#every other fascist government did on the planet did? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

smokeybrandreviews · 8 months

Text

Incorrect

Pardon this deluge of Star Wars content but Ahsoka has me reeling. Episode five really recontextualized so much about the Clone Wars (and the prequels, themselves), it’s incredibly difficult not to reexamine my previous perceptions of that part of the mythos. The realization that the Jedi Order effectively sent children to their deaths, that they gave actual teenagers command of entire clone units, is absolutely horrifying to properly understand. Sure, when it’s a cartoon, it’s all in good fun. But seeing all that carnage in live action, teenage Ahsoka standing there next to Hayden’s Anakin? That was a lot. The realization that Ahsoka Tano, one of the most powerful Jedi, trained by THE most powerful Jedi, is little more than a weapon to be used for some Republic trade dispute, is so goddamn bleak, I can’t stand it. Coming to terms with the sheer brutality thrust upon Tano, and every other Padawan at the time, is something which has skewed the very morality of the Jedi for me. I can’t see these cats as the “good guys” anymore. How can they be? The Jedi Council committed war crimes! Like, they’re no better than the Sith in that regard and that’s so weird to say out loud. I grew up with the OG trilogy so, for me, there was a stark delineation between Jedi and Sith. Luke and Obi-Wan were Jedi. Upstanding, wise, and compassionate. Good guys. Vader and Palpatine were Sith; Straight up space fascists with anger problems and a mean-streak that could destroy planets. Bad guys. There was a quaint black and white to the dynamic of the galaxy far, far, away. After that episode of Ahsoka, the child soldier thing paints the Jedi just as atrocious. Sending children to die strictly for Republic interests, is the worst kind of imperialism. It’s staggering to me that more people don’t see that. If the Jedi judged sending children to war morally correct, how can you trust that judgment? How can you not question every choice they ever made? Hoe can you not question their treatment of Anakin?

Anakin mentioned to Ahsoka that he was trained to be a peacekeeper but was he really? I mean, Obi-wan probably did his best to bring the kid up properly but let’s be honest; That was a losing fight. Qui-Gon plucked Anakin from a planet where he spent the first eleven years of his life as a proper slave. No one knows what little Annie endured during that time. Tatooine was a hellscape of violence and depravity, ruled over by the Hutts. This crime family had free range on that planet, a fact the Republic turned a blind eye toward until they needed an alliance against the Trade Federation. How f*cked up is that? Anakin wanted off of that world so bad, he wanted to be free, and he believed from the bottom of his heart, that the Jedi would deliver he and his mother from bondage. But, when Jedi actually show up, it’s not as liberators but as middlemen. F*cking negotiators on behalf of the government, trying to cut a deal with the crime boss who allowed the cruelty of slavery to ensnare Anakin. On a whim, he catches Qui-Gon's interest and they take Anakin. Alone. They left his mother in bondage and at the mercy of that debauched world. They don't even send anyone for her because that's not the Jedi way. Emotional attachments lead to the Dark Side, so sayeth the wise and moral Jedi Code.

They fly to Courasant on the promise Anakin will become a Jedi, himself, probably in hopes of gaining enough power to free his still enslaved mother, only to be dismissed as too old by the Council. Because he was too old for the indoctrination. Those first eleven years of a Jedi’s “training” are for severing the emotional bonds which make you human. It’s for “teaching” you how to suppress your emotions because, again, according to the Jedi, emotions are bad. Anakin, already wildly powerful in the Force, couldn’t be brainwashed into a Jedi zombie because that ship had chronologically sailed. He knew his mother. He was very attached to her. He was quietly crushing on Padme. It was far too late to install those mental blocks of control. But, Qui-Gon being Qui-Gon, opted to train Annie anyway. Until he was murdered by a Sith Lord the Council refused to acknowledge as real. So it fell on Obi-Wan to do the job, even though there was a very strong chance that the eleven year old Anakin was just as powerful as he was. Kid was set in his ways and probably wildly traumatized from a life of bondage. Doesn’t help that, during a crucial time in his adolescent life, a f*cking cold war started and Anakin spent his teenage years “peace keeping” throughout the galaxy at the behest of the Republic; Not at all the enforcers for a government so corrupt, an entire Sith Lord had risen through its ranks like it was nothing.

A decade of this sh*t later and Anakin gets promoted to Jedi Knight out of reluctant desperation, forgoing the actual trials necessary to test the mettle of his character, because the cold war he grew up in got real hot, real fast. So now he’s one of the preeminent muscle men of the Republic and, arguably, their best weapon to boot. The Council recognizes this and instead of getting him the, you know, counseling needed to deal with that life long trauma, they saddled Anakin with a Padawan who is just as precocious as he was. Now, don’t misunderstand me. Ahsoka was good for Anakin. She forced him to mature and become more than just “The Chosen One.” Dude had to set an example for his kid sister and he did just that. But then she walked away from all of that Jedi nonsense, disillusioned and conflicted, much like her Master. He tried to get her to stay, pleading with her on behalf of the Council, but if we’re being honest, that was just Anakin trying to convince himself that Ahsoka wasn’t right to leave. That was Anakin trying to convince himself to stay in the Order. That Dooku wasn’t right. That Palpatine wasn’t right. The brainwashing didn’t take. He was too old. The trials were skipped. He wasn’t tested. Anakin Skywalker, the slave plucked from the Syndicate planet, Tatooine, thrust into the world of space wizards, political espionage, backdoor dealings, and war, at the age of eleven. Expected to be some grand savior of a cosmic unknown, never fully trusted or accepted by his peers. He was rejected by his heroes, had his father figured killed by a maniac, and then became a glorified goon for a Republic that had no qualms with sending people to die over trade tariffs. And you wonder why he fell.

We didn't get to seem eleven year old Anakin on missions. We didn't get to see teenage Anakin slaughtering across the galaxy in the name of keeping the Republic's definition of peace. There isn't a movie for that. But I did see a teenage Ahsoka, standing next to her adult Master, in the middle of an active battlefield and that f*cked me up. She was a child. A teenager, sure, but a child nonetheless. And Anakin was even younger than that! Seriously, let's not mince words here, Anakin Skywalker has been in the field with Obi-Wan Kenobi since he was probably twelve or thirteen years old. It's canon that Anakin is one of the best duelists in history. You don't get that food from practice. You get that good practically, out of necessity. That's how Ahsoka became as skilled as she did and Anakin is even moreso. If the two mirror each other, as they very obviously do, that means Sky Guy was just as honed and sharpened to be a soldier, as Tano was. Only Anakin was honest about it to his Padawan where as Obi-Wan, and the greater Jedi Order, were not. They sold Anakin a lie, preyed on his youth and immaturity, ignore his pain and vulnerability, then went full shocked Pikachu when he turned up to slaughter all of the Younglings. Like, What the f*ck did you expect to happen? You turned the most powerful Jedi to ever live, a slave for the first decade of his life, and instead of showing this kid compassion and patience, you thrust him into a cold war as an enforcer for ideals he can't possibly understand. You let his mom die, tell him he can't love his wife, and chase away his little sister even after proving her innocence. Anakin had a choice, of course. We all do. But, if we're being honest, from his perspective, knowing the life he has led, how is the Jedi Council any better than Palpatine's Galactic Empire? What;s the difference between a absolutist regime who sends children to the front lines of war “in the name of peace”and an intergalactic fascists state?

#Star Wars #Lucasfilm #Anakin SKywalker #Darth Vader #Ahsoka #Star Wars: Ahsoka

14 notes · View notes

lolotheparagon · 6 months

Note

What's the story behind the Ironites in Star Cross Warriors?

The Ironites lived on the futuristic metal world of Ironos (which is like if Cybertron was run by toxic masculine warrior culture) and their planet’s fascist government has caused so much warmongering on other planets that they have wasted their own resources and the whole planet is in disarray and everyone is in despair. Tombsteel, who was once an archivist who was kidnapped by the council and was tortured/experimented on until he became a towering, powerful robot capable of mass destruction and the council used him as a figure of fear to silence the Ironites into submission. However, Tombsteel grew conscious of how much the Ironites feared him and he escaped the council’s control to become a vigilante to use his newfound powers for good. During this time, he saved and befriended a group of misfit Ironites (who are the only people left in Ironos who aren’t dead, imprisoned or brainwashed soldiers) tired of constantly living in an oppressed world and they all decide to steal a ship from a docking station and set off to find a new home. After tricking the King’s ignorant son Silverlance into handing over secret entry codes for a spaceship, Tombsteel manage to find one for his friends and tries to call them over to hop aboard, but they are all caught by the Ironite Army and the council sentence Tombsteel to exile via black hole and the rest of the rebels are sentenced to prison. It is said on Ironos that the black hole will lead any poor Ironite soul who falls into its abyss will be sent to a place worse than hell, and what’s worse they have no idea what kind of place it even is…

And that’s when Tombsteel lands in Prettiopia. After waking up to find himself in a cute, pastel world full of cute critters, Tombsteel was so frightened of the “demons” at first but he soon befriends and protects the Prettiopians, even becoming a father figure to the Princess Parfait and is now proud to call Prettiopia his new home.

As for the other Ironites, back on Ironos they all managed to break out of their cells and decide to jump into the black hole to find Tombsteel, which leads them all to crash land into Prettiopia (with Silverlance in tow) and they are now being tasked by Parfait and Tombsteel to get them to fit into their new home and end up falling in love with Prettiopia the same way Tombsteel did.

For each of the Ironites misfits backstories:

Irogun is a ex-war general who’s terrible leadership skills and abuse of his soldiers got his entire fleet killed in battle. And the only reason the Ironite Council stripped him of his title was that one battle cost them millions in resources. Being self-exiled, Irogun became very jaded and nihilistic in his old age and wants to provide wisdom and advice to his new group of friends but fears he will never be taken seriously again and will only let his anger and pride take control. Until he decides to become a martial arts teacher instead and one Prettiopian, Florabelle, becomes his first student and Irogun has to learn that there are different ways to teach people and that it’s important to be patient and understanding as a teacher

Alumina was a famous gladiator back on Ironos who won countless battles in the arena but behind the scenes, she was frequently mocked by her manager and other women gladiators for her hobbies in writing and poetry and was also mocked for showing too much emotion. Alumina then suffered a mental breakdown that cost her her job and was immediately replaced by a younger, more attractive gladiator. After landing in Prettiopia, the comedian Merriberry decided to be her best friend and she helps Alumina to embrace her feminine side and that all her hobbies and emotions are nothing to be ashamed of.

Myrcuri is a scientist and was born with mercury all over his body that caused every Ironite to melt and fizzle if anyone so much as goes near him. As such, he got a reputation for being a walking plague and has been a recluse ever since, leaving him very timid and weak-willed. Until Tombsteel found him and let him join the misfits. After landing in Prettiopia, he’s astonished to learn that not only is the Prettiopians are completely immune to the mercury on his body, but also that they want to learn about science (which is interesting because Prettiopia is a world fuelled by magic) so Myrcuri decides to become Prettiopia’s first scientist to teach more Prettiopians about the wonders of science. He also becomes a big brother figure to Willow, the laidback wolf, as he helps her learn about Ironite technology and she helps him come out of his shell to be more outgoing and assertive.

