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beardofkamenev · 3 years

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1, 5, 7 :)

Thanks for the ask! This is kinda a long one without any pretty pictures, so I’ve tagged it for anyone who doesn’t want it clogging up their dash.

1. Historical figure you used to like before you learned more about.

I’ve never actually liked him, but Winston Churchill. I knew he was 'problematic’ to an extent, but I was pretty neutral on him since, you know, he “saved Europe” from the Nazis. I also didn’t learn about him in school, so I just took the established opinion of him at face value. But MY GOD he was a racist, white supremacist, imperialist, genocidal piece of shit. Here are some choice quotes from the man himself:

On the Boer War (1902): “[It was] great fun galloping about.” “[My only] irritation [is] “that Kaffirs should be allowed to fire on white men” (The ‘great fun’ being the war in which the British sent 100,000+ black Africans to concentration camps, and ‘Kaffir’ being a racist term for black Africans.)

On the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds (1920): “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against the uncivilised tribes … it would spread a lively terror.”

On Mussolini (1927): “In the conflict between Fascism and Bolshevism, there was no doubt where my sympathies and convictions lay.” (Hint: it was fascism.)

On Palestinians (1930s): “Barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung.” On self-determination: “I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger.”

On Jewish people (1937): “It may be that, unwittingly, they are inviting persecution — that they have been partly responsible for the antagonism from which they suffer.” (Hitler was already in power, so YIKES)

On the genocide of Native Americans and Indigenous Australians (1937): “I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”

On the partition of India (1947): “I’d rather see them have a good civil war.” “The Hindus were [a] race protected by their mere pullulation from the doom that is due” (’Pullulation’ meaning ‘to multiply rapidly’, and ‘the doom that is their due’ being the brutal, sectarian partition in which millions were killed and displaced. Churchill may have helped create Pakistan — or as he called it, Britain’s “bit of India” — but he despised Pakistanis, who he considered a “lower manifestation” of humanity.)

On the Bengal Famine which killed 3 million (1944): “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” (Keep in mind that, like the Irish Famine, the Bengal Famine was a direct result of his own government exporting rice from India, despite the fact that crops had failed and that Churchill was repeatedly warned that continuing to export rice would lead to famine. Not only did Churchill deny relief to Bengal, but he also blamed the Bengalis for their own starvation for “breeding like rabbits.”)

His opposition to Nazism wasn’t nearly as principled as most people believe. Far from being an anti-fascist and anti-Nazi, Churchill was himself a fascist eugenicist, who only opposed the Nazis insofar as Hitler’s imperial ambitions threatened British dominance. This was the same Churchill who once boasted that the “Aryan stock is bound to triumph,” and whose main criticism of Hitler was that he had “not been mellowed by the great success that ha[d] attended him,” lamenting the loss of “the Hitler of peace and tolerance.” I was neutral on Churchill before, but now I’m pretty comfortable placing him in the same league as other racist mass murderers, if not in death toll, then certainly in his views. The British Viceroy of India said that “Churchill’s attitude towards India and the famine is negligent, hostile and contemptuous.” The Indian Secretary of State said that there wasn’t “much difference between his outlook and Hitler's.” His own secretary attested to him saying that Indians were “a foul race ... and he wished Bert Harris could send some of his surplus bombers to destroy them.” And those were just his view on Indians. While Churchill’s own colleagues saw him as an extremist, the cult of British exceptionalism demands that these inconvenient aspects of his legacy be ignored, lest they contradict the narrative of the Empire as an ultimately beneficial, civilising force.

Don’t get me wrong, I do think that Churchill is worthy of serious study, as all influential and complex figures are. But he is uncritically considered The Greatest Briton of All Time purely because of his whitewashed wartime legacy, which has been used time and time again to dismiss the very real harm he caused to millions of people and continues to cause harm today. Stalin also “saved Europe” from the Nazis, but it would be insulting to say his role in defeating Nazism somehow excuses his atrocities. Yet Churchill’s atrocities are constantly excused because his victims were mostly brown “savages” (his words), who needed to be ‘civilised’ anyway. You only have to look at this BBC article to see his apologists’ mental gymnastics in trying to defend him (here’s my favourite: “Although Churchill did think that white people were superior, that didn't mean he necessarily thought it was OK to treat non-white people in an inhumane way”). As a POC from a former American colony, I find the systematic erasure of the atrocities committed by the Anglosphere and the knee-jerk defensiveness towards any acknowledgement of the intergenerational trauma caused beyond irritating. The Cult of Churchill is but one example of this.

5. Historical figure we should talk more about.

JASPER TUDOR UNCLE OF THE CENTURY. Now that was a man who was actually loyal to his brothers and protected his nephews, unlike... some other uncles I could name lol. He’s also the one Tudor man (aside from Arthur) that PGregs couldn’t demonise, although she did still portray him as a 26 year old man being in hopelessly love with his 13 year old sister-in-law, which uh, NEVER HAPPENED.

Anyway, I have a whole tag devoted to Jasper here if you want to learn more about him. There are also three historical biographies dedicated to him: Jasper Tudor: Dynasty Maker by Terry Breverton (2014), Jasper Tudor: Godfather of the Tudor Dynasty by Debra Bayani (2015), and Jasper: The Tudor Kingmaker by Dr Sarah Elin Roberts (2015). I haven’t actually read them myself so I can’t give you my opinion on them, but I have read Wales and the Wars of the Roses by Howell T. Evans (1915) which discusses Jasper in detail and I highly recommend.

7. Favourite primary source.

Oh man, it’s so hard to choose! Purely in terms of aesthetics, it has to be Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. I even have a whole tag devoted to salivating over the pretty colours lol. In terms of textual information, I’d probably say Henry VII’s letter to his mama, Maggie B. It reveals so much about Henry’s relationship with his mother, including how close they were, how much he respected her, and how often they collaborated in matters of state. It also includes this cute line:

I shall be as glad to plese you as youre herte can desire hit, and I knowe welle that I am as much bounden so to doe as any creture lyvyng, for the grete and singular moderly love and affection that hit hath plesed you at all tymes to ber towards me.

I was supposed to write a post about it, but I got lazy so it’s still sitting in my drafts. In terms of both textual information and literature, I think Gwaith Lewys Glyn Cothi is pretty underrated as a primary source. They’re poems, so naturally there’s a lot of embellishment, but they give a lot of insight into the under-explored Welsh aspect of the Wars of the Roses from someone who actually lived through the era. I’m also Jasper Tudor trash, so of course I’d like anything that talks about him.

(The history asks meme is still open!)

#i will tag my hate actually #winston churchill #now for the people i don't hate #jasper tudor #henry vii #margaret beaufort #lewys glyn cothi #history ask meme #juliawickers #questions for the beard

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laporcupina · 4 years

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TOG meta: tradecraft

Copley tells The Old Guard that their future must now involve masks and prosthetics and hair dye and wigs and gloves and all of the other kinds of masquerade tools that Nile frankly takes for granted as obvious and is a little gobsmacked that the others are willing to fight him on the necessity of it.

"You live in a world of CCTV, fingerprint databases, and facial recognition software," he tells them not for the first or fifth time. "Every country that has a useful passport has that passport embedded with an RFID chip. Even the so-called liberal democracies have files on all of their citizens, let alone the places like China that know more about a resident than that resident knows about themselves.

"You don't get to live off the radar anymore. I found you and, frankly, it wasn't that hard with current technology. You want to do what you do, you have to do it within the system, flying false colors and changing identities far more often than once a generation or once a century."

In the year 2019, a couple of Crusaders and a woman older than dirt learn the fine arts of tradecraft and Nile, a Millennial with decades of pop culture and social media under her belt, is as much spectator as participant. She's got the concepts down cold, although Copley often gets as frustrated with her for thinking real life works like the movies do as he does with the others for acting their ages. He tells Andy, who announces that she doesn't have to bother with any of this shit because she's on a timer now, that unless she plans on stop working in the next five years, she is a fool and an idiot and will find herself in someone's black site prison spending the remainder of her days getting tortured for information she doesn't have.

"The Americans don't have a monopoly on rendition," he tells her. "They're actually more civilized about it than most because they think they're doing God's work and are the beacons of liberty and justice. The godless Europeans? The actual theocracies? The neo-fascist revanchist empires you'll all recall so well from their first incarnations? You have no idea what they're capable of because they, like you, have a cultural memory that goes back millennia. But they've modernized it. They remember the same lack of mercy that you do but have turned it into functional paperwork so they don't feel it at all when they hurt you. How much pain do you want to be in when you die?"

And so they learn how to subtly change their noses with bits of latex or clay - Nicky is adorably unhappy with every possible option to change his shnozz and Joe makes things both better and worse by telling him he is beautiful no matter what and then busting out laughing when he sees the results. There is a two-day seminar on colored contacts that was supposed to be one day but none of them can figure out how to put the lenses in on the first day and Nile isn't excused from it despite the fact that black people her shade don't have blue or green eyes.

"They do, although it's rare and mostly outside the US," Copley tells her. "There will be times when you will need to stand out and be striking. Either to confuse recognition software or simply to draw attention away from something else. Or someone else. If all the survivors remember is a black woman with purple eyes, then your team has gotten away safely."

There are lectures on wardrobing to hide their physiques and why they need to start using the knowledge they have about local dress and customs. There are long talks on when they will need to look like locals and when they will need to look like tourists and why they can't wear whatever they want and this is where Nile is both fascinated and frustrated. She’s spent the last eight years in USMC uniforms with her hair in USMC-approved styles and her makeup and jewelry all dictated by the Corps and she's very chill about the idea of dressing for work, but the others are not to a degree that's kinda funny. Andy, Nicky, and Joe are indignant at fashion history lessons when they lived through the eras ("You were alive at the time, that's not the same thing") and have gotten really stubborn about dressing how they like instead of how they need to after a relatively tiny amount of time being able to do just that.

They also have long arguments about old weapons, but Copley clearly went into this understanding that the labrys, longsword, and scimitar were not going into permanent storage.

"Rotate your arsenals is all I'm saying," he repeats for the fiftieth time because of course 'give it all up' was what the others had heard. "You have centuries' worth of obsolete weaponry lying around in your safehouses to choose from if you want to be traditionalists, but don't make that your calling card or everything else is for nothing. Don't take the antiques on every mission - use shorter swords or different blades once in a while, use a modern fighting knife, pick up an axe from the hardware store. You are all competent in so many different weapons and it would be good for you to remember how lethal you all are with more than what you're most comfortable with. Look at it as a challenge if you need to."

Nile takes notes on all of this stuff, including what the guys need to do not only because she can tell that Joe and Nicky are doing the selective hearing thing, but also because someone's going to have to pass this on to Booker and it's not stuff that can wait a hundred years. He might not be running into danger in far-flung parts of the world, but he's living in Paris and that's just as dangerous according to Copley. Probably more. She knows Copley can find Booker and tell all of this himself, but she doesn't think he will. Not out of guilt or malevolence or whatever it is that tied the two of them together so that Copley could turn Booker like he did, just... Booker's off the chessboard as far as Copley goes. As far as the others go, perhaps. But he's still out there and Nile doesn't want him in trouble because he's been on CCTV too many times.

Turns out that CCTV is not the weird surveillance vision they have to worry about. Booker dreams of Paris and Nile dreams of Chicago and Quynh went with the easier choice.

