#the enforcers just being BAFFLED | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shsl-heck · 10 months

Text

Thinking about the Chevalier interlude, specifically the inaugural team of Wards. Like in universe, they sell it to this first group of kids (and presumably the rest of the world) as a place for second chances, to find friends and mentors who understand what youre going through, where you can learn to use your powers safely while making good memories. The kids broadly seem to believe in these noble intentions of course, but what really gets me is that I've seen readers buy into it!

"Oh, it's such a tragedy that the Wards program became this awful thing that traumatizes kids even more, and expects them to die for the sake of civilians! It's fallen so short of what it was originally supposed to be!"

No it has not??? The fact that the triumvirate and Hero are saying it has this noble goal doesn't make it true. The Wards was pretty clearly always a way to increase the amount of bodies the prt could throw at threats, and we know this because it was started by the fucking Triumvirate as a part of the Protectorate! Alexandria literally came up with the idea of the Protectorate to legitimize the power of capes, and have a consistent source of heroes Cauldron could throw at problems. That is the whole reason for the PRT/Protectorate existing. So when we have this group of children brought in a subsidiary, there are 2 real options.

1). Cauldron and Alexandria decided they would be really niceys and created this program with no intentions other than helping these kids out.

Or 2). As things got worse, they realized the Protectorate didn't have enough manpower to do what they needed, and so they expanded it to include children (the demographic most prone to triggering). That way, they greatly increase the number of capes who they can send to fight and die as needed, and the ones who do survive their tenure in the Wards will be better trained when it comes time to join the actual Protectorate.

At the risk of sounding conceited, I think the second one is far more likely based on everything we know about Cauldron. Maybe it was originally a little nobler, and the goal was just to create more well trained heroes and cut back on young villains, but there's no way Alexandria, Doc Mom, and Contessa didn't factor in the ability to sacrifice the kid heroes if it improved their chances of success. That was absolutely a perk at minimum.

That's the real tragedy of the inaugural Wards. The kids were lured in with promises of safety, comraderie, and second chances like lambs to the slaughter. All the while, Alexandria and Cauldron knew that many (if not most) of these children would suffer abuse by the prt (like in the case of Reed), die, or face a fate worse than death like poor Mouse Protector. It's horrifying! The idea that they didn't know the danger these kids would be in is literally inconceivable. Especially when one of you is also the head of the prt! They knew, and they didn't care. It improved their chances at the end of the world, and so they did it no matter the cost.

#the same ppl will talk about Taylor being an unreliable narrator who we cannot trust #and then take Alexandria at face value #i think a lot of it is that this genre of guys very uncritically support and assume the best of authority figures #especially law enforcement #in a way that they just dont when it's a teenage girl who's never so much as glanced in the direction of a healthy coping mechanism #the great irony here being that fundamentally the prt/protectorate and Cauldron are all *also* being run by traumatized young women #and also that pretty much every negative opinion Taylor expresses abt the prt is 100% vindicated as the story goes on #genuinely baffled ppl can read Worm and be like 'Taylor's distrust of the prt was irrational'#it's the same energy as calling a woman hysterical #yes this *is* just me remembering the We've Got Worm podcast guys #they are my mortal enemies when it comes to wormposting #worm spoilers #worm #worm web serial #worm wildbow #parahumans

215 notes · View notes

xiaoriae · 11 months

Text

GENSHIN MEN AS ENEMIES TO LOVERS TROPE.

— PAIRINGS ; ayato, childe, itto & xiao x gn!reader (separate)

— CONTENT ; genshin's quests spoilers ahead (i don't really said them as spoilers but just a little heads-up, especially for those who are new to genshinblr) and slight mentions of blood in childe's.

— NOTES ; reposted from my old blog!

nobleman!ayato x commoner!reader

the kamisato head clan was your least favourite person of all time. this unsure, yet negative feeling you had on him all started since an eight years old AYATO did a prank on your younger self.

a long time had passed by, but since then, ayato seemed to find the joy in stirring your commoner life, until the name ayato engraved at the back of your mind with such revenge and hatred.

it went on and on like this, until one day, he heard the shogunate was going to enforce the vision hunt decree all around inazuma. he had no choice but to obey. after all, he needed to maintain his title as one of the heads in tenryou commission, yet all he thought was you, your stupid smile, and your vision.

he knew he had to do something about it.

“come here,” the moment ayato’s voice called you out, you rolled your eyes. you ignored him, spun and tried to blend in with the crowds, knowing too well that he couldn’t get you in public appearances.

but ayato was faster. all he did was pulling you aside, hidden from prying eyes. “do you have your vision?”

you scoffed, maybe too rude for someone as noble as him, but you did not really care when it was ayato who was right in front of you. “why? you are going to confisticate it? under the behalf of the shogun?”

your choosing of words should’ve made him baffled, or amused, but instead, he didn’t have the time for your nonsense and your attitude. “give me your vision,” his voice asserted command and it honestly intimidated you. “you really want it? no, not with your own hands, kamisato.”

ayato’s grip on your wrist tightened. you didn’t get why he was so stubborn with this, or even wanted to do this, but still, the desperation in his eyes was evident. “give it to me, now,” his tone went cold, and his low tone—almost like a growl—came out from him, frustrated and it left you in a confused yet startled state.

“i’ll take care of your vision, it is much safer with me.”

“ayato?” your voice sounded small, and you were left speechless with his actions. did he really go all this length just to protect your vision?

but... why?

he looked down on you, slowly pulling the vision away, and you nodded, and that was all it took for ayato to have your own consent. “take care, little one. i am hoping that you don’t go around making a fuss with the shogunate.”

you didn’t know why you believe him in the first place, but you did.

and now, your vision was in the hand of your worst enemy, yet he saved you from many unfortunate occasions under the decree.

fatui harbinger!childe x adventurer!reader

CHILDE was a cheerful and an easygoing person. one look at him and everyone instantly knew, that this man, was someone who didn’t take things too seriously.

that was, until your name came out.

both you and him, or maybe all of the people around you, knew that you hated childe with all your heart, and vice versa.

picking up occasional fights with him was normal. belittling each other in combats and talking big about who was better were your daily routine, yet him being like this was certainly out of the norm.

“what do you think you’re doing?” you frowned, retracting your body away from his hold. however, childe was stronger, and there was no point of you trying to fight his strength.

“who did this to you?” he boldly looked up and down at your whole dirty, and bloodied clothes, gently touching all cuts and bruises—in contrast with him forcefully made you sat down in front of him prior to whatever this was.

“why do you even care?” you pulled away for the tenth times from his touch. a foreign feeling bubbling inside your chest, and childe’s gaze was filled with rage, and you were stunned with his face.

