AU where Zuko doesn't practice helmet safety

she turns, makes direct eye contact with you, smiles,

Rundown of the current protests, rioting and state crackdown that have erupted in France over the police murder of a 17 year old brown boy.

I've seen way too many Europeans on here insisting ACAB is just a USAmerican thing. It's really important y'all know that it isn't. Cops as an institution is fundamentally fascist, and in the Global North, white supremacist.

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Rest in power baby boy.

*Correction: Nahel wasn't Black, but Maghrebi (of North African descent). Apologies for the mistake.

@goated33 got me thinking-

in some ways, vaggie has the personality and risk assessment capabilities of a small furry animal

meaning everyone in hell THINKS she's the idiot chihuahua, picking fights with the local dobermans, getting metaphorically (literally?) dragged away by charlie for her own good

the twist is she's actually one of those damn weasel things, able to fuck up creatures several times her size and almost impossible to kill normally- yet STILL she's somehow picking fights waaaaay above her weight class

charlie got headaches over this in the early days, i bet. before vaggie simmered down from "don't kill kids wft" to "sinners maybe kinda redeemable actually? not for killy killy stab??"

even now though there's the vibe that, if left alone with alastor and even one less fuck to give, vaggie would be throttling him in seconds flat

this would probably not go well... sadly, once she got started, i could see her probably not noticing or caring much. imagine charlie worrying about this possibility a lot. some nights staying awake, concerned who her girlfriend might pick a fight with next, while vaggie lies fast asleep in her arms, blissfully smiling... likely dreaming of finally getting to stab somebody again like she means it <3

I can't sleep because I'm thinking about Anna Garska again. I've been haunted by her case for some years now and I think I'll forever be. She was a young woman, a mother of a little girl. Her husband (a policeman) killed her because he got bored and wanted to "start a new life". They never found her body, but there was enough proof anyway and he went to jail for her murder. The worst thing? He never said what he did to her. Her grave is empty. Her mother is suffering beyond any measure, she was very close with her. Anna's daughter is growing up without her and will never know her. And this scumbag knows where Anna's body is. But he just won't tell. Just like that. Even though it shouldn't matter to him now when he's in jail anyway. It makes me so angry. That's a typical fucking man, not caring about anyone but himself. A master of life, death and truth. I'm telling y'all that the biggest dream I have is to get him in my hands and torture everything out of him in the most brutal way. He fucking killed her but that's not enough for him, he won't allow her body to rest in peace, he won't allow her mother to mourn her properly. Why? Just because he can. Can you imagine? That's a definition of evil if I ever saw one. Where does it end? Do men have any fucking limits of how far they'll go with their depravity? When I say that they hate us THIS is what I mean. We're nothing to them when we're alive and we're nothing to them when we die.

This is Anna. I didn't know her, but I'll never forget her face.

HEADS WILL ROLL | RIVERDALE

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MDZS Society! aka: there's a lot less killing than you'd expect

This follows from this post and also the recent translations of MXTX’s most recent interview (which I can now no longer bother to find bc this has been sitting in drafts for like, siiiix months? More? Oh god anyway.) which reminded me about my feelings regarding MDZS society and how different it is from the martial societies we see depicted in typical modern wuxia. (Small disclaimer, I am a wuxia genre fiend and I love like, thinking about fictional societies so this is like, “AHA! You’ve unlocked my trap card!”) 

For the purposes of this, I’m going to be looking at MDZS/CQL’s depiction of the jianghu (which I think is fairly similar! I don’t actually think the show writers made CQL’s jianghu/martial society more genre typical than it was in the book) and comparing that with modern classic wuxia (mostly Jin Yong and Gu Long works.) For this comparison, I’ll be looking at a Jin Yong book — Legend of the Condor Heroes (which is widely considered the starting point of modern wuxia as a genre) — and one Gu Long book — Dagger Li/Sentimental Swordsman, Ruthless Sword (widely considered his most popular work) — and seeing how their societies differ from MDZS society. 

This will likely come in two parts because this one was already getting long, and I don’t think we can fit “how often does nobility exist in a typical jianghu and what do bloodline sects look like normally versus what they look like in MDZS” in this post along with the main topic of “is MDZS society a particularly physically violent place?” 

This post discusses how often cultivators are socially expected to kill people. Like, actual living human beings instead of, say, monsters or ghosts which have been categorized differently than like, human beings. 

EDIT: I forgot to talk about Dagger Li but this was already much too long sorry. Feel free to hmu for more thoughts though.