#the old guard #tog #tog meta #the old guard gang #tradecraft

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cassatine · 3 years

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and now a full write-up for the second half of propaganda garbage: the show ep 2. first half here.

yesterday i left off after the unsurprising revelation that the Flag Smashers have eco-fascist talking points - to be clear, they’re not actually eco-fascists, it’s just that they exist to be a made-in-conservatlandia caricature of radical leftism (that cannot but turn bad) and the eco-fascism taking points make it a tad less on the nose for the non-conservatives who want to believe they’re being catered to.

the Flag Smashers aren’t supposed to even hint to a real ideological alternative to that which is pushed by the show: they suscribe to the view that injustice is basically baked into humanity, or as Sam said “making things better for one group makes them worse for everyone else“. they don’t disagree with that premise at all, and in fact reiterate it when Karli Leader Lady outright says things were better before the Blip because there were fewer people, and now things suck because all those refugees getting repatriated is eating all the ressources: making things better for Blip victims is making things worse for everyone else. (also amazing inversion here, with the US military and government and let’s just say first world countries since lbr who the fuck do we think has power in the GRC doing A Lot for “refugees” and the caricature-radical-left baddies arguing *checks notes* that the gvt is allocating to many ressources to the refugee crisis. no one actually says refugee crisis but like. come the fuck on. this comes back to the Flag Smashers not being any kind of real ideological alternative: even under the eco-fascism talking points they’re just rehashing anti-immigration conservative rhetoric.)

where their views truly diverge is in their, ehr, solution to the inherent injustice problem. they’re not into maintaining the status quo as the least worst option, but they’re not really into changing it either - they don’t have an alternative to the curent world order to offer: theyre ‘against borders’ but again, that kind of stuff’s just there to make them look radical-left-adjacent. what they’re into is fewer people so that the ones left have moar ressources.

so when we pick up, their ideological stance’s just been revealed to boil down to “we had a glimpse of how things could be” when half the planet’s population killed off, and then Flag Smashers hint they have something big in the plans for the next day, so big there’ll be no going back. also their motto is ‘one world, one people’, because 'stand up, damned of the earth’ would be too on the nose even for this show.

meanwhile, Sam and Bucky go visit Bucky’s...not friend? a guy he knows called Isaiah in Baltimore, where we first get a scene with two black kids calling Sam ‘Black Falcon’ when they recognize him in the street. he pretends to be Not Amused, stopping to say it’s just Falcon and ‘do u want to be called Black Kid’ but hahaha he was joking, not being serious. social commentary bait - i kinda want to like that scene, tbh, because it’s less artificial than most of the previous ones, but also the situation is written so that Sam can’t really say how he feels about the moniker, because he’s talking to two black kids happy to see a black superhero - one of the kids even explains it’s his father who told him to call Sam Black Falcon.

and it still ends on haha joke now, which is kind of a pattern in this episode, and we move on to Bucky’s not-buddy Isaiah. they met during the Korean war. Bucky was with Hydra killing US soldiers there or some such and Isaiah was sent by the US military to deal with him and they fought it out in a bar in Goyang. it’s unclear why neither finished the other but that was their one and only interaction until now, it seems.

Isaiah laughs when Bucky says he’s not an assassin anymore, because you think you can wake up one day and decide who you wanna be? doesn’t work like that. Isaiah is a black man, so when he adds that ‘well, maybe it does for folks like you’, it sounds like he’s saying something to the effect of ‘systemic racism means only white people get second chances and that’s deeply unjust and i’d know because that’s my life’ or maybe ‘people don’t change but systemic racism lets white people pretend they can’. the end of the episode also gives you the option to see it a Hydra dig. no, really - turns out Isaiah’s serum-enhanced, and it’s not yet clear if Bucky wants intel or more from him, but Isaiah doesn’t care that there are superstrong meanies out there because after his Heroic Time In Korea he spent thirty years in jail being experimented on and he’s understandably Done; ‘even your people weren’t done with me,’ he tells Bucky, but the twist is that at the very end of the episode Bucky comes back to that conversation, going ‘when he said my people’, and Sam tells him not to take it to heart and ~that’s not what he meant~. which Bucky already knew, because by that Isaiah meant... Hydra.

so there’s that. the wonder duo gets thrown out, and Sam’s pissed too because no one’s ever told him Isaiah, black super soldier, existed at all - but his attempt at confronting Bucky on that is cut short before he even gets to ‘were u going to tell me or anyone at all that said first black super soldier spent thirty years being experimented on in jail or is it fine with you that it’s all been hushed up, what the fucking fuck man‘ because enter two white cops. racial profiling scene that turns into sorry Mr Wilson i didn’t recognize you without the goggles (unlike the army, the police very much can be shown in a bad light) means that if Sam doesn’t get to confront Bucky, Bucky does get to say he remained silent on the matter of Isaiah because Isaiah had suffered enough. Sam doesn’t get to confront him on that excuse either (reminder that Bucky hasn’t seen Isaiah since friggin Korea and thus is unlikely to have any idea what Isaiah actually wants; maybe he’s superdone superheroing but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t want a measure of justice if he could get one), because there’s a warrant on Bucky, who missed court-mandated therapy, whoopsie, and thus is under arrest and taken away.

there areno real repercussions to that because Discount Captain America gets Bucky out of his police station cell in a jiffy ince the world is small and DCA and Bucky’s therapist know each other from the army. said therapist is there too, to force Bucky and Sam into making-up through a therapy session in an interrogation room. somehow it turns into queerbaiting when the therapist tries an exercise she ~uses with couples trying to decide what kind of life they want to build together. it’s the miracle question, and the miracle they both want is for the other to talk less, because it’s back to banter, baby. Bucky gets to talk about what aggravates him in Sam, and of course it’s why did you abandon the shield blah blah blah you threw away Steve’s legacy and maybe Steve was wrong about you whoop de woo it’s really about Bucky himself, because then maybe Steve was wrong about Bucky too. cue the violins. Sam gets to tell him he did what he thought was right, but he doesn’t get to reopen the Isaiah confrontation or the cop situation or anything weighty and instead a deal is made: deal with the Flag Smashers, separate and never see each other again.

DCA was waiting for them to once again offer working together, and explains he thinks the Flag Smashers will be distributing their medecine in camps in Central and Eastern Europe - and since those camps are Blip refugees camps he’s either wrong or it’s probably not medicine that’s going to be distributed, unless the show drops all pretenses of coherency. he doesn’t know where they are though. there’s antagonism, mostly from Bucky and DCA, and still no working together, but Sam’s reason this time is DCA needs authorisations and shit whereas him and Bucky are free agents who can do whatever. as proven by *checks notes* his government property drone, his work for the USAF, and Bucky’s court-mandated therapy.

meanwhile in Slovakia the Flag Smashers are loading an airplane when new players enter, peeps working for ‘the Power Broker‘. they kill one of the Flag Smashers but the others get away. the Power Broker seems to be behind the ‘u stole from me imma kill you’ text, and it all seems overkill for stolen vaccines or whatever, and since the Flag Smasher’s super strength is apparently serum-induced and Hydra’s fucking everywhere maybe he’s the middle man.

and finally, as covered: ‘when he said my people’, Bucky starts - and immediately Sam tells him not to take it to heart and ~that’s not what he meant~ because friggin Hydra. so instead of Sam getting to read the ‘were u going to tell me or anyone at all that the first black Super Soldier spent thirty years being experimented on in jail or is it fine with you that it’s all been hushed up, what the fucking fuck man‘ riot act or anything like that. the episode ends on ‘let’s go talk to Zemo’.

and that’s a wrap without a conclusion because the only one i have is yesterday’s: it’s a show that makes a perfunctory attempt at pretending it’s not propaganda, but only so it can win the participation award.

#not sure whether i'll do the next eps #i'd say maybe shorter posts #but this was already supposed to be short #le sigh #cass watches falconwinter #spoilers #the falcon and the winter soldier

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quakerjoe · 5 years

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"Why are people so hostile towards President Donald Trump?"

Chris O'Leary:

Before you pass my answer off as “Another Liberal Snowflake” consider that 1.) I'm an independent centrist who has voted Republican way more often in my life than Democrat, and 2.) If you want to call someone who spent the entire decade of his 20’s serving in the Marine Corps a snowflake, I’d be ready to answer the question what did you do with your 20’s?

Why Liberals (And not-so liberals) are against President Trump.

A.) He lies. A LOT. Politifact rates 69% of the words he speaks as “Mostly False or worse” Only 17% of the things he says get a “Mostly True” or better rating. That is an absolutely unbelievable number. How he doesn’t speak more truth by mistake is beyond me. To put it in context, Obama’s rating was 26% mostly false or worse, and I had a problem with that. Many of Trump’s former business associates report that he has always been a compulsive liar, but now he’s the President of the United States, and that’s a problem. And this is a man who expects you to believe him when he points at other people and says “They’re lying”

B.) He’s an authoritarian populist, not a conservative. He advances regressive social policy while proposing to expand federal spending and federalist authority over states, both of which conservatives are supposed to hate.

C.) He pretends at Christianity to court the Religious Right but fails to live anything resembling a Christ-Like Life.

D.) His nationalist “America First” message effectively alienates us and removes us from our place as leaders in the international community.

E.) His ideas on “Keeping us safe” are all thinly veiled ideas to remove our freedoms, he is, after all, an authoritarian first. They also are simply bad ideas.

F.) He couldn’t pass a 3rd-grade civics exam. He doesn't’ know what he’s doing. He doesn't understand how international relations work, he doesn’t understand how federal state or local governments work, and every time someone tries to “Run it like a business” it’s a spectacular failure. See Colorado Springs’ recent history as an example. The Short, Unhappy Life of a Libertarian Paradise And that was a businessman with a MUCH better business track record than Trump. We are talking about a man who lost money owning a freaking gambling casino.

G.) He behaves unethicaly and always has. As a businessman, he constantly left in his wake unpaid contractors and invoices, litigation, broken promises, whatever he could get away with.

H.) He is damaging our relationships with our best international friends while kissing up to nations that do not have our best interests in mind. To his question “Wouldn't’ it be great to have better relations with Russia?” The answer is Yes. But it is RUSSIA who needs to earn that, who must stop doing the things that are damaging to that relationship, or we are simply weaker for it.

I.) He has never seen a shortcut he didn't like, and you can’t take shortcuts in government. “Nuclear Option, Remove the Filibuster, I’ll change the Constitution by Executive Order…Don…what happens when you remove the filibuster and the other side retakes the majority in the Senate? Suddenly want that filibuster back? What happens if you manage to change the Constitution by Executive Order and an Anti-2A President wins the next election?

J.) He behaves and has always behaved as an unabashed racist. Yes, I’ve seen your favorite meme that claims he was never accused of racism before the Democrats…Absolutely false. Donald Trump’s long history of racism, from the 1970s to 2019 See the Central Park 5, the lawsuits and fines resulting from his refusal to lease to black tenants, the 1992 lost appeal trying to overturn penalties for removing black dealers from tables, his remarks to the house native American affairs subcommittee in 1993. The man sees and treats racial groups of people as monoliths.

K.) He is systematically steamrolling regulations specifically designed to keep a disaster like the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis from happening again.

