Yknow, I think this passage really captures how Ouyang views Esen, especially in contrast with how Baoxiang views Esen. Ouyang geuinely believes the best of Esen, he genuinely belives that Esen is good and pure and kind and that it's himslef that is taining him into being otherwise. And while Ouyang is right in that he's technically responsible for Esen’s current emotional state (he did very much kill Esen’s dad and frame his brother for it, that is very much a thing he just did), for once it isn't his fault for the everything else going on with Esen?
I do think Esen is generally good-natured, and tries to be kind and generous to those he loves, but it's very clear that Ouyang has reduced him to JUST that in his head. He only sees Esen’s best qualities as inherent to him, and all the bad ones are Ouyang's fault somehow. He blames himself for Esen not understanding him (because there's something wrong with him, and even when he's mad at Esen for not caring enough to notice certain things he justifies it in his head by making it about his own unmanliness or whatever and Esen is just to perfect for that), for any failure in battle (yeah you're the general but Esen also approved this hes your boss dude), and generally for any moment where Esen exhibits less than stellar behaviour/capacity/etc. When in reality, we have a lot of moments where Esen is just sort of a dick, many of which are pre-ouyang (courtesy of HWDtW wbx flashbacks, which, granted, are also biased but my point still stands). We see Esen's constant and usually unjustified frustration with wbx and sometimes Ouyang, we see him be dismissive of the things they tell him, in the pre-order reward its pretty much stated that he makes a habit of dumping Ouyang outside brothels for hours while he goes inside to get laid, in one of his first scenes we see how much he enjoys it when Ouyang spends the whole morning tormenting Altan (altho tbf he kinda deserved it, altan suuuccckkss), and in general Esen just kinda treats people like crap sometimes. He's snapish and short-tempered and stubborn and imperious, loves whining about stuff, and is a shitty brother and best friend. He's got a lot of good qualities too, like how he's one of the few people that treats Ouyang with respect and tries to treat him as an equal, how his first reaction when wbx is insulted is to come to his defense (even if wbx usually foils his attempts by immediately clapping back and storming off), how we see him recognize he gets frustrated witj wbx too easily and tries to hold his temper back, how he immediately self-sacrifices to save Ouyang from his dad, how even after thinking wbx killed their dad he does really want to forgive him.
My point is, Esen is trying, but he's a very flawed human being, and Ouyang just can't seem to grasp that. He looks at him with rose-colored glasses. And it's so interesting that amongst all the shitty things Ouyang has done (and this duology really just is Ouyang and WBX fuck up yuan dynasty china to truly Epic proportions), the one he feels worst about is the one that isn't actually his fault (sorta). He may have killed Chaghan and been the catalyst for Esen's emotional blow up, but he isn't responsible for Esen having the capacity to burn WBX's books. That was Esen's decision. He hasn't somehow manipulated Esen into an eviler, crueler version of himself by virtue of existing evil-y and eunuch-y and revengefully im his vicinity. Esen was always capable of this, even if we take out Ouyang's actual manipulations, and I think this whole I-tainted-hin mentality really encapsulates how fucked up their relationship and Ouyang's mental state are in general. After all, Ouyang doesn't feel bad about the murder, or the framing, and he feels guilt about causing Esen pain, but most of all, he feels absolutely terrible that he's shattered what he sees as Esen’s purity, which in reality is mostly just the pedestal he himslef put him on. Man, what a fucked up little guy.
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Selected Excerpts From The Fire Nation Royal Palace Servants' (Unofficial) Handbook
Or: Revisions To Normal Protocol After The Ascension Of Agni's Exalted Flame, The Dragon Of The Sun, et cetera, Fire Lord Zuko
1. Agni's Exalted Flame, The Dragon Of The Sun, et cetera, Fire Lord Zuko should not be referred to by his full titles and styles, no matter the context. This appears to annoy him. "Fire Lord Zuko" and "Lord Zuko" are acceptable, as well as "your majesty" and "my Lord".
1.1 "Lord Hotman", however, is unacceptable.
1.2. Even if the Avatar specifically requests you to address Fire Lord Zuko as that.
1.3. In fact, any attempts by the Avatar, the Lady Beifong, the honorable Tribesman Sokka or even Master Katara to get you to address Fire Lord Zuko by anything other than his proper title should be disregarded.
1.4. Referring to Ozai of the Fire Nation (titles rmvd, dishon.) as "The Loser Lord", however, is acceptable.
2. Fire Lord Zuko is aware of the concept of mortality, but does not seem to understand how it relates to His Majesty. Following activities should be discouraged: Free climbing, glider usage, contact with exotic animals larger than a turtleduck (or smaller, if the animal is known to be venomous), amateur theatre productions, cooking, sailing, spelunking, botany, please see full list in the Matron's office.
2.1. It should be noted that His Majesty's belief that mortality does not apply to him does not appear to be completely unfounded. After several "close calls", it has been decided that upon his demise, Fire Lord Zuko should lie in state for at least two weeks.