“because you are someone i care about.”

you mentally cursed at your damned heart for skipping a beat at that, but childe seemed oblivious with his previous words. all you saw was the ginger in front of you slightly shook and his eyes burned when he saw your injuries.

he truthfully worried, what ifs questions were running around inside his mind, and all he could think of was his subordinates, the fatui.

he knew that they didn’t like him, and he knew that they purposefully injured you, you had been there once, and it was because of him.

sure, you didn’t look like you were hurting, or weak—you were strong, he knew that—but he couldn’t contain himself when he saw how awful you came back from outside of the city.

demon!itto x human!reader

ITTO was a cocky being.—

that was among infinite traits you didn’t like about him.

that sly smirk you had been aching to wipe off of his face. how he practically flaunting his muscles everywhere with no shame. yes, you slightly cringed at the sights but that couldn’t compare with how full he was of himself.

and by gods, he didn’t even give you a time alone. whenever you went, he would be following you behind with his narcissistic side, saying that he would protect you or something along the line of, “don’t worry, this is the one and oni, arataki itto, will protect you.”

no matter how many times you ignored him, that much would be a payback of how clingy he was towards you afterwards.

such a childish act for a huge guy.

“y/n!“ if you could do it sooner, you would’ve shut his loud mouth with a tape, because oh my god, he was loud as hell, and you were getting tired of keeping up with his random bursts of energy.

they said that you shouldn’t be around an oni for too long, but itto seemed harmless. too human although he was a half-demon that was supposedly be feared.

“what is it?” a heavy sigh passed your lips. you just wanted to go out for a morning walk, nothing more and nothing less, and what a wonderful way for you to start your day, you thought.

“just want to greet my favourite person,” he gave you a hug, tone too happy for someone who had just been whining about how he lost in a duel. his face slightly rubbed beside yours and you swiftly ducked your head, ultimately freeing your body from the figure who was too close in your opinion.

“aww,” he slightly whined. you didn’t understand his mood, so you were frankly, straight to the point. “what do you want, itto? you usually want to cut my head off, but today you’re acting like a baby.”

“hey! if you’re shorter than me, you are definitely a child. no room for argument,” he huffed. yep, definitely too whiny for a guy who could’ve break you with a single punch.

“although i badly want to duel with you, since, you know, i uh.. lost yesterday, but isn’t today’s your birthday?”

“and?”

“come on, now. you’re no fun,” he pulled his arms into his chest. “that is why i would like to make your dull life much more brighter,” he faked a cough. “happy birthday—

"yeah, cut it off, arataki itto.”

adeptus!xiao x human!reader

how did someone could be hating on social interactions so much?

that was the first question you only had, and it was for a specific adeptus.

XIAO was too lonely, and when he always shrugged you off, you decided that you didn’t like that side of his.

what was the point in protecting liyue but having a solitude life? did he really feel that bothered by having someone talking with him?

your numerous questions were answered when verr told you his backstory, and maybe you were being dramatic, but his reason was so heartbreaking for you to hear.

“don’t,” xiao’s hard tone warned, because you stared at him too much until he couldn’t bear to see your eyes. he knew that you figured out one thing or two about him, and he didn’t like the fact that there was guilt everywhere inside you. “i do not need your mortal pity.”

you almost cried when you remembered his karmic debt, because all this time, you treated him so bad, and now you were weighing with continuous guilt, guilt and guilt.

“xiao,” you finally, finally voiced out after long session of looking at the adeptus. his green spear in his hand, that mask beside his waist. “i’m sorry.”

“don’t, it’s useless,” xiao wondered how you suddenly became like this. usually, you would bicker with him, saying that he needed communications and daily conversations in his life but today, of all day, where he felt so heavy with karma, you decided to soften your heart and looking at him with such sympathy.

he truly hated that look you had been giving to him for hours now.

he knew you knew, your eyes told him everything.

you felt like comforting him, but you didn’t know how. it was weird when all you did was fighting with him, babbling about all the things surrounded him and then suddenly, you wanted to put him at ease.

so you decided to let the day passed by, silently enjoying the sky view from the rooftop of wangshu inn. no words were told to him, and he, for the first time, appreciated your treatment.

2K notes · View notes

gudrunbrangwen · 2 months

Text

if ur fat lib politics “draw the line at fat fetishists” i fail to understand whose liberation you are actually For lol. the specter of the ill-intentioned chubby chaser just cracks me up when it’s used to paint a community of (mostly fat) people who are in agreement that getting fat(ter) on purpose is sexy as Ghoulish Degenerates Infiltrating Our Movements. if you are legitimately pressed by the possibility that people might love fat bodies For Being Fat (in an active horny pursuit way, not in a target ad way) and not despite their fat then the call is coming from inside the house LOL. i’m tired of even giving concessions to this patently conservative rhetoric like “ohhhh i guess BAD objectification happens too 😢” cuz the kind of power dynamics that allow abuse are only enforced by this kind of hand-wringing

it’s not identical but it does have commonalities with only supporting trans existence if they’ve tried sooooo hard not to be trans & feel really bad about it. there remains the presumption that being cis is a superior and more desirable human state, and that people who might transition out of their own desire to change (having nothing to do with a Born this Way narrative) are posing a threat to True (innocent) victims of gender dysphoria.

it’s baffling and offensive to actual discussions of bodily autonomy to balk at the idea that someone might want to occupy a body that isn’t socially rewarded by a fundamentally conservative culture at large. get a fucking grip!!!

#more fat lib activists come out as feedists NOW

229 notes · View notes

villainsandvictimsalliance · 4 months

Text

Whenever I remember that Tenya almost went full vigilante mode for Tensei I want to scream so bad like it's not even funny.

Bnha somersaults its way into saying "maybe heroes are just good citizens with the power to do good things" and "maybe heroism is not in the big notorious acts but in being kind and fair in the day to day details" AND THAT'S ALL TENSEI.

AND THAT'S WHAT MOTIVATES TENYA TO GO FULL BLOODHOUND ON STAIN.

I'm not denying that the world needs the big ass heroism acts like defeating AFO or saving a city or all those flashy notorious feats. All Might is very needed, because there are threats that are too old and developed and have accumulated too much hatred and damage over the years. You cannot always prevent those things from happening and to believe so would be naive, right?

What I'm saying is that those big events are the lowest percentage. They are the consequences of a systematic failure.

Take two of the biggest evil plots in the manga: AFO planning to still OFA and Overhaul with his quirk-erasure bullets. Both plans depended on an abused child being used as objects, Eri because her quirk was the base of the bullet working and Tomura because he was just meant to be AFO's new body in the future. In both cases, AFO and Overhaul were cornered after losing the child they were using for their plots. In fact it was the kids resisting the abuse that contributed the most to their failure: Eri prevented Overhaul from hurting Deku and Tomura prevented AFO from escaping his decaying body.

In that sense, the little unknown pro-heroes taking care of their neighborhood's children do a lot to prevent cases like Tomura or Eri from happening. Hell, AFO and Overhaul were also kids who went the violent route to survive.

Ingenium's silent heroism is probably the best example of what a hero looks like. They don't seek fame or glory. They regard heroism as their duty, their responsibility. No matter how little the act is, it's still important to do it.

At this point, we must admit the Tenya's crisis over what happened to Tensei is not only about their bond as brothers. Yeah, that was Tenya's big bro, but it is no less than when Deku and Bakugo saw All Might fighting AFO for the last time— the last moments of their role models.

The Iida brothers' crisis was deep rooted in the main issues of the story, so I'm still baffled at how people just tend to ignore it.