L.) He speaks and acts like a demagogue. He sees the Legislative and Judicial branches of government as inconveniences, blows up at criticism no matter how deserved and actively tries to countermand constitutional processes, not to mention attempts to blackmail and coerce people who are saying negative things about him

M.) His choices for top positions, with the exception of Gen. Mattis, who is a gem, have been horrendous. A secretary of Education without a resume that would get her hired as a small town grammar school principal, A secretary of Energy who didn't know the Department of Energy was responsible for nuclear reserves, an EPA head whose biggest accomplishments to date had been suing the EPA on multiple occasions, an FCC head who while working for Verizon actively lobbied to kill net neutrality, and an Attorney General who thinks pot is “nearly as bad as heroin” and asked Congress for permission to go after legal pot businesses in states where it is legal. (There goes that great Republican States rights rally cry again, right? *Crickets*) An Interim AG after Firing his First AG who’s appointment is probably unconstitutional.

N.) He denies scientific fact. Ever notice that the only people you hear denying climate change are politicians and lobbyists? 99% of actual scientists studying the issue agree that it’s real, man-made and caused by greenhouse gasses. Ever notice that every big disaster movie starts with a bunch of politicians in a room ignoring a scientist's warning?

0.) He does not have the temperament to lead this nation. He is Thin Skinned, childish, and a bully, never mind misogynistic, boorish, rude, and incapable of civil discourse.

P.) He still does not understand that the words he speaks, or tweets, are the official position of 1/3 of the US government, and so does not govern his words. He still thinks when he speaks it’s good ol’ Donald Trump. It’s not. It’s the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. You have probably spread a meme or two around talking about how no president’s every word has ever been dissected before…YES, THEY ALWAYS HAVE. It’s just that every other president in our lifetime has understood the importance of his words and took great care to govern his speech. Trump blurts out whatever comes to his mind then complains when people talk about what a dumb thing that was to say.

Q.) He’s unqualified. If you owned a small business and were looking for someone to manage it, and an unnamed resume came across your desk and you saw 6 bankruptcies, showing a man who had failed to make money running CASINOS, would you hire him? He is a very poor businessman. This is a man it has been estimated would have been worth $10 BILLION more if he’d just taken what his father had given him, invested it in Index Funds and left it alone.

R.) He is President. But he refuses to take a leadership position and understand that he is everyone’s President. Conservatives complain about liberals chanting “Not my President” while Trump himself behaves as if no one but his supporters matter.

S.) He’s a blatant hypocrite. He spent 8 years bitching Obama out for his family trips, or golfing, or any time he took for himself, and what does he do? He was already on his 20th golf outing in APRIL of his 1st year in office. He constantly rants about respect for the military, yet can’t be bothered to attend the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day because of a little rain. (And that excuse about Marine One not being able to fly in the rain is HILARIOUS.)

T.) He’s a misogynist. It's not really ok in this day and age to be a misogynist, but it’s not a huge deal if you’re a private citizen. It’s a pretty big deal if you hate half the people you’re elected to lead. The disdain for women seeps out of his …whatever…. and he just can’t hide it.

U.) Face it. In any other election “Grab Em’ By the Pussy” would have been the end of that candidate’s chances. Back in the 90’s I used to marvel about how Teflon Bill Clinton was. I no longer do. The fact that he managed to slip by on that is as much a statement about how much people hate Hillary Clinton as it is about what is wrong with politics in this country right now.

V.) He has one response to a differing opinion. Attack. A good leader listens to criticism, to different points of view, is capable of self-reflection, tries to guide people to his point of view, and when necessary stands his ground and defends his convictions. Any of that sound like Trump? His default is not to Lead, its’ to attack. Scorched Earth. The Jim Acosta reaction is a good example. There was no defense of his convictions when Acosta was asking him repeated questions about his rhetoric on the caravan. His response was to attack Acosta.

W.) He takes credit for everything positive while deflecting blame for everything negative. Look at him with the Stock Market. He’s been bragging about it since day one, and to give credit where credit is due, speculation on coming deregulation early in his presidency did fuel some rapid growth, but to pretend that it’s all him, that we’re not in the 9th year of the longest bull market in history and THEN, when the standard market volatility that deregulation inevitably brings about starts to show up? Yeah. Look at yesterday. Hey! Stock Markets losing because the Democrats won! Do I need to bring out the Stock market chart for the last 10 Years again?

X.) He emboldens the worst among us. Counter-protesters are slammed into by a car while countering actual Nazi rally, and the response is there’s fault on “Both Sides” The media is at fault for a nut job sending them and Donald’s favorite targets pipe bombs. The truth is not all Republicans, not all Trump Supporters are racist, fascist lunatics. Many are just taken in by the bombastic personality and are living in an information bubble made worse by the fact that they unfollow anyone and ignore any source of information that makes them feel uncomfortable. People on the left do that too. The Biggest problem the right has right now is that the worst of the Right is the loudest and the most in your face, and the actual right, especially the Freaking PRESIDENT needs to be standing up and saying No. Those are not our values.

Y.) He seems to think the Constitution of The United States, the document that IS who we are, the document he took an oath to support and defend is some sort of inconvenience. He demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of Constitution, from believing he can alter the 14th through executive order, to thinking The free exercise clause in the first amendment somehow supersedes the establishment clause (not that he really understands either) or that the free exercise clause only applies to Christians. Or his attacks on freedom of expression and the press. He repeatedly makes it clear that if he’s read them, he does not understand Articles 1–3, and that’s something he really should have before he took the job, because they’re not going away.

Z.) I’ll use Z for something I do blame him for, but the rest of us have to carry the blame too. Polarization. This country is more politically polarized than I can remember in my lifetime. Some of you who are a few years older than I may remember how it was in the late 60’s when construction workers in New York were being applauded for beating up hippies, I think it’s pretty close to that right now, but that was before my time. And he is the cause of much of the current level polarization, but also the result. It didn't’ start with Trump. We’ve been going down this road I think since the eruption of the Tea Party in the early years of the Obama Administration. I do hope the tide turns before it gets much worse because the thing that scares me more than anything is what if that keeps going the way it has been? "

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lordeasriel · 4 years

Note

I really care about your opinion, how do you feel about the bbc show and the way it's going?

I feel like before I give my take, I need to say that I understand the show is its own thing, and while I do wish they did a better job adapting certain things, I understand that sometimes there is a need for radical change or cut, especially when your budget is not super high (which HDM does have a lot of money into it, still is not a super big budget production, so they have to worry about these things). And I do enjoy many things about the show, but my overall vibe is mixed, to be honest. I’m stating this now because people often question whether I like the show or not, becaus I do criticise it a lot, and I simply have a critic view of the things I like, which is why I discuss them a lot and it can be overwhelming.

My main issues with the show are these 3 things: (which I’ll put under the cut because this got a bit longer than I wanted to lmao sorry)

Lack of worldbuilding and loose lore: I’ve been talking about this since day one, and this mostly applies to season 1 because I can’t judge season 2 yet because it’s not fully aired yet, but the show suffers from lack of worldbuilding, especially in Lyra’s world, which is the world that sets everything in motion. I still dislike the fact they introduced Will mid-NL, I don’t think he needed all those episodes to establish something that easily could’ve been done in S2 and because they gave TSK a lot of time, other parts of Lyra’s world suffered considerably, mainly the witches and the Magisterium.

The show doesn’t really expand on those two groups, especially, and I think that’s not good, especially the Magisterium (which they have over simplified by making it one big baddie, or so it seems at least, not to mention that implying a single leader for them practically ruins Marcel Delamare’s arc in TBOD and I’m very mad about that lmao). A lot of the Magisterium plot has that infighting aspect, which creates tension on their side as well as against their enemies, but the show doesn’t really explore that or the nuances of the Church, and they also don’t explore how varied the witches are, and I feel like this is a serious mistake. (The portrayal of the witches is by far my least favourite thing in the show, if I’m being honest).

Dull parallel world (and lack of daemons): this ties a bit with the worldbuilding aspect, but this is mainly about design choices. I think the show doesn’t make Lyra’s world as unique as it should be. On its own the world looks pretty and the outfits of most of the cast are great, but when you realise that Will’s world is intertwined with that, you don’t really feel like these two worlds are vastly different.

There is an odd situation in which Marisa’s fashion feels 30s/40s, but most of the men from her social circle (not fair to compare with the gyptians) just wear plain suits and they look much more modern. And while I get that they went for a timeless vibes, with different eras and styles, Lyra’s world feels like a caricature and it doesn’t feel believable. The colour palette is mostly the same for both worlds (even in s2, it’s hard to tell much of the difference because either the scenes are indoors or at night.) This, paired with the lack of daemons (which has been discussed many times in the fandom) kinda bums me out.

Marisa’s oversimplification: I’m mentioning Marisa, specifically, because she is the one that suffers the most due to this writing issues, but other characters like Lord Asriel, MacPhail, the general collective of the Witches, they all suffer from the writing trying to take away the nuances of them and make them flatter than in the book. Marisa is the worst because without her complexity and her flaws, she simply gets dull and boring and flavourless, and it’s kinda what has been happening in the show in my opinion. All she does is weep and she has no strength that doesn’t rely on a random fit of rage that dies out and she gets upset. There’s some great moments, like when she mimics the Monkey, but most of the time she’s just a shadow of who she is supposed to be.

The show tries really hard to make her a Scorned Mother - right from the get go, they try to makes us see how she wants Lyra, how she struggles with her “bad nature” and how that affects their relationship. There is this lingering implication that Lyra was taken from her against her wishes; they make it seem like being a mother to Lyra is her driving force, the only reason why she seeks power and influence. And that is the opposite of Book! Marisa, who is a force of nature, ruthless and ambitious, with not an ounce of maternal instinct.

She does eventually decide to help Lyra, instead of harming her, but even that action comes from a narcisistic place: Lyra is to her a possession, something that belongs to her, and that she wants to preserve. The show just handles her badly, falling into overused, boring tropes that struck far from the book version.

These are usually my main complaints about the show, and they upset me every episode to the point I’m practically ignoring them now lmao The show does a lot of good things too, making Will less of a prick, restoring Lyra’s personality from the first book into S2 Lyra (so far, please keep it that way), Mary is looking great too. They have mostly a great cast, and they did improve the daemons this season (except uh, there are far less daemons to show because of the other worlds - and the Ruta Skadi daemon change pisses me off tbh).

They do have a lot of interest in the show, but the writing (the main issue to me) feels clunky and childish, with the show toning down most of the themes that make His Dark Materials so special, especially to me (which frankly I expected them to do, but it still stings a bit). They make the Magisterium a single bad entity that feels more Authoritarian-Fascist, than a theocracy (even if they sneak in the religious symbols and rituals and garments, it’s just not a good portrayal, it’s very tame and shy); and they try to justify Marisa’s actions (especially in current interviews, there’s lots of talk about how her background will play in the show to “explain why she is the way she is”). The fact the Magisterium is portrayed as pure evil makes it looks less familiar than it should be, and therefore they don’t look scary, they seem like a caricature, a joke.

A lot of the essence of the characters get lost, and the core message of the story too, like when Iorek and the Gyptians tell Lyra she can be one of them, to support her lack of “proper family”, when that is the opposite of the books message. It doesn’t make sense for them to change that, other than maybe Jack Thorne wanted to because it makes the story feels less hopeless, but it’s why he fails to adapt these character - he doesn’t capture the essence, he tries to write these character with gaps in them.

