Always an experience watching the leftism leave FNAF fans when someone mentions that Scott Cawthon financially backed fascist politicians.
The switch from posting hardline leftist tweets about boycotts and signal boosts and critical takedowns of politicians and celebrities to ‘ohhh, well. everyone makes mistakes. who can blame him, listen he. he donated money to gay charities too. that makes it ok! a millionaire in his forties is allowed to have political beliefs. does it even matter? just let it go!’ is whiplash inducing. The antivaxxer celebrities have got to go, but this one horror dev who quietly handed wads of cash to antivax lawmakers? He’s chill, he can stay.
The charity thing is so funny too because suddenly utilitarian positive-negative point counting is the way to go. Maybe an abacus would help calculate the net good of donating to the Trevor Project minus donating thousands of dollars to Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. -10 points if I push a kid in a lake but +11 points if I help an old lady across the street, so I’m chill. You can’t judge me. Hey, maybe. Just don’t push a kid in the lake period. How fucking low is the bar when we’re excusing maxing out the possible dollar amount of donations to Mitch fucking McConnell. That should be like. Default you’re a bad person.
3K notes
·
View notes
Book 7 Spoilers ahead!!!
hmmmmm Lilia x Reader where you're a member of the Silver Owls but you have no loyalty to them so you betray them by secretly playing spy for the fae in exchange for peace, quiet, and safety if you help them win. The fae don't really trust you, especially Lilia, but he knows opportunity when he sees one. They just have to be careful about how much they trust you.
Because of the nature of your agreement you end up meeting up and exchanging letters with the Phantom General of the Briar fae a lot to relay information. At first it's just that and your meetings are all really just pure business, but then Lilia complains about Princess Malenoa and everyone pushing jobs onto him. This spurs you on to complain about Henrik and how all he does is order people around and lounge around all day. The two of you end up bonding over your demanding and tiring jobs and gradually grow closer each letter.
Aside from exchanging information, the two of you begin to exchange stories and tales and knowledge. You begin to know each other on different facets that no one else knows and confide in each other your deepest thoughts, fears, and insecurities. The two of you have a lot in common and understand each other so well that it just makes it so easy and natural and comfortable to be open like this. No one else have ever made either of you feel safe enough to share your most deepest secrets (not even Malenoa and Revan in Lilia's case. They're his best friends but they're also his superiors. There's just some things he can't talk about with them.) so it's so nice to finally find someone that does.
The two of you fall slowly, but you fall hard.
Neither of you admit this to each other of course. A war is no time for something as silly and trivial as love and romance and you both know that neither of you have time for a relationship. So you both pine and yearn in silence, either from your fortresses miles away from each other, or several feet apart on the rare occasions you meet up in person—so close yet still so far.
In one of your letters you relay to Lilia your worry that someone might be catching on. Lilia's heart twists in fear and his mind races with paranoid thoughts and possibilities. He doesn't show any concern in his response aside from acknowledging your worry, but he does tell you to be careful. He reasons that it would be unfortunate for the fae if their most valuable informant were to be discovered. (he activated tsundere mode to cope)
He sends the letter and goes about his duties. Days pass. Weeks. He realises during some off-time that he hasn't heard from you in a while. More time passes. No sign of a response from you.
Lilia says to himself that it's fine. It's nothing. It's no big deal. You're probably just occupied, or finally realised how dangerous it was to keep associating with the enemy. It's fine. The fae forces have managed before without your assistance. It's fine it's fine it's fine
he's not fine
(Part 2)
427 notes
·
View notes
Listen, we know Bruce was traumatized by his parents’ death but I hold that even before they were killed Bruce Wayne was a little weirdo. Like his paranoia and difficulty with emotion and attachment are from that terrible night. But I imagine 8 year old Brucie was OCD as hell and painstakingly arranging and rearranging his things to his satisfaction. He was meticulous, even as a child, very detail oriented. Highly intelligent, showing a boundless curiosity and determination to understand everything from a young age. I bet he was hell to enforce bedtimes on, always to do much to do and too little hours in the day.
