in a 2003 review of this same history, “gays and lesbians campaigned for acceptance by suggesting that they were ‘just like you,’ but with the single (but extremely significant exception) of [having] partners of the same sex.” Under this framework, attraction to a single gender was the unifying glue between gay men, lesbians, and straight people—bisexual people were just “confused.”

Bisexual people realized that they would have to form groups and coalitions of their own if they wanted cultural acceptance. But just as bisexual activism was gaining a foothold in the 1980s, the AIDS crisis hit, and everything changed—especially for bisexual men.

“AIDS forced certain bisexual men out [of the closet], it forced a lot of bisexual men back in, and then it killed off a number of them,” longtime bisexual activist and author Ron Suresha told me.Those deaths hindered the development of male bisexual activism at a particularly critical moment. “A number of men who would have been involved and were involved in the early years of the bi movement died—and they died early and they died quickly,” bisexual writer Mike Syzmanski recalled.

The AIDS crisis also gave rise to one of the most pernicious and persistent stereotypes about bisexual men, namely that they are the “bridge” for HIV transmission between gay men and heterosexual women. As Brian Dodge, a public health researcher at Indiana University, told me, this is a “warped notion” that has “never been substantiated by any real data.” The CDC, too, has debunked the same myth in the specific context of U.S. black communities: No, black men on the “down low” are not primarily responsible for high rates of HIV among black women.

For decades, bisexual men have been portrayed—even within the LGBT community—as secretly gay, sexually confused vectors of disease.

In 2016, bisexual men are still feeling the effects of the virus and the misperceptions around it.

“We’re still underrepresented on the boards of almost all of the national bisexual organizations,” Suresha told me, referring to the fact that women occupy most of the key leadership positions in bisexual activism. And in a new, nationally representative study of attitudes toward bisexual people, Dodge and his research team found that 43% of respondents agreed —at least somewhat—with the statement: “People should be afraid to have sex with bisexual men because of HIV/STD risks.”

For decades, bisexual men have been portrayed—even within the LGBT community—as secretly gay, sexually confused vectors of disease. Is it any wonder that they are still fighting to shed that false image today? It’s hard to convince people that you exist when they barely see you as human.

👬👫👬👫

It’s not that bisexual women have it easy. Both bisexual men and women are much less likely than gay men and lesbians to be out of the closet, with only 28% telling Pew that most of the important people in their life know about their orientation. Collectively, bisexual people also have some of the worst mental health outcomes in the LGBT community and their risk of intimate partner violence is disturbingly high. Bisexual people also face discrimination within the LGBT community while fending off accusations that their orientation excludes non-binary genders. (In response, bisexual educator Robyn Ochs defines “bisexuality” as attraction to “people of more than one sex and/or gender” rather than just to “men and women.”)

And on top of these general problems, bisexual women are routinely hypersexualized, stereotyped as “sluts,” dismissed as “experimenting,” and harassed on dating apps. Their bisexuality is reduced to a spectacle or waved away as a “phase.”

But it is still bisexual men who seem to have their very existence questioned more often.

Suresha pointed me to a 2005 New York Times article with the headline “Straight, Gay, Or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited,” the fallout of which he saw as “a disaster for bi people.” The article reported on a new study “cast[ing] doubt on whether true bisexuality exists, at least in men.” The study in question measured the genital arousal of a small sample of men and found, as the Times summarized, that “three-quarters of the [bisexual male] group had arousal patterns identical to those of gay men; the rest were indistinguishable from heterosexuals.”

“It got repeated and repeated in all sorts of media,” Suresha recalled. “People reported it in news briefs on the radio, in print, in magazines, all over the place.”

As the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force noted in its response to the article, the original study had some clear methodological limitations—only 33 self-identified bisexual men were included and participants were recruited through “gay-oriented magazines”—but the Times went ahead and reported that the research “lends support to those who have long been skeptical that bisexuality is a distinct and stable sexual orientation.”