Neonyx was a vagrant Ironite who often gave Ironite Army guards the slip and stole artefacts and salvaged parts in order to make enough money to survive. But being an orphaned man constantly on the run made Neo very lonely, until Tombsteel found him and gave him a place to stay and protection from the Army. After landing in Prettiopia, he becomes attached to Ragamuffin, the little squirrel rebel, and treats him like a little brother. The two go on a lot of adventures from hiking to searching hidden ruins in Prettiopia. Neonyx’s mature attitude calms Rags’ fiery tantrums and teaches him to be a more well-rounded person to use his sneaky skills for more productive purposes and to outlet his anger more healthily.

And finally, Silverlance was Prince of Ironos and was blissfully unaware of the plight of his people and was in a bubble of luxury and privilege his entire life, only interested in the fantasy of knights and chivalry. However, he never managed to please his father due to his irresponsible behaviour and flamboyant nature. One night, Tombsteel broke into his chambers and threatened him to give them the codes to his secret fleet of spaceships his daddy gave him so Tombsteel can get a ship to fly off planet. Silver was forced to comply and after leaving the palace, finally got the wake up call to see the utter destruction his father, the council and his army has wrought upon Ironos. And what’s worse, Silverlance is too late to do anything to fix it. After Tombsteel was exiled and the misfits arrested. Silverlance manages to find them escaping their cells and tries to catch them (in order to look good in front of his dad) but ends up knocking himself out and crashes into the group as they leap down the black hole with them. After landing in Prettiopia, he is the quickest to get attached to the Prettiopians as he finally gets to embrace his theatrical side that he was confirmed to keep hidden. However, he can’t make things right again as a prince by leading the Prettiopians as they already have a leader (Parfait) and nor can he lead the Ironite misfit gang (Tombsteel) as he’s already the butt-monkey of the group so he’s been the most desperately seeking a purpose out of all of the Ironites. However, Fabricorn the local seamstresses and fashion designer befriends him and he decides to become an actor instead with Fabricorn designing his costumes and he in turn teaches her how to be a knight. And the two end up forming an unlikely friendship.

5 notes · View notes

thepalmofyourfreezinghand · 11 months

Note

Can you guys comprehend sarcasm - that was the atheism comment. Like I hundred percent did not take it as a completely serious thing... it's like man, religious people get offended when you discuss abortions with them near but when is it my turn?

Some of these Matty things could be resolved if you all actually were not hell-bent on interpreting stuff in a way that "offends" you.

Same goes for emasculating comment about Taylor which was said yeeaaarsss ago.

Similar can be applied to this interview where he clearly means to say criticizing big religions is a bit of a problem and islam as such is a good example because critcising that religion is actually closely intertwined with actual racism towards people who participate in that religion. But you all have not had a single debate or reading comprehension class idk mate it's becoming more difficult to understand people.

And so when you are going headfirst through the wall on these issues, NO ONE can take you seriously if you want to actually address smth of value regarding him being an idiot asshole.

Not you saying that I’ve never had a single debate or reading comprehension class when I was literally a finalist in a national debate competition in high school and I read 50+ classics a year ahskshsjsjsj.

1. First of all, in his interview he made the specific example of Islam. He could’ve chosen Christianity and we likely wouldn’t be having this conversation, but he didn’t! He said those things as an atheist who lives in a country where the majority of people are Christian, and Muslim people are a minority. Do you realize that this context matters? I’m in the same condition as he is: I’m an atheist living in a Catholic country. You realize that, since I live in a country where there are 100.000 churches and only 12 Mosques (unfortunately a true story), because the construction of new Mosques is opposed by so many people, a country where Muslim people are still discriminated against, it’s not the same for me to criticize Catholicism or to criticize Islam?

2. He said “Nowadays, I think if you’re like piously religious, if you’re dogmatically faithful, you should be kind of ashamed of yourself”. How is that not offensive? How is that not ignorant? Why should you offend so many people instead of talking about SPECIFIC things and specific behaviors and specific acts? In Italian we say “fare di tutta l’erba un fascio”, which means “to bundle all the grass together”. You can translate it as “mixing apples with oranges”. Well, why is he doing that? Has he personally met every single pious person on the planet? What gives him the right to say that they should be ashamed of themselves? There’s plenty to criticize about the misinterpretation of religion (like the protests by Christians outside of abortion clinics or what’s happening in Iran). So, why on earth is he attacking PEOPLE instead of condemning specific ACTIONS or GOVERNMENTS? People who follow a religion dogmatically and don’t hurt others have nothing to be ashamed of, are you kidding me? I don’t think he understands the difference between criticizing a religion and being racist towards its members, or he wouldn’t have said something that has such strong racist undertones.

And I’m the FIRST to criticize Catholicism. Hell, I talk shit about Catholicism (which is the religion practiced by the majority in my country) every single day. You know what I don’t do, though? I don’t criticize the people who believe in a religion, especially not those who are also minorities.

3. The funny thing is that atheists have plenty of rights. Our right not to be “offended” by religion or not to have to deal with religion is protected. I can only speak for my own country, but we’ve had tons of sentences from the constitutional court about the rights of atheist not to be subject to religion (like a beautifully reasoned sentence about the right of students not to attend religion classes, which were inserted as mandatory during the fascist period). There are limits to this, obviously. For example, because of the influence of Catholicism, Italy is still the only country in Western Europe to only grant a civil union, and not also marriage, to people of the same sex. But that has everything to do with the influence of Catholicism and nothing to do with the rights of atheists, because there are also tons of same-sex Christian couples who would wanna marry. Atheists per se have all the rights they (we) want.

So yeah.

1. Can you really call it sarcasm if it falls flat and it’s stupid and it’s intertwined with racism?

2. He talked specifically about Islam, which is a minority. And again, context matters: you can’t come here and make the example of abortion clinics to defend his case when he was SPECIFICALLY talking about Islam and falling into stereotypes.

3. He talked about people when the problem isn’t single people who practice a religion.

Hope that helps!

#matty healy

8 notes · View notes

ladyscroogeblr · 2 months

Text

Trump,

Trump is nothing compared to our President Joe Biden! Trump wss the worst president, ever! He has no idea what he was doing, most of the time! Trump was clueless how are government ran! Still doesn't! Handled the covid pandemic by pretty much ignoring it except when he told people to inject bleach into their bodies! Never cleaned the swamp! Watched tv, usually 8 hours a day! Wanted to get the US out of NATO! He lost the most jobs as president since Hoover! Trump is stupid. A very bad business man! Tried to run the presidency like a business. Made over a billion as President! He paid more taxes in China then here! Refused to released his taxes. Cheated on his taxes. He looks and acts like he cognitivity is gone down hill! Can't remember what city he is in. A lot of times he babbles about things we have no idea what he's talking about! Gets Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley confused! Says Obama is the current president more then once! Said he ran against Hilary and Obama in 2016! Keeps saying Biden is the most corrupt president ever when he actually was! Most world leaders hated Trump and laughed at him and the United States when he was in office! Is a convicted sex offender. Has 91 criminal indictments against him! Is unhealthy! Knows the McDonald's menu then the employees! Eats unhealthy all the time! Says he looks better then Biden! Doesn't exercise because he believes it wears down the body! He worst excuse I've ever heard not to exercise! Most people who worked in the White House could not believe how stupid is was! Trumps says he was everyone's favorite president! Doesn't like soldiers who end up as prisons of war! He calls them losers! Especially John McCain who was a prison of war for 6 and a half years! He's he's head of the MAGA Republicans! Has Mike Johnson eating out if his hand! Tried to sensor Jimmy Kimmel because was telling jokes abouthim! Trump his a bully! An insecure brat! A whiner! Every other word out of his mouth is a lie! Never pays his bills. Brained washed Michael Cohen! Has hired the worse lawyers on the planet! Truth Social is a big joke! He said it would over take Twitter! Buried 1st wife Ivana on his New Jersey golf course to get a tax break! Her grave site is totally neglected! If he could and get a way with it, he'd have sex with daughter Ivanka! Trump is a pervert! A fascist! A bigot! A racist! Arrogant! Pathetic! Disgusting! Unhinged! Still says the the 2020 election was rigged! Trump is head of his own cult! Has cheated on all his wives! Had sex with a poor star he tried to pay off without anyone knowing! Treats Don Jr and Eric badly! Both are pretty stupid! Jr acts like is on drugs! Trump loves Fox News! Loves diet Coke! Sold tons or President documents after he left office. Keep most of TBE documents at Mar a Lago.. Pictures have shown the documents where in the Ballroom and a bathroom for example! He said he took them because he wanted to and said he has presidential immunity! No he does and no president has! The judge head if this case is a hard core Trumpster! This case might not making to count until after 2024 election! Doesn't read. Never has released his school records. Is not religious even though A lot of religious people say he is! The guy us Satan! Played down how serious his covid case was! Wears orange make up which makes him look like a clown! Trashed NFL players for taking A knee during the National anthem! Tried to get involved with this matter with the NFL! Didn't like it either when the NBA and MLB did it! Back in the day he tried to buy the Buffalo Bills. Couldn't do it when he could not get a bank loan! Hated when sports teams won championships and refused to go the White House! Hated his vice president Mike Pence. More later!

#trump #not away #needs to be stopped

0 notes

smokeybrand · 8 months

Text

Incorrect

1 note · View note

qqueenofhades · 3 years

Note

Do you really hate this county? Or were you just ranting?

Sigh. I debated whether or not to answer this, since I usually keep the real-life/politics/depressing current events to a relative minimum on this blog, except when I really can't avoid ranting about it. But I have some things to get off my chest, it seems, and you did ask. So.

The thing is, any American with a single modicum of genuine historical consciousness knows that despite all the triumphalist mythology about Pulling Up By Our Bootstraps and the American Dream and etc, this country was founded and built on the massive and systematic exploitation and extermination of Black and Indigenous people. And now, when we are barely (400 years later!!!) getting to a point of acknowledging that in a widespread way, oh my god the screaming. I'm so sick of the American right wing I could spit for so many reasons, not least of which is the increasingly reductive and reactive attempts to put the genie back in the bottle and set up hysterical boogeymen about how Teaching Your Children Critical Race Theory is the end of all things. They have forfeited all pretense of being a real governing party; remember how their only platform at the 2020 RNC was "support whatever Trump says?" They have devolved to the point where the cruelty IS the point, to everyone who doesn't fit the nakedly white supremacist mold. They don't have anything to do aside from attempt to usher in actual, literal, dictionary-definition-of-fascism and sponsor armed revolts against the peaceful transfer of power.

That is fucking exhausting to be aware of all the time, especially with the knowledge that if we miss a single election cycle -- which is exceptionally easy to do with the way the Democratic electorate needs to be wooed and courted and herded like cats every single time, rather than just getting their asses to the polls and voting to keep Nazis out of office -- they will be right back in power again. If Manchin and Sinema don't get over their poseur pearl-clutching and either nuke the filibuster or carve out an exception for voting rights, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is never going to get passed, no matter how many boilerplate appeals the Democratic leadership makes on Twitter. In which case, the 2022 midterms are going to give us Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that) and right back to the Mitch McConnell Obstruction Power Hour in the Senate. The Online Left (TM) will then blame the Democrats for not doing more to stop them. These are, of course, the same people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton out of precious moral purity reasons in 2016, handed the election to Trump, and now like to complain when the Trump-stacked Supreme Court reliably churns out terrible decisions. Gee, it's almost like elections have consequences!!