Before Stain, the "League of Villains" was just a minor threat. Dabi was a nobody with no real crimes to his name. Toga was just a lost little girl trying to survive the streets. Spinner didn't even think about being a villain. Before Stain, things were bad, but no one really thought they could change the status quo, you know?

The USJ incident was not the big deal because 1) how was attacking kids the answer? and 2) going for All Might was expected, since he was almost invincible and the biggest hero in the world and blah blah blah.

When Stain started attacking minor pro-heroes...

Stain was the opposite of Tomura. He admired All Might and saved those kids, but went after the pro-heroes with less powerful quirks. He gave the population a sense of control. It's like he said "hey, you don't have to go after All Might to change the system and why would you? The real problem are the ones on the lowest part of the pro-hero chain".

Suddenly, they could go against pro-heroes and win. Divide and conquer. Suddenly, there was a ladder to climb. Suddenly, you could target not the institutions responsible for the rotten ideology of your society, but the people who enforced the ideology with their daily work.

Stain defended his posture by saying that those people didn't want to be real heroes. They just wanted the money, the fame, they were not really committed to their duty.

And then attacked Tensei, of all people.

If big crimes are built from little crimes that are accumulated over time, what would happen if you decided to eliminate the people taking care of the little crimes?

The crisis of belief in pro-heroes was triggered by Stain. When Stain pointed out at Ingenium (the one in the suit was Tensei) and accused him of false heroism, it's when shit started to go south. He created the idea that pro-heroes should be punished if they don't perform correctly and that they deserve to die if they don't have pure ideas of their job— or whatever.

Tensei being the victim is supposed to show how hypocritical Stain is. Tensei is probably one of the only pro-heroes that never did anything wrong in the manga and one of the best family men to be presented. A man who was loved by everyone for being good in every sense of the word.

Stain projected his own fantasies on Tensei in order to accomplish his witch hunt, not truly caring to figure out who the person was. He just attacked for the sake of attacking, which explains why he was so popular: anyone could do the same and project their issues on him, fighting different battles disguised as just one cause.

When Tenya went after him, it could only make sense. The little of the Iidas is too righteous and noble, quick to judge and act, prone to making mistakes and getting carried away by the looks of it all. So easily his justice turns into revenge and he falls into the trap Stain set. Who knows what a hero student killing Stain would have caused...

At this point it's obvious I'm just ranting for the sake of ranting but 😭😭😭 give the Iidas the respect they deserve please.

#bnha #mha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #league of villains #lov #shan's bnha rants #shan's mha rants #iida tenya #iida tensei #Ingenium #pro-hero ingenium

338 notes · View notes

2-dsimp · 2 months

Text

Danny The Boss:

Oh no. Not only is his darling a fabulous cosplayer they’re also top of the line assassin too. Get this man an ambulance because right now he was about to pass out from his hyperactive imagination of you in the wifey fit from Spy x Family. He actually has those costumes in his sacred closet and he’ll downright get on his knees and beg for you to be the Yor to his Loid.

??? The Enforcer:

You’ve brought out his inner cheerleader since now that he’s discovered that his little spark fire is a cold blooded killer. You bet that he’s gonna cheer you on like the big supportive golden retriever that he is. He’ll shower you with praise for every single name you’ve taken off the map.

Bjorn The Strategist:

For being the smartest one in the room it was ironic how he had no clue of how you were already in the business until you outright told him. The news left him baffled as he sat in his chair with the cold cup of black coffee spilling from his cup until it ran empty. He was the literal embodiment of “Wow…I need to a minute to think about this” I guess those rose colored lenses he wore for the cute barista of his really did make him blind.

Yujin The Hacker:

He actually brought the topic of you being a bounty hunter up to you and bombarded you with all sorts of questions with an excited catlike grin on his face. One day he was absentmindedly stalking you on all social media until he came across something that was a telltale sign that you were in a similar profession. He was literally bouncing off the screens of his pc monitors at the fact that you two shared something in common. And he couldn’t wait to gossip with you about it!

Koji The Medic:

He knew right from the moment he saw that his darling nurse was oddly skilled with his tools. For every “patient” that came in he couldn’t help but be impressed with how well you handled even the rowdiest of the bunch with such effectiveness without breaking a sweat. He just decided not to mention it as it wasn’t necessarily a topic he felt that needed to be addressed as it wasn’t any of his business.

Moros The Torturer:

He couldn’t help but be the mother hen he was and fret over you every time you went out on a mission. He’d constantly worry about how you were doing once you left him to his own devices. It was so bad that he was stuck in autopilot mode the whole entire day until you came back. Even while he was on duty torturing his clients targets as they screamed in agony from him pulling off their nails. All he could think about was wether or not his sunshine ate this morning.

Ossian The Sniper:

Once he found out that you were also a contracted killer from having a stakeout outside your house. Spying on you from his sniper lenses only to find you cutting at dead body and disposing it within a vacuum bag. He’d make sure to stalk you during your mission making sure not to get caught as he headshoted anyone posing a threat to you. Silently cheering you on with a sweet small smile on his face and a fist pump from a distant building. As he gushed over how badass his crush was.

115 notes · View notes

exitwound · 6 months

Text

Maybe think about why you care so much about calling gerard way a woman to the extent that you equate it as the only correct way to engage with their work, as if art as well as support for the trans community can’t have value by itself, as if that isn’t the point, not their literal personal internal experience of gender that’s no one’s business, the same way trying to decide if anyone is trans is not your business if that person doesn’t want to tell you or talk about it with you, because it’s gender essentialist, and why it’s so baffling to you that a celebrity in general but especially gerard way might want to avoid labels or this specific type of intrusive categorization , as they have explicitly stated as well as created music that is about the same thing. And shouldnt we live in a world where someone can present gnc, and talk about experiences with gender and with femininity in honest ways, without people not just obsessing over whether that means they’re “really a woman” but outright deciding, and acting like they are. That’s a narrow fucking definition of womanhood. And shouldn't we value that authenticity from people who don’t want to choose a label as much as we do from people who identify in ways they do choose to label, (labels or the lack of btw have never been individual terms but tools for relating or not relating ourselves to the world in specific ways,) Isn’t that a better more open and beautiful mode of creating relationships to each other? Why does gerard need to be a woman to you? Why are you so obsessed with this? Why is transness and queerness and gender nonconformity itself, to you, some kind of item, an object or artifact for distribution upon others — and it is not in fact “creating cisnormativity” to accept the way a person wants to relate their identity to an audience. There are lots of trans women and transfeminine people who are doing everything gerard way is doing for transness and much more. If you want to call someone a woman go call a woman a woman. If you want to celebrate trans joy go celebrate trans joy. Please by all means do I will celebrate with you I am celebrating with you and I am doing it while listening to my chemical romance. So what’s the point in acting like this. I really don't get it. But it concerns me because this isn't the only time I've witnessed this kind of attitude and although its well-intentioned and "playful" its ultimately weird, ultimately harmful. So honestly, if this really feels "low-stakes" to you it might be because you've never dealt with the kinds of situations where the stakes exist, or considered the perspective of someone who has a different relationship to the stakes of your argument than you do.