“Show me the quest for scientific proof that heterosexuality exists. It begins and ends with even just one person saying, ‘I’m straight.’” — Amy Andre, Huffington Post

The article fueled the devious narrative that male bisexuality was just homosexuality in disguise. The lived experiences of bisexual men don’t support that narrative—and neither does science—but its power comes from prejudice, not from solid evidence.

And unsurprisingly, the 2005 study’s conclusions did not survive the test of time. In fact, one of the co-authors of that study went on to co-author a 2011 study which found that “bisexual patterns of both subjective and genital arousal” did indeed occur among men. The New York Times Magazine later devoted a feature to the push for the 2011 study, briefly acknowledging the paper’s previous poor coverage. But many in the bisexual community were unimpressed that the scientific community was still being positioned as the authority on the existence of bisexual men.

“Show me the quest for scientific proof that heterosexuality exists,” Amy Andre wrote on the Huffington Post in response to the feature. “It begins and ends with even just one person saying, ‘I’m straight.’”

👬👫👬👫

One of the most tragic things about society’s refusal to accept bisexual men is that we don’t even know why it is still so vehement. Dodge believes that his new study offers some hints—the persistent and widespread endorsement of the HIV “bridge” myth is alarming—but he told me that he would need “more qualitative and more focused research” before he could definitively state that HIV stigma is the primary factor driving negative attitudes toward bisexual men. (Research in this area is indeed sorely lacking. The last major study on the subject prior to the survey Dodge’s team conducted was published in 2002.)

In the meantime, bisexual advocates have developed plenty of compelling theories, many of them focused on the dominance of traditional masculinity. For example, Herukhuti explained that “we live in a society in which boundaries between men are policed because of patriarchy and sexism.” Men are expected to be “kings of their kingdom”—not to share their domain.

“For men to bridge those boundaries with each other—the only way that we can conceive of that is in the sense that these are ‘non-men,’” Herukhuti told me, adding that, in a patriarchal society, gay men are indeed seen as “non-men.” The refusal to accept that men can be bisexual, then, is partly a refusal to accept that someone who is bisexual can even be a man.

Many of the bisexual men I interviewed endorsed this same hypothesis. Kevin, 25, told me that “it’s seen as really unmanly to be attracted to men.” Another Kevin, 26, added that “the core concept of masculinity doesn’t leave room for anything besides extremes.” Justin, in his mid 20s, said that “men are one way and gay men are another way [but] bisexual men are this weird middle ground.”

Our society doesn’t seem to do well with more than two—especially when so many still believe that there’s only one right way to be a man.

And Michael, 28, added that bisexual men are “symbolically dangerous”—a “big interior threat to hetero masculinity” because of a shared attraction to women. It’s easy for a straight guy to differentiate himself from the modern gay man, but how can he reassure himself that he is nothing like his bisexual counterpart?

The answer is obvious: He can equate male bisexuality with homosexuality.

The logic needed to balance that equation, Herukhuti explained to me, is disturbingly close to the racist, Jim Crow-era “one-drop rule,” which designated anyone with the slightest bit of African ancestry as black for legal purposes.

“For a male to have had any kind of same-sex sexual experience, they are automatically designated as gay, based on that one-drop rule,” Herukhuti said. “And that taints them.”

To see that logic at work, look no further than the state of HIV research, much of which still groups gay and bisexual men together as MSM, or men who have sex with men. Dodge, who specializes in the area of HIV/AIDS, explained that “when a man reports sexual activity with another man, that becomes the recorded mode of transmission and there’s no data reporting about female or other partners.” Bisexual men have their identities erased—literally—from the resulting data.

“A really easy way to fix this,” Dodge added, “would be to just create a separate surveillance category.”

But when it comes to categories, our society doesn’t seem to do well with more than two—especially when so many still believe that there’s only one right way to be a man.

👬👫👬👫

The situation of bisexual men is not hopeless. Slowly but surely, they are expanding the horizons of masculinity. The silver lining in Dodge’s study, for example, is that there has been a decided “‘shift’ in attitudes toward bisexual men and women from negative to more neutral in the general population” over the last decade or so, although negative attitudes toward bisexual men were still “significantly greater” than the negativity directed at their female peers.