Now, it might be easy to think that cultivators killing actual people is a really common thing in MDZS/CQL universe! After all, they do have martial arts training and one of the prominent things about the first life is just how many people die both in the Sunshot Campaign and the fallout afterwards. However, I would argue that a lot of the traumas and related issues and reactions that happen in MDZS happen because cultivators are, by training and education, not actually prepared for killing actual living breathing human beings! (And also that the morality of this world prevents it for the most part) 

Now, we do actually get a pretty good window into what the typical training is like for young cultivators in MDZS, because we get a fairly well defined schoolhouse scene where LQR is asking them questions about "how do you tell the difference between various different problems we have to solve?" and "how do you go about fixing this problem?" and none of those include the moral quandary of "if I, a young cultivator out in the Jianghu, see a guy who is doing something I morally disagree with, under what circumstances do I beat him up and/or kill him." This does not appear to enter the curriculum at any point, leading me to believe that the morally correct number of people not like, ghosts or ghouls or fierce corpses, a regular average MDZS cultivator is supposed to have killed is approximately 0.

Which. Is a thing you get in a normal martial arts wuxia jianghu. There is generally the threat of "oh yeah this that or the other faction will be doing shitty things and thereby try to murder you." Instead, in MDZS/CQL most of the heirs of sects are...attending school together. Doing teenage things like partying and gossiping and attending classes.

And sure yes, there was a case of WWX and JZX trying to beat each other up. But the sects did sure let their kids stay at Lan summer camp for months on end (sometimes repeatedly, see NHS) without fearing for their lives or that anyone would steal another sect's techniques or otherwise causing real havoc or intersect warfare etc.

Which is infeasible in any other sort of Jianghu situation. For example, contrast this scenario with this scene from LOCH where Guo Jing's shifus are giving him advice since he is newly 17 and about to set out by himself into the great big world:

Guo Jing therefore bid farewell to his teachers. They had witnessed his battle against the Four Demons of the Yellow River, and were not too greatly worried. The young man had proved that he knew how to use the skills that they taught him. Therefore they let him leave alone. On one hand, the meeting of outlaws in Yanjing worried them greatly, so that they could not ignore it; and on the other hand, a youngster always had to travel the jianghu alone, in order to learn lessons that no teacher could pass on. At the moment of parting, each made their last recommendations. As usual when the Six spoke after one another, Nan Xiren was the last one to express himself. "If you cannot defeat the enemy," he said. "Flee!" He knew that given Guo Jing's dogged character, he would prefer to die rather than to surrender, if he met a master, he would certainly fight to the bitter end, even at the risk of death. That was the reason Nan Xiren gave him this common sense warning. " Martial arts have no limits," added Zhu Cong. " As the proverb says, 'For every peak there is one yet higher', so for every man there is one stronger. Whatever your power, you will always one day meet a foe stronger than you. A true man knows to retreat when necessary, when facing grave danger, it is necessary to contain one's impatience and anger. This what is meant by the adage, « If one preserves the earth and its forests, one does not fear to lack firewood ». It is not therefore not cowardly to take good advice! When the enemy is too numerous and that you cannot face them there, it is especially necessary to avoid being too reckless. Keep in mind Fourth Shifu's advice!"

Does this seem like the sort of advice that any Young MDZS Cultivator would get? "You're a good kid, but when you go out into the world, there will be people who straight up want you dead even though they met you 15 minutes ago, you cannot persist in fighting with these people because they will want you dead and you are a baby cultivator who needs to learn to run away when shit gets rough or you will be dead."

And again I come back to how MDZS cultivators are more like occupational ghostbusters because this really does inform how their society functions and runs and how everyone reacts so badly to the Sunshot Campaign beginning and its aftermaths and possibly explains how JGS could get his way after Sunshot.

Because what happens when you get a society that does train heavily in martial arts and have Able To Kill Real People Weapons who spends most of their time solving very black and white situations of "okay is this ghost whose eating people's livers good or bad? y/n?" and a clear hierarchy of "how do we get rid of the ghost eating people's livers in town x" instead of say "is it morally correct to kill this group of bandits who's been threatening the town" or "is it morally correct to kill this shitty businessman who's been holding people hostage and threatening to hack off their limbs" you have a reduced level of philosophical musing on like, "what is the purpose of martial arts, which is designed to kill people and what do I use martial arts for?" and "under what circumstances and situations would I personally find it morally correct to kill a man?" Which are all questions that Wuxia coming of age stories typically have, and I think MDZS does have, but expressed differently.

Again, it appears that the number of Real Live Human Beings that it is morally acceptable to have stabbed in your life is approximately 0 in this universe, and the expectation that you, personally, might have to fend off people trying to stab you over brunch is also approximately 0.

This also leads to a situation where like, questions of vengeance have very difficult escape hatches! If your parents are murdered on the job by an evil rampaging ghost, this is very sad and tragic and now you're an orphan and of course that's not good, but this is a occupational job hazard, not like, "Yeah Joe Bob from the sect down the street murdered my dad because #Reasons~, and now it's my legacy to grow up to murder Job Bob from the sect down the street to avenge my dad."