2.1.1. We do not want another incident.
3. The turtleducks in the Western Pond do not need to be fed by the servants any more.
3.1. However, the turtleducks should be rotated out at regular intervals in order to prevent overfeeding.
4. At any official social functions, at least three servants should be vigilant in case His Majesty tries to tell a joke.
4.1. It should be noted that there is no concern for His Majesty's jokes being offensive, crass or otherwise contrary to good taste. They are simply very bad. His Majesty always ends up embarrassed.
5. Any children left unattended in the Royal Palace for more than 15 degrees can be retrieved from the Fire Lord's office.
6. Should His Majesty go missing, the following places should be searched: roofs and any high places, cellars and secret passages, the fur of the Avatar's sky bison (which is surprisingly deep), and every place that an ordinary five-year-old would think to hide in during a game of "Hide and Explode."
6.1. All of the Imperial Firebenders as well as any soldier who wears a mask during the course of their duties should be questioned.
6.1.1. Important note: Some of the soldiers who are especially close to His Majesty can perform a passable imitation of him. Efforts should be made to prevent an uneducated soldier from, say, conducting a meeting with the Minister of Agriculture.
6.2. After the recent incident, that list is expanded to include the Kyoshi Warriors and any other groups that might wear concealing full face paint.
6.3. If all of these measures prove ineffective, a letter should be sent to The Dragon of the West, Prince Iroh, asking His Highness to return His Majesty.
6.4. If a ransom note is delivered, it should be immediately checked against the handwriting samples from the honorable Tribesman Sokka as well as Avatar Aang, before any other actions are taken.
6.4.1. Replying "Good luck, he's your problem now" to a ransom note is absolutely unacceptable.
6.4.1.1. To further drive home the point, the Royal Archives are required by law to preserve every single piece of royal correspondence. That thing will end up in a museum.
This handbook will be updated should it prove necessary.
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It is over and everything is lost. This is the refrain repeated by Armenian families as they take that final step across the border out of their home of Nagorno-Karabakh.
In just a handful of days more than 100,000 people, almost the entire Armenian population of the breakaway enclave, has fled fearing ethnic persecution at the hands of Azerbaijani forces. The world barely registered it. But this astonishing exodus has vanished a self-declared state that thousands have died fighting for and ended a decades-old bloody chapter of history.
On Saturday, along that dusty mountain road to neighbouring Armenia, a few remaining people limp to safety after enduring days in transit.
Among them is the Tsovinar family who appear bundled in a hatchback littered with bullet holes, with seven relatives crushed in the back. Hasratyan, 48, the mother, crumbles into tears as she tries to make sense of her last 48 hours. The thought she cannot banish is that from this moment forward, she will never again be able to visit the grave of her brother killed in a previous bout of fighting.
“He is buried in our village which is now controlled by Azerbaijan. We can never go back,” the mother-of-three says, as her teenage girls sob quietly beside her.
“We have lost our home, and our homeland. It is an erasing of a people. The world kept silent and handed us over”.
She is interrupted by several ambulances racing in the opposite direction towards Nagorno-Karabakh’s main city of Stepanakert, or Khankendi, as it is known by the Azerbaijani forces that now control the streets. Their job is to fetch the few remaining Karabakh Armenians who want to leave and have yet to make it out.
“Those left are the poorest who have no cars, the disabled and elderly who can’t move easily,” a first responder calls at us through the window. “Then we’re told that’s it.”
As the world focused on the United Nations General Assembly, the war in Ukraine and, in the UK, the felling of an iconic Sycamore tree, a decades old war has reignited here unnoticed.
It ultimately heralded the end of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway Armenian region, that is internationally recognised as being part of Azerbaijan but for several decades has enjoyed de facto independence. It has triggered the largest movement of people in the South Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Azerbaijan has vehemently denied instigating ethnic cleansing and has promised to protect Armenians as it works to reintegrate the enclave.
But in the border town of Goris, surrounded by the chaotic arrival of hundreds of refugees, Armenia’s infrastructure minister says Yerevan was now struggling to work out what to do with tens of thousands of displaced and desperate people.
“Simply put this is a modern ethnic cleansing that has been permitted through the guilty silence of the world,” minister Gnel Sanosyan tells The Independent, as four new busses of fleeing families arrive behind him.
“This is a global shame, a shame for the world. We need the international community to step up and step up now.”
The divisions in this part of the world have their roots in centuries-old conflict but the latest iterations of bitter bloodshed erupted during the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Karabakh Armenians, who are in the majority in the enclave, demanded the right to autonomy over the 4,400 square kilometre rolling mountainous region that has its own history and dialect. In the early 1990s they won a bloody war that uprooted Azerbaijanis, building a de facto state that wasn’t internationally unrecognised.
That is until in 2020. Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, launched a military offensive and took back swathes of territory in a six-week conflict that killed thousands of soldiers and civilians. Russia, which originally supported Armenia but in recent years has grown into a colder ally, brokered a fragile truce and deployed peacekeepers.