“Put the champagne on the ice,” Dodge joked. “We’re no longer at the very bottom of the barrel but we’ve still got a ways to go.”

That distance will likely be shortened by a rising generation that is far more tolerant of sexual fluidity than their predecessors. Respondents to Dodge’s survey who were under age 25 had more positive attitudes toward bisexuality, perhaps because so many of them openly identify as LGBTQ themselves—some as bisexual, some as pansexual, and some refusing labels altogether.

That growing acceptance is starting to be reflected in movies and on television, once forms of media that were, and still often are, notoriously hostile to bisexual men. A character named Darryl came out as bisexual with a myth-busting song on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and, as GLAAD recently noted, other shows like Shadowhunters and Black Sails are starting to do bi male representation right. The HBO comedy Insecure even made biphobia into a powerful storyline when one straight female character, Molly, shunned her love interest when he told her that he once had oral sex with a guy in a college. But other shows, like House of Cards, are still using a male character’s bisexuality as a way to accentuate his villainy.

Ultimately, bisexual men themselves will continue to be the most powerful force for changing hearts and minds. I asked each bisexual man I interviewed what he would want the world to know about his sexual orientation. Some wanted to clear up specific misconceptions but so many of them simply wanted people to acknowledge that male bisexuality is not fake.

“It’s important that bisexuality be acknowledged as real,” said Martyn, 30, adding that “there’s only so long someone can hold on to a part of themselves that seems invisible before it starts to make them doubt their own sense of self.”

“I am happy being bisexual and I’m not looking for an answer,” said Dan, 19. “I’m not trying things out, I’m not using this as a placeholder to discover my identity. This is who I am. And I love it.”

Samantha Allen is a reporter for Fusion’s Sex+Life vertical. She has a PhD in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University and was the 2013 John Money Fellow at the Kinsey Institute. Before joining Fusion, she was a tech and health reporter for The Daily Beast.

#bisexuality #bi #bi tumblr #support bisexuality #bisexuality is valid #bi pride #lgbtq community #lgbtq #lgbtq pride #pride #bisexual #bisexual community #bisexual men are valid #respect bisexual men #bisexual men #bisexual nation #bisexual education #support bisexual men #bisexual men exist #biphobic gay people #end biphobia #biphopia #biphobic #bisexual pride #bisexual erasure #bisexual men allies

[petitprincess1]

I don’t mean to sound mean. How are the sinners in Hazbin Hotel tortured? Yes, they live in place where chaos runs supreme. However, most of the sinners seem extremely happy most of the time. Also, in Helluva Boss, this version of hell does not seem very chaotic. The imps do not live impoverished or are discriminated despite being lower class in this world. Demons walk around the street without fear of being attacked. This place does not even seem over-populated. In Helluva Boss, the society of this version of hell is a little too calm sometimes. This is supposed to be the same world as Hazbin. Like, Vivziepop has said this place is supposed full of horrible people torturing each other all the time. In Helluva Boss, I do not get the sense that this world is like that. The only demon that I can say I have seen suffer is Angel. However, I do not get see how the other sinners suffer. Am I missing something? Can you help me understand ? Sorry for the bother!

I mean, what do you want to happen? People getting killed in every single frame in the ep or bodies lying on the street? XP The imps live in Imp City, which is pretty poverish looking compared to The Pentagram. Also, Helluva Boss focuses more on the relationships of the characters rather than the world-building. There is some with the other rings, but you wont see much of the Pride Ring, which is where the Sinners reside. Plus, this is just season 1, so we aren't gonna get everything.

Also, in comparison to what we saw in HH pilot, of course the hellborns are going to be much calmer. Imo, the hellborns aren't as driven by sin compared to Sinners, which is why in Pentagram City there's so much debauchery and temptation everywhere. They seem to even feel regret for their actions, which, judging by the HH pilot and comics, the Sinners seldom do.

As for everything else, I can't fully answer. It seems like this version of Hell is meant to be a tiny bit more functional compared to other versions. However, saying that it needs to be chaotic in order to be hellish isn't true. Like I said, the Sinners are constantly surrounded by sin in the Pentagram, so there's no way for them to even get redeemed. It even seems like they're forced to continue their sin, like Pentious being obsessed with domination or Cherri and arson. It's subtle suffering.