Aside from my exasperation with the death-cult right-wing fascists and the Online Left (TM), I am sick and tired of how forty years of "trickle-down" Reaganomics has created a world where billionaires can just fly to space for the fun of it, while the rest of America (and the world) is even more sick, poor, overheated, economically deprived, and unable to survive the biggest public health crisis in a century, even if half the elected leadership wasn't actively trying to sabotage it. Did you know that half of American workers can't even afford a one-bedroom apartment? Plus the obvious scandal that is race relations, health care, paid leave, the education system (or lack thereof), etc etc. I'm so tired of this America Is The Greatest Country in the World mindless jingoistic catchphrasing. We are an empire in the late stages of collapse and it's not going to be pretty for anyone. We have been poisoned on sociopathic-libertarian-selfishness-disguised-as-Freedom ideology for so long that that's all there is left. We have become a country of idiots who believe everything their idiot friends post on social media, but in a very real sense, it's not directly those individuals' fault. How could they, when they have been very deliberately cultivated into that mindset and stripped of critical thinking skills, to serve a noxious combination of money, power, and ideology?

I am tired of the fact that I have become so drained of empathy that when I see news about more people who refused to get the vaccine predictably dying of COVID, my reaction is "eh, whatever, they kind of deserved it." I KNOW that is not a good mindset to have, and I am doing my best to maintain my personal attempts to be kind to those I meet and to do my small part to make the world better. I know these are human beings who believed what they were told by people that they (for whatever reason) thought knew better than them, and that they are part of someone's family, they had loved ones, etc. But I just can't summon up the will to give a single damn about them (I'm keeping a bingo card of right-wing anti-vax radio hosts who die of COVID and every time it's like, "Alexa, play Another One Bites The Dust.") The course that the pandemic took in 21st-century America was not preordained or inevitable. It was (and continues to be) drastically mismanaged for cynical political reasons, and the legacy of the Former Guy continues to poison any attempts to bring it under control or convince people to get a goddamn vaccine. We now have over 100,000 patients hospitalized with COVID across the country -- more than last summer, when the vaccines weren't available.

I have been open about my fury about the devaluation of the humanities and other critical thinking skills, about the fact that as an academic in this field, my chances of getting a full-time job for which I have trained extensively and acquired a specialist PhD are... very low. I am tired of the fact that Americans have been encouraged to believe whatever bullshit they fucking please, regardless of whether it is remotely true, and told that any attempt to correct them is "anti-freedom." I am tired of how little the education system functions in a useful way at all -- not necessarily due to the fault of teachers, who have to work with what they're given, and who are basically heroes struggling stubbornly along in a profession that actively hates them, but because of relentless under-funding, political interference, and furious attempts, as discussed above, to keep white America safely in the dark about its actual history. I am tired of the fact that grade school education basically relies on passing the right standardized tests, the end. I am tired of the implication that the truth is too scary or "un-American" to handle. I am tired. Tired.

I know as well that "America" is not synonymous in all cases with "capitalist imperialist white-supremacist corporate death cult." This is still the most diverse country in the world. "America" is not just rich white middle-aged Republicans. "America" involves a ton of people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, Christians of good will (I have a whole other rant on how American Christianity as a whole has yielded all pretense of being any sort of a principled moral opposition), white allies, etc etc. all trying to make a better world. The blue, highly vaccinated, Biden-winning states and counties are leading the economic recovery and enacting all kinds of progressive-wishlist dream policies. We DID get rid of the Orange One via the electoral process and avert fascism at the ballot box, which is almost unheard-of, historically speaking. But because, as also discussed above, certain elements of the Democratic electorate need to fall in love with a candidate every single time or threaten to withhold their vote to punish the rest of the country for not being Progressive Enough, these gains are constantly fragile and at risk of being undone in the next electoral cycle. Yes, the existing system is a crock of shit. But it's what we've got right now, and the other alternative is open fascism, which we all got a terrifying taste of over the last four years. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to go back.

So... I don't know. I don't know if that stacks up to hate. I do hate almost everything about what this country currently is, structurally speaking, but I recognize that is not identical with the many people who still live here and are trying to do their best, including my friends, family, and myself. I am exhausted by the fact that as an older millennial, I am expected to survive multiple cataclysmic economic crashes, a planet that is literally boiling alive, a barely functional political system run on black cash, lies, and xenophobia, a total lack of critical thinking skills, renewed assaults on women/queer people/POC/etc, and somehow feel like I'm confident or prepared for the future. Not all these problems are only America's fault alone. The West as a whole bears huge responsibility for the current clusterfuck that the world is in, for many reasons, and so do some non-Western countries. But there is no denying that many of these problems have ultimate American roots. See how the ongoing fad for right-wing authoritarian strongmen around the world has them modeling themselves openly on Trump (like Brazil's lunatic president, Jair Bolsonaro, who talks all the time about how Trump is his political role model). See what's going on in Afghanistan right now. Etc. etc.

Anyway. I am very, very tired. There you have it.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #covid for ts #i had a lot to say evidently #rant

812 notes · View notes

dereksmcgrath · 3 years

Text

I had said before that the number 108 can be unlucky. It wasn’t unlucky at all for My Hero Academia: Vigilantes. But 108 is kind of unlucky for this episode: not only are we focusing on the Villains, but we just aren’t giving their story the structure and emotional weight it deserves.

(I either opened with those remarks or just made a bunch of corny jokes about how “Meta Liberation Army” can be abbreviated as MLA--and I’m saving those jokes for a future review.)

“My Villain Academia,” My Hero Academia Episode 108 (Season 5, Episode 20)

An adaptation of Chapters 220, 221, 222, 223, and 224 of the manga, by Kohei Horikoshi, translated by Caleb Cook with lettering by John Hunt and available from Viz.

My Hero Academia is available to stream on Crunchyroll and Funimation.

Spoilers up to My Hero Academia Chapter 325.

When I teach literature, I refer to the plot as a problem: it is something that the protagonist is trying to solve. This problem can take various forms, but it is often as an antagonist that the protagonist confronts. When this episode has the Doctor refer to a “villain” as someone “who turns nonsense into action,” that’s kind of the point: the villain is here to get the plot rolling. Without them, you don’t have a hero, you don’t have a story.

It has been long accepted by a lot of fans and scholars that superheroes tend to uphold the status quo. I think the first time I gained awareness of this popular argument--although likely not the first time I encountered it--was Dr. Horrible’s mangled remark that “the status is not quo.” More recently, however, I have been reading academic books on superheroes, and not only does that argument persist--that superheroes represent law, order, and upholding traditional norms even in the face of new evidence or out of sheer obliviousness to the need for systemic change--but the argument has become that, if a superhero story does not have the heroes doing something to effect systemic change, then it’s not a good story. I may be misunderstanding that argument, but if I don’t, then it’s not an argument I can stand behind.

The argument is that superhero stories tend to reduce complex issues to having avatars for each side of the issue--the good guy and the bad guy--get into a fight, where we are focused on the spectacle rather than on seeing actual people engaging in the actual work needed to address problems not on the individual level--again, one good guy physically fighting one bad guy--but on a larger scope.

I am oversimplifying this argument, as even those same scholars will point out that, initially, of course there were superhero stories that had the protagonist taking the fight against the system. Superman is one of the ones named most frequently, whether in his initial comic book premiere doing what police and media would not to face down a corrupt senator (a sign of things to come in his later fights with Luthor and in Justice League Unlimited) or fighting the Klan (in the meta sense, fighting their analogue on the radio show and, more recently, literally in the comics). It kind of makes Superman look like one influence on the Peerless Thief in My Hero Academia, but we’ll get to him far later in these episodic reviews.

Even with that exception of Superman, it’s not hard for me to agree with the argument that heroes prop up the status quo. That has been the plot point for My Hero Academia and why this war against the villains has been incoming: a system that depended on just All Might, now depending on a wife-beating abusive father like Endeavor with his crimes not popularly known, has a level of corruption that cannot stand up with just one man’s shining example of honest goodness and integrity to be the Symbol of Peace. It was why I appreciated the manga eventually showing that, yes, there was an entire network of assassins within the Hero Public Safety Commission to keep All Might’s hands clean--and, in retrospect, while Lady Nagant was our first named example, given what Hawks ends up doing to Twice, deadly force may be frowned upon by law in MHA but has to have been something Hawks was told he had legal authority to do. (Also, as I will never stop pointing out, Endeavor unintentionally and unknowingly killed another Pro Hero in Vigilantes, and we’re just supposed to pretend that was fine.)

But going back to this academic argument, about how superhero stories tend to stick to one-on-one battles and don’t let the heroes effect systematic change, I’m ambivalent. There have been a range of superhero or superhero-adjacent stories that have the protagonist making on-page, on-screen, obvious work to not just get into fisticuffs with the bad guy. I already pointed out Superman’s first appearance and his fight against the Klan. I can also identify other examples, some hamfisted like Captain Planet, others more nuanced like Korra reaching out to Kuvira in The Legend of Korra. While the scholarship I read bristles at the idea of reducing these fights to just avatars for good and evil, I shrug and say that kind of comes with the territory of a superhero story. I hate justifying tropes: it’s like saying “this fanservice is acceptable because that’s part of the genre”--which leads to its own set of problems, especially when I hear fools defending sexualized fanservice that is just not needed for the story and is abusive by gender and representation. Heck, The Brave and the Bold animated series had Equinox and Batman battle as giants representing the avatars of chaos and order--which is confusing enough, with Equinox having a vaguely yin-yang motif that debunks any clean separation between chaos and order. And yet, here I am, arguing that this kind of fanservice of a hero and a villain beating each other up is to be expected: you have a debate about ideals of what a hero should do when you see Iron Man and Captain America each representing a side in a fight, whether the poorly handled comic book Civil War or the better film version, and even then, that film also lets the individual personalities get in the way of saying anything meaningful about government oversight and individual agency, ideas better handled in that other Captain America film, The Winter Soldier, and even then that film also gets stuck in just being about Steve and Bucky’s relationship.

All of this is me saying that, when you add a superhero to the fight, you’re going to feel disappointed that almost nothing systematically changes in its setting, not only because, as I’m hinting, these are stories about individuals fighting each other and not stories about the individual against society or nature, but also because a superhero can only change so much of their world for the better before that world no longer looks like our own or a new societal problem has to emerge to create the problem that is the plot itself for wherever the story goes next. Once a hero makes the setting into a utopia, either a new problem emerges to show the fiction of that story and that a dystopia is always married to a utopia, or the utopia is revealed to be hollow (Shigaraki’s word of the day) and fake. My Hero Academia already showed the utopia of a world where people get to live with their Quirks is fake, not only by (largely necessary) regulation of those Quirks but also, as we’ll see more with Spinner, Compress, Toga, Gigantomachia, and others, looking different, or being socially aware, or having disabilities, or being the “wrong” size, excluded you from that society.