However, the thing that annoys me the most is how they portray Asriel. It’s just... it’s bad. Really bad, which is a shame cause James is talented as fuck, but he had little time to film for season 1, and then they portrayed him very poorly. That scene when he addresses Roger in episode 7 is ridiculous, Asriel would never behave that way; there was relief in him finding Roger was there too, yes, but not to that extent and not in such a cringe way. Asriel is not deranged or irrational, he is a man on a mission, and Roger was a tool (there is no pleasure in Asriel taking his life and no excuses - it needed to be done and he did it); they just needed him to sound creepy in the show for whatever reason.

I hated how they handled the bridge scene for Asriel, Lyra and Marisa, but that’s long and complicated for me to explain here. In S2, there has been some mentions of him so far, including the implication he might have ruined Cittàgazze himself and I frankly don’t understand where did they get that idea. But the cherry on the top was Thorold telling Marisa that Asriel was gonna kill Lyra and that’s just-- that’s so dumb. That’s genuinely dumb writing, because Thorold knows Lyra followed Asriel to the mountain, and while I do believe Asriel would have killed Lyra if Roger wasn’t there, there is no way Thorold should know or consider that Asriel was gonna hurt Lyra, because Roger was there. In fact, Thorold’s interactions with Asriel in episode 8 already disprove this, so either Thorold was lying in S2 for the sake of, I don’t know, chaos or whatever, or the person who wrote this was a five-star, solid gold, fucking moron.

I’m not gonna mention the lost episode because that was no one’s fault, but the fact that they discarded an episode that all information we have on imply that it was important to set up the backstory of the angels and the city, it’s... concerning. It means they wrote something parallel that should’ve been woven into the season.

The truth is, I still watch the show on Sundays, and I still like some stuff they do (especially Mary’s stuff, so far), and despite me slandering the show per your request anon lol (cause unfortunately my honest opinion is mixed, I just don’t try to overfocus on the negative on Tumblr, I mostly talk about it on discord or private), I do think anyone who has read the books should watch the show.

For me, personally, everything I love about HDM is barely on the show - complex characters, the philosophy, the oppression by religion, the interesting world - and the vibe I get is that they’re adapting a coming-of-age love story, which is the last and - being fully honest - the least important message these books give us, but unfortunately they were set to making a family show from the start, and my expectations were high and unmatched, and a family is what we’re getting: toned down, cute, pretty visuals and soulless (heh, pun intended), philosophically speaking. I expect a certain pattern going into S3, but I always like to hold out hope that they will hire better writers (apparently Jack Thorne already wrote 4 scripts, so there you go lmao), and try to give HDM the adaptation it deserves. The truth is, if you’re a picky, canon reliant person like I am, the show might be a struggle, but if you just like the story for the teen romance, or if you don’t care about overthinking a show/book, then most people can have a good time with it.

#asks #effie watches hdm #sorry it took me a while and sorry for the gigantic critique #but i wanted to be honest about my take on the show so far #Anonymous

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reading-writing-revolution · 5 years

Text

A person asked the question, "Why are people so hostile towards President Donald Trump?"

Chris O'Leary:

Why Liberals (And not-so liberals) are against President Trump.

C.) He pretends at Christianity to court the Religious Right but fails to live anything resembling a Christ-Like Life.

D.) His nationalist “America First” message effectively alienates us and removes us from our place as leaders in the international community.

E.) His ideas on “Keeping us safe” are all thinly veiled ideas to remove our freedoms, he is, after all, an authoritarian first. They also are simply bad ideas.

G.) He behaves unethicaly and always has. As a businessman, he constantly left in his wake unpaid contractors and invoices, litigation, broken promises, whatever he could get away with.

K.) He is systematically steamrolling regulations specifically designed to keep a disaster like the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis from happening again.

0.) He does not have the temperament to lead this nation. He is Thin Skinned, childish, and a bully, never mind misogynistic, boorish, rude, and incapable of civil discourse.

//Meanwhile, I’m not a Liberal either, and I’m a veteran of 20 years with 13 deployments to combat zones.//

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seh406 · 4 years

Text

C.) He pretends at Christianity to court the Religious Right but fails to live anything resembling a Christ-Like Life.

D.) His nationalist “America First” message effectively alienates us and removes us from our place as leaders in the international community.

E.) His ideas on “Keeping us safe” are all thinly veiled ideas to remove our freedoms, he is, after all, an authoritarian first. He has shown that they also are simply bad ideas.

F.) He couldn’t pass a 3rd-grade civics exam. He doesn't’ know what he’s doing. He doesn't understand how international relations work, he doesn’t understand how federal state or local governments work, and every time someone tries to “Run it like a business” it’s a spectacular failure. See Colorado Springs’ recent history as an example. “The Short, Unhappy Life of a Libertarian Paradise” and that was a businessman with a MUCH better business track record than Trump. We are talking about a man who lost money owning a freaking gambling casino.

G.) He behaves unethically and always has. As a businessman, he constantly left in his wake unpaid contractors and invoices, litigation, broken promises, whatever he could get away with.

K.) He is systematically steamrolling regulations specifically designed to keep a disaster like the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis from happening again.

N.) He denies scientific fact. We’ve all witnessed this with the latest world disaster, the Coronavirus. He was warned by scientists and doctors very early on that this could happen but he totally ignored these warnings which has had un-reversible repercussions. Have you also noticed that the only people you hear denying climate change are politicians and lobbyists? 99% of actual scientists studying the issue agree that it’s real, man-made and caused by greenhouse gasses. Ever notice that every big disaster movie starts with a bunch of politicians in a room ignoring a scientist's warning?

0.) He does not have the temperament to lead this nation. He is thin skinned, childish, and a bully, never mind misogynistic, boorish, rude, and incapable of civil discourse.

P.) He still does not understand that the words he speaks, or tweets, are the official position of 1/3 of the US government, and so does not govern his words. He still thinks when he speaks it’s good ole’ Donald Trump. It’s not. It’s the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. You have probably spread a meme or two around talking about how no president’s every word has ever been dissected before…YES, THEY ALWAYS HAVE. It’s just that every other president in our lifetime has understood the importance of his words and took great care to govern his speech. Trump blurts out whatever comes to his mind then complains when people talk about what a dumb thing that was to say.

R.) He is the President. But he refuses to take a leadership position and understand that he is everyone’s President. Again, this has been recently demonstrated with the Coronavirus Pandemic. Conservatives complain about liberals chanting “Not my President” while Trump himself behaves as if no one but his supporters matter.

V.) He has one response to a differing opinion. ATTACK. A good leader listens to criticism, to different points of view, is capable of self-reflection, tries to guide people to his point of view, and when necessary stands his ground and defends his convictions. Does any of this sound like Trump? His default is not to Lead, its’ to attack. Scorched Earth. The Jim Acosta reaction is a good example. There was no defense of his convictions when Acosta was asking him repeated questions about his rhetoric on the caravan. His response was to attack Acosta and he’s done this many times now with the

X.) He emboldens the worst among us. Counter-protesters are slammed into by a car while countering actual Nazi rally, and the response is there’s fault on “Both Sides” The media is at fault for a nut job sending them and Donald’s favorite targets pipe bombs. The truth is not all Republicans, not all Trump Supporters are racist, fascist lunatics. Many are just taken in by the bombastic personality and are living in an information bubble made worse by the fact that they unfollow anyone and ignore any source of information that makes them feel uncomfortable. People on the left do that too. The biggest problem the right has right now is that the worst of the Right is the loudest and the most in your face, and the actual right, especially the Freaking PRESIDENT needs to be standing up and saying No. Those are not our values.

Z.) I’ll use Z for something I do blame him for, but the rest of us have to carry the blame too. Polarization. This country is more politically polarized than I can remember in my lifetime. Some may remember how it was in the late 60’s when construction workers in New York were being applauded for beating up hippies, I think it’s pretty close to that right now. And he is the cause of much of the current level polarization, but also the result. It didn't’ start with Trump. We’ve been going down this road I think since the eruption of the Tea Party in the early years of the Obama administration. I was hoping the tide would turn before it got much worse because the thing that scared me more than anything is what if that keeps going the way it has been? Well, that ship has sailed given Trumps past record and the latest current events that have gone horribly wrong.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for reading my reasons which I hope has given you my insight rather than just some superfluous statement I could have made that would have been pretty meaningless of why I cannot and never will support this man as someone I respect, let alone support him as our President.

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myworld50 · 5 years

Text

A person asked the question, "Why are people so hostile towards President Donald Trump?"

Chris O'Leary:

Before you pass my answer off as “Another Liberal Snowflake” consider that

1.) I'm an independent centrist who has voted Republican way more often in my life than Democrat, and

2.) If you want to call someone who spent the entire decade of his 20’s serving in the Marine Corps a snowflake, I’d be ready to answer the question what did you do with your 20’s?

Why Liberals (And not-so liberals) are against President Trump.

C.) He pretends at Christianity to court the Religious Right but fails to live anything resembling a Christ-Like Life.

D.) His nationalist “America First” message effectively alienates us and removes us from our place as leaders in the international community.

E.) His ideas on “Keeping us safe” are all thinly veiled ideas to remove our freedoms, he is, after all, an authoritarian first. They also are simply bad ideas.

G.) He behaves unethicaly and always has. As a businessman, he constantly left in his wake unpaid contractors and invoices, litigation, broken promises, whatever he could get away with.

K.) He is systematically steamrolling regulations specifically designed to keep a disaster like the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis from happening again.

0.) He does not have the temperament to lead this nation. He is Thin Skinned, childish, and a bully, never mind misogynistic, boorish, rude, and incapable of civil discourse.

*snagged from a friends wall:

#trump #politics #gop #politics trump #donald trump

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honeychildoz · 5 years

Text

"Why are people so hostile towards President Donald Trump?" Chris O'Leary:

1.) I'm an independent centrist who has voted Republican way more often in my life than Democrat, and 2.) If you want to call someone who spent the entire decade of his 20’s serving in the Marine Corps a snowflake, I’d be ready to answer the question what did you do with your 20’s?

Why Liberals (And not-so liberals) are against President Trump.

C.) He pretends at Christianity to court the Religious Right but fails to live anything resembling a Christ-Like Life.

D.) His nationalist “America First” message effectively alienates us and removes us from our place as leaders in the international community.

E.) His ideas on “Keeping us safe” are all thinly veiled ideas to remove our freedoms, he is, after all, an authoritarian first. They also are simply bad ideas.

G.) He behaves unethicaly and always has. As a businessman, he constantly left in his wake unpaid contractors and invoices, litigation, broken promises, whatever he could get away with.

K.) He is systematically steamrolling regulations specifically designed to keep a disaster like the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis from happening again.

0.) He does not have the temperament to lead this nation. He is Thin Skinned, childish, and a bully, never mind misogynistic, boorish, rude, and incapable of civil discourse.

*snagged from a friends wall:

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extraneousdominomask · 6 years

Text

Of Heists and Hustles - The Abridged Version

[Night in Zootopia. The Nope Diamond is travelling to The Museum, and all the cops are helping. All the cops except]

Judy: This sucks! I wanna help!