Look at characters like Angel Dust, who is constantly suffering around Valentino, or even Alastor, who has his thoughts broadcasted for everyone to hear. It's like it's impossible to go beyond what you "fell" for. If you went to Hell because of being an arsonist, well then that's all you can do and possibly what you "live" for. One can argue that that's worse than just simply being around chaos, which one can become numb to.

Plus, another thing that's terrible is that they can't die. Only angelic weapons can kill Sinners. They can regenerate, but it's extremely painful. So, they can't even escape through death. Although, that's not even including the annual Extermination. A whole day dedicated to a mass genocide of Sinners suffering for just dying and happening to go to Hell. So, there really is no "peace" in Hell. If you somehow can deal with the constant debauchery, turf wars, drugs, cannibals, and other sins around you, then the Extermination will get you.

So, in my eyes, the suffering in this Hell is much more subtle compared to others that we have seen. It's like an intrusive thought that just won't go away. It just gets more and more prevalent. The only way to shut it up is to indulge. No way for redemption. No way for getting into other businesses. You're stuck with what caused you to end up there, until someone armed with angelic weaponry or a Fallen Angel itself ends you. It's just a theory, but it feels like a true Hell.

#hazbin hotel #helluva boss #hazbin hotel theory #vivziepop #ask answered

[tuberculosis-bot-9000]

This is Snikt Kazkaktak, my Yam’rii OC that I made while thinking about how cool mantises are. The plan is to maybe write something about him in the future. Backstory and relevant details under the cut.

(A lot of these ideas were inspired by a friend on Discord. You can find them at darkobscurityarts on Insta)

Yam’rii Castes

Yam’rii society is divided into three strict castes: Scythes, Palms, and the Aurum. Intermingling between the castes is taboo and will result in the death of the member of the lower caste.

Scythes are the Yam’rii that only possess blades and no fingers. They are usually larger and physically stronger. They’re relegated to the military, personal or Hive guards, and physical labor that doesn’t require hands. They are the lowest caste and live short, violent lives.

Palms are the Yam’rii that possess hands but no blades. They are the smallest and weakest of the three castes. They are the workers in every sense of the word. They benefit from a bit more freedom than the Scythes but not much. They do everything that the Aurum believe to be beneath them. Some lower-hatched Palms are pressured to join the military, considering they can actually manipulate tools and work technology. They are the middle caste.

The Aurum are the highest class of Yam’rii and possess both hands and blades. The Aurum are essentially nobility, the upper crust. They are greedy, sadistic, and manipulative. They utterly control the Hives and by extension, the entire species. They crave conquest and control. The Aurum are the commanders, the CEOs, the politicians. Aurum Yam’rii live cold, calculating, opulent lives of decadence and decay.

Yam’rii Hand Structure

Yam’rii hands are dictated by genetic factors. Both the Scythe and the Palm genes are dominant traits, meaning any child that has both genes will always come out as an Aurum. This is important for later ;}

The Yam’rii originally evolved to have grasping digits, but developed blades due to the high number of predators on Huk. The blade is actually an over-developed third finger, meaning while Palms have three fingers and a thumb, Aurum only have two fingers.

Yam’rii Society

Yam’rii society, culture, and accent varies from caste to caste. Scythes tend to have a rich oral history and value strength above all else. Palms are influenced by which House they serve under, but practice their own religion in secret. The Aurum are divided into Houses, vast sprawling sects of families rallied under the flag of one powerful P/Matriarch and their descendants. Aurum value bloodlines and your future is decided more by your family than your own ability.

Each House, of which there are usually one or two in each Hive, compete with each other for dominance. It is common practice for a Yam’rii House to wage war on another. The loser will either pledge allegiance or be eradicated. Victors will also regularly demand tribute from the families under their control, ensuring one family stays on top. Inter-House war is also common. These bugs just love fighting each other over everything.

The False Egg Secret

The average Yam’rii female will lay between 100 and 200 eggs at once after mating. Most of these eggs are decoys, however. They won’t ever hatch, and serve to confuse predators. Only about 1-10 eggs will actually hatch. This is all a lie.