What I’m trying to say is that, once you add superheroes into a story to fix the problem, you can’t show what systematic change looks like. How do you write a story where it makes sense that no hero came to save Tenko Shimura from becoming Tomura Shigaraki? What’s a story like My Hero Academia supposed to do to show the problems with a society, if you have superheroes who can fix those problems by beating up the bad guys?

Solution: You have the bad guys beat each other up.

In this corner, the League of Villains, people who were made outcasts because they did not fit in--which reveals the flaws of a society that is not accepting people who may not be able to change their past or their bodily conditions.

And in this corner, the Meta Liberation Army--which reveals how society breeds people in business, media, and politics who abuse laws and societal norms to elevate themselves and create a social Darwinist nightmare.

Granted, these are some foolish schmucks for starting up this fight in public, but I’ll address how the MLA just doesn’t work in a later episode review.

But for now, let the fight begin. No matter who wins, at least we see how society at large allowed these Villains to emerge--and we can either see All For One’s dictatorial forces get wrecked, or see Re-Destro’s fascistic oafs get wrecked.

Unfortunately, no matter who wins, the Pro Heroes are going to lose, too.

I am overly impressed with myself for realizing all of this. And I say “overly” not only because this is arrogant of me but also because I’m pretty sure just about every other person following this series already came to this conclusion: if you want to show actual systematic change, you have to show what the villains are up to, because they are the ones showing the holes in our society that need to be fixed. Either a villain exploits those holes to cause damage to people, or the villain is themselves representative of unfairness in the system and, by breaking the law to save themselves and others, are unfairly maligned as villains.

That being said, I’m not a big fan of the “[Insert villain’s name here] was right” arguments. Yes, Magneto is justified in his goals and ethics, and the debate is the means he takes to them, so his existence is to show why the X-Men are screwing up and need to be more radical. Yes, Killmonger is right that Wakanda’s isolationism is reckless and allows for travesties to persist, but his choices are largely out of individual desire for vengeance, so he’s an example that T’Challa can follow. Taken too far, though, and you get people who preach anti-establishment notions without having an alternative or are just trying to sound edgy rather than actually pointing to the actual problem: it’s someone who celebrates the Joker without recognizing that, no, you don’t want to be that asshole, or who celebrate villain-turned-hero Vegeta just because he looks cool and without appreciating what steps he took to change and what fall he experienced before he got to the point of being a villain.

In all these cases, if done poorly, you have the same tired trend of a villain existing only so long so that the hero changes for the better. It’s as tiresome as I unfortunately sometimes feel reading post after post celebrating how complex and sympathetic the League of Villains’ members can be when, still, a lot of them are just assholes using empty excuses to defend atrocious behavior (primarily, just All for One) or, for the most part, are people put into desperate situations (Shigaraki, Toga, Spinner, Dabi, Twice) who are doing the best they can (Twice, Spinner) even if their actions are not defensible (Toga) or also out of line (Shigaraki) due to their own refusal to seek the legitimate help they need to work through their issues (Dabi).

It’s hard to read posts online calling the League members sympathetic when we have not had a chance in the anime to know their full story. And as with the slow revelation that this setting is not really as welcoming of people of all shapes and sizes as initially hinted, so too do the villains’ backstories show that they were justified in some actions they took, except for those that led to deaths. Too bad none of that really pops up in a meaningful way in this episode that would rather tease out Shigaraki’s back story, keep dangling the obvious answer to who Dabi really is, and short-sells what should be a meaningful friendship between Twice and Giran but is just dropped as fast as Shigaraki takes off Twice’s mask. Jeez, Shigaraki, that is a dick move to Twice…

But I’m already on Page 4 of this rant, so let’s get to the episode already.

Pulling back the curtain yet again, these reviews tend to follow a pattern. Since I first wrote about the MHA anime, my process would be to first re-read the chapters, then watch the episode in Japanese, then watch the episode in English, so as to retrace my steps in how I first encountered most of these stories, as well as to see any patterns in the production process moving from manga to anime to localization. But with this episode, that practice was made nearly impossible given how prevalent the hostility towards this episode, this arc, and this season have been, especially when a friend shared numerous reactions from other viewers about this episode. Seriously, for all the whining I just did the previous four pages, you could read this person or this person who are much better at explaining why the introduction of Re-Destro to the anime sucks, for more than one reason.

So, I had a different approach: I already had the flaws to this episode shared with me by other viewers, then I listened to the English dub, then I re-read the chapters, then I watched the Japanese dub with English subtitles.

And, boy, am I grateful I took that approach, because this episode is a ton of talking--too much talking. For an anime adaptation that cut so much of Spinner’s Leonardo from Ninja Turtles narration, I’m shocked that they kept the boring parts of his narration and cut the only good parts, including the very opening that had a lot more action and gave us a reason to sympathize with these Villains.

I know I’m a snob regarding animation; I have expressed before how, despite my love for animated works, I tend to appreciate them more for what they do with storytelling rather than the spectacle of the visuals. I really dislike works where the value of the work is in the animation alone: I am here to see a story unfold, and if there is no narrative, no plot, no beginning-middle-and-end, then what I’m encountering is a museum piece, not a work of cinema. (Feel free to bash me for that hot take: I’m still railing against Patty Jenkins’s ridiculous argument from this week.)

And as with most forms of karmic punishment I experience, I pay the price: if I rail long enough about works that are only all about the animation and not the story, then my punishment is an episode where all we get is a lot of story and not much in the way of animation. Yet I can’t even say we got a story here, so much as back story, exposition, needless narration--it’s Blade Runner only bad. As much as I have loved how this anime’s storyboards stick so close to the manga panels, the pan over the League listening to Shigaraki’s vague back story felt like the least interesting way to handle this scene, especially when it excises so much of Spinner coming around from questioning Shigaraki to sympathizing with him. Who would have imagined cutting so much of Spinner’s initial narration and the opening from Chapter 220 would screw up how to adapt Shigaraki’s back story from Chapter 222.

The anime cuts how this arc begins in the manga: Chapter 220 starts with Spinner facing off against an extremist group that hates him for his reptilian appearance--a moment that would have garnered more sympathy from the audience for these Villains than this episode is exhorting. We needed a scene to get behind these villains and agree with them, before we are shocked to hear Shigaraki say what we have long expected, that he just wants to destroy everything and make everyone as miserable as he has felt, to wake us up that, no, you may sympathize with these outcasts (to use Twice’s one-word self-description), but you shouldn’t agree with Shigaraki’s goals. (I know Shigaraki relents somewhat when asked by Toga, but it’s hard to backtrack from “destroy it all” to “destroy it all but not the stuff my friends like.” How on Earth is Shigaraki going to destroy Izuku when Spinner somewhat admires the guy and Toga...well, yeah, best left unsaid.)

While watching this episode, I also was reviewing other topics about anime and manga I’m going to go into more detail about later this month, and one topic of discussion is the assumption that anime and manga, by their visual style and story tropes, especially shojo and shonen, tend to be about big expressions--emotional outpours in words, movements, facial expressions, and actions to more easily communicate what is happening, regardless of context.

I hate to keep repeating “ambivalent” in my reviews (another academic word I need to expunge from my lexicon for a bit), but I’m ambivalent about that argument, that anime and manga, especially shojo and shonen, are better at communicating. If your character is unreadable, that likely has an intentional reason: we don’t get much of a read on the Doctor in this episode, not helped by his mustache and glasses, but we also don’t get a read on what Shigaraki is up to.

This episode only heightens my regard, not just about anime, manga, shojo, or shonen, but in animation and comics at large, that not everything is readable in what a character is planning.

On the one hand, I do agree that visual works tend to make ideas easier to comprehend for some people who can engage with such visual works. As someone who teaches English literature and writing in a United States setting, I use comics in my teaching to cross language and cultural barriers, especially for students for whom English is not their primary language or who are the first in their family raised in the United States. And this teaching approach also helps in reverse: I include manga and anime in my teaching to show how not all details cross language and cultural barriers in a one-to-one correspondence, hence the challenges of translation and localization, and how all of us struggle to make ourselves understood within our own primary language to someone else who is fluent in that language, let alone trying to translate into another language or to present ourselves in a different set of cultural norms.

On the other hand, anime and manga are not a fixed genre. Yes, I agree that the images tend to emphasize big eyes, big expressions, and big motions--but that’s like saying all animation is Looney Tunes, or all animation is Disney, or is Dragon Ball, and so on. Likewise, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, shonen is more than just one type of storytelling, and the same goes for shojo. This arc of My Hero Academia is placing focus, after admittedly far too long, on the Villains as the protagonists--and their behavior pokes holes in the idea that things are obvious, when the Villains are themselves such liars, so crafty, have their own hidden agendas, are keeping secrets from each other. It’s as if their behavior is a commentary on this plot and how BONES is adapting it: the Villains are keeping secrets, so this plot is going to keep its secrets for just who Re-Destro and the Meta Liberation Army are, what their personalities are like, and what Shigaraki and the Doctor have in mind for getting what he wants. We’re even kept in the dark as to Shigaraki’s full back story; we’re in the same position he is, knowing just little bits and able to make assumptions from a handful of visual cues and memories, without fully knowing who the hell Tenko is. Add to that Spinner’s struggles to narrate all of this and to get into Toga’s mind and Shigaraki’s mind, as well as Dabi’s own secrets and agenda with Hawks, and we have a story that blows up the notion that anime and manga are easier for reading a character’s mindset: no, they are not always easier, not when the creators deliberately mislead the audience or keep them in the dark for a surprise.

By keeping so much of the audience in the dark, so that we become aware of how deceitful villains can be, and we are put into Shigaraki’s place of not knowing where he came from. This should be a set of brilliant choices by BONES to adapt this arc in this manner. But the problem is, no, almost none of this gets anywhere close to brilliant. It’s not brilliant--it’s frustrating, because we already know what is going to happen. You can just pull up the manga at low cost with a Viz account and read all of this in the order it was originally presented and get the answers ahead of time. And if you’ve been reading the manga all along, you already know how this arc ends, and you know stuff from the next set of arcs so that you do know already what Shigaraki’s back story is, what Dabi was really up to, who survives, who dies. You even learn more about Compress’s back story--stuff that really should have been hinted at much earlier in the manga, and could have been hinted in this adaptation but as of this episode has not.

Maybe that is why the anime removes Re-Destro murdering his assistant: it’s such an odd moment that it is challenging for me to get a read on Re-Destro, as he alternates in the manga between being very friendly and devoted to his comrades but also violent and heartless.

It may be obvious that I didn’t like much of this episode. I think when I stopped taking this episode seriously was when I heard the voices. Like I said, I tend to start with the Japanese dub first before getting to the English dub. And I have nothing at all against English dubs: I would not be listening to them as much as I have, often first before I ever hear the Japanese, and I would not be a fan of so many English-speaking actors in dubs if I had any animosity to the craft, their work, and the benefit they provide for creating a larger audience for these stories. And nothing against Larry Brantley and Sonny Strait, but some of this casting feels off. I wasn’t able to take this episode seriously as soon as I heard the voice distortion that was used for Re-Destro’s phone call: that took me out of the story. If I had the chance for localization, I would really need Twice or someone to call out how freaking ridiculous that Mickey Mouse voice sounded. You have freaking Sonny Strait here: use the Krillin voice, use the Chibi Ragnarok voice, use the Usopp voice--use something, really go bizarre here, it’s just a voice distortion device! And as I said, nothing against Strait, but when I hear Re-Destro when I read the manga, that’s not the voice I have in mind. For right now, HIroaki Hirata in the Japanese dub is closer to that smoothness I expected for this character. But I have no doubt Strait will do excellent as Re-Destro’s empowered form: think Strait’s role in The Intruder II from Toonami. It’s just that Re-Destro in the English dub is lacking that odd refinement I was expecting.