Because not to be dramatic, but these stakes are the same stakes relevant to the literal record numbers of legislation currently being passed in the US using bioessentialism and gender essentialism to install systems of state-controlled gender-enforcing and forced gendering of trans and non-trans gnc children in schools and in healthcare. What you're doing is, if on a small scale, still contributing to the same conceptualization of gender as these laws, and as the people who passed them, even if you're well intentioned and hate the laws, even if your beliefs are reversed, the framework is the same, and that framework is going to empower the dominant culture, not yours. That's how power works. Which is why it's stupid. It's literally just stupid. And it hurts trans people who have had experiences in the real world where people are just as intrusive as you are being about trying to interpret their gender, and you’re no different for trying to clock people. If you don't know the stakes of your words, you should learn them before you use those words. Just because you're in a bubble of people who agree with you and think this is just about being either "right" or "wrong" about gerard way's gender and wanting to be "right" doesn't dismiss you from the meaning of the actual words you are saying and the ideologies informing your beliefs, whether or not you're aware of them, because the rest of us aren't trying to be right, we're not living in a this-or-that world in the first place. Personally I don't know them. I've appreciated & engaged with what they have said about their experiences with gender as well as their art while also respecting their statements about not liking labels, and treated their silence on their own identity as intentional, because I like knowing what words, and the absences of words, mean

#z #mcr

250 notes · View notes

moon-pepper · 9 months

Text

I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that understanding history is necessary to prevent the worst parts of it from repeating, so I spend a lot of my free time trying to learn about things like colonialism, slavery, genocide -- and it worries me to no end to see how much the majority of people don't seem to understand even about events everyone is familiar with. I used to be baffled that anyone could genuinely believe slavery was "just how things were back then", but it makes sense when you realize that most history lessons only deal with what the people in power decided to do; public outrage about a particular action only matters in the historical context if that outrage led to actual mass revolution. Even before we get to the layers of whitewashing and propaganda constantly applied to history, there's an innate bias toward treating major political movements as though they just appear and disappear entirely at random. Which leads me to wonder...

Do fellow gentiles realize that the Nazis weren't new?

What I mean is that most coverage I see of the Nazi ascension to power in Germany presents them as this new, fringe group that came to power out of nowhere through solely violent means. Sometimes there will be explicit mention of the fact that antisemitism was extremely prevalent throughout Germany (occasionally even the rest of Europe!) prior to Hitler's political campaign, but oftentimes it seems implicit that mass antisemitism in Germany began when the NSDAP first formed. Even when the prior existence of antisemitism is brought up, the Nazis are portrayed as a new, unique evil; they did things that no democratic society would ever dream of doing, things that could only be achieved by either completely hiding them from the public or by threatening anyone who spoke against them. "Nazi" is simultaneously an easy epithet for any excessively cruel or restrictive person and a label that is far too severe to seriously apply to anyone because the Nazis were so evil in a way that nobody else was that nobody is truly deserving of comparison.

The thing is, though, that the policies put into place by the Nazi government in order to enable their genocidal end goal weren't original. Even setting aside the fact that they're often viewed as the inventors of genocide despite Hitler openly admitting that he got the idea from the treatment of Indigenous peoples by the U.S.A. (highly recommend watching this BadEmpanada video to learn about that), very few of the Nazis' beliefs or actions were original to the Nazis. The conspiratorial, racially-puristic ideas that the Nazis touted were derived from contemporary conservative thinkers all across the West, and many of the antisemitic legal policies they implemented as part of their Final Solution were practices that had been standard throughout Europe for centuries prior.

The infamous yellow-star badges used to identify Jewish citizens? Those were first devised and enforced the region (by both Christian and Muslim rulers) at least as early as the 800s; it was 1215 when Pope Innocent III declared that all Jewish and Muslim people living in Catholic lands should be required to wear identifying clothing with the explicit goal of segregating them from Christians. The Nazi ghettos to which Jewish citizens were forcibly relocated were inspired by ghettos which had existed to segregate and isolate Jewish populations for centuries; the only real difference is that these new ghettos were just preludes to concentration camps rather than being meant for long-term habitation. Just about every part of Western society had some form of restriction (mandated or voluntary) banning Jewish people from occupying certain jobs or limiting their presence in universities going back centuries before the Nazis existed. There were more than 350 years where Jewish people were not legally permitted to live in England.

The reason I bring all of this up is because, even among people who are conscious of Europe's widespread antisemitism prior to the rise of Nazism, there's a strong notion that the Nazis were so detestable because they came out of nowhere; that they completely defied the norms of the day and took their antisemitism to a level that even the deeply antisemitic societies of past Europe never would have.

In reality, the Nazis weren't much of an escalation -- they were a return. Legal segregation, expulsion, and even slaughter of Jewish people really only began to end when the Enlightenment came and public sentiment in the West began to favor secular government. The first country to abolish legal restrictions on Jewish people was Revolutionary France in the 1790s. Russia maintained its restrictions on Jewish citizens' rights up until it also saw revolution in 1917. The idea that Jewish people were responsible for all of society's ills and needed to be subjugated and exterminated was not a new idea that took hold of Germany due to its economic suffering after World War 1; it was a very old, very popular idea that most of Europe had only just begun to abandon and which was brought back in full force the moment it became politically convenient.

Consider how this compares to present-day politics. Jewish Germans were only granted equal rights in 1871 -- Adolf Hitler's father and mother were 34 and 11 years old, respectively -- and when the Nazi Party formed only 49 years later, the majority of adult Germans would have grown up in or been raised by parents who grew up in a world before religious desegregation. The Nazi Party's promise to the German public was not to introduce a newly bigoted society, but to bring back the bigotry they had grown up with and ensure that it would never leave again; they succeeded by using Germany's post-war suffering to "prove" their society was declining and blaming that decline on a recent major societal change, thereby convincing Christian Germans who were still deeply antisemitic that you see? we let the Jews have rights and not even fifty years later everything is awful. Many Germans did not need to be lied to or forced into supporting the Nazis because, to them, the Nazis were just fighting to revive the "Good Old Days" of their youths.

As a political party, the Nazis were functionally identical to all of the modern-day pundits eagerly proclaiming that racial equality and LGBT equality and religious diversity and welfare policies are destroying the country. Any period of significant economic downturn, any large cultural shift, any major catastrophe no matter the cause is automatically the decline of Western Society to them -- and the blame for that decline is always placed on the most relevant pro-equality social movements. What makes the Nazis unique is not their goals or the beliefs that fueled them; what makes the Nazis unique is that they're the latest and largest example of a group like them gaining power and then rapidly losing that power, which makes them simultaneously martyr idols for subsequent fascists and sacrificial vessels through which liberals can pretend the world's evils were expunged.

Any major shift in favor of granting rights to the oppressed inevitably stirs up a proportional conservative backlash with the effort of reversing course -- not just by revoking those new rights, but by making the previous inequality worse so that it becomes harder to undo again. If we care about ensuring an equitable future, it is vital to understand that the fight for that future does not end with a law being passed. It ends only when equality for all is so well-established as a social norm that there is no way to benefit from pushing for its destruction. Do not get complacent.