Nick: I am ambivalent.

[The Cooper Gang waits nearby, ready to steal it!]

Sly: I'm a thief!

Bentley: I'm a hacker.

Murray: I'M THE MURRAY

Sly: This sucks. I'm bored.

McHorn: Oh god! We're all getting beaten up by a giant shirtless cat!

Sly: Amazing!

[Sly meets Tai Lung. He is giant and shirtless.]

Sly: I have stolen the diamond!

[Tai Lung hits him very hard.]

Judy: Stop right there! You're under arrest!

[Tai Lung hits her very hard.]

Tai Lung: I will now kill you.

Sly: Not if I heroically intervene! It's my Establishing Character Moment! I do nice things but for selfish reasons maybe!

[Everybody fights. Nick throws the diamond. Judy throws herself after it. Both land in a river.]

Nick: I am anxious!

Tai Lung: I am leaving.

Judy : I am the world's greatest cop!!!! but also cold and wet

[It's still night. The same night and everything! Tai Lung is running across rooftops.]

Tai Lung: I am the best at running across rooftops!

Sly: Get on my level, amateur, you don't even know I'm following you.

Tai Lung: What?

Sly: Nothing.

Bentley: Sly, what's happening?!

Sly: A bad guy tried to steal the diamond and hurt a policewoman. I am following him because I hate him.

Bentley: Your libido will be the death of us all.

[It's The Museum. The curator of The Museum is Black Panther. Yes, really.]

Okonkwo: Thank you for saving the diamond. I hired Wolf O'Donnell to protect it, but he hasn't been written into the story yet. Would you like to come to my fancy party on Friday?

Nick: Heck yes!

Judy: As long as we don't die horribly before then, ha ha!

[Awkward silence.]

[It's a gross warehouse. There are hyenas.]

Shenzi: We're hyenas!

Banzai: Except now we're also bikers!

Tai Lung: Move aside. I hate you.

[A tiny nerd uses a telephone.]

Peridot: I'VE SPENT A LOT OF EFFORT ENSURING MY BOSS IS A SECRET!

Mastermind: Ironically, it is transparently obvious who I am.

Sly: I've just taken photos of all of you!

Tai Lung: What! I will now kill y-

[Murray hits him with a van.]

Murray: let's BOUNCE

[It's the ZPD morning briefing! With your host, Chiiiiiiiief Bogo!]

Bogo: Let's get this over with. I have strict orders to distract from the fact this entire chapter is exposition by utilizing

Sly: snazzy scene transitions!

Bentley: ...why did you yell that?

Sly: Just run it, Hardison.

Bentley: This is Tai Lung. He punches. This is Peridot. She hacks. These are the hyenas. They're dumb, and, furthermore, stupid. Squeezing them might reveal the mastermind, who I have been unable to identify.

Sly: And what about

Judy: the oddly attractive raccoon, Chief?

Bogo: He's Sly Cooper. He and his friends steal things for fun, mostly from other criminals. But sometimes they don't, I guess. We have an Interpol agent coming to help us. That is all.

Nick: Wow, I wish all our briefings could be this short. That just leaves

Sly: Nick and Judy!

Bentley: Yes. Nick and Judy. They are friends who fight crime.

Sly: I will befriend them also. Get me a telephone.

Judy: I just got a text! Sly wants to meet us.

Nick: Guess we better investigate.

Judy: Sounds like a plan, my dearest friend who I love and share a house with!

Nick: So are we boning or what?

Judy : Unclear!

[Nick and Judy are in a park, reading a newspaper of wacky mayoral candidates.]

Nick: Look at all these wacky mayoral candidates! Like Toriel Undertale! And Scar!

Judy: "Scar" is a dumb name.

Nick: Yes.

Clawhauser: It's me, Clawhauser, over the radio! Bogo wants to see you, Nick!

Nick: Heck. Don't die, Judy.

Judy: Okay!

[Nick leaves. Sly enters.]

Sly: Wanna team up?

Judy: Only kinda!

Bogo: Come in, Wilde, and meet our Interpol liaison.

Nick: Great, some stuffed-shirt two-bit - ¡dios mío, zorra muy bonita!

Carmelita: Hello, I'm Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox. And I should hope you mean that to be translated literally, not colloquially.

Nick: You work for Interpol?! That completely invalidates my significance as a street-level officer in Furry New York.

Carmelita: True. But remember: Star Fox.

Nick: Star Fox?

Carmelita: Yes.

Bogo: Wilde, you've been chosen to work with Carmelita because you know the city like no-one else.

Carmelita: Pretty good justification for why I'd team up with a complete rookie, right?

Nick: If I don't have Judy helping me I might cry. Just a heads up.

Bogo: In a somewhat out-of-character move, I will grant Hopps freedom from usual department rules.

Carmelita: In a very out-of-character move, I am okay with this.

Nick: The important thing is that I got what I wanted.

Carmelita: Congratulations. Now if you'll excuse me, I should go get my ninety minutes of daily sleep.

Bogo: Wilde, for god's sake, learn some independence. Hopps could die at literally any moment, you ever think about that?

Nick: Yes!!!!! Constantly!!!!!!!!!! It consumes me from within!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bogo: Well, good. As long as you're aware.

Nick: Star Fox?!?!

Judy: Yes.

Sly: Go arrest the hyenas to find the mastermind.

Judy: Smart plan. But my partner isn't gonna like this.

Nick: I don't like this!

Judy: Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease? Just once!

Nick: Fine. Just once. Oh, also, the Interpol inspector is a fox, and also also, Bogo is letting you help me help her. Secretly.

Judy: Wow! Wow to all of that!

Nick: Yeah. Now let's go to Ruby's bar.

[It's Ruby's bar.]

Ruby: I'm Ruby, from the show RWBY!

Blake: I'm quiet.

Finnick: And I'm here too.

Nick: oh god

Judy: Are you two not friends any more?

Finnick: It's genuinely unclear in canon if we ever were.

Murray : Time for THE MURRAY to make like a Cold War superpower and instigate a proxy conflict!

[He does. There are many kicks. The hyenas go to jail.]

Tai Lung: Heck.

Carmelita: So Nick and Judy think these hyenas are connected to the diamond heist?

Bogo: I'll be honest, Inspector, I just let them do whatever and they work things out eventually.

Banzai: You'll get nothing from me, copper!

Nick: [is Nick]

Banzai: here is every secret i've ever been told

Nick: So apparently the mastermind is Scar? That's ridiculous. Let's go bother him.

Peridot: HECK!!!!!!!!!!

Carmelita: Great work in there, Nick!

Nick: I was not a con artist!!

Carmelita: ...Cool! See you later.

[It's a slideshow.]

Bentley: Here's the slideshow for my new plan. We'll need three things: alarm schematics,

Sly: Right,

Bentley: an entire subway train,

Murray: NICE

Bentley: and an invitation we'll have to rob from an innocent old man.

Sly: Okay :)

Bentley: ...

Murray: ...That's... kinda evil, Bentl-

Bentley: Yes. It is.

[It's Scar's house.]

Scar: Hello, I'm Scar.

Judy: Are you the bad guy?

Scar: No, I'm Scar.

Nick: How's Mufasa?

Scar: That's unimportant. I'm Scar.

Judy: Are you connected with these hyenas?

Scar: Oh , I'm so sorry, but I haven't "seen" them in years >;3

Judy: ...can we arrest him for making that face

Nick: That legislation hasn't been finalized yet, sorry.

[They leave.]

Nick: Scar basically admitted to everything, but in a way that gives us no evidence. We've got nothing right now, but I'm sure it's him.

Judy: But why? Why steal the diamond?

Nick: Well, everyone loves us for saving the day. If he manufactured a similar situation, he might actually get voted in as mayor.

Judy: A transparently evil fascist using misinformation to win an election? Come on, Nick. This is 2016.

Nick: goddammit judy

Clawhauser: It's time to read Tai Lung's Extended Backstory File!

Carmelita: And I am here as well.

Clawhauser: Oh gosh! He's mostly evil because his dad died! And he did the manslaughter! Mammalslaughter...?

Nick: Yep, it's true. Doing one crime will ruin your life forever. Gotta tick off the Social Commentary box for this to be a real Zootopia fanfiction...

Carmelita: I remain unsympathetic to him in light of this information. My role in this and all narratives is to stick stringently to the Lawful part of Lawful Good. Never trust criminals. No matter how handsome they are.

Nick: But this doesn't explain why Tai Lung is helping Scar become mayor.

Judy: The mayor's office can pardon crimes! Somehow! Even though that really only applies to stuff like parking tickets, not an international crime spree of theft and probably murder!

Nick: In fairness, Tai Lung mightn't know that, Scar just needs to convince him.

Judy: Let's go with that, yes.

[A smol cat stabs Banzai with an umbrella.]

Banzai : Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! Kill Nick!

[Carmelita shoots him with her Huge Gun.]

Carmelita: Writhe, little man.

Nick: He went savage! But only a little bit...

Judy: What evil genius put this together?

Peridot : AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! LEGS... SHORT! HNFF

[The Cooper Gang steal a subway train.]

Murray: This is the BEST DAY EVER

[Tai Lung attacks.]

Murray: I change MY MIND

Sly: Go on without me, guys! I'll handle him alone! By which I mean I'm immediately calling Judy for help.

[There are many kicks.]

Judy: Wait! I know your tragic backstory!

Tai Lung: Then go make a gifset.

[His attempts to murder them do not abate. However, Sly and Judy save each other.]

Judy: Gosh, you're amazing!

Sly: No, you're amazing!

Judy: Gosh...

Sly: So are we boning or what?

Judy: Unclear!

Tai Lung: Enough of this vague romantic tension! You're boring me stiff!

[He bores into them until they are stiff.]

Murray: Oh my god Sly and Judy are dead wait, no, they're just sleeping.

Bentley: Yes. We're all terrified two protagonists will die halfway through the story.

Carmelita: Alright, losers, shut up and follow my lead. Time to demonstrate my full prowess as an officer.

Murray: Oh, wow! Are you gonna shoot him?

Carmelita: Murray, please. I'm an Inspector with Interpol. My tactical knowledge is a little more advanced than that.

Tai Lung: I'm going to drown these tiny fools! And there's nothing anyone can do to stop m-

[Carmelita proceeds to shoot Tai Lung in the face multiple times. It is very funny.]

Nick: I've found a way to weaponise his previously-established backstory!

Bentley: Thank god. We've justified that otherwise pointless detour.

Nick: Shut up and hack that telephone, Specs.

[The telephone rings.]

Murray: It's for you!

Tai Lung: Ahoy-hoy?

Nick: It's me! Your boss! Quit it.

Tai Lung: Pop quiz - what's my motivation?

Nick: Uh... you're doing these crimes to not be a criminal any more?

Tai Lung: Close enough. I will begrudgingly follow your suspiciously merciful orders.

Nick: We did it!

Bentley: Nice work. Say, does this look like a flash-bang to you?

Nick: Wh- OH GOD MY EYES

[Judy is propped up on many pillows.]

Nick: Okay, you didn't die this time, but that was pretty close.

Judy: Bring on Round Two!

Nick: I am genuinely begging you to take the day off. More for my sake than yours.

[It's Black Panther's office in The Museum.]

Wolf O'Donnell: And it's me! Wolf O'Donnell!