Granted, it’s the same problem for me when I hear Brantley as Spinner: I am making unfair assumptions that don’t suit the goals of the creators when it comes to this character. It is sadly not as obvious in this episode as it is in the manga: this arc in the manga starts with Horikoshi invoking Laird and Eastman’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by having Spinner, who is already a sword-wielding reptilian martial artist, narrating just like how Leonardo narrating at the beginning of the very first issue of TMNT. I wanted a voice for the English dub that is like Leonardo’s, a little higher pitch and more youthful, like what Brian Tochi brought in the live-action Turtles film or what Cam Clarke and Michael Sinterniklaas bring in the animated versions. I think, for the Japanese dub, Ryo Iwasaki’s performance as Spinner is very close to what I expected. But that also may seem too obvious: Spinner may be young, but giving him an older-sounding voice can belie his inexperience, youthfulness, and naivete, similar to how people make assumptions about him by his reptilian appearance. The anime is putting me into my place--I think of Spinner one way other than who he really is, so I’m no better than the people around him who have discriminated against him for his physical appearance.

Just as I have a set of assumptions that unfairly influence how I would cast Spinner, I also think Re-Destro should have sounded more refined and less graveley in the English dub. But my expectations belie that, just the Joker whom he resembles, Re-Destro puts on this cultured facade to hide that he is just another violent gangster thug, someone who would kill his own assistant. I know I cited examples above about how complex Re-Destro is, but it’s hard for me to see him as sympathetic just because he’s crying over something he did out of his own volition: he coldly killed his office assistant Miyashita, his tears and kind words don’t suddenly make this a warm and cuddly death, we don’t get to think of him as our woobie. It only makes it more irritating that BONES so far has cut not only that scene of Re-Destro killing Miyashita but also Re-Destro’s TV commercial: it would clue us in that the reason he has that gravelly voice is because, no matter how much he tries to present himself on TV, he is not that kind of a man.

But since I invoked the Joker comparison to Re-Destro, yeah, I’m disappointed we didn’t get Troy Baker as Re-Destro, as unlikely as I imagine that would be to happen, regardless of Baker’s previous work with Funimation. It does lend a bit more to conspiracy theories on my part, though, given casting director Colleen Clinkenbeard telling Twitter followers to stop expecting Mark Hamill in MHA, it’s never happening--we can’t even get Troy Baker doing his Mark Hamill Joker.

(I’m not being fair to Baker: I’m not saying his Joker is at all bad--it is not, he has been excellent as Joker, especially playing him and Batman in the Ninja Turtles crossover film, but it is obvious Baker is performing the kind of Joker that came out of Hamill, so I’m trying to say he’s doing the “Hamill Joker,” rather than the “Nicholson Joker,” the “Ledger Joker,” or the “Caesar Romero Joker”).

It’s also a challenge to sympathize with these characters when we aren’t getting what this arc should give them: a re-introduction. I hate approaching this episode in a post-James Gunn The Suicide Squad world, but seeing how much MHA owes to not The Suicide Squad of the comics but that motif in so many superhero comics, there is that missed opportunity to reacquaint the audience with who are the members of the League of Villains. So, where the hell is my freeze-frame re-introduction to each League member? There was that fan theory a long time ago that Giran was really Present Mic in disguise: imagine doing Present Mic’s introduction of characters by name, Quirk, and pithy comment, only it’s Giran in the announcer seat this time.

(Don’t even get me started on how annoying it is to have Izuku handling the post-credit preview: give that to Spinner.)

Again, maybe it is brilliant for BONES not to include some re-introduction scenes, whether narrated by Giran or happening naturally in conversation between these characters. These Villains barely know each other’s back story, so there’s no artifice where they would believably share their back stories to each other in conversation in this context. And as I said, Shigaraki does not know enough about his own past, and Dabi is hiding his real identity. But when we’re stuck with Spinner as our half-hearted narrator, who seems not to know why he and Toga are still here with Stain being gone, and when Toga is this dull in her answer about what keeps her going after Stain’s arrest, and when Spinner himself seems not to know what he’s still doing here, all of that does not communicate a reason for us to keep going with this story.

I know this arc is going to get better, storywise at least, just based on how it went in the manga. I can only hope that the animation can capture the chaos that the original manga illustrations showed. But I am trying to think what a new viewer is going to do if this is their introduction to this series. I’m not invoking the Episode 7 Rule, I’m not doing a hypothetical experiment to gauge which episodes are the best to bring a newbie into this series--I am asking, honestly, if a fan was already into this series, and was watching it one Saturday morning, and a friend or roommate or relative saw them watching, they would be utterly lost about why they should care about this. Even the explanation for why Twice is indebted to Giran is presented as such an afterthought that does disservice to a potentially emotional moment, to what is supposed to be a pretty deep friendship, as deep as it can be for a weapons trader like Giran and an outcast-turned-criminal like Twice, so that, when Twice helps rescue Giran, we feel that emotional payoff.

It is honestly shocking that, for all the throwbacks, recaps, and flashbacks we get, including how Giran’s fingers match up to previous places where the League fought, that this still leaves a new viewer in the dark. And the problem lies at the feet of MHA arriving at a fifth-season slump: the series has gone on so long that things feel lazy and making far too many assumptions on what knowledge the audience is bringing. You’re not getting a bigger audience if you keep appealing to the diehard fans and the people reading the manga. After all, why would you keep doing ridiculous recaps and flashbacks if the fans already know what happened?

But speaking of the recaps and flashbacks, that should have been how this episode redeemed itself. As I said last time, if you re-worked the order of episodes to start with the Oboro Shirakumo story, that would be more shocking. But what if this episode could have been the very first episode of the season, and following the trend of previous seasons, make it a recap episode? We already had Izuku narrating a clip show, Class 1A at the pool, a photojournalist visiting the UA Dorms--it would be so much more interesting seeing “League of Villains camping in the woods while in the background Shigaraki gets squished by a giant.” Have the Villains tell campfire stories about how they got here: it would be a great excuse to re-use the animation and save on the budget. You could fit in a few gags, as Toga starts telling a really gruesome story but gets distracted by all the blood in it, while Twice’s story bounces between sugar-sweet happy and grim-and-dark chaos, while Compress and Spinner are stuck trying to keep them focused. It’d be a hell of a lot more interesting than how BONES somehow screwed up a potentially emotional volatile moment between Izuku and Amajiki that would put into question whether Izuku is going to have to kill a Villain and just how devastated Amajiki feels after Mirio lost his Quirk.

And speaking of whether Izuku is going to have to kill a Villain: obviously, this arc is setting up how much more dangerous Shigaraki is than UA gave him credit. Back in Season 2, I hated how Nezu and UA staff referred to him as a “man-child,” given the connotations that have surrounded masculinity and being a man. I wrote that before 2016; in this post-2016 atmosphere, and the increased prevalence of toxic masculinity, I am, once again, that annoying word ambivalent. I am likewise ambivalent how well this series has shown Shigaraki to be able to form the plan he does by episode’s end. We’re only told by Spinner how much faster Shigaraki is getting and how much slower Gigantomachia has become--but the animation doesn’t show that. And we’re being told how great Shigaraki’s plan is--when it sounds ridiculous.

By cutting so much of Spinner’s narration from the manga, we also don’t get a scene where Spinner confronts Shigaraki to ask him what is his plan. Up to that point, Shigaraki has said that, with Kurogiri gone over the last month and the computers at the old League hideout destroyed, they can’t reach the Doctor. Spinner is insistent: what is the plan? Shigaraki responds that he just told them--as Gigantomachia crashes through their hideout. The other characters explain for readers like me who aren’t following: Shigaraki just said Kurogiri was gone; to contact the Doctor, Kurogiri sought Gigantomachia; Gigantomachia would sniff out where Shigaraki is and bring him to the Doctor. Brilliant--that shows more attention to Shigaraki’s planning and scheming, and now, it’s not even here in the episode to make me think this guy is that smart. (This episode also had Shigaraki reveal his plan to have Gigantomachia attack the MLA, whereas it was Spinner who predicted that was going to be Shigaraki’s plan--so, again, we’re not letting Spinner stand out as smarter than we expected, either.)

I know Shigaraki is supposed to be our chessmaster, given his association with gaming, especially when he was faking his ignorance about shogi to lower Overhaul’s guard before defeating him and stealing his Quirk-cancelling bullets. But I’m having the same problem I had when following All For One throughout this anime: it just feels like these two antagonists are getting ahead out of sheer luck and because everyone else is a fool, not because either of them are that great as villains. Give me a Xanatos, give me a Luthor, give me a Norman Osborne (not Clone Saga Osborne, a different one). Show me Shigaraki is more than a pawn for All For One and the Doctor, because I don’t feel anything here, not even when we’re supposed to feel that Shigaraki has some legitimate concern for All For One that just isn’t getting communicated to me, whether by my stubbornness or because the content is not giving the animators and actors what they deserve. Eric Vale can sell the hell out of a scene, but Shigaraki’s talk about All For One is not giving that opportunity to the actor.

My remarks this time are a lot more disorganized and doesn’t really arrive at any conclusion. I have more to say about how this arc works and doesn’t work, especially when it comes to how ridiculous the MLA comes across in underestimating the League, but we’ll get to that next time.

#my hero academia #shigaraki #league of villains #meta liberation army #spinner #long post #mha spoilers

61 notes · View notes

theravennest · 3 years

Text

Hot Loki Take: Sylvie was Right

*Spoilers for all of Loki the series up to and including ep 6.

Sylvie was right to kill He Who Remains and free the timeline.

I’m deadass.

He Who Remains forced reality into an endless cycle between a time of Order (he rules as dictator) & a time of simulated and controlled "Chaos" (his Conqueror variants wage war). I say this “chaos” is simulated because when you think about it, it’s chaos that He Who Remains arranges himself by manipulating Lokis.

He Who Remains is so fucking sus but for some reason people are just tripping over their own feet to believe everything he says and vilify Sylvie for killing him.

He literally tells them (and us) that his methods are deceptive and we know for a fact that he’s willing to murder trillions upon trillions of people, planets, and realities to get the outcome he wants. Yet some are still believing everything he says cuz he said maybe 4 things that were truthful, I guess, and cuz he’s cute. Some of us are so blinded by the fear/anticipation of Kang the Conqueror’s arrival, we are letting him bamboozle us.

He Who Remains perfectly and personally tailored the Ordered period of the timeline to produce this exact Sylvie and this exact Loki, had them meet/influence each other, and then had them travel to the end of time...to him.