#pepperpost #antisemitism #long post #disclaimer that i am not a historical expert and this is not intended as a professional essay. it's pretty surface-level t.b.h.#second disclaimer that this is not meant as doomsaying. i believe people are good by default #anyway. spent way too long typing all this out mostly to try and mull over my own recent thoughts on this subject #hopefully it's coherent to anyone else

295 notes · View notes

tower-of-hana · 7 months

Text

The Magic System in Harry Potter Is Kinda Dumb an Essay

The Killing Curse Was a Bad Idea

I took this one from a youtube video but it's true and I don't see it talked about a lot. The killing curse was a bad idea because it disincentivises the villains from ever attacking the heroes in an interesting way. Instead of using any type of dark magic that is interesting and cool they'll just reach for the instant death spell because it's easier.

It Doesn't Have Any Meaningful Rules:

Rules in a magic system are important because they allow the characters to establish strategies and for the audience to understand what those strategies are. Harry Potter doesn't do this which is why almost all of the magic fights are dumb and boring (it doesn't help that the main character knows like three spells but that isn't really a problem with the worldbuilding). Pretty much all the limits on the magic system in Harry Potter are used to stop the author from having to worldbuild.

It Also Doesn't Do Anything with the Lack of Rules:

That being said, anime fights where characters throw the sun at each other are dumb fun but Harry Potter doesn't do that either. Harry Potter doesn't really have any spells that are overpowered in an interesting way. As a result all fights are just characters throwing the same three spells at each other and older characters using undefined, more interesting spells to create the illusion of a better magic system.

Transfiguration Is Implemented Badly:

Transfiguration isn't a bad idea but the way it works in the books makes it completely useless. Why the fuck would anyone use a spell to turn a hyper specific thing into another hyper specific thing. That's just not all that helpful.

We Don't Know What Magic IS:

In Harry Potter pretty much everything about how magic works is badly defined. But I think most of this problem stems from the more fundamental problem that Harry Potter never establishes what magic is. In a lot of stories the author mentions at some point what their magic system fundamentally is: the force is some type of magic force that exists throughout the universe, chakra is magic energy that flows through your body etc. This is not necessary but it helps both you and the audience know what the rules and limits to magic are. Harry Potter doesn't do this so magic can just do random bullshit.

Good Guy Magic and Bad Guy Magic Operates on Twisted Morality:

Some pieces of media give the bad guys evil magic so you know that they are evil. Harry Potter tries to do this but utterly fails. Take the unforgivable curses for instance. The first is the cruciatus curse, it causes pain. This is fine, most people agree that pain is bad. The second one is the imperious curse, it allows you to control people. This would be fine because mental manipulation is generally considered to be bad. Or it would be, if the story hadn't already established that the "good guys" go around erasing people's memories all the time. In fact they constantly invade and manipulate the minds of muggles to the point where they genuinely do it more than the racist bad guys. In fact the wizarding world is basically an apartheid state enforced by the literal thought police and the main characters we're supposed to sympathize get positions of power in it (mostly) but I digress. The third is the killing curse and this one makes sense on the surface but when you think about it it's really baffling. Sure killing people with no other side effects or other purpose sounds evil until you realize that the good guys in Harry Potter try to kill people by: blowing them up, setting them on fire, crushing them with shelves of shitty plot devices, disintegrating them, defenestrating them (movie), freeing a dragon in a crowded area, setting unquestionably evil beings loose around children, suffocating them with magic plants, magic plant Havana Syndrome, crushing them with giants, burning them with the power of love, supposedly slicing them to pieces with transfigured knight statues, being eaten by magic bushes, poison murder trees, trampling them, and fucking yeeting them across the room. I dunno mate I would rather painlessly die tbh.

✨The Powa of Wuv✨

You know how the power of love is a thing we all joke about because it's such a trite and overplayed stand-in for an actual solution to a problem? Well the author decided to make it a part of the magic system. Now for the low low price of your mom you, yes you, can be immune to the plot. I would praise this as great satire if it wasn't taken 100% seriously the entire series.

#magic #anti jk rowling #anti jkr #anti harry potter #anti hp #worldbuilding

163 notes · View notes

ikkosu · 3 months

Note

I would love something, anything with human reader (gn) SSAU, stuck between Prowl and Pharma <3 maybe they’re a mechanic? Or just a nurse? I love how you write the two dorks. They’re just sooooo 👀💚

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A WALL

a/n : ah!!!! my favorite person!!! it's been a while pookie jkjk I am excessively obsessed with them, as well LITERALY (I kid you not. It's about time I write an, ahem, threesome with them

"Have you tried reporting him for harrassment?"

Oh, you've have enough.

Your datapad hits the surface of your desk with a clink, not without letting out a growl of frustration that all the more tightened the coil of a headache, brewing in your temples.

Just a visit. It's just a visit. It's just a visit. He's just being himself he's just—

"You know what, Prowl? You're so damn petty sometimes."

You swivelled to face him, but the cop-bot perched in your chair, your chair, inspecting your work-cubicle, pretends to look away.

Like, he didn't just pester you the whole hour on ethics of trying to fire your own boss and slandering your note-taking skills.

(yellow? seriously? any other highlighter you can choose but you picked yellow? disgusting).

"You should know your adjectives, by now. I wouldn't call that petty. A term I'd prefer is being Strategic." He clipped. "But I'm sure, given how your emotions normally regulate your, whatever you have, is a brain — you wouldn't be able to comprehend such a notion."

He's made a habit of making everything sound so reasonable, it's baffling. You round your desk, stopping short in front of him. Prowl retaliates your scowl by leaning back against the chair. He tips his helm until it hits the headrest and his eyes, flaring blue, peered over the crook of his nose.

You know he's got that stupid bastardly smile underneath the facade.

"What do you want?" You huffed out.

"A simple, round the block, routine checkup. Nothing important. "

"Yeah? Yeah? You're, like, three fucking planets away from your station. I'm sure that's plausible."

Where's Max when you needed him most to beat his ass?

"Anything is possible if you think it to be so."

Oh, you're this close. This close. You look to your watch, groaning internally. Around three hours more you're due for an operation. And you're not even prepared yet! You're supposed to go through your notes on how to yank out a gut from it's slot, not having a verbal spar with Cybertron's number one asshole.

"Look, I don't know what beef you've got with the guy but I thought you're the enforcer here, mister goody two shoes. This is illegal."

He scoffs at that but doesn't seem to regard the last part, however. " It's your boss now, huh."

"Excuse me?"

"Last I heard he was the boss." The chair creaks as he shifts on the spot, looking incredibly out of place in that plush, black office wheeler. " What, did you pucker up your lips and appeased his ego to botch that spot?"

"What?" You sputtered. "Botch that spot? What are you— No, No!— He's my boss!— I— What do you want me to say?"

"That you're not his playtoy." He crosses his arms.

"I'm not!"

"Then, call him by his name." He grits his teeth. "Don't say 'my boss'. It sounds corny. It sounds stupid. You sound stupid." A digit juts your way and you scoff, holding yourself back from commiting first degree murder. " And, you know what's even better? Just don't talk to him. Ever. Not even a look or a smile. Is that understood?"

"Prowl, i—" You sighed, dragging a palm down your face. "Please, tell me you didn't come all the way here to Delphi —all the way here — just to tell me that."