[Audience applause, cheers, howling.]

Okonkwo: Hello, my vaguely trusted employee. Can I help you?

Wolf: Yes. This job has much more master thieves than advertised. Pay me much more money.

Okonkwo: Your concerns are valid. However, I'm afraid I have no money to spare.

Wolf: ...well then! Forget I said anything. Not important ;)

[Peridot is watching cartoons illegally online - yes, specifically, that's what happened - when Tai Lung appears.]

Peridot: YYYYYYYYYYYYOU MESSED UP!

Tai Lung: Eh.

Peridot: I'M GONNA FIX IT!!!

Tai Lung: Off you go, then.

Peridot: NYEH

Sly: Always treat a lady to chocolates after she saves you from being drowned by a snow leopard.

Bentley: Terrible news! Murray's sick! He's come down with a serious case of Can't Be In The Plot Right Now!

Sly: Perfect! What a convenient excuse to invite Judy to fight slash commit crime with me!

Bentley: Sly, can we please talk about the underlying issues pushing you into this uncharacteristic behaviour?

Sly: No.

[Nick and Carmelita must do computer things.]

Carmelita: I like you, Nick. I'm gonna tell you a bit of my backstory - lord help me, I'll even banter with you.

Nick: Wow. Well, it's an honour being under you.

Carmelita: So are we boning or what?

Nick: Unclear!

[Judy has had the entire day off. She is ready to die.]

Judy: I am ready to make some terrible decisions!

[She receives a text from Sly.]

Sly: check out this hot selfie i took at an active crime scene

Judy: Wow! What an attractive terrible decision!

Sly: want to help me beat up a small nerd?

Judy: i'm there! [rabbit emoji] [raccoon emoji] [gun emoji] [computer emoji]

Peridot: CLODS! STEP INTO MY DEATHTRAP GAUNTLET AND DIE!

Sly: How about................... we don't do that?

Judy: yeah okay

Peridot: NO!!!

[Peridot locks them into an employee lounge, forcing them to Bond(tm).]

Sly: So basically I'm doing this for my dead dad.

Judy: Interesting. Isn't he dead, though?

Sly: Hmm, good point.

[Nick receives a text from Judy.]

Nick: uhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Carmelita: What's up, buttercup?

Nick: On one hand, I should probably keep this a secret. On the other, Please Help.

Sly: My arc is that I can't stop stealing.

Judy: Mine is that I'm probably going to h*cking die.

Sly: Haha wow!

Judy: Hey. Hey, Sly, guess what. I know your tragic backstory too. That's rough, buddy.

Sly: Thanks, Judy. I appreciate it. Y'know, you'd make a pretty good thief.

Judy: And you'd make a good cop!

Sly: Um, funny story,

Nick: You drafted a falsely amnesiac Sly Cooper into Interpol?! That's not a funny story at all! That's melancholic, and deeply concerning!

Carmelita: Look. In my defence... I wanted to bone him.

Nick: That's not-!

Peridot: CLODS! STEP INTO MY DEATHTRAP GAUNTLET AND DIE! PLEASE?!

Nick: Let's cut the power.

Peridot: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Nick: I lied. I actually was a con-artist.

Carmelita: I know, Nick, I've seen the movie.

Sly: You should communicate more clearly with your partner.

Judy: Good suggestion, internationally wanted criminal. I'll get right on that, just as soon as-

[The power goes out and the doors open.]

Judy: Oh, cool, we can beat up that nerd!

Sly: Finally!

Peridot: THIS IS A BAD NIGHT FOR PERIDOT

Tai Lung: Ugh! I'm here to save you.

Nick: They're gone. But we can still arrest Sly - Judy, cuff him!

Judy: Um... no.

[It's breakfast time! Judy... actually, y'know what? I'm not gonna comedically abridge this part. Chapter 16 of this story came out very, very well, especially since I don't consider serious emotion one of my strengths. I might suggest you just go and read it if you're interested. It's the emotional culmination of the separate arcs for Nick, Judy, and Sly/Carmelita that build through the story, and I'm still very pleased with the results. Anyway. It's sad.]

[The Cooper Gang's sad too.]

Murray: I messed up!

Sly: Yeah. Me too.

Bentley: Oh, shut up, guys. You'll feel better when we successfully heist a diamond, I assume.

[Sad, sad, droopy ears.]

Judy: I am so depressed I am willingly performing traffic duty.

Clawhauser: I can't even cheer you up, and I'm Clawhauser!

Judy: She who is tired of Clawhauser is tired of life.

[At The Museum, Wolf is giving a helpful pep talk.]

Wolf: What do we want?

Wolves: Loads of money!

Wolf: How do we want it?

Wolves: From anyone!

Wolf : [tearing up] I'm so proud of you all.

[Nick and Carmelita try to find the Cooper Gang. All they find is a chocolate shop.]

Carmelita: This makes me feel angry!

Nick: I am dead inside. ...Moreso than usual.

[The bad guys are doing okay, really.]

Peridot: I'M VERY SORRY!

Mastermind: Sorta don't care. Is the Night Howler(tm) ready?

Tai Lung: We're using Night Howler on someone?

Mastermind: Oh, we're using it on someone alright >;3c

Tai Lung: how did you do that over the phone

[It's the fancy party! Wolf's manning the door.]

Wolf: I'm casually bullying a guy in a wheelchair! Just in case you weren't sure I was an antagonist.

Scar: Here is a bribe so I can carry skip the security check.

Wolf: I love my job.

Sly: Hiding in the rafters is making me feel a little better.

Tai Lung: Same.

Sly: Agh! What are you doing up here?!

Tai Lung: Right now? Just mocking you for having empathy. Loser.

Judy: Oh, hello, Carmelita. What's up?

Carmelita: This is a little late in the story, but: we have so much common ground. Don't repeat my mistakes. You have deeply impressed me in the threeish days I've known you, and I'm lucky to have met you.

Judy: W-wow. The feeling's more than mutual.

Carmelita: So are we boning or what?

Judy: Gosh, I hope so.

Nick: You enjoying the party, Scar?

Scar : Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmhhh >:3cccc

Nick: Soon, Nicholas. Soon.

Toriel: Excuse me, I seem to have misplaced my child. I'm a competent mother, I swear.

[Judy looks for Toriel's son, Asriel, but instead finds only a crime!]

Wolf: Gimme the diamond!

Okonkwo: What treachery is this?!

Wolf: I've received purely electronic communication from someone claiming to be the Cooper Gang, saying they'll pay me big money for this diamond.

Okonkwo: And you... trust that?

Wolf: Well, not any more. Clearly, Cooper is trying to fool me!

Okonkwo: Clearly.

[Wolf leaves with the diamond. Okonkwo obliterates a wolf with a single punch. He is, after all, Black Panther.]

Okonkwo: Officer Hopps, please help me evacuate the entire museum by claiming that a heretofore-unmentioned fireworks display is about to start, which is mandatory for all guests to attend, but will not actually materialise.

Judy: Wow! You are smart.

Okonkwo: Yes.

[Everyone leaves, miraculously.]

Tai Lung: Time for you to get poisoned by Night Howler!

[Tai Lung gets poisoned by Night Howler.]

Tai Lung: The - the shadowy figure who never so much as told me their name betrayed me?!

Sly: Oh, honey.

Asriel: Golly! I exist for only two things: bein' adorable and wanderin' heedlessly into deadly situations!

Sly: I've known this kid for only half a second but if anything happened to him I would kill everyone in this room and then myself.

[Something almost happens to him.]

Sly: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[He saves the good good boy. The Cooper Gang regroup-er gang.]

Wolf: You'll pay for this, Cooper!

Sly: who in god's name are you

[There are many punches. Nick, Judy and Carmelita show up.]

Nick: We haven't resolved our issues yet!

Judy: But that won't stop us from DOOR!

[DOOR!]

Sly: Is everyone okay?!

Judy: Yeah, but the three of us are stuck in here with Tai Lung!

Nick: And I'm stuck out here like a tiny orange idiot!

Murray: Don't worry, Jak & Daxter reference! Me and Bentley will try to open this door offscreen!

Bentley: Yes, now's as good a time as any to exit the narrative. Frankly we've been secondary characters for this entire outing.

[Bye, guys!]

Carmelita: I have a novel idea - let's beat up the bad guy, with violence.

Sly: I love you so much.

Nick: Don't worry Judy, you can do this! You're amazing!

Judy: Thanks, Nick. I genuinely needed to hear that. What about you?

Nick: I can do something else. Because I'm also, separately, amazing.

Sly: Hey, cool, People Are Good At Different Things! That's the moral of my whole franchise.

Nick: Here's one for you - Nick Wilde Is The Best. That's the moral of mine.

Judy: Go get 'em, tiger.

[They go get the snow leopard as Nick go gets the lion.]

Nick: Ladies and gentlemammals, I know who's behind this.

Toriel: Is it me?

Nick: Actually, no! It's Mufasa!

Scar: What?! No! I'm ten times the jewel thief Mufasa is! ...Which, um, is zero. Because ten times zero is still zero.

Nick: Let's discuss this somewhere quieter, where it would be hypothetically easier to stab a police officer to death.

Scar: Excellent. Yes.

Scar : Why yes, I am exactly the kind of person to own a cane-sword.

Nick: Contrary to appearances, I am perfectly competent at my job! You're under arrest!

Scar: Curses! But I still have Peridot.

Nick: You really don't. She's gonna abandon you the second my excellent partner stops Tai Lung.

Scar: Ah, but will she?!

[She does.]

Judy: Oh god, Sly is dying!

Carmelita: No! Not like this...

Sly: Oh. Wow. You're... actually really sad. I'm fine actually. It was a prank. Epic... fake internal bleeding to steal a diamond prank! Y'know, that old... um... SMOKEBOMB

Peridot: I WILL NOW MAKE LIKE A LAWN CHAIR AND FOLD.

Nick: Just as I predicted! Everything's done, we can go home.

Judy: But Nick, we need to resolve these emotional arcs!

Nick: uuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[The roof!]

Sly: I'm sad. I ruined everything.

Judy: No, Sly. Not doing crimes is good, actually.

Sly: Source?

Nick: We are definitely not boning.

Sly: More's the pity. Maybe next time.

Carmelita: We might still be, though. Despite everything.

Sly: Hooray! Let's smooch!

[They smooch. I've been publishing fanfics for over six years - well over 200,000 words in the last two years alone - and for so long this was the only kiss in any of my stories. And I wonder why my numbers are low.]

Sly: I'll start making the world a better place by robbing Scar utterly blind! Catch you all later!

Carmelita : No, Sly, we'll catch you.

[Everyone laughs. Sly flings himself from the rooftop.]

Nick: Hey, Carmelita, let's be penpals.

Carmelita: Sure. That sounds like a mildly diverting interquel. I'm gonna get hammered on champagne now, so I'll leave you kids to your Feels.

[She does. Nick and Judy make up and stuff. Whatever.]

[Night in Zootopia.]

Epilogue! The bad guys go to jail, Carmelita learns how to email, Wolf disappears, Finnick gets a job at The Museum because I guess his presence in this story needed to go somewhere, the Cooper Gang's failure means the diamond is safe, Sly has a protracted existential crisis he claims is just him "figuring stuff out", and Nick and Judy - surprise surprise - are still friends. But are they boning? To this day, it remains unclear.