Now Lokis by nature are agents of chaos and could suddenly swerve left, so to speak, for no reason. So let’s assume I believe that He Who Remains didn’t 100% know what they would choose once they crossed the Threshold (if the Threshold he described is even real, tbh). He also so carefully molded both of their entire lives for that moment in the Citadel. He may not have known 100% but he knew at least 90% of how they would react to everything he said and did when they were both pushed to this place/mindset.

Notice how he teed them up for the fight that ended in his death:

Manufacturing a scenario where they would meet via the TVA’s variant pursuit.

Manufacturing a scenario where they would travel to the Void and meet Alioth.

Kid Loki being in just the right place to give his sword to Loki.

Miss Minutes appearing to menacingly offer an obvious devil’s bargain.

Him slyly telling Sylvie that she can’t trust Loki, putting it into her head just before he gives them his ultimatum.

All of these thing practically gift wrapped that ending to the Loki on Sylvie fight.

Let’s elaborate.

What was even the point of Miss Minutes offering to re-insert them into the same Sacred Timeline with both getting their hearts’ desires there?

Not more than ten minutes later He Who Remains told Loki and Sylvie to their faces that he manipulated all this for the sole purpose of making them choose between taking over as rulers of the TVA or killing him and ushering in a Multiversal War. Neither of those choices would result in re-inserting Loki and Sylvie back into the timeline.

So what is the truth? Why waste precious moments with a creepy Miss Minutes menacing them in that vestibule scene?

Notice how Miss Minutes’ words pushed Loki further onto his path of no longer wanting power or a throne but desiring to change his attitude about himself and the universe. Notice how her words conversely pushed Sylvie into balking at the idea of accepting another “fictional” life after a lifetime of being manipulated and made her double down on her mission to free the timeline and get revenge.

Sylvie has the ability to see memories but interesting how he kept her distracted by condescending to her and provoking her, just stoking the fire to make her react negatively. (Interesting how he was far more focused on Sylvie’s reactions than Loki’s, most likely because he needed her to kill him for his plans to work.)

Now I don’t want to completely shift responsibility for her choices away from Sylvie. In truth, if she had held in her vengeance for let’s say an hour and trusted Loki a bit more, they could’ve sat down to talk about things and maybe found a third solution other than starting a Multiversal War or ruling the TVA that still could’ve even allowed her to get revenge. (More on the ultimatum later.)

But I can’t blame her for losing her cool, either. He Who Remains made damn sure she would burn as hot as possible because he tailor made her life to give her the personality he wanted. And any other version of her out there who might have made a different choice would’ve already been pruned.

He Who Remains tells Loki and Sylvie straight up that he set them on their particular life paths because he needed them to be “changed by the journey” to ensure everyone in that room was in exactly the right mindset to do what was needed to “finish the quest” and presumably “slay the dragon,” aka Him. (Notice the parallels to the speaker narration just before episode 2′s fight at the Ren Fair.)

We don’t know! Sylvie never enchanted him to read his memories because she was so filled with rage and Loki was too busy trying to stop her, he didn’t think to do it either. And we’ve already established that He Who Remains trained them that way. Nothing that happened in that office was without He Who Remains’ influence and meddling.

Another nail in the coffin that convinces me that He Who Remains is a no good dirty liar is Renslayer.

If He Who Remains’ end goal was to either have the Lokis choose to rule the TVA or destroy it and thus end up with no memory of her previous TVA judge role/life, why did he send Miss Minutes to Ravonna with files that caused her to pack her bags and search for what she calls “free will,” AKA the one in charge?

I’d bet dollars to donuts that when the next season rolls around the only people who will know what’s going on and still have their memories will be Loki, Miss Minutes, Sylvie, and Ravonna. (Maybe Kang the Conqueror will know as well but I could see it going the other way too. I’m 50-50.)

He Who Remains was planning something by pushing Ravonna the way he did. Does he want her out of the TVA so she doesn’t lose her memories when everything resets? Does he want her to go find the Conqueror version of himself? I mean, at this point, practically everyone knows who she is to Kang in the comics, so let’s not pretend that’s not an option.

Another thing to think about...it’s super suspicious that he was so eager to make them believe he’s one of the “good versions” of Kang and all these others are much worse while giving absolutely no evidence of that outside of an interactive blob powerpoint, a quirky attitude, and a couple of sad, weary faces????

Who’s to say He Who Remains isn’t playing the long game and always manipulates his variants to eventually give him the chance to seize control of the multiverse?

Who’s to say he’s not one of the Kangs that wanted to conquer too? Funny how the “pure of heart” Kang is the one who still wrested control of all reality, killed off every other timeline with a weapon of mass destruction, installed a fascist time bureaucracy, and set himself up as the dictator. Sounds an awful lot like some conqueror shit to me, just saying.

Even wilder theory: what if this really is the same Kang the Conqueror but at the end of his life? We only have hhis word that he’s a variant. He Who Remains tells Loki that this fight is for the “young and hungry.” Maybe the “young and hungry” he’s referring to is not Loki and Sylvie at all but his literal younger self. Perhaps he set up this entire cycle of chaos and order so that he can perpetually live, conqueror, rule, die, and start all over again? Reincarnation, as he says...

But let’s set that wild theory aside for a moment. Let’s circle back to the Multiversal War debate and say it really is is caused by an infinite amount of his variants.

I think it’s hella sus that He Who Remains was so insistent that Loki and Sylvie only had two choices to resolve this riddle: Multiversal War or running the TVA almost exactly the way he did while maintaining only a single timeline. Those are definitely not the only two options they had. In fact, I could probably name 1-3 other options off the top of my head right now:

Keep He Who Remains alive while learning how he manipulated time and using those skills to slowly unleash the multiverse while killing every version of Kang to prevent him from existing as either conqueror or dictator.

Kill He Who Remains, take over the TVA, and slowly change it to something not horrific or even build a brand new system for governing time.

Kill or keep He Who Remains, still take over the TVA, slow rollout the Multiverse and kill or prevent every Kang along the way.

(I’m not saying these aren’t also morally questionable options, I’m just saying they are different from the two choices He Who Remains presented.)

But let’s say these options I suggested are not feasible. I just randomly came up with them ten minutes ago so it would be fair if they were picked apart logically.

So let’s contemplate this, instead:

Why should we assume/believe that a Multiversal War is actually a bad thing again??? Why are we assuming that He Who Remains’ Sacred Timeline really saved reality from total collapse?

Assuming he told the truth about his motives, maybe he was just...wrong about the end of reality. Maybe he saw what he thought was the conclusion to the Multiversal War coming and erroneously believed it to be the end of everything but actually it was the multiverse sorting itself out and everything would’ve been fine after.

We (and He Who Remains too) will never know because not only did he not show any evidence to back up his claim that reality was on the brink of collapse, but he himself never allowed things to play out naturally. Whenever the end of the war comes to the brink of something, he always panics, weaponizes Alioth, and traps the universe in his cage of Order with the TVA.

Even more controversial take...maybe the collapse of timelines and the end of everything should be allowed to happen. Maybe the natural cycle of reality is to build and build, splinter and splinter timelines, until it collapses and starts all over again from the void.

Nothing is created and nothing is destroyed, all things exist in a cycle so why should the multiverse be any different?

After all in all, in all three possibilities an infinite number of timelines is destined to suffer and die. Whether it be during the Kang-controlled Order period, Kang-controlled fake Chaos period, or the unrestrained natural Chaos that collapses in on itself...an untold amount of people are dying anyway. There’s only one of those scenarios that has actual unrestrained free will where those people get to exist how they want, make choices they want (even bad ones) for as long as they can.

(Personally, I’ll take that over what the Kangs have wrestled the multiverse into.)

I’ll just take this moment to re-iterate: trust nothing He Who Remains says. He’s a known liar and manipulator, and unlike Loki he has done absolutely nothing to actionably show he’s not still lying or to show that he’s trying to change outside of some sad looks. It’s all pantomime, bruh. Like, the pageantry of it all astounds me.

Is he maybe telling some truths? Sure. But that doesn’t mean he’s not using the truth to manipulate everything. It’s an illusion, I’m telling y’all! He was up to no fucking good.

Sylvie was far more right to kill him than to not. Loki, Sylvie, & team (prolly also the latest Avengers lineup too) now just need to find a way to break this Kang cycle.

#loki #loki laufeyson #sylvie laufeydottir #kang the conqueror #he who remains #loki spoilers #mcu #mcu spoilers

32 notes · View notes

obiwanobi · 4 years

Text

You really made me write a 2.6k fic after I said I wouldn't write a fic, hum. Have some 'drunk, tired and jealous but will never admit it' Senator Kenobi who just wanted to spend one quiet night bitching about other politicians with Anakin:

Growing up in the Temple made Obi-wan way more aware of how to control negative emotions, but possessiveness has never been a huge problem in his life. He's not a Jedi, so he does have material possessions -admittedly, fewer than most people- but the rule about attachments still has a particular impact on him and even if he hasn't made a deliberate choice to keep respecting it, he understands the value of it and makes a point of keeping it in the back of his head.

Until now.

Senator Odage is laughing obnoxiously and putting his grabby hand on Anakin's arm. Senator Odage, with his wide smile and passionate speeches, seems to have been galvanized by the standing ovation following his latest intervention in the Senate Chamber and is now chatting with Anakin. Anakin who had enthusiastically clapped with the rest of the Senate a few hours earlier after Odage's remarkable intervention.

"You boiling with hate is not a sight I'm used to."

Glass raised to him in greetings, Bail lifts an eyebrow at Obi-wan's flat look. That's the first time Obi-wan sees him tonight, lost in the myriad of senators, committee members, ministers, dukes and duchesses, princes and princesses, representatives and official dignitaries, exchanging platitudes, plotting their next moves, faking smiles and drinking to forget at the Senate Holiday Party.

"I am not." "You’re giving shorter and shorter answers to diplomats you wanted to talk to for weeks and you’re holding your glass so tightly that I can almost hear it shattering as we talk.” "I might be a bit tired," Obi-wan admits as he forces himself to unclench his fist and looks at something else than Odage and Anakin. "Tired, yes. I would have said trying not to snap at people of your own party and mentally throwing daggers at Odage, but tired is good enough I guess." "I don't know what you're talking about." "You know, Senator Odage? Young, bold, promising career in front of him, antislavery committee member, currently flirting with your Jedi and making you sulk in a corner?" "Oh. That Odage. No, I'm quite sure I'm just tired." "And why would you be tired?" "Why would I-"

Something that has been growling inside of him for hours finally snaps and the floodgate opens.

"Please Bail, I just came back from my seven-week-long trip with tragically boring representative Bar, where, do I need to remind you, I finally put in motion the underfunded education program for children of the Outer-Rim, was supposed to come back to Coruscant in time to deliver a speech that would have proved that I achieved some kind of progress, which is unheard of for someone working in the Senate, but had to make a 'quick' detour by Naator's moon and got stuck with the Duke there who thought Stewjon was a show on the HoloNet because Chancellor Palpatine wanted someone from the 'remote' Mid-Rim to explain that even 'backwater dust-ball like your planet has benefits of allying themself with the Republic!' and then came back to Coruscant just in time to see young, bold, promising Senator Odage ending my own speech with, I'll admit, more punch and sincere sensibility that I could ever deliver! So maybe I'm just tired Bail, and want to spend my night quietly sulking in a corner."