(I have a whole essay about how this pertains to both of the Nie Brothers, and how it pertains to JGY and also Jin Ling, and how this seems to routinely fuck people up in MDZS in a very specific way we don't typically see in other wuxias, but this is getting SO long as it is).

But yeah "the socially acceptable number of real living people (instead of ghosts or demons or fierce corpses or whatever) to have killed in your lifetime as a cultivator is approximately 0" means that the Sunshot Generation gets really really fucked up by all of this "killing real people" they did.

Which! might be why JFM was so slow to move on "yeah the Wen are threatening to kill your heirs." <- socially inconceivable behavior. Why society in general is so shocked by Xue Yang and the murder of the Chang <- which would be bad normally but not quite like this. And why no one did anything specific about JGS even if they felt he wasn't entirely correct. What are they going to threaten him with? Death???? A trial of his peers? Social Shunning??? Public shame???

"But Tav how does this relate to CQL!Su She's morality?" I hear you ask. Well you see, the question of "he should've been ready to die for his sect!" is utterly baffling in a society where nobody is expected to be ready to die for their sect on a regular basis because the idea that you should be ready for someone trying to stab you before brunch is utterly nonsensical in a world where most people expect that the baseline number of murders a cultivator does in their lifetimes is 0. That's the world he lives in.

On this regard CQL!Su She is utterly blameless. Nobody handed him a rulebook or expectations sheet for "the sect down the street will try to kill you" nor SHOULD they expect he'd be ready to die at a drop of a hat when no part of the education or social expectations include "ready to die for your sect because it's routine for people to try to kill you."

If you don't even expect to be stabbed and possibly die at a discussion conference where there are lots of cultivators from many sects why on EARTH would you expect to be facing down death in your own home when there's. cultivators here to kill you, this situation is so out of left field?

I found out something today that just infuriated me. Back in December we got an email from our kids school saying that one of the families in the community had suffered a tragedy. Through the grapevine, I heard that it was a murder, a husband killing his wife. There was talk that it was a murder-suicide, which would be no surprise, as men typically kill themselves after committing horrific crimes they have no intention of paying the penalty for.

Today I learned that he shot his wife once, then as she ran out the front door for help, he fatally shot her, and THEN HE TOOK A SHOT AT HIS FIVE YEAR OLD CHILD AS THEY RAN FOR HELP. Like, what the fuck dude? Killing your wife wasn’t enough? You had to do it in front of your kid and then try to kill them too?

This is why I don’t fucking CARE when people bring up male suicide rates because FUCK THAT. This man should have saved everyone the trouble and trauma and just killed himself. Then this kids mom would be alive and they’d need a whole lot less therapy. Because any man who could take aim at his own child, after killing their mother in front of them couldn’t have been the type of father anyone would miss too much.

As long as male suicides are preceded by the murder of one or more person, I DO NOT CARE. Stop taking other people with you when you decide to give up, and maybe THEN I will start caring.

Fuck whatever DC is doing with the al Ghul's characterizations and story lines, I've decided that from now on the al Ghul's are gonna be DC's version of the Addams Family instead.

Now I don't mean just give the various al Ghul's the exact personalities of the various Addams and call it a day. That's boring, that erases all the interesting parts of the al Ghuls, that's just using "find & replace" and not actually adding anything. I mean give them the vibes of the Addams Family.

Keep the al Ghul's as the al Ghul's with all their scheming and machinations and world domination attempts but give them all the unhinged energy, the casually insane view of the world, the deranged levels of love and devotion for family. Make them that group where objectively they are batshit insane but also you cannot argue with the fact that they are indisputably the most stable and functional family in the entire universe.

They're creepy, they're kooky, they're mysterious and spooky. Ra's many opulent homes and impenetrable fortresses are a museum and the al Ghul's really are a screa-um whenever people come to see-um (or when they lay waste upon their enemies in a surprise attack that has been planned for months and is just the first domino in a series that will ultimately lead to achieving a far greater goal).

They all love each other and want each other to be happy, they express this primarily with stabbing and murder attempts (its fine, death is a thing that happens to other people).

And forget the League of Assassins being a cult. Just make the whole vast globe spanning organization a collection of cousins/aunts/uncles/dear old friends ect. No one (not even the al Ghuls, if they cared to keep track of such things) is sure who is actually related to them and who just got absorbed into the ever expanding family tree based on their vibes being right.

(Is Sensei Ra's father you ask? Well he's certainly someone's father - probably.

Anyway have you heard about Cousin Cheshire? Despicable poisoner of a young woman, capable of the most horrific things imaginable - yes she is the sweetest dear. Like I was saying though, she just had a baby!

Everyone in the family is just so excited to throw a baby shower to celebrate! Ubu has really gone all out with the spike traps, he does so love getting to welcome a new addition to the family.