(At this rate, probably not.)

Woah, that was so much faster!!! I wrote this whole thing in under a week. I'm just gonna stick to this format from now on...

#sly cooper #zootopia #of heists and hustles #my writing

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jcmorgenstern · 6 years

Note

please rant about the second half of COLS and COHF

this ask opened pandora’s box, consume at your own peril

Basically…my biggest problems with the second half of COLS and COHF as a whole is really just…Jonathan as a character really, truly, utterly, and absolutely makes no sense on a very fundamental level. Like I really don’t say this lightly, I spent almost all of last summer trying to piece together a coherent characterization and eventually came to the conclusion that…there wasn’t one, at least that I could see.

(Readmore for length, heavy criticism of the work (obviously), and mention of canonical attempted rape).

So before I jump right in to providing evidence for that uhh slightly bold claim, I do want to acknowledge that Jonathan in COG totally makes sense, even if certain uhh incestuous aspects of his character do make my eyes roll back into my skull. To me, it always seemed a bit evident that the series was meant to end at COG, and the second half of the trilogy was sort of an ad hoc thing that happened after the series kept building popularity and there was demand from the fandom (and the publisher) for content. If taken alone, Jonathan’s character in COG is relatively self-consistent, and I’ve posted before (also at length….lol) about how Jonathan’s character in COG alone is actually a bit tragic, and it’s not until COLS that he truly makes a villainous turn off a cliff. Though the incest is, from the start, #a bit much, we all know that that’s just how CC novels go and, to some extent, ya just gotta roll with it.

The first half of COLS continues to be pretty exciting from a Sebastian Enthusiast perspective–in fact, for me, it’s really what made me fall in love/hate with the character and his portrayal to begin with. And some of the character work in the first half of COLS is actually pretty good!! We have the moral ambiguity of the Jace/Seb bond, Clary being unable to tell to what degree Sebastian in lying, the slightly random, wild, and jumbled snips of his character coming through (vampire threesome, vampire fetish, wearing Jace’s cologne??, fashion whore, messy bitch, shitty poetry writer?? it’s all free real estate) and then he lays out what could have been such an interesting plot!!

All the mentions of the increasing number of demons coming through to Earth is finally being used after being mentioned ad nausea for three whole books!! We’re set up for an interesting, shades of grey antagonist who thinks the ends justify the means and that sometimes a Wee Murder is needed to end an unjust regime (the Clave) without realizing that removing the Clave violently without any real and just alternative will create a power vacuum that invites even worse outcomes!! And the protagonists have to navigate slightly more complex moral issues than “genocide is bad, really!!”

And then…er, no. Like, really no. The entire book does a complete 180 and says no, all that (questionable) character development was a complete lie, all the human motivations you could possibly ascribe to the villain are bunk, he just wants to destroy the world. And not only that, he tries to rape Clary and….yeah no. (I’ll talk more about that later…I have a lot to say).

And for me that was really a massive disappointment. Like, to be clear: it wasn’t that I wanted Jonathan to be a pure uwu soft boi who did nothing wrong ™, or that he would be anything other than an antagonist. But like….a) rape. no. and b) I did sort of want his motivations OR his goal to sort of make sense and follow any sort of reason but honestly…they don’t.

The rationale CC tries to offer is that Jonathan doesn’t understand the meaning of love and wants to bend the world to his will so that it will love him instead. And like….that works to an extent, but then she also very clumsily attempts to make him a psychopath and…

Look.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while you know my feelings on poorly-written psychopath characters but…I’m gonna be real honest with ya here….a true psychopath is, with a very few fine exceptions like the entire population of high-security prisons, super fucking boring. They’re emotionally shallow, both internally and externally, and are usually driven by very grounded and unemotional goals. Winning a promotion. Attaining a position of power. Becoming a neurosurgeon. Having the best lawn in the zip code. “The psychopath next door” isn’t Hannibal Lecter, it’s your shitty boss or that one prick who calls the HOA on you for having your lawn one (1) millimeter over regulation.

And you know what? I’d take a story about Hannibal Lecter, lawn fascist. I’d maybe even take a story about Jonathan Morgenstern, shitty CEO, though honestly that sounds dangerously close to 50SOG so maybe not. Because if written well, the sensational serial-killer psychopath can be genuinely thrilling in fiction.

But honestly in this case?? It doesn’t work. Not even getting into the issue of “are signs and symptoms of psychopathy diagnostic in a child soldier” issue (pro tip: almost definitely not), why does he want to burn down the world? Why does he want to kill downworlders if he is basically one? How does he react to his father’s ideology? Does he even have a consistent ideology? Why doesn’t he stay at home playing Mario Kart?? If you can’t answer any of these questions, psychopath or no, anything he does is literally just not convincing and falls flat.

And now I’m going to segue into my “demon blood as a metaphor for child abuse” rant, which will hopefully segue into my “the demon army and ending of COHF is bullshit” rant, and maybe round it all up with my “you don’t have to have your villain graphically try to rape his sister to convince your audience of teenagers he’s a Bad Dude” rant.

So! Demon blood. So full disclosure, the scene in question is probably my actual favorite scene in COLS and the series at large, god knows why really, but it was actually pretty well-written as a hook for a thread that was totally dropped and never ever ever mentioned again. I’m talking about the scene where Jonathan asks Clary for a strength rune, and he tells her Valentine whipped him as a child with demon metal. His wounds will never heal, and serve as a reminder of the “perils of obedience” which is, quite possibly, the most chilling and interesting turn of phrase in the entire series.

And if you think about it, “wounds that will never heal but hurt constantly” are a pretty canny metaphor for the emotional abuse that shapes Jonathan and his ability (or lack thereof) to relate to others. Valentine never particularly loved or even cared for Jonathan, and used him as a child solider (drop me another ask if you want to know the rationale behind that one, kind of not a lot of space for that here) in his genocidal crusade, complete with brainwashing and pretty obvious physical and emotional abuse. That stays with him, twists the way he views love and truth, and leaves him with a permanently negative view of self and worldview that he doesn’t seem to put much effort into overcoming. To be clear: being abused doesn’t make you evil. But in the absence of love and support and positive role models to help you unlearn things, anger and pain can twist even good motives into bad actions, and lbr, Jonathan doesn’t have an over-abundance of good motives. The real peril of obedience is never questioning what you’re told.

But of course it’s never mentioned again, so like, fuck me or whatever.

The show does a better job of it, and almost directly links Jonathan being Like That to what Valentine, Jocelyn, and Lilith did to him and…does a pretty good job of not woobifying him or dismissing his pain. Him having demon blood is almost completely uncoupled from him being “evil” (or, more accurately, doing evil or cruel things) and is instead his responsibility. What makes him “incapable of love” is that he was never shown love, and what makes him violent and cruel is that he was only ever taught violence and cruelty.

But in the books demon blood is definitely intended a metaphor for psychopathy. “He had the humanity burned out of him because of his demon blood” “he’s incapable of love because of his demon blood”…you get the picture. But considering she honestly doesn’t really hit psychopathy and (to me) pings in more at ASPD (antisocial personality disorder, the DSM-V approved version of psychopathy, with some MAJOR and important differences in diagnostic criteria) or NPD (narcissistic personality disorder), I sort of…don’t like how demon blood is directly used as a metaphor for mental illness. And once the demon blood is gone…poof! so is his “evil” so uhh yall read between the lines with me on that one.

(If you want a rant on why I think book Jonathan fits better with ASPD or NPD than psychopathy, drop me an ask, but god please consider the consequences. Also, I generally don’t feel comfortable “”diagnosing”” villains for the hell of it, but in this case since the canon itself has already Gone There and I’d be operating mostly off the DSM, I’d feel slightly less shitty about it).

Anyway. So what I deeply, passionately, truly hate about COHF is the ending, when the demon blood is burned out of Poor Green-Eyed Jonathan and There Is Not Enough Good In Him So He McFucking Dies. What fucking enrages me about this is like…the ENTIRE series is about how “blood doesn’t equal morality” EXCEPT in the case of this one guy apparently because fuck him and fuck consistency!! Also on a slightly different tack it completely erases all culpability of him as a person and like….what, “the demon blood made me do it” is now a viable excuse?? what the fuck. no. what the fuck. also what does “not enough good in him” even MEAN in the context of someone who LITERALLY DESCENDED HIS MOTHER’S BIRTH CANAL THAT WAY oh my god its??? so fucking stupid and the philosophical implications ENRaGE me especially like.,,,as a geneticist….we kind of had a wee run-in with that kind of thinking….it was called “eugenics” you may have heard of it….G OD !!!

Also that doesn’t even get into the contradictory nature of Jonathan’s actual characterization (I use the term loosely) itself like…sometimes his dialogue reads almost like Jace’s, but by the end of COHF he literally quotes Jesus Christ (render unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s), says “FOOLS!!11!!1!” like….literally once a page, I think at some point dips into vaguely Shakespearean English while violently whiplashing into whatever “ ‘You’re insane,’ said Simon. ‘You’re dead,’ said Sebastian” is?? and is overall an editor’s literal worst nightmare. There is NOTHING driving this character other than pure, unrestrained literary chaos, and absolutely nothing he does or says seems to make a hell of a lot of sense and is designed purely #4 the evulz. It’s just so painfully cartoonish that it physically pains me to read it and yet, here I am, holding the physical (hardback) copy that I own, reading it, and physically shuddering jesus CHRIST

(You did uh, definitely ask for a rant, right?)

OH yeah uhh and to round it all off…the “you don’t have to have your villain graphically try to rape his sister to convince your audience of teenagers he’s a Bad Dude” rant:

Look my friends there’s nothing wrong with Clebastian but there is definitely something wrong with rape and lbr: there’s a lot of it written into this character and his relationship with his SISTER and fuckign thanks!! I absolutely hate it. Apparently, when asked why she chose to include the graphic attempted rape scene in COLS, CC apparently said she “wanted to make sure the audience knew he was beyond saving.”

Look.

When a guy builds a demon army to obliterate the world and everyone in it, I generally get bad vibes. Worse vibes, in fact, than from a guy who tried to rape his sister, though that’s pretty fuCKING bad. The point is, there is absolutely no fucking reason to do that. Seriously, there’s not. And when your entire NYT bestselling fanfic series is based on the incest fetish HP fanfiction, it’s?? proBABly not the best idea to like…include an attempted rape scene between two siblings in a work that already has a lot of UST between presumed or actual siblings because people WILL talk and.,,,can u blame them lol

On a more serious note…female protagonists are so often forced to undergo rape or sexual humiliation as part of a narrative (or worse, for titillation of the viewers–looking at you, GOT and also yeah lbr COLS). Even in the show, which has definitely improved on some weaknesses in the original narrative, Clary is nearly raped by a demon in order to awaken her rune powers. That’s disgusting, honestly, and unnecessary, and you know what? Luke Skywalker didn’t have to face a rape threat to get his powers, and neither should a female counterpart. The show didn’t even ADDRESS this later, or even bring it up at all, and that’s even more upsetting, and part of why I don’t have faith in the WR to bring the concept of a Jonathan-Clary bond in 3b to life in a way that doesn’t make me want to curl up into my epidermis like a chrysalis and never emerge again. (See also: Lilith’s unaddressed sexual assault of Jace, and Camille’s equally unaddressed assault of Simon).