Bruce was that kid who dragged bugs in the house for study, pulled down all the books on one shelf so could arrange them in height order, skittered around the house’s many passages like a little rat. He was the kid who was happy and cheerful but a bit awkward from growing up a Wayne, he would much rather squirrel away somewhere with a book considered too old for him than talk with people he didn’t know. He loved the macabre in the way weird little kids too, he wanted to see Zorro for the action and the violent fight scenes. Thomas and Martha Wayne had to listen to their precocious son ask them time and again how they thought they would die and listen to his speculations.
I want the Justice League to have to go back in time for whatever reason and they expect Bruce to be a delightful, happy, normal child. Instead, they find a kid with a lovingly worn Sherlock Holmes omnibus under one arm, an entire bag of raisins in the other, dark circles under his eyes from late nights reading and he’s covered in dust and debris from getting stuck behind the drywall again.
“You’re not mom and dad’s friends,” he’d say in a petulant voice with a familiar set of his mouth. “I’m gonna call my butler and he’s going to kick your butt.” And the whole League loses their mind because Bruce really has always been Bruce.
5K notes
·
View notes
every so often i get possessed by my childhood friends dead on main au and i turn to danny like a specter and froth at the mouth over him, and i get weirdly poetic. Like oh? Oh? Did crime alley do a number on you, kid? Did it turn you into something that bites? Something cruel, that claws? And kicks? Are you something full of grief, tainted and smeared with the oilsin of Gotham? You're not getting that off, scrub all you like Macbeth, it's not coming off. Oh, you're submissive? No, no, you're submissive like a dog on a chain is, are you wearing your muzzle? Oh, you took it off? Are you going to bite? Better make it hurt then. You better make them bleed. Better clamp on so tight they have to pry you off. You better take some skin with you. You're not the gun, guns don't hurt people. The bullet does, are you the bullet? You better be, if anything, Crime Alley raised you to be nothing else. What's your trigger, my friend? Whose gun are you in?
69 notes
·
View notes
The thing about Prowl is I don't really think canon was ever trying to frame him as a "necessary evil" or anything along the lines of "he's a shitty person but his work was necessary" like mmm.... That feels very much like something Prowl wants to believe about himself, not something that's actually factually true in reality.
I can't really make a good argument about it because I only remember like a handful of standout Prowl Moments in IDW1 but like... Prowl dropping a bomb on a neutral city and blaming it on the Decepticons is not "a necessary evil," that's a war crime. Prowl trying to destroy the space bridge to Caminus to keep Starscream from getting power over it, dooming the entire planet and its inhabitants to extinction by starvation, is not "a necessary evil," it's a fucking war crime. I feel like trying to frame such drastic measures as him "doing the dirty work of the Autobots" feels way too much like an excuse for actions that actually aren't justifiable. Especially since Prowl himself is far from being the 100% rational guy he thinks he is, considering how often he bases his decisions on things like his anti-Decepticon bias and his general refusal to follow any orders that contradict what he thinks is The Right Thing To Do (TM).
But also I think this is kind of the fault of the narrative of IDW1, since very few Autobots besides Prowl are given the chance to actually be morally gray even when the worldbuilding implicates them in some very morally gray things. Like, for example, JRO adding in the existence of MTOs which implies that the normally squeaky-clean leader Optimus was willing to approve the creation of new soldiers just to throw them into combat (and even the attempts to humanize the MTOs by giving them "an education" were eventually cut down to nothing but combat optimizations). And there's also the fact that Optimus knows about the Wreckers and has been known to call them on missions at least once (Stormbringer), meaning he's very much aware of the Wreckers and their tactics and is willing to call them in for fights when it's necessary.
I don't think you need to use Prowl as a crutch to make the Autobots morally gray. I think the Autobot leadership (or at least, Optimus, since few people besides him or Prowl seem to have major tactical command over the army as a whole) is plenty morally gray enough on its own, because the nature of war is inherently morally gray no matter how righteous your cause is. Reducing the lives of your own people into numbers on maps, harvesting resources, bringing MTOs to life just to die in a war they practically have no stake in, those things are enough.
And tbh it kind of bothers me when people try to saddle Prowl with the "dirty work of the Autobots", not just because it frames Prowl's blatantly evil actions as some sort of savior act taking the blame from the rest of the Autobots (which isn't even accurate, because the blame for war crimes falls on the entire army as an institution rather than one person), but because it downplays the moral grayness of the Autobots and pretends that no Autobot BESIDES Prowl ever participated in morally gray actions, which simply isn't true.