But Moscow failed to stop Baku in December, enforcing a 10-month blockade on Nagorno-Karabakh, strangling food, fuel, electricity and water supplies. Then, the international community stood by as Azerbaijan launched a 24-hour military blitz that proved too much for Armenian separatist forces. Outgunned, outnumbered and weakened by the blockade, they agreed to lay down their weapons.
For 30 years the Karabakh authorities had survived pressure from international powerhouses to give up statehood or at least downgrade their aspirations for Nagorno-Karabakh. For 30 years peace plans brokered by countries across the world were tabled and shelved.
And then in a week all hope vanished and the self-declared government agreed to dissolve.
Fearing further shelling and then violent reprisals, as news broke several Karabakh officials including former ministers and separatist commanders, had been arrested by Azerbaijani security forces, people flooded over the border.
At the political level there are discussions about “reintegration” and “peace” but with so few left in Nagorno-Karabakh any process would now be futile.
And so now, sleeping in tents on the floors of hotels, restaurants and sometimes the streets of border towns, shellshocked families, with a handful of belongings, are trying to piece their lives together.
Among them is Vardan Tadevosyan, Nagorno-Karabakh’s minister of health until the government was effectively dissolved on Thursday. He spent the night camping on the floor of a hotel, and carries only the clothes he is wearing. Exhausted he says he had “no idea what the future brings”.
“For 25 years I have built a rehabilitation centre for people with physical disabilities I had to leave it all behind. You don’t know how many people are calling me for support,” he says as his phone ringed incessantly in the background throughout the interview.
“We all left everything behind. I am very depressed,” he repeats, swallowing the sentence with a sigh.
Next to him Artemis, 58, a kindergarten coordinator who has spent 30 years in Steparankert, says the real problems were going to start in the coming weeks when the refugees outstay their temporary accommodation.
“The Azerbaijanis said they want to integrate Nagorno-Karabakh but how do you blockade a people for 10 months and then launch a military operation and then ask them to integrate?” she asks, as she prepares for a new leg of the journey to the Armenian capital where she hopes to find shelter.
“The blockade was part of the ethnic cleansing. This is the only way to get people to flee the land they love. There is no humanity left in the world.”
Back in the central square of Goris, where families pick through piles of donated clothes and blankets and aid organisations hand out food, the loudest question is: what next?
Armenian officials are busy registering families and sending them to shelters in different corners of the country. But there are unanswered queries about long-term accommodation, work and schooling.
“I can’t really think about it, it hurts too much,” says Hasratyan’s eldest daughter Lilet, 16, trembling in the sunlight as the family starts the registration process.
“All I can say to the world is please speak about this and think about us. We are humans, people made of blood, like you and we need your help.”
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TLDR; don’t give tumblr money until they start making visible improvements towards accessibility
I’ve seen a few posts around about something people are calling crab day where you’re supposed to gift the crab button to your mutuals to support Tumblr financially. Please don’t participate in this unless Tumblr starts making noticeable improvements towards accessibility between now and then. It’s been 5 months of me trying to get the bare minimum of accessibility for photosensitive users or even just find out who I can talk to to get anywhere, and Tumblr is refusing to make any changes.
@photomatt has doubled down on the suggestion that you should just pay for ad-free or install an ad-blocker instead of listening to any of the suggestions photosensitive users have repeatedly made. Please do not give money to Tumblr until they show a commitment to accessibility because they will continue to ignore our requests if it doesn’t impact them financially.
Some of the requests we’ve made are:
1. Allow us to disable autoplay on browser as well as the app. This is an accessibility feature, not a data-saving feature, and should be treated as such.
2. Include ads in disabling of autoplay, along with other formats that currently get around the autoplay feature. Currently even if you have autoplay disabled you can still end up with flashing lights in your face every few posts from ads.
3. Improve the reporting process for strobing ads. The quick reporting process doesn’t provide good options to ensure the person reviewing the report realizes that it’s being reported for flashing lights so you have to hope they agree it’s either malicious or offensive and don’t just brush you off as abusing the report function. The more complicated reporting process involves getting a screenshot and the link that the ad brings you to, which requires lingering on the ad, which if you’re trying to report the ad for your safety, is dangerous. You can also still get the same ad 10 times a row after reporting it until it’s been reviewed. Which again, presents a danger to users.
4. Add a community label for flashing lights. Flashing lights are commonly untagged or mistagged, even sometimes maliciously. It would be extremely helpful to the photosensitive community to be able to add a warning to a post that doesn’t have one.
I’ve talked a lot about the photosensitive community in this post because that’s what I have personal experience with and what @photomatt has explicitly come out and just said to buy ad-free about, but there are definitely other accessibility issues that need to be addressed as well (like the alt text function needing improvements to make it accessible to users who need it and don’t use screenreaders, or the fact that a lot of tumblr official stuff still doesn’t seem to use the alt text feature themselves). Please feel free to add on accessibility issues I’ve missed in the reblogs.
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