And what bothers me almost more than all this is…it’s not like Jonathan’s creepiness is subtle. He constantly invades Clary’s personal space, makes comments she’s uncomfortable with, puts her in situations she doesn’t like. You could leave it there and I guarantee most of your readership (especially your female/female-aligned readers) will INSTANTLY pick up on the fact that this guy is Bad News and you know what?? Clary isn’t subjected to that bs for….the heck of it?? Not that subtlety is ever the strong point of this series but like…that’s a huge glaring issue and one I can never overlook, and why I’ve honestly chosen to basically Ignore Canon And Do Whatever The Fuck I Want.

In summary: Jonathan was basically shoed in as a) a half-assed foil to Jace and b) a plot device/fix and c) fodder for more incest after Jace and Clary were no longer brother and sister and tbh?? Not entirely here for it.

tldr: jonathan morgenstern is a dumb bitch and no one is valid, more at 9.

#i love a crispy boy #i CANNOT put ths in the tag there is way too much hate #anti tmi #anti cc #like honestly for safety but also bc i do sort of rip into it #YALL ASKED #obvs this is just my personal onion but y e a hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh #anyway!!!! i love how i said hiatus and post a like. 2.5k ask a few hours later #but thats them breaks folks #rape tw #rape mention

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wmaitla · 6 years

Text

40k Factions Headcanons Part 2

Right, here’s part 2 of what might be a long running series I’m mostly writing because I want to get these ideas out of my head so I never have to think about them again.

Sisters of Battle

The Sisters are probably my favorite faction in all of 40k. Fanatical power-armoured catholic space nuns wielding flamethrowers and rocket-firing submachine guns really encapsulate the feel of 40k. The fact that they haven’t received a real update in two decades makes me sad. SO here’s how I’d redesign them if I woke up one morning and suddenly found myself in charge of GW’s intellectual property: Crunch-wise there’s quite a few changes I’d make, including the Faith system, but a lot of them are really minor. I’d give Sisters units the Faithful special rule, which gives them the Shield of Faith invulnerable save and generates a Faith point at the start of each turn. Sisters can spend Faith points to either perform Acts of Faith (which buffs units) or to “dispel” hostile psyker powers. Because more units = more Faith powers, it means the Faith system will scale with the size of the army, something Faith systems have traditionally struggled with. I decided to go unit-by-unit for this analysis, explaining the changes I’d make to each one, because a lot of the changes where fairly intricate HQ Canoness with a possible Celestian bodyguard - Celestians all get storm bolters, canoness gives a “strategy buff” (An extra command point?) Priest with a possible Crusader Bodyguard - Priest gives a “morale/faith” buff compared to the canoness, possibly generating d3 faith pointsinstead of just one. Crusaders are Crusaders, one or two can take flamers/meltas/stormbolters. No plasmaguns for the priests, the sisters should be about the faith and fire. Elites Arco-Flagellants - a Fearless unit of crazy naked dudes. They throwout 2d3 Str 4 attacks each and have toughness 4 and feel no pain, but they aren’t Faithful (they aren’t believers, its why they’re here, they’re just raging on Holy Cocaine and Blessed Steroids). Repentia - Another Fearless unit of mostly naked people frothing at the mouth, tearing at their enemies and taking up an Elite slot, bThese guys need a few things to differentiate them from the Flagellants. First of all they have big girl eviscerators (instead of the nerfed versions they have now) making them effective against a different kind of enemy to the horde-killing Flagellants. They have two attacks each so they can dish out the hurt, but they’re only toughness three with no armour besides Shield of Faith. I’d consider including an Act of Faith that increases Shield of Faith to 4+ for a phase/turn, just to give them a better chance of surviving until they can actually kill something. I don’t wanna give them feel no pain, because it makes them too similar to Arco-Flagellants. We want our units to be diverse and interesting after all. Troops Sisters of Battle - 5 to 15 strong, able to take two special weapons for each five Sisters in the Squad. Flamer/Meltagun/Stormbolter, but no heavy weapons. This is to help keep them mobile and aggressive. Faithful Mob - a weak but Fearless close-combat tarpit, lead by a lay preacher. Gets around the Decree Passive because the Ministorum isn’t technically keeping them under arms. If some Lay Preacher, totally unaffiliated with the official Adeptus Ministorum, gathers a crowd of Ordinary Pious Imperial Citizens and inspires them to march to the battlefield in order to take the fate of their planet into their own hands and smite the Foul Enemies of the Most Holy Emperor of Mankind, its not really breaking the Degree Passive if the Sisters point them in the right direction, now is it? Having these guys as troops also serves to show how influential the Cult of the Emperor is in the lives of everyday imperial citizens and how fanatical those citizens tend to be. Transports Rhino - As standard. Its not broken so there’s no need to fix it. Although I would make the Rhino is the heavier armoured of the typical imperial Metal Bawxes, when compared to the IG’s Chimera. Can carry up to twelve people, can be upgraded to be Faithful with Laud Hailers, can take a pintle-mounted flamer. Immolator - As they are. BEHOLD! THE IMMOLATOR! PURGATION MANIFEST! Repressor - Similar to a rhino, but lighter armoured and open topped in exchange for firing ports. These things have been around forever, there’s no excuse for why they’ve remained forge world only for so long. Fast Attack Death Cult Assassins - infiltrating infantry, placed here so the Elite section isn’t so crowded. I wouldn’t necessarily give them power swords, we have enough close combat ass-kickers in this force with the Flagellants, the Repentia and the Crusaders. Maybe swap them out for some kind of short-range gun. Shotguns maybe? Seraphim - as they are. these girls are cool. Dominions - similar to Sisters of Battle, but they have the ability to outflank. I’d want to differentiate them from the normal sisters more than “they have outflank and more special weapons”, so I’d give them a smaller unit size and less amour and say they have to take an immolator or repressor to outflank in. Heavy Support Retributors - Sisters with heavy weapons. Nuff said. May not be able to take a repressor, because that may be too broken. Penitent Engines - Random attacks like the Arco-Flagellants, but they don’t die if they roll max attacks. More lightly armoured than dreadnaughts but cheaper, meant to be taken in squads of two or three. The pilots are surgically connected to their machines, as they are never meant to be removed. Only in Death Does Duty End. Exorcist - shoots a barrage of four long-ranged missiles, each hit at strength 6 AP-3 and causing d3 hits. With all your melta guns you don’t really need d6 Krak missiles, and although this might be too “middle ground” its at least different. Super Heavy Living Saint - a generic version of Saint Celestine. Can fly and smite people with a giant flaming holy sword, essentially an Imperial Demon Prince. VERY hard to kill. She can be healed using faith points, one wound per Faith point expended. She has 6 wounds and a 3+ Invulnerable save, although she’s only toughness 3. Inquisitor - these guys aren’t the sneaky, investigative Inquisitors, oh no. They’re the Faith and Fire Inquisitors who raise armies of the faithful to purge entire planets, turning the skies black with the smoke from millions of pyres. They’re in the Super Heavy section instead of the HQ or Elite section because they have the ability to call down orbital barrages, which are devastating and can strike multiple units in one turn. It also gives them more “presence”, sticking them in the Super Heavy slot shows that these guys are a big deal in-game. In terms of their play-style, the Sisters tend towards a very aggressive mechanised force, although you can run them as a priest leading a vast horde of the faithful. I left Heavy Weapons off the normal Sisters squads to encourage close range, objective-seizing firefights. Their playstyle mirrors that of the Tau, in a way. They’re a mostly mechanised force, but while the Tau prefer to hang back and fight their enemies at a safe distance the Sisters want to rush in to a range where their bolters and flamers are more effective. Despite this, they aren’t meant to be a “close combat” army, there’s a reason the only good close combat units are Elite choices. Pushing so close to the enemy while depending on ranged combat makes them a high risk/high reward army, which suits them thematically. Sisters aren’t “safe”. They’re the DOOM soundtrack if it had a hymnal choir, they’re Faith and Fire, they’re here to rush across the table and smite the enemies of Humanity with Great Anger and Righteous Fury. Fluff-wise, I’d have there be more sisters. Like, A LOT more. I’d change them from being one of the minor factions to being a galaxy-wide fighting force. The Adeptus Ministorum is really pushing the Decree Passive with this, but the Inquisition doesn’t clamp down on them because large armies of powered armoured fanatics are actually very useful in the 41st Millenium, especially when you need to call up Righteous Soldiers of the Emperor to smite some deserving heretics. In a very real way they’re “budget space marines”, which isn’t a bad thing considering the Imperium’s current military situation. They have the powered armour and the fire power, but there’s enough of them that they’re useful in a defensive capacity and armies more of them can be raised up relatively quickly. They aren’t genetically enhanced like their big brothers, but they are enhanced in every other way imaginable while still remaining human - a high-protein diet since childhood, grueling physical training, steroids, etc.Thematically, they represent the religiosity and fanaticism of the modern Imperium. Faith and Fire. Gigantic techno-cathedrals full off countless faithful, their voices united in ear-blistering hymns. Violent redemptionists leading mobs of normal citizens to attack vagrants and mutants. This is the side of the Imperium represented by the Sisters and their followers.Also, there are trans sisters.p.s. I realise there’s a lot of ableism involved in this, what with the whole “purge mutants in the name of the emperor” thing. I’d acknowledge this in-universe: The Imperium AREN’T good guys, especially not in the new version of 40k I’m making. They’re is a brutal fascist empire, where the nobility live lives of unimaginable extravagance on beautiful garden worlds or in shining cities above the clouds, while the average imperial citizen works 16 hours a day in a dangerous manufactorum and dies of carbon monoxide poisoning at the age of 29. The leaders of the Imperium don’t value any part of humanity that doesn’t benefit them, and they go to extreme lengths to monopolise all of their subjects’ waking hours - time a worker spends doing things they enjoy is time the Imperium doesn’t benefit from after all. Heresy Grows From Idleness, from workers who waste their time doing things for themselves instead of working to strengthen the Imperium or from workers who stop and ask themselves WHY they have to work 16 hours a day in a manufactorum seemingly designed to maim them. A disabled human who couldn’t work, who was incapable of producing for the imperium, would be demonised for this reason. Not only are they not useful to the Imperium, they also risk laying bare its greatest hypocrisies. The harshness of life under the Imperium is why rebellion is so tempting, and why the Forces of Chaos find it so easy to recruit new soldiers. The Imperium are NOT the good guys, and the fact that Games Workshop have forgotten this is one of the worst parts of modern 40k.So yeah. There’s my headcanon for the Sisters of Battle in 40k. They’re my favorite faction, so much so that when Raging Heroes releases enough of their Sisters range I’m going to collect an army of them for 8th (they’re going to be an army of disabled IG vets who use their power armour as mobility devices and fight to protect fringe worlds). I was going to do my headcanon/redesign for the Guard in this post too, but this post took two hours to write so I’m going to hold off and do that another day. Tell me what you think, if you actually managed to read through all this.

#my writing #wmaitla #40k #40k headcanon #Sisters of Battle #Adeptus Ministorum #warhammer 40k #ableism #tw ableist #maybe? I'm fairly certain mutant is an ableist slur

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theuberthinker · 5 years

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Sometimes you just have to applaud.