For Scythes and Palms, it’s true enough. Only 1-10 eggs will hatch. But not because the rest are decoys. All Yam’rii eggs are moved to a communal nursery to be tended by servants. However, when they are in these nurseries, certain chemicals will be released into the air. These chemicals kill 90% of the unhatched Yam’rii. Those that do hatch are weak and frail. This ensures that the lower castes’ populations are kept just low enough to never be a problem.

For the Aurum, however, eggs are a much different story. Every single Aurum egg is allowed to hatch. That isn’t where it ends, no. Aurum hatchlings are not fed or cared for until after their first trial. When the hunger grows too much, Aurum hatchlings will rapidly cannibalize each other. Once only a few remain, then the hatchlings are given to their mothers.

Snikt’s Story

Snikt was not hatched to an Aurum Matriarch and her consort. Snikt was hatched on Abbaji Minor near the end of the Huk War to a Palm house servant and a Scythe Hive Gaurd. Not long after, however, the Hive was attacked by Kaleesh guerrillas led by none other than Qymaen jai Sheelal. It was only by luck and the mercy of a Kaleesh mother that Snikt and his mother survived. His father died in defense of the Hive.

Boarding an escape vessel, Snikt’s mother managed to convince the captain that Snikt was one of the Matriarch’s hatchlings whom she had grabbed during the attack. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, none of the Matriarch’s family had survived, leaving Snikt the sole heir of the family. The pair was ferried back to Huk where they were housed by the Matriarch’s cousin. The Patriarch of House Kazkaktak took a liking to Snikt. However, the Patriarch had a long list of heirs, leaving Snikt poor for future prospects.

That was until the Patriarch recommended he join the Kzz’izz Military Academy. The Patriarch had an in with the Dean, and if Snikt succeeded, he could be made the Patriarch’s heir. All he needed to do was graduate the Academy and he would be awarded with untold power, wealth, and influence. Unfortunately for him, the Kzz’izz Military Academy is tougher than he thinks…

#star wars #snikt #snikt kazkaktak #yam’rii #yam’rii of huk #huk #yam’rii oc #huk oc #general grievous #grievous #qymaen jai sheelal #kalee #kaleesh

[themattress]

Ghetsis the Complete Monster

Follow-up of sorts to this post. As I said there, after much internal conflict between both fans and Game Freak developers as to whether Cyrus was a Complete Monster (a purely atrocious, irredeemable villain) or not, it was firmly settled that he was not. Enter Ghetsis Harmonia of Team Plasma, who shares some of Cyrus’ most unsavory qualities and none of the positives. So, does he qualify as a Complete Monster? The answer is...complicated.

Despite being literally designed to be as malevolent as possible, the video game version of Ghetsis has three frequently cited reasons for why he shouldn’t be considered a Complete Monster: his worst deeds are done off-screen, he is restricted by the E-rating in how bad his on-screen evil actions can be, and his goal of world domination is too standard particularly when compared to the likes of Cyrus and Lysandre who seek massive death and destruction. 

There is certainly merit in the first point: we never do actually see Ghetsis’ horrifically restrictive raising of N, or the manipulation of his followers, or the slave-driving of Pokemon to construct his castle, or how he abused his main partner Pokemon so that it evolved into a Hydreigon before the usual level (with its most intense move being Frustration, at that), or much of anything related to his plan in Black 2/White 2. The end results are supposed to speak for themselves, but I can get how some people might not think that’s enough.

The other two points are more sketchy. I understand the first in the case of the 2D Gen V games since in both of those he threatens to kill the player character before battling them, but nothing actually happens if you lose to him. However, this moment stands out for a reason:

People who hand-wave it away with “the icicles weren’t going to impale you” or “the freezing effect wouldn’t have killed you” (the latter of which is debatable) are missing the point: this is the first time in the game series that a character flat-out used a Pokemon to threaten the player character’s well-being. This broke a core rule that’s been in place for five generations of games, and it was specifically this character that did it. Then we jump to 3D and, well....