And with Anakin who I haven't seen in two months, he didn't add.

Still in his corner, but this time with Anakin complaining about politicians to his face, moving Jar Jar's glass with the Force every time he puts it down, giggling at Padmé's attempts not to laugh. Yes, Obi-wan would have liked that.

He is maybe, just maybe, a bit more than tired.

Obi-wan risks a glance at the Jedi still listening to Odage. His hair is longer than when he left and getting in his face, preventing Obi-wan to see his reaction to the senator’s gesture for another drink. Anakin knows better than to indulge in public, he huffs internally, raising his own glass to his lips. He learns that the hard way the first time Obi-wan took him to a boring party and they both realised that he was, despite his stature and his ‘strong Outer-Rim boy who fears nothing’ declarations, a lightweight incapable of keeping down drinks with more alcohol than sugar.

"You need to drink," Bail says, reaching for the closest bottle. "This is my fifth one." "You need to stop drinking," Bail corrects, reaching for Obi-wan's brandy. "No, I don't. It's fine Bail," He sighs as Bail sends him a worried look. "I think it's just time for me to go home." "Without me?"

And there he is. The only Jedi present at the Holiday Party without any clear reason why. The only one Obi-wan can bear to see after such a terrible day for his ego and moral dignity. Obi-wan is almost relieved to feel him close again after so long, but the warm feeling of reunion with the incandescent supernova that is Anakin in the Force is tainted by Senator Odage's presence at his side.

"Obi-wan."

Anakin's warm hand on his elbow distracts him from the senator, but he doesn't move close enough to make the gesture looks intimate. Even if the way Anakin keeps looking at him makes Obi-wan wants to chuckle with fondness at the obviousness of the whole thing. The Force is vibrating with bright delight around them. It's a good thing no other Jedi is in the room because if Anakin's blinding smile is not enough to translate all his emotions, he's certainly not shielding anything in the Force right now. The only thing stopping him from reaching out or saying more is that he knows how Obi-wan feels about displays of affection, particularly in public.

Before Obi-wan can say anything, Odage is gesturing his glass in front of his face, dragging his attention away from Anakin's eyes.

"Good evening Senator Organa. Senator Kenobi, a pleasure to see you back! I was just talking about you with Knight Skywalker and how your speech was truly something. I hope you didn't mind that I tweaked some parts to make it mine? Being part of the antislavery's committee brought me a new perspective on social activism, and on the... How did you say, Anakin?"

Anakin replies something at the same time that he lets his hand fall from his arm. Obi-wan can only stare in disbelieve at the man calling a Jedi he barely knows in such a familiar way. Is it really their first encounter? Did Anakin meet Odage in the past fest weeks when Obi-wan wasn't here? He certainly looks like someone he would have a lot to talk too, being approximately the same age and Odage having this magnetic pull that seems to enthral most of the Senate.

What else did he miss during his time away?

"...I'm sure you can submit a demand to the Jedi Order for this, Mariv," Anakin says.

Mariv? Mariv? Who the kriff is Mariv? Surely it isn't Senator Odage, who is now leaning towards Anakin with the smile of someone who's finally hearing what he was aiming at for the past hour.

"But wouldn't you be the best for this, Anakin?"

This is it. Obi-wan probably had too much to drink, especially combined with his exhaustion and sour mood, but he knows he will not let that slide. Anakin looks clueless and Obi-wan will not let him be roped in whatever grubby schemes avid politicians have in mind with a Jedi, however smart and better than him at his job they are. Especially if they're smarter and better than him.

"Anakin," Obi-wan cuts in, and just like he hoped it will, it immediately grabs Anakin's attention. Obi-wan doesn't call him by anything else than a respectful 'Knight Skywalker' when they’re not alone. He barely does it in front of Bail and Padmé. "I'm sure you can't take decisions without consulting the Order first, that would be presumptuous, wouldn't it?"

If Obi-wan's complete focus on him hadn't distracted him from Odage, the small step he takes closer to the Jedi, making them arms brush, would have done the trick. He never gets that close in public and judging by Bail’s raised eyebrow, he’s not the only one surprised by his own boldness.

"Oh," Odage says in a suave voice, his eyes following the way Anakin unconsciously shifts his whole body towards Obi-wan, "yes, you would know about this, Senator Kenobi. I keep forgetting your past as a Jedi apprentice. That must be a real advantage to have this connection to them. Not every Senator can have the chance to call for a specific knight when they want company on their trips or when they fancy it."

Obi-wan feels Anakin's reaction in the Force before any movement and almost as a reflex to prevent him from throwing a comment they will both regret, Obi-wan grabs his shoulder. It’s enough to stop him. Obi-wan feels him slowly relaxing under his fingers. His hand, a light touch at first, slowly goes down to the small of his back, applying just the right amount of pressure there to make the man under it quiet and contented in the Force once again.

Sometimes, Anakin being so receptive to touch is a blessing.

"You're perfectly right, Senator Odage," Obi-wan declares with the most polite smile he could afford after four glasses of brandy and rethinking his entire career in the past twenty minutes. "Nothing like good-old fashion favouritism to get out of assassination attempts and surviving Outer-Rim fascist government leaders who don't appreciate feeling like you're giving them a lesson. Thanks the Force for failing my Jedi training, I don’t know how I could be a competent politician without completely relying on the Jedi Order."

The poorly covered laugh coming from Bail, who has been suspiciously quiet until now, does nothing to stop Odage from opening his mouth again. Obi-wan is drunk, hasn’t slept in the past 48 hours and has a hand on Anakin: One more inappropriate remark from Odage and fist-fighting would feel less and less outside of the realm of possibility.

“Senator Kenobi, I never knew you were so funny.” “I haven’t been funny since my last run-in with a gundark,” Obi-wan deadpans, eyes locked on Odage as he downs his last glass of brandy. “I think Senator Kenobi is tired,” Bail proclaims before Odage has the chance to reply. “He was just telling me that he was going home, and I’m sure it’s also time for Knight Skywalker to head back to the Temple.” “Sure, we’re going the same way and I came with a speeder, I can take Obi-wan home.” “Wait Anakin, I didn’t have the time to-“, Odage tries but Bail is already putting a firm arm on his shoulder. “You two have a good night! So, Senator, did I already introduce you to Representative Bari? I’m sure you and her seven heads will get along marvellously.”

“That was…” Anakin says once they’re gone, leaning completely against Obi-wan’s hand on his back. There is no reason for it to still be there, but Obi-wan can’t stop his slow insistent up and down movement against Anakin’s back. “For one moment I thought you were going to use the prissy tone you take when I’ve irritated you enough to make you lose patience, and just starts listing everything he did wrong since the day he was born.”

Obi-wan narrows his eyes at him, finally retracting his hand and turning away toward the main exit of the Senate’s reception room. He doesn’t need to look back to know that Anakin is right behind him.

“I don’t have a prissy tone.” “Hum hum.” “I had…” Obi-wan’s shoulders sag and he slows down to match Anakin’s pace. “…A long week.” “It’s Wednesday.” “Ah. I’m afraid that if this is the way I start the week, my chances of ending up in jail are going to blow up at the end of it.” “Don’t worry too much about it,” Anakin dismisses, getting his robe and Obi-wan’s coat from the cloakroom, “I would bail you out. If you ask nicely.” “Would you?” He feigns a distract tone as he turns around to slip his arms in the coat Anakin is holding for him. “I was under the impression that you would be too busy mooning over Mariv to think about it.”

There is a strange noise behind him and before he can react, two hands are on his shoulders and forcing him to turn around and confront Anakin’s wide eyes.

“Are you… Are you jealous? Is this why you were all…”

He makes a little hand gesture to his back and tilts his hand. Obi-wan really wants to tell him that he looks like an idiot with his silly gesticulations and shaggy hair everywhere, but unfortunately, a slight blush from the party is still visible high on his cheeks and the amusement in his eyes is tangible in the Force around him, and by extension, around Obi-wan. It’s infuriating.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Anakin,” He huffs, shifting around, but Anakin must see something on his face because he’s suddenly laughing and squeezing his shoulders. “Obi-wan Kenobi, you are jealous! You're a jealous man! I have never seen you jealous before, I didn’t even think you knew how to, this is the greatest moment of my life!” “Anakin, you’ve been knighted. And freed from slavery.” “I stand by what I said!” He declares loudly. “Were you ready to defend my honour?” “Force, would you stop saying-“ “No, no, answer the question Obi-wan.” “Can we go-“ “Did you think I was into Odage? Were you seething with rage because he touched me? Did you think I would forget all about you after two months and, what, elope with the first politician to talk to me?” “You’re a terrible person, do you know that?” “Because you know I would only elope with you.”

There is no answer to that. Anakin is the picture of sincerity, grin still full of mirth, golden curls framing his flushed cheeks and the Force humming softly around him. It feels warm and kind, loving in such a playful way that it’s begging Obi-wan to join him, give in, love him.

And Obi-wan is a tired, old, drunk fool who wants.

He’s shoving Anakin behind one of the pillars of an adjacent corridor before he realises what he’s doing, fisting Anakin’s tunic in one hand and grabbing a handful of curly hair to keep him in place with the other. Anakin’s eyes suddenly darken, his lips moving to form the beginning of a shameless taunt, surely, but Obi-wan’s demanding mouth is on him to prevent it in an instant. He tastes like expansive cocktails at boring parties, but underneath it’s him, only him and no one else.

A leg is pushing Anakin against the pillar, pressing and pressing at every little noise escaping from him. Obi-wan wants to melt into him.

“Terrible, awful boy,” He grumbles as Anakin tries to laugh before getting kissed again, instantly pliant under him. “Well,” Anakin finally breathes. His hair is an absolute mess, half in his face and half pulled by Obi-wan’s fist, letting him admire an immaculate throat. Where he found the strength not to bite there before, Obi-wan doesn’t know. “I think I need to send a ‘thank you’ card to Odage. Or maybe grant him his-”

A sharp pull on his hair and his words turn into a faint whine.

“Will you, Anakin? Will you really?”

Anakin’s eyes shut blissfully, like he’s finally where he wants to be.

“I guess I won’t have time for that.”

#*obi-wan 2 seconds away from verbally destroying someone*#anakin:*delighted overjoyed ready to get on his knees*#senator kenobi au #obikin #this was... a very good prompt #I should probably find a beta instead of making you read my broken english #asks #anon #fic i will never write #well it's more a fic I wrote now

555 notes · View notes

grandhotelabyss · 3 years

Photo

A few extracts from the leftist thinker of the hour. In his latest piece, he inveighs against an unrelated group of philosophers, political actors, and cultural traditions, using mostly guilt-by-association and ad-hominem attacks, with some puerile schoolyard epithets (e.g., “man-childs [sic],” “Boomer Theory”) thrown in, all in the name of what he calls “positive biopolitics,” defined, if the following vague jargon is a definition, as

inclusive, materialist, restorative, rationalist, based on a demystified image of the human species, anticipating a future different from the one prescribed by many cultural traditions. It accepts the evolutionary entanglement of mammals and viruses. It accepts death as part of life. It therefore accepts the responsibilities of medical knowledge to prevent and mitigate unjust deaths and misery as something quite different from the nativist immunization of one population of people from another. This includes not just rights to individual privacy but also social obligations to participate in an active, planetary biological commons.