The corner of his mouth tugged up a little. He looks away to hide it, though. "I'm paid to serve the law after all."

"Oh, yeah? You're paid to shut the fu—"

"My, my. That's not a pleasant way to address a man of law, now is there darling?" A low voice crooned behind you and you feel his servos curling over both sides of your waist, chassis against your back. Pharma rests his chin on your shoulder and a chesire grin is directed to the enforcer.

You don't dare to look behind you, but you're also not strong enough to lock eyes with Prowl who's got a death grip on the arm chair, teeth gritting, digits digging into the cushion. Eventually, he stands up to his full height, stepping close, you're almost sandwiched between the two like a smore.

"Doctor." He clips.

"Enforcer." Was Pharma's drawl. "Here to fetch your little pet?"

He bristles, door wings piking up at the term but doesn't regard it. "Here to take them far. How much for a forced unemployment?"

"Oh, nothing much. I usually do it for free, but this one..." Pharma leans close and you yelp when his chassis pushes you forward to press against Prowl's, you guessed it, chassis. "—Is an exception. You see, officer, I actually quite like having this one around. Keeps my arduous moments flourishing, my lonely nights — occupied."

Prowl lands a servo on your shoulder. "Yeah. Figured as much." He grits out.

"Oh, not really. It doesn't have to take much assuming." Pharma straightens up, a servo on the other side of your shoulder. "While, its all in good fun, we three all have a job to do, yes? Best you leave them to their devices now."

He was about to tow you away when Prowl's unrelenting death grip on your shoulder prevents you from moving. "I'd rather not."

"Is that so?" Poison spools out from that drawl.

"Your audials doesn't seem to be of optimum order. Mind If I smoothen out the creases?"

You winced, looking at your watch. Shit. Shit. Shit. Of all times Pharma had to come in, he takes the opportunity when Prowl is here?! You need to prepare yourself right now. That patient isn't going to pull out a gut themself, and they aren't sewing their lungs back, either. If you could just....wiggle from the rooks of their grip and slowly slide away to— Prowl clamps a servo on your waist. Pharma, clutching your shirt.

They hold you close.

Oh, forget it.

A wide, terse grin eases out on the jet's face. "Perhaps your t-cog would need a diagnosis as well. Oh, no, no not just your t-cog. Something else. As a doctor I would'nt want my patient limping for...." He whispered lowly. ".... undercompensation, given how you're strutting around...."

Prowl let's out a low growl in his throat. "Oh? How about we head out side and hunker down a nice 'smoothening out?"

"Don't try me, enforcer." Pharma's mood isn't much better but unlike Prowl he's got a good facade holding up. " You've got what's coming and it won't be pleasant. I suggest you step out now."

Then the bastardly smile curls the corner of his cheek. "Let's test out that theory, then."

Oh, dear.

#transformers #maccadam #transformers x reader #transformers idw #pharma #prowl x reader #idw pharma #idw prowl #pharma x reader

66 notes · View notes

thebibliosphere · 9 months

Note

Im glad you had a relatively good time playing the Batman telltale games but now.im wondering have you played Wolf Among Us? I think it also speaks to that critique you have of like, the illusion of choice and how nothing you do can fully change an outcome but I think it sort of works better for that storyline specifically because of who the character you play is in a way. Also bigby wolf is just Insanely hot

God, I love Bigby, both in the game and in the graphic novels. (The voice actor for Bigby can get it too, but specifically when he starts to go feral. Read me the phone book, you sexy 40-pack-a-day wolf man.)

And yeah, the lack of actual choice works a bit better for Bigby, given who he is and the circumstances they're in. They're basically living under enforced magical segregation where deviation from the rules can get your entire community killed. Bigby's moral choices are essentially "enforce the cruelty of the rules" or "let people die."

If he smuggles a bit of compassion in under the radar, it's also not necessarily expected because Bigby is a monster. He's the Big Bad Wolf. He got picked for the job of law enforcement because the other fables are terrified of him. He's eaten people. And he's pretty blunt about it. He might not enjoy when people suggest he enjoys violence, but the violence comes easy to him because he understands the necessity of being the biggest, meanest, baddest wolf around because that's how he survives. You see that in the graphic novels when he stops at nothing to defend his children. Not even his own siblings are safe from his wrath. Bigby is a creature of limited outcomes, and the limited nature of the game plays into that.

With Batman, whose entire identity is built around his moral code in defiance of the world around him, it doesn't really work. Not even when you pull the rug out from under him and proclaim his father to have been a villain, he's still got this strong sense of dedication to Gotham and the people closest to him.

And while you could make it interesting by highlighting his "bad" choices in the game, it doesn't have the same impact if there's no difference in outcomes. If Batman becomes a villain, treat him like a villain. But if your Batman stays true to himself, which is possible to do, it makes no sense to have Alfred treat him like he's given into all his worst impulses when he hasn't.

It's honestly kind of baffling and doesn't work for his character, not even when Bruce is behaving out of character and hurting people beyond his usual limits, it's because he's undercover and under extreme duress.

Treating him like the big bad villain because he punched some law enforcement out instead of letting Harley Quinn shoot them dead doesn't work. You see him hesitating and struggling in those moments. He hasn't abandoned who he is. Even if you pick the meanest dialogue, the character is still clearly emoting distress and regret. He's still Batman. He's just having a very not good terrible bad awful year and needs people to give him a Fucking Break.

#telltale batman #the wolf among us

182 notes · View notes

daenerystargaryen06 · 3 months

Text

This is late 'cause I've been very busy and sick- but let's get into it.

I've seen so many comments like this one on Tik Tok, really terrible platform for comments like these to pop up since everyone likes spreading their hate for Dany on Daenerys edits/videos, especially on other comments that show support for Daenerys and uplift her. But this one in particular genuinely baffles me no, I won't blur the name out; this dude commented this on a public forum for everyone to see. Just don't send him hate or anything... even if this part of the fandom isn't as crazy as all the others.

'Drogon isn't as crazy as his slave master Dany'. Let's break this down, shall we? First point- Dany isn't a slave master, ESPECIALLY to Drogon. Dany was a bridal sex slave herself, in the show at the age of 16/17, in the books at the age of 13. She knows what it's like to be a slave, she was one herself, and due to her enslavement and the horrors she saw when wed to Drogo (his own people's violence against not only her but also the Lhazareen)- Daenerys wants equality for everyone. She breaks the chains from those enslaved in Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen. She works to free these people from their sufferings and plight and give them agency to achieve freedom for themselves and no longer live under the cruelty of the Masters. In the show, she sets up a council of freedmen to govern themselves to rule the cities, and she ensures the Masters no longer remained a threat to her people before she left to Westeros. In the Books, she is currently struggling against the Masters and is facing many struggles, but she is still striving to ensure her people remain free and safe from the Masters without worry of cruelty and fear under the Masters for their own profit.

