Thinking about the fact that sevro is a carvers creation too.
“We went to a carver to see if we couldn’t make ourselves some magic. We did.”
Sevro, just like Darrow, is created in a lab, but their purposes are completely different. Darrow is created as a machine of war, his whole purpose after being saved by the sons of ares is to infiltrate and tear down the gold machine. He can’t separate himself from this war, because his purpose is not yet fulfilled.
Sevro, on the other hand, is created out of the love his parents have for each other. And when his mother is killed his father starts this revolution, and he does it in big part for him. It’s no coincidence that the organization fitchner starts is called the sons of ares. In sevros life, the war hasn’t just been about tearing down the society, it’s about the possibility of what comes after. The possibility is own birth represents.
I think iron gold and dark age really highlight the differences between their individual philosophies. You can see it in the fact mustang says she’d like to retire with Darrow and their children, plural, despite the fact that in ten years they’ve only got the one (who certainly wasn’t planned). Meanwhile sevro and victra have had three and another on the way in that intervening time. You can see it in the way Darrow continually struggles to pull himself away from the war, while sevro is able to compartmentalize and prioritize his family when he’s home. You can see it in the sevros palace chapter in dark age, when Darrow says sevro “didn’t close his mind to his family before battle, because he knew they did not make him weaker, they made him stronger than he was by himself.”
Darrow can’t start living life for himself until his purpose is fulfilled, while sevros purpose has always been that very life, so he finds a way to fit it in.
So in the end, it’s not surprising that when it comes down to it, Darrow chooses his army and sevro chooses his family. It’s not about one of them being right and one of them being wrong. It’s about what they were created for.
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Someone shared a post about the pear of anguish, saying it was used to torture slaves, and I thought its design was interesting but something felt slightly off, so I looked it up.
The first thing you see when you look this thing up is that its usage is disputed.
Apparently the mechanism doesn't seem to work the way it's said to work? It's said that people would slowly enlarge the opening in order to spread an orifice wider and wider, and that it could even break jaws.
The thing is, this device does not seem to open in this way. It seems to spring open. The screw mechanism is for closing it.
I relayed this information, thinking this was someone who would actually care about fact checking. "It might not actually have worked in this way. Its usage is disputed."
For some fucking dadblamed reason, they took this as me... questioning the existence of racism? And denying the suffering of black people?
I do a little more digging, and it's basically the same thing over and over. One guy insists that it's totally a torture device, because why else would it be in torture chamber museums?
I don't know, buddy, maybe because people like to make up stories and scare others.
That's one running theory for the existence of this thing: people wanted a good story. They wanted to be able to sell that story in order to make money. So they made elaborate devices and charged people to see them, or displayed them in order to scare their guests.
This part of the speculation, by the way, is from medieval times. There are no modern accounts of this item's usage.
We have so many accounts of slavery. We have so many ways to spread information. We're still able to converse with some of the children of the people who are still alive. We can still see the documents they left during that time.
Why would they leave this out? If it were actually in use, why would they relay the whippings, the confinement, the rape, the starvation, the harsh working conditions, the lynchings, the forced assimilation, and just... not mention this part?
Their friend piled on. I told him my statement was based on the way the device functions, and not "white people wouldn't do that." I told them that I didn't expect better from him, because I didn't know him, but I did expect better from them.
Apparently this was me making assumptions.
Gonna be honest, I didn't read the entirety of their responses, because this sort of thing is maddeningly upsetting to me. I thought I was safe to say something because, when I accidentally sent them a video by Alexis Nelson, they called it funny and informative. I know that doesn't seem like much, but... honestly, Alexis isn't going to be up everyone's alley, and sometimes that's due to bigotry. So I thought they would actually care, and not be mad about being checked. I've been in that situation plenty of times, and I normally don't say anything if I don't think I'm going to get through. I only say something if I have hope for that person.
I thought I might actually have a potential friend, and said person responded to "Hey this information might not be accurate" with... honestly, I can barely even parse the way they worded things? Something about slavery happening whether it was disputed or not.
I just wanted to fact check an unsourced facebook post.
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I've gone back and forth on whether or not i have true spring/summer SAD of if I just dislike the seasons because of health issues made worse by heat and dysphoria and etc, but yesterday I was walking to an evening class and on noticing it was light out at 6pm suddenly became, like, genuinely suicidal at the thought that it's only going to get worse from here, so I think. The shoe probably fits.
And that would be bad enough on its own, I've already been struggling so much with depression even during my favored months, so the last thing I need is something making it worse, but the part I found myself losing more sleep over last night was that spring/summer SAD is just so... lonely. And worse than that, I feel like it isn't respected at all. Like, I have friends I otherwise consider great on mental health issues, including mine, many of whom have fall/winter SAD themselves, who I will mention my own SAD symptoms to and who will respond with "Wow, you're so weird!" instead of the sympathy I'm looking for from fellow seasonal depression sufferers. I try to be considerate of their own issues in the winter, even though it's my preferred season, but because my version is the less common one, suddenly it's a joke?
I didn't even know until today that spring/summer SAD has slightly different symptoms that align with my experience a lot (increased anxiety along with the depressive symptoms, insomnia instead of oversleeping, poor appetite instead of overeating), because nobody talks about it. And I don't know of any helpful things to try like sun lamps or Vitamin D supplements for fall/winter SAD sufferers, because either there aren't any, or nobody's bothered to research it.
I don't know. I know I can get overly grumpy about this and I try to reign it in because I know the winter is really genuinely hard for so many people, especially living somewhere as cold and dark and far north as Minnesota. But all that really is good for me, and I really do wish I didn't have to battle loneliness and guilt and feeling "wired wrong" along with worse depressive symptoms every year when spring and summer roll around.
I'm not making a joke when I say thinking about three more months of the days getting longer made me contemplate jumping off a bridge for a split second last night, and just because my mental illness is the less common kind doesn't mean I'm just "weird" -- it's still a mental illness. And I think it would help me manage it, or at least feel a little less lonely, if people would actually treat it like one, instead of just a personality quirk.
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