TLDR: Prowl isn't as much of a hero as he thinks he is because committing atrocities in the name of your cause doesn't change the fact that they're atrocities (and may not have even been justified). However, painting Prowl as the "token evil teammate" of sorts also places too much blame for the atrocities of war on him in particular, when in reality that's a burden shared by Optimus Prime and any other members of the Autobot military command structure.
239 notes
·
View notes
what do you think it would be like if (and assume that in this Ezio is affected in his actual life by everything Desmond does) When Desmond started in on Ezio’s memories, he accidentally turned on Eagle vision and couldn’t turn it off and so came to the conclusion that Ezio was just color blind- while Ezio is having a major crisis over why he sees everything and nothing all the time! And after Ezio finally accepts this is just how things are now- Desmond finds the off switch and the fallout of color commences at the worst possible time
Considering the first time Desmond connect with Ezio was during his birth, this means that Ezio would believe he is color blind growing up. It would probably be something the Auditores would hide to everyone and Ezio would grow up believing seeing the gray world is some kind of ‘curse’. The truth is his parents are hiding it because they know Ezio isn’t color blind, he sees the blues and the reds. Ezio believes those colors are just part of the gray world he sees but Giovanni knows that this is a sign that Ezio is special, to the eyes of the Brotherhood… and the Templar Order. They’re trying to protect Ezio and his siblings help. Claudia picks his clothes to be sure he doesn’t pick disastrous color combination (by Renaissance standards). Federico would find ways to talk about the colors of this and that so Ezio would have an idea of what color they are in case he needs it later on. Petruccio plays with Ezio of ‘guess the color’ and it helps Ezio differentiate the gray hues or, at the very least, memorize what color they were supposed to be.
And then…
Desmond connects with Ezio again.
I have a feeling you were going for maybe something like Desmond deactivates the Eagle Vision during the Auditore execution but what if…
Desmond didn’t deactivate it but the Animus loaded the next memory on ‘default settings’ which includes…
The Eagle Vision being deactivated.
The next time Desmond connects with Ezio, it took the Animus a bit of time to load everything properly so the settings are changed just after Vieri hit Ezio with the stone.
Ezio’s frozen because his entire world burst into colors.
He can’t even see the sickening red of Vieri anymore.
Just… so many different colors he had never seen before.
And Ezio would assume it was Vieri’s stone that ‘cured’ him of his curse.
And in his delight, he rushed Vieri.
… and kissed him in the lips in gratitude.
Vieri and everyone else are simply confused, wondering if Ezio Auditore da Firenze has gone insane.
He was laughing, even going as far as dancing with the stupefied Vieri.
It was only when Federico got there that Ezio let go of Vieri and told him as he hugged his brother, “I can see!”
Federico realized what he means and he gets Ezio out of there, apologizing to Vieri and telling him they’d kick his ass later.
And the next memory Desmond sees is Ezio’s family being happy and hugging him because he can now see.
Desmond is just confused.
Sooooo… Ezio was blind before???
That’s what Desmond assumed until he activated the Eagle Vision again to check his surrounding after Ezio receives his father’s orders to bring some documents to Lorenzo de’ Medici then he heard Ezio’s sharp intake of breath and how he started to panic. Ezio ran back home and tells his father that he can no longer see anymore and their conversation tipped Desmond off that they’re talking about the Eagle Vision.
He deactivates it and got his confirmation when Ezio told his father that he can see again.
And Desmond starts to freak out because this means he can… what? Change what the Animus is showing? Change the past?
“That’s ridiculous, Desmond. The Animus can only show the past. This is probably some kind of bug.” Lucy would try to tell him but he can’t shake off the feeling that it might be something more.
Because of how frightened Ezio had been to lose his ability so see colors, his father tells him to rest in the house for now and orders Federico to deliver the documents instead.
Federico returns soon enough to Claudia and Petruccio with Ezio, trying to get him to relax a bit. Claudia didn’t even read the letter she had received today because she had been worried about Ezio.
So when the guards came to take them away…
Ezio was there.
… with Desmond who can control Ezio.
… with the skills from his waking bleed of Altaïr.
103 notes
·
View notes