The E-rating didn’t stop Ghetsis from just making it clear that he would kill a preteen girl with his bare hands! Again, no other villain in any game in the series has done this! Giovanni, Archie, Maxie, Cyrus and Lysandre were all in this same event, and only Ghetsis did this!

Lastly, the comparison to Cyrus and Lysandre and the heinousness of their goals falls flat for a couple of reasons. First of all, when Ghetsis’ version of ruling the world involves de-arming the population of their main means of defense (their Pokemon), that guarantees a ton of death and destruction as he crushes all resistance with extreme prejudice. But more than that, presentation and motivation is everything here. Cyrus and Lysandre are depicted with sympathetic backgrounds and somewhat understandable reasons for pursuing their extreme goals, with both of them holding the firm belief that it’s for the good of the human race (Cyrus) or the planet (Lysandre), not too dissimilar to the less extreme and more sympathetic Maxie and Archie. Ghetsis has none of that. He is driven purely by entitled narcissism and cares only about himself. His justification for why achieving his goal is best for the world and all the people in it is...well, HE’S going to be ruling the world, and he’s perfect, and so by default a world ruled by him is a perfect world! There’s nothing remotely sympathetic about that, which makes the death and destruction he intends to cause the worst kind even if it’s less extreme than Cyrus’ and Lysandre’s. And personally, I’d say that makes him a Complete Monster.

But maybe this still won’t sway some people. Maybe they’ll say Ghetsis as presented in the games is still too cartoony to properly qualify and that he needs to be darker and edgier.

You called?

Not only do Pokemon Generations’ episodes 13 and 14 portray public attacks that Ghetsis is responsible for as far more damaging and dangerous than the games did, but episode 15 shows the man himself in a darker, more deranged light than Black 2/White 2 itself did. He can be summed up as “psychologically hell-bent on killing his son, especially when said son tries to reach out to him with compassion and understanding”. Also, he’s using White Kyurem, not regular Kyruem, so there is no mistaking that its direct attacks on N would be lethal.

Oh, and if that’s not enough for you, how about the Pokemon Adventures manga’s take?

Not only does this version also mastermind attacks that are depicted in a far more realistic terrorist-y way than in the games, and have additional cruel deeds given to him like crucifying the Unovan Gym Leaders in a public display of force, ordering the deaths of the “common trainers” rising against Team Plasma, and causing Black to get sucked into the Light Stone along with Reshiram, but he does it all the way a real sociopath would: with a pleasant smile and a tranquil, gentlemanly demeanor (in many ways, it’s returning him to the roots of his very first conceptual appearance). At least until, again, he personally tries to kill his son.

Both Generations and Adventures are free from the games’ E-rated restrictions, and they pull no punches in showcasing just how depraved Ghetsis is, with not even Cyrus and Lysandre able to match him in being an intensely frightening villain. These versions of Ghetsis are definitely Complete Monsters, there is no credible argument to be made against this fact.

However, on the flipside, we have the TCG and Pokeani versions. These versions of the character double down on the restrictions from the games and amplify the cartoonishness. TCG!Ghetsis has only one card in one set (albeit the middle of a “trilogy” of sets revolving around Team Plasma), and while it’s a powerful card, its effect falls flat when stacked up against later villains like Lysandre and Lusamine. Also....he’s a goddamn card. If he prevails and takes over the world, then it’s only going to be a problem until the next game gets played.

As for the Pokeani version from the Episode N arc of Best Wishes, he’s as standard an Evil Overlord type of baddie as you can get. The OP makes him look cooler than he really is:

Also, the fact that he was coming in and being so mediocre after a phenomenal showing by Giovanni, before a phenomenal showing by Lysandre, and during a phenomenal showing by his own lieutenant Colress especially damages this incarnation of Ghetsis’ effectiveness, let alone his chances of being a Complete Monster. His goal is prevented from being realized before it’s even close to being in reach (twice!), his entire relationship with N is glossed over, and there are no personal stakes involved with defeating him. He just kind of....happened.

Bill Rogers’ dub voice for him is the final nail in his coffin; by Arceus, was that bad!