Talia of course has cultivated a brand new strain of the most toxic plants imaginable to make a brand new kind of necrotizing poison. You know, as a nice little romantic gift for Cousin Cheshire and that young man of hers. It really is so important to make sure you take time for you and your partner to go on dates and have a few pitched battles to the death on dark rooftops in the pounding rain when you have children.

Now there is some to-do about it all of course, you know how family get together can be. Everyone is arguing over who should get to give little Lian her first weapon and what it should be. Nyssa is pushing for grenades but Ra's is insisting on a sword - he's traditional like that you know - but Dusan has the vote so far on throwing knives. You know the kind that have the little divots along the edges of the blades them to make it easier to get the poison you dip them in to stick.)

I'm just saying that the al Ghuls should be a delightful cross between the Bond Villains they were originally conceived as and the lovingly unhinged Addams Family. It just feels correct in my heart.

(Again keep the interesting aspects of the characters and the nuances of who each of them are like their drive to save the world through destroying humanity and their strong environmentalist leanings and their constantly playing 5D chess and everything, but like, take away the racism and the cartoonishly evil for no reason bullshit and give them some fun feral energy to go along with it).

Actually. Looking at the chronology. The last time Gideon and Harrow talked alone before the pool scene, Gideon accused Harrow of being a jealous creep for telling her to stay away from Dulcinea.

A whole lot of stupifying things happened in between, but really, it wouldn't be surprising if her first panicked reaction to Harrow disrobing was to think Harrow was making a move on her. Relationship definitely hurtling toward something.

Hey Stormlight fans why are we so quick to forgive Dalinar for killing innocents- including his own wife, but when it comes to Elhokar, whose worst crimes were just being immature and incompetent- both of which come from not being ready to inherit the throne- he's unforgiveable?

Do yall actually think Elhokar is irredeemable because he let Moash's grandparents die?? If so then yall should really take a good long look at Dalinar's arc and compare it to where Elhokar is when he's swearing the First Ideal, because Dalinar at his lowest on the whole was far worse than Elhokar ever was

TW: BLOOD AND VIOLENCE

Bonus:

What if Security-san got infected with @garbagechocolate​ Truth Virus? Bad things. Lots of bad things. It’s a good thing it can’t actually infect humans 

Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window and he’ll fall. Set fire to him and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden’s secret. Ripeness was all.

i like saw 3D if i’m in the right headspace to disassociate it from the prior 6 movies but aside from lawrence’s rightfully bemoaned character assassination hoffman’s personality shift is also more than a little upsetting

Like to knock that fucking ridiculous hat off his corrupt head.

BAERRR THE MALE SIREN ONE WAS JUST SO— JRKEODKDDNDKSSKEKDJDJDK

SCREAMING. 🛐🛐🛐

He makes me wanna punch him in the face (romantically😳)

Are we getting a part 2 soon?? 🤭🤭

YAN! MALE SIREN PRINCE PT2

tws: manipulation mentions, abuse mentions, torture implications (not directed to the reader), domestic violence mentions, regicide,

i didn’t know y’all would like that so much 😭😭 but yes i can do a pt 2.

♡ Yan! Male Siren Prince who, as mentioned before, is the eldest. He’s the heir of the Siren Folk and because of that, his parents are extremely strict.

♡ Yan! Male Siren Prince who has scars on his back from lashings and has had scales ripped off of his tail as a punishment. His parents punish him when he doesn’t live up to their expectations, so he’s become very introverted and resentful because of this.

♡ Yan! Male Siren Prince whose name is Mattias.

♡ Yan! Male Siren Prince who is natural kind and nurturing, but is also a master of manipulation. Be careful, his words might not be in your best interest at times!

♡ Yan! Male Siren Prince whose father was not only abusive to him, but to his mother as well. Because of this, he plans on killing his father and taking the throne to protect his mother and his siblings.

♡ Yan! Male Siren Prince who tried his best to protect his siblings and mother from his father’s wrath, but when his father laid hands on you, he snapped.

♡ Yan! Male Siren Prince who kills his father in a blind rage, claiming the throne and immediately creates a law that protects all human lovers.

♡ Yan! Male Siren Prince who, in case you were wondering, used a spell to permanently allow you to breathe underwater since you refused to become a Siren.

♡ Yan! Male Siren Prince who is a better ruler than his father by far, but because of that, he doesn’t have much time for you anymore.

♡ Yan! Male Siren Prince who wishes he left his home with you instead of becoming the King. He’d be able to spend more time with you that way…

♡Yan! Male Siren Prince who fakes your deaths and leaves his home to find a new place to live!

♡ Yan! Male Siren Prince who’s furious when he finds out his siblings figured out his plan and invited themselves >:((

♡ Yan! Male Siren Prince who begrudgingly admits that the more people there are to protect you and have eyes on you the better. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all… but you have to love him the most!