"There speaks one who has been neither." Dany's nostrils flared. "Do you know what it is like to be sold, squire? I do. My brother sold me to Khal Drogo for the promise of a golden crown. Well, Drogo crowned him in gold, though not as he had wished, and I . . . my sun-and-stars made a queen of me, but if he had been a different man, it might have been much otherwise. Do you think I have forgotten how it felt to be afraid?" -A Storm of Swords - Daenerys II

"He was too eloquent for her. Dany had no answer for him, only the raw feeling in her belly. "Slavery is not the same as rain," she insisted. "I have been rained on and I have been sold. It is not the same. No man wants to be owned." -A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys III

Even worse is that this comment refers to Dany as being DROGON's slave master. Drogon has never been considered a slave to Dany. He is her child, her son. Her dragons are her children. Dany has never regarded them as slaves, nor will she ever regard to them as such. Rhaegal and Viserion were chained because Drogon killed a child, and Dany feared her dragons would grow unruly and begin to kill more of her people, yet she also regrets this decision. She cries when she does this in the show. She reflects upon it and regrets it in the books. She will always care for and love her dragons, who she loves alike to a mother. She regards to them as her children and would never willingly harm them.

In the show and books, Dany struggles with Drogon making his own decisions. But she does not try to enforce him under her will like a Master would a slave. She wants him to listen, yes, but every mother wants their child to listen and behave. In the show, she never harms Drogon or forces him to submit, he WILLINGLY listens to her once she gains back her identity after burning the Khals in Vaes Dothrak and going against the Masters when she returns to Meereen. If he didn't wish to listen, he wouldn't have to, as he possesses a mind and will of his own which was already shown in seasons 4-5. In the books, she has to whip Drogon into submission, but it was not to enslave Drogon- it was to SAVE him and her people from death in the Fighting Pit when he comes and almost loses his life while burning the people around him. If not for her, Drogon would have died, and he attacks back at her as well within the Pit before he submits to her and allows her to ride upon him away from the violence that was occurring.

Calling Dany Drogon's slave master is alike to calling every other Targ before her slave masters to their dragons, when we know that isn't true, and Dany's connection to her dragons is actually very much different and runs deeper than that of her ancestors with their own dragons.

Now, on the topic of 'craziness', Dany is far from it. In the show, she only became 'crazy' in the very last few episodes of the last season, when the writers ruined her character all for their excuse to have Jon kill her since they couldn't even think up a better ending. Before that, are we just going to ignore the fact that Dany actually went against what her father had done, did things for the good of others and cared for those considered 'lesser', and saved basically all of Westeros when she allied with Jon and it was the majority of HER armies and dragons that fought against the WW and NK? She only went 'crazy' when the writers wanted her to, and even that I don't consider canon, due to the fact she was painted as a HERO before they assassinated her entire character and made her go off the deep end and even that I don't view as just 'crazy'.

In the books, she fears becoming like her father, she is compared most to Rhaegar (a character many in the books view as sane and heroic), and she reflects most upon her actions and questions her decisions made. She is a grey character at most, and even still, she is the one character that does the most good and selfless acts in the books compared to everyone else. She wants what is best for her people, she wants to make them happy and give them good lives, and she wants to be a good Queen who isn't just feared or violent to achieve what she wants. She forgoes Westeros to keep in Meereen for her people's safety. She works the hardest to attempt for peace with the Masters without bloodshed or acts of cruelty and she is compassionate, intelligent, and an empathetic woman. She sees suffering and instead of accepting it like everyone else in that world has, she works AGAINST it to save those who do suffer due to her own experiences of suffering and pain. She is, in all, a hero who wants to do good. That doesn't seem very 'crazy' or 'slave master' to me.

Someone should really pick up the books, but I fear that their reading comprehension would be just as bad as their comments on Tik Tok.

65 notes · View notes

okiedoketm · 4 months

Note

There's a scene in One Piece where Koby is talking about his frustration and disappointment with the Marines as an institution, and Helmeppo tells him "Well, you just have to become some big shot and fix it all, right?" and Koby agrees with him, and that's got me thinking about how, in canon, Koby's endgame is pretty clearly going to be exactly that -- he's set up as not only Garp's successor but as the one who will surpass him. Koby's goal is to become so powerful and so influential that he's able to enforce massive reforms on The World Government's Entire Military, which is. No small task! Koby's motives are so selfless that it's easy to overlook that, actually, he's aiming for just as much power and prestige as the other top hitters. This man, like so many others in One Piece, is trying to swallow the sun, and it's been made clear that he's one of the few who has what it takes to actually succeed.

And that has me thinking about people constantly being surprised and confused by Zoro's loyalty to Luffy, because Zoro could be a pirate captain in his own right. People keep expecting him to be gunning for the crown, and we're told that if he did, honestly, he might make it! Zoro has the makings to be Pirate King, or at least to be a top dog, an emperor of the sea. People see his skill and his ambition and they assume, and every time he has to be like "Nah man, you got it wrong, my dreams start and end with that grinning rubber idiot over there. Yes, really."

and all of THAT has me thinking about Koby's Bad Day, and how hilarious it would be if Koby ALSO dealt with that on occasion. Technically he already does have experience as captain of his own crew (although being a captain in the navy isn't really the same kind of autonomy and freedom as a pirate captain, that's not Nothing!) and he certainly has the skills and the strength to get peoples' attention. However, unlike Zoro, Koby is very much Just Hanging Out. Like, Zoro knows he's hot shit, and it doesn't surprise him when other people point it out to him. He understands where the confusion comes from. He just corrects people and moves on. But Koby? If somebody just started assuming that Koby must clearly be the REAL captain, or that obviously Koby must want the Pirate King title for himself, I think Koby would explode. I don't think he'd know how to react. And I think it would be really, really funny.

Anyway I'm just sharing thoughts cause I'm on a reread. Thank you so much for writing this fic btw, easily one of my faves and reading it is always such a blast.

Man. My inbox loooves not showing me messages. Sorry to answer this so late!

First of all you are SO right, Koby would combust at the idea of being a contender for Pirate King. Where on earth would anyone get that idea?? Well, Koby, you’re a very powerful pirate with potentially the best observation haki in the entire world. People are gonna assume.

But of course Koby still mentally thinks of himself as a Good Boy, hasn’t fully reconciled with the fact that he is objectively and inarguably a pirate, in a world where most pirates are back-stabbing scumbags. He’s a member of Luffy’s crew, he is very proud to call him Captain! But honestly I think he sometimes forgets that they’re pirates, since 90% of the time they’re not doing anything illegal 😂

Combine that with the fact that he chronically underestimates how strong he really is, and that he is Luffy’s most ardent supporter? Yeah the Pirate King comments would BAFFLE him.

Thanks so much for sending this ask! I’m so happy you enjoyed KANGVCD enough to re-read it! It means a lot!