So when it comes to the question of whether Ghetsis is a Complete Monster: the Generations and Adventures versions unquestionably are, the TCG and Pokeani versions unquestionably aren’t, and the games version is unquestionably supposed to be and whether you go along with that all comes down to whether you let the restrictions in the medium get to you or not.

And for me, a single picture says much more than any restrictions ever will:

Complete. Monster.

#Pokemon #Ghetsis #Team Plasma #Analysis #This has been a PSA #He is a Complete Monster!

[bangtanpromptsfics]

acacia.

dialogue prompt #1: “Is this illegal?”

pairing: jungkook x reader

genre: f2l, fluff

word count: 1,590

warnings: alcohol consumption, swearing

summary: jungkook is in love with his best friend who would date anybody but him

a/n: these are meant to be for writing practice. feedback is greatly appreciated. it's really short but I hope you like this!! prompt is inspired from pinterest.

masterlist

“Is this illegal?”

Jungkook realises you are dumb, especially with all that alcohol from the party, or more so even without it. 

He takes a sip of his beer and tries to construct a safe sentence which won't come out as rude.

“Bitch”. Well he tried. “You want to rob someone? That too his Balenciaga jacket? ”

You are referring to Namjoon who is busy chatting up girls with his dimples and loads of knowledge, for which he is mostly known. Redefining sexy or something on that line. 

He was hosting this party for reasons you don't remember now anyways, it has something to do with his never ending list of achievements. And he basically invites most of the population of college. I mean free drinks so, whatever. 

“I'm cold Kook, and his jacket looks so warm. He didn't give it when I asked him politely, so let's steal it”, you slur, shifting your body weight around enough to not have your face planted on the floor. 

“You asked him? ”, he squeaks. “You can have mine”, he is removing his denim jacket in the next second, with a look of amuse of course and drapes it over your shoulder, “feeling better?”

“Yes!”, you begin to chime, “It smells like you too!”

Jungkook’s cheeks warm up instinctively. Though sometimes you are a pain in the ass, especially drunk, he had never complained about it. He shoots death glares and unpleasant nose scrunches of course, but nothing more. He'd been your friend for so long, so he should've been used to the random appreciation you give him. He should be immune to your flirty laughs, the way you look absolutely endearing with his hoodie on your small frame and definitely not clench his fist in jealousy when you go out for dates. 

Probably a very cliche best friend in one-sided love story, but he feels so much more complications than that. He was going to confess ages ago, but since you are dumb as I said, would jump around random guys, scare them off with your mouth and wonder why you are single. 

At times he wants to blow a punch to his face, like now, for being so crazy about his best friend, and being limited to only give you some sort of bro love until it's alas the final year of college and he completely misses the chance when you go to Paris for career. 

“Talk something Kookie”, you bump shoulders together to catch the boy's attention who is in deep thought. He was indulgent in walking you to your dorm, and it reaches by ten minutes, and he really just want to fucking kiss you before you go, but he can't. 

He faces you when you rest your face on his shoulder. “What are you thinking about hm?”, you ask. 

“Nothing”. Liar. 

“Well then I have something to say”, you remove your face and gaze on the ground, feeling a little sad already. 

For a second he is hopeful and he doesn't know why. “What about?”

“Yesterday’s date”. Ouch. But as always he is trying his best, “Oh totally forgot about it. How did it go? Any luck? ”

“He stood me up. That asshole didn't even show up. I guess he just wanted sex”, you kick a pebble out of frustration while Jungkook wants to kick his face. It breaks him that he doesn't stand a chance to show you how much you can be loved. That you are more than the body all boys crave and go. 

This time he kicks a pebble, and it jumps fairly up to land on some car’s window. 

“Careful”, you chuckle, “I don't have money for concession”.

“Y/n, why don't you understand when I say someone is playing you? I always warn you, but you choose to do your bullshit anyway”. He is aggressive, but he's just sad; broken. And even though you get it, it sets you off. 

“I am trying to find my soul mate”.

Jungkook couldn't help but laugh out loud, he thinks you are so innocent, so naive to let people run you over because of how soft your heart is. He even bends a little to catch his knees to support himself. 