Because “many cultural traditions” remain extant, it’s hard to see how we get from here to there, which makes this discourse little more than apologism for present arrangements: the corporate monopolies will, with the financial, legal, and coercive assistance of the state, manage us down to our atoms, and we will be obligated to participate whether we like it or not. Though our author makes a few faint-heartedly woke noises, his vision is, to repurpose his own argumentative tactics, fundamentally indistinguishable from neoreaction with its dream of hyperracist face tentacles—except that I suppose Land or Yarvin would allow for more dispersed authority centers, making their cyberpunk paradise, ironically, the less fascistic of the twinned accelerationisms.

From this unseemly polemic, one concludes that Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault are essentially equivalent to Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Greene and that only a simplistic reactionary with a pathological attachment to “lost objects” could have any objection to “any artificial governing intervention in the biological condition of human society.” And I’m not Agamben: I don’t object a priori to any, but surely I may object a posteriori to some. See how his abstraction serves his case: he argues at the level of ideas and would probably dismiss any assessment of the actual forces in play (pharmaceutical giants, the U.S. security state, the CCP, Bezos, Gates, etc.) as “conspiracy theory.” (If the conservative’s attachment to “lost objects” is deluded, by the way, what should we call the radical’s investment in an imaginary and basically impossible future, that famous omelette they will never be able to prepare no matter how much albumen they spill?)

The personal slam against Illich is particularly grotesque. Leaving aside the expert class’s new conviction that only a Trumpist CHUD could possibly think medical interventions must be consensual, I know people who died of tumors they had treated in exactly the way doctors recommended—they died a few months later than they might have otherwise, in agonies they might have been spared, from costly and ineffectual treatments with severe side effects. There’s no cure, after all, for cancer, though I wonder how much cancer might be prevented if the biopolitical agents our author extols did not devote themselves to coating the entire planet in a shell of plastic. But I’m sure his endorsement elsewhere of “deep climate governance”—i.e., “You’ve used your heat ration for the winter, pleb!”—will solve this problem.

Note, too, the contradictions, flagrant in so swaggering an author. First he bizarrely and scornfully attributes to the soixante-huitards a belief in “subjective moral intentionality,” as if a bunch of Nietzscheans talking about the death of the author believed in any such Kantian thing. Then he delivers a moralistic little sermon on masks—wholly ignoring the actual disputed science on the topic—that only makes any sense at all if we subjectively recognize ourselves as moral agents rather than merely biological organisms. These intellectual misanthropes who insist we’re exactly the same as spores and houseflies always run aground on the same problem: if you’re saying it, and especially if you’re saying it to change people’s minds, then it can’t be true. Human exceptionalism, at least on this planet, is not an article of faith but an empirical fact. Marx certainly thought so—see “Alienated Labour” (1844), but then I suppose he was still a Romantic when he wrote that.

As for the wholesale dismissal of Romanticism, I suspect our polemicist hasn’t done the reading. There is no total “disgust with rationality and technology” in Wordsworth or Shelley or Emerson or Melville or Whitman—yes, comp-lit kids, you have to read the English and Americans as well as the French and Germans—only a complaint about their inability to coexist with other dispositions. I have no problem with rationality or technology, but believe their proper role is to serve us, not to master us. I would recommend Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), but I imagine it comes pre-proscribed by our ardent technologist. And demystification? Please wake me if it’s ever anything other than a rival myth. “Humans are organic objects that should be managed by centralized power” is also a story, not a very good one. A better story, if our author will condescend to read a Romantic, is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818, 1831). Often interpreted as a warning about overweening science, it is also a caution—from a woman whose father, mother, husband, and friends were all left-wing radicals who made worse messes of their lives than Ivan Illich made of his—against what one critic memorably calls “Promethean Politics”:

By representing in her creature both the originating ideals and the brutal consequences of the French Revolution, Mary Shelley offered a powerful critique of the ideology of revolution. An abstract idea or cause (e.g. the perfecting of mankind), if not carefully developed within a supportive environment, can become an end that justifies any means, however cruel. As he worked to restore life where death had been, Victor Frankenstein never considered what suffering his freakish child might later endure.

Mary Shelley’s middle-class gradualist liberal female politics—what Nancy Armstrong denounces as the domestic ideology of the English novel tout court—has its own dangers, and is nowadays complicit with the technocrats, as we hear “Think of the children!” used to justify every excess. Still, Frankenstein, with its gain-of-function experiment gone awry, remains a powerful vision of rampant radical technocracy, what may be unleashed on humanity when the quest to master what cannot be mastered meets its nemesis. Positive biopolitics, on the other hand, given its implicit endorsement of the powers that be and its emptily denunciatory rhetoric, is yet more evidence that we no longer have left-wing ideas in America but only “irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.”

#leftism #marxism #critical theory #philosophy #mary shelley #michael foucault #hannah arent #giorgio agamben #ivan illich #benjamin bratton

8 notes · View notes

snakebusters · 3 years

Text

Snake Party Melbourne all the rage.

Snake parties are all the rage among mums and dads in Melbourne. People are lining up for snake parties in Melbourne! To learn more about how Snake Parties came about, read on ...In the late 1960's The Snakeman Raymond Hoser invented Snake Parties. At the time, Hoser was lampooned as an idiot, but the idea could not be killed. The name came from the idea of bringing tons of snakes to a kids birthday party, for the children to get hands on and hold them. These reptile gatherings soon evolved to become full-blown wildlife parties and then the so-called reptile party. Since then he has registered the trademarks for reptile party and reptile parties in Australia, involving all sorts of critters and in all configurations. The reptile party trademarks include Snake parties, snake catcher, online information on snakes, wildlife conservation activities, education in schools and so on.The whole concept of snake parties has travelled a long, long, way since then. Initially, Raymond Hoser and his reptile collection were a curiosity piece among friends and others who would come to his home to see them. Hoser would take the snakes out of their cages, do a show and tell and let those who wanted to hold them, get hands on. At the time, Raymond was more into the science of the animals that dealing with other people, but his parents were regularly entertainers of friends and invariably everyone would want to see the animals. Rather than wait for this to happen, Raymond would simply take the animals to the party, do his show and tell, and then get back to what he had to do. Typically that was study in one form or other, including what has since become many hundreds of major scientific papers. From these humble beginnings, the 15 minute "show and tell" with the snakes as the centrepiece expanded and then word-of-mouth did the rest. The reptile party show extended to an hour or more. Strangers and other people were more than happy to pay to have Raymond take time out and do what soon became known as the reptile party, or snake parties. Raymond Hoser's activities were effectively outlawed in the 1970's, as the government-run and owned zoos saw a potential break in their monopoly of the wildlife space. They wanted people to come to the zoo and spend their money there instead. The idea of a mobile zoo eating into their lucrative profits was something they had to stop and which they succeeded in.Raymond Hoser fought against the government's corrupt and dishonest banning of private ownership of wildlife in Australia for two decades and got nowhere. The enemy in the form of government-run zoos, wildlife officers from the department that owned the zoos were way too powerful and easily withstood the demands of people wanting private ownership of reptiles. The government run zoos, like Taronga in Sydney and the Melbourne Zoo in Melbourne (known as Zoos Victoria) also had the government controlled media on their sidel. That was until in 1993, when Raymond Hoser dropped a so-called curve ball and he published the best-selling book, Smuggled: The Underground Trade in Australia's Wildlife. It exposed the rotten underbelly of the illegal Australian wildlife trade, corruption in State Wildlife departments and all the animal abuse and cruelty going on in their own zoos businesses. True to form the Australian government had the book banned, got police to raid bookshops and seized all copies of the books. On instructions copies were destroyed and the media that was completely controlled by the state was gagged from reporting the story.The state controlled media, including the Murdoch Press, who only reports what the government wants them to, refused to report the story of the corruption book that was banned. Were it not for the corageous efforts of a veteran investigative journalist, Fia Cumming, this story would have gone no further and nothing would have changed. Employed at the notorious Murdoch owned News Corporation, stories she wrote about corruption were censored and banned (they say spiked in the trade) and her sub-editors, better known as government-assisting censors made sure none of her stories about full-blown corruption ever got printed. Aware of this, Fia Cumming decided to sabotage the system and get the story of the banning of the book run when the censor wasn't looking. After planning in line with a covert military operation, her story ran on the front page of all the Murdoch rags on a Sunday in mid 1993, a media frenzy followed and next thing you know, the Australian government through the environment minister at the time (Chris Hartcher) was forced to apologise for the government's fascist behaviour. He then interviewed on National TV and was forced under duress and effectively kicking and screaming to direct that the book be formally "unbanned". Police were directed to go back to policing, but as we know, not much that is done, because a lot of cops prefer to deal illicit drugs and do other things that make them more cash.The book Smuggled:The Underground Trade in Australia's Wildlife went on to become a best seller! It has been republished many times since and remains an Australian classic more than a quarter of a century after it was published. It is mandatory reading for all wildlife lovers and those with an interest in entrenched government corruption in Australia. The bombshell book forced a rewrite of wildlife laws across Australia and for the first time in decades, private people could keep and study native wildlife without getting locked up if caught doing so. This also meant that privately owned travelling wildlife shows could operate again. Once it became clear that mobile wildlife displays were legal and those who did them were not going to jail for doing hands on wildlife displays, Raymond Hoser was again able to do his reptile parties. Seizing on from ideas from others and refining them, the business plan and the nature of the reptile parties changed dramatically.Instead of owning species that he liked, Raymond Hoser targetted those that were best suited to being handled, ease of looking after and with a wow-factor for audiences at events like kids parties and birthday party shows. The snake party, sometimes also known as the Kids Reptile Party included crocodiles, snakes, lizards, frogs and turtles, with lots of different kinds and massive numbers at a time, so that even in a group of 30 people, everyone can hold the animals at the same time. In Melbourne the state of Victoria, Australia, kinders, primary schools, secondary schools and even universities seized on the opportunity to have a mobile zoo come to them and so business boomed for the reptile party shows. The concept of the travelling wildlife display for kids birthday parties has now been copied across Australia and also elsewhere, including in the UK, USA and even South Africa. Raymond Hoser taught people in all these places, who now run their own successful wildlife education and reptile display businesses. In Melbourne, reptile parties are seen most weekends and in pretty much all suburbs of Melbourne and nearby parts of Victoria. On weekdays when not at schools, kinders and the like, reptile displays can be seen at corporate events and even team building exercises for bored business people. Occasionally Raymond Hoser will spend the day simply cleaning cages, a neccessary chore that comes with owning animals. However most fo the time, he does this at night, because, put simply, he is too busy by day to do such things. Did I mention that Raymond Hoser, better known as the Snakeman is also one of the world's best known wildlife conservation icons. In terms of actual results, no one on the planet can match his score. But when it comes to wildlife conservation, Raymond Hoser stresses that everyone needs to be involved for things to work and succeed. He says it is a team game and every person should be a part of the solution.

#snake party #Snakeman #Raymond Hoser t #reptile party #kind reminder #kids #animals #hold the animals #kinders #wildlife conservation

3 notes · View notes