#asks #kangvcd #koby’s awful no good very confusing day #one piece #wren don’t look

63 notes · View notes

amarriageoftrueminds · 1 year

Note

maybe it's bc I grew up seeing (and can still see from the outside) how cis men play/joke/fake gayness as a display of domination but yet all somehow knew to avoid actual gayness like the plague (bc the it's so real how cishets manage to know what we are b4 we ourselves do) but I see that exact same "locker room" idea of playing gayness for laughs (usually by violating of sexual boundaries) + treating actual gay love like an unmentionable replicated by the cishets making media

like, look at marvel's iron man thor and gotg movies littered with writing that might nominally be considered "gay" jokes abt men being placed in sexual situations each other (again, often by laughing at the idea of sexual assault/nonconsensual sexualization) but cishet norms don't consider this gay in any real sense. it's the "accepted" way of portraying "gayness" in a way that signals to the audience that it's there to poke fun at the characters and knock 'em down a peg for comedy

This is part of why I rolled my eyes at ppl claiming queerbait at tfatws (completely not knowing what the bait part of the word means). Those "gay" moments in that show were the most classical homophobic dudebro locker room comedy that I've grown to recognize as an extension of the homophobic rough housing culture growing up among cishet boys. Every "moment" was just a Gunn-esque laugh at the male characters being degraded by being put in a position that seems gay against their consent, either by literally falling/rolling into it, by purposeful taunting by a malicious (and shoehorned) character, or literally by the force of the state(state as in governing body). it's meant to be funny in that the cishet culture the comedy comes from dictates that violating men's boundaries with a superficially "homo" act is a way to enforce hierarchy within the group. the jokes come from homophobia (which is why the creators were baffled at the idea of shipping in that show, they recognize the difference between real gayness and their homophobic lockerroom-culture jokes)

This is also why we never see anything even remotely like that between Bucky and Steve, they have genuine love for one another, the same cishet "gay" rough housing culture recognizes that between them it wouldn't be a joke, it'd be actually gay, so they avoided it like the plague. That's why we hardly ever see Bucky and Steve's canon platonic friendship portrayed, it holds actual love for one another that can't be played off by stoicism or homophobic lockerroom-style comedy. They can't do Gunnisms to make it a haha hehe, so the marvel franchise opts to not show the best friends inseparable from playground to battlefield as actual friends. Actual factual, sincere, earnest friendship between men is considered to approximate to gayness by comic book dudebro culture, so they don't show it and then blame gay ppl for "ruining" the platonic make friendships that they were too scared to show because anything more than hooking up with a bunch of interchanging women and meeting up one a year at a bar to talk about the women they've hooked up with is considered to gay by cishet men who still haven't grown out of that homophobic (& misogynistic) locker room culture.

Anon you're so right, and this is also how Tony can be cracking jokes about holding Rhodey's dick in the Avengers movie and no one in the execs room has a gay panic about needing to separate them!

Given that it also had Sharon mocking Bucky for being 'Mr America' tfatws especially seemed to revel in these nasty little homophobic digs. 😥

#long post #tfawts critical #stucky meta #mcu critical #mcu meta #steve meta #bucky meta #toAyourQ #dat's me #hey nonny #stucky #bucky barnes #written like a supernatural episode #it's like they tried to head off shipping sam/bucky at the pass...#...by making them do the thinly-veiled homophobia dudebro cliches #especially in contrast to the classic 'predatory-camp-gay-disney-villain' style zemo #who's all about the deep emotional talks and this is framed as intrusive and creepy and hannibal lectery #also there was that weird mackie quote...#where it seemed like he was being jockeyed into saying sth critical of gay shipping and then had to back-pedal..#and sth similar from sebstan more recently?? 🤔#ftatws onward really seems like a cack-handed attempt to de-gay bucky in particular...#just in time to shove him up against a bunch of women in thunderbolts presumably?? 😞#meta #steve rogers #tl;dr: they're so concerned with avoiding seeming gay they accidentally make everything seem hella gay #like it comes full circle back around to gay...#where steve and bucky's very avoidance of everything connoting typical male friendship shown everywhere else...#ends up just emphasising how very much NOT JUST FRIENDS they are #is it just me??#anon is SO SO fucking right

204 notes · View notes

vintagegeekculture · 1 year

Text

50 Years of Kung Fu Movies

There’s an overlooked anniversary that hasn’t been widely reported much yet: as of March 2023, it’s been 50 years of Kung Fu movies in the United States.

Bruce Lee was not the first big international Kung Fu movie star. Rather, the first English-dubbed breakout Chinese martial arts movie to become a hit in the greater US (apart from Hawaii) was “5 Fingers of Death” (also called “King Boxer”) in 1973 starring Lo Lieh, six months before Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon” and posthumous fame, making Lo Lieh the first true international Kung Fu star. There were lines halfway around the block at Times Square to see “5 Fingers of Death,” thanks to a radio giveaway in the New York area, and to those who first saw the movie, they remember the very first scene when the 63 year old Kung Fu master started backflipping and kicking out of nowhere and everyone watching this started losing their minds. “Five Fingers of Death” was like “Star Wars” in that it was a movie people saw over and over, minds blown, never having seen a film like this before.

Because Kung Fu movies were shown in less expensive grindhouse cinemas in urban areas, like seedy, pre-gentrification Times Square in New York, the audience for these films was disproportionately black, and to this day, the black community has a strong connection to 70s Kung Fu movies. Every middle aged black dad today loves this stuff. It isn’t just due to them being shown in inner city theaters, however, or on UHF stations where they were replayed cheaply on Saturdays. Rather, the success of Kung Fu movies in the black community is based on the themes of the movies. Most Kung Fu movies are about poor dishwashing working class underdogs in an unjust system, usually either Japanese Imperial Occupied China, or during the Manchu Dynasty, where China was ruled by despotic foreign conquerors. The heroes bow in humiliation at first, but who secretly take the power back through intensive personal training, blood and sweat and a montage, that lets them stand up to oppressors. As RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan explained: “when we saw these movies about opposing the Manchu Dynasty, it made us think we weren’t the only people in world history that ever went through this.”

When it comes to introducing the genre, “Five Fingers of Death” is a great “first movie,” a pure, emblematic example of what these movies look like. In the very first scene, in Japanese occupied China, an old Kung Fu Master who is our hero’s teacher is pursued by Japanese karate killers, enforcers of the occupation. His student, Lo Lieh, has to learn the iron palm technique in a brutal, bloody, visceral series of training montages to harden his palms to iron, which involve him excruciatingly breaking every finger in them. The themes of vengeance, pursuing justice under occupation, training montages that are as important as the action, and the theme of failing brutally over and over until it “clicks” and you have a miraculous “Eureka!” moment that every teacher recognizes and lives for. It helped it started with the Kung Fu right away....imagine seeing flips and flying kicks for the first time when you’re used to western bar brawls.

It’s worth noting that, despite being a hugely important moment in pop culture, 5 Fingers of Death was not a hit in Hong Kong, and was not even in the top 10 highest grossing movies of the year. It reminds me of Voltron, which is absolutely unknown and completely obscure in Japan, when elsewhere, it is THE giant robot show. The fact 5 Fingers was a big hit in the US absolutely baffled the Shaw Brothers, who were convinced to part with the rights for their movies for cheap, leading to a flood of Kung Fu movies. Notably, Lo Lieh, though he was the first Kung Fu movie star and a reliable martial arts leading man, did not have much of a career after this in lead roles. His character skills were best served playing villains in Shaw Films, notably as the evil Kung Fu eunuch supervillain, Pai Mei, in “Executioners from Shaolin” and “Clan of the White Lotus.” Tarantino wanted Lo Lieh to reprise his role of Pai Mei in Kill Bill Part 2, only to discover that he died just before filming.

#kung fu #lo lieh #70s

304 notes · View notes