“What?”, you scoff, crossing your hands across the chest. 

“You want to go on a date?”, he asks. And it takes him off guard too, more than you. But he seemed confident for the first time. Probably because the sober you doesn't remember the drunk you even in the slightest, or perhaps he thinks it'll go right. 

“Date?”, you repeat, “With you?”

“Yeah”

“Like… right now?”

“Yes”, he puts out his hand, waiting for you to join hands. 

What's the worst thing that's going to happen anyways? It's Jungkook, that one person who would give his life to protect you. 

He doesn't say anything for the rest of the walk. It's a bit rushed because he can't simply wait. A whole thunderstorm is rushing inside his veins and he wants to make everything about this just perfect. So perfect that you forget about every date you have ever been too. 

This is surely not the best date he had planned if he ever took you out, but it sounds alright on his mind and wishes it does the same on yours too. 

After a stroll, you're waiting for Jungkook behind some rented building. He returns with a ladder; enough to make it to the first floor. 

He makes sure to stand behind you and assure your safety. The rest of the way up was stairs, several tiring floors and heavy breath. 

He observes your face forms an ‘O’ out of surprise. 

At the rooftop of this building sits the most beautiful view of the city and thankfully starry sky to make things better. 

It's Jungkook’s self-reflection space to be exact. There were things he shared with you of course, you were each other's shoulder to cry on, but ever since he caught feelings for you, he is just afraid he'll end up ranting into a sudden confession and ruin the friendship. 

So he found other ways to cope. You however were convinced that it was some sort of “change” over time. Everyone changes and you believed it was just something of that sorts. 

“It's so beautiful! ”, you grin, “How come you never bring me here you meanie! ”, you smack his arm as you sit down on the ground beside him. 

“I was going too! ”, he fights back,  rubbing his arm. 

“This is a perfect date”, you begin after some moment of silence, “how come you don't go for relationships!? Girls will be so happy to be treated this way! ”

The first part of the sentence makes his chest warm out of pride, but it collapses to where it was before as you end. 

He just knows you'll never know how he feels unless he just says it, without beating around the bush. 

He doesn't say anything and instead gets up to take two cans of beer he had hid somewhere. You are way past your alcohol limit and acting knowingly for once, you reject. 

He opens his and chugs down half of it in one go. 

“Woah… hey Kookie you alright? ”, he flinches when your palm presses against his shoulder. 

“I want to kiss you really bad”.

Bad line of start. 

Your cheeks burn and turn vibrant shades of scarlet, expecting anything but that. But the more you continue to look at him, the more ethereal he looks; attractive, and someone definitely not deserving of petty friend zoning. 

He feels a pair of lips on his cheeks, startling him. He turns around to see your face breathtakingly close. 

He is really slow, studying every clue you give, once he is certain he is doing this with consent, he places both of his palms on your cheek and leans in. 

Jungkook wants to pinch himself because he thinks he is sleeping and it's just another one of his blissful day dreams. But when you nibble on his bottom lip, he thinks maybe not. You are really here, hands on his hair and kissing him. He holds your head more firmly as he begins to dominate the kiss, ambitious to let you know what he had been thinking about you for the past several years. 

His lips are flushed and glossy when you break off of him, but hands still on his body, on his shoulder, taking your time to catch your breath. 

“Y/n...I hope it's clear now. I like you. Like… . I really like you. And it had been killing me for years whenever I see you going behind other guys, sleeping with them just because they agree to take you on a date. Please Y/n, will you give me a…chance”.

Since the author had enough of Y/n’s dumbness as well, the story continues with Y/n accepting him, realising how blind she was. 

You feel already intoxicated by his lips so you give it a peck and hug him, “Yes Koo. And I'm sorry, for all this, and thank you so much for this date, I am looking forward to our second one”, you beam. 

He finds it cute how you think soulmates exist. He doesn't know about all that. He just knows you can make him happy and every heartbreak for you was worth it. So he smiles and nods, nothing conveyed after, until he takes you back to your dorm and kisses you one last time for the day. 

Thank you so much for reading!!

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