[ianthewife]

My dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😛 this strain is called "Our Wars Have Ended" 😳 you'll be zonked out of your gourd 💯

Me: yeah whatever. I don’t feel shit.

5 minutes later: Our wars have ended and now the dead came back to rule over the living and those living are not only stripped of power and agency over their own lives, but also made to feel ashamed and are told again and again how their subjugation is actually rightful and benevolent and kind and how grateful they should actually be that their nation’s past came back to devour the present. this conquest is being painted as liberation and yet now there is absolutely no chance for escape or freedom or peace or dignity even in death because sooner or later you will be brought back or taken apart and every single part of you will be exploited and used for someone else’s purposes again and again until you have absolutely nothing left to give—

My buddy (???) Fann Arkhetarias from the darkness of the woods and beside the Long King: Why are you crying?

​

[perl-in-my-head]

The long king's trophies make me think that bodies always had a special significance in Cyshane.

[rosenkranz-isnt-dead]

The Silt Verses chapter 27: So I'll Bear It Trembling Onwards // Our Wars Have Ended episode 2: More Than A Man

[rosenkranz-does-things]

In the Long King's era, it was customary to take trophies from fallen rivals. Centuries on, he bears the spines and skulls of his defeated contemporaries upon his own back — to honour them in perpetuity and to remind the world that he is more than a man.

[sulfurzee]

Catalfac

[variousqueerthings]

one of the interesting things about the shield is how easy it is to become lesser-than. everyone who's a cop thinks of themself as fundamentally a cop and therefore situationally different to the people out on the street. which, if you're a white straight guy so far that's been easier to maintain (although one man has committed suicide for accidentally causing the death of his ex-wife and child and ofc our lead character is constantly losing his relationship with his own children, but these aren't because of being white straight men), but every character who's not within that specific demographic has in some way suffered for the traits that they pretend that they're somehow above (although also occasionally invoking commonality when it suits them to do so)

julien was beaten for being gay by other cops. danny has faced misogyny on the job by other cops. aceveda was sexually assaulted and then his wife (and cousin) react like everyone else would, like he's lost his masculinity and so he can't tell anyone else and actually get help (im not far enough in yet to say if he eventually does or not) and claudette is constantly undermined/loses out on her promotion and it's not quite as directly tied to her being a black woman within the text but it certainly happens more to her than to others and i think that's very intentional

but. buuuut they all still hold onto the privilege of being a cop. being a cop is a way of life. everything else doesn't matter because of the brotherhood of cops or some such culty verbiage. they repress all the parts of themselves with as much violence as is required to become a part of the "in-crowd" (except for claudette and aceveda to an extent, they do try to marry these ideas within themselves by representing the "good" black/latino communities, altho especially aceveda stumbles more often than not)

the precariousness of thinking that being a cop makes you immune from bigotry, because you're first and foremost a cop, right? and your fellow cops see you that way too... right? and it's possible to stamp down any similarities you see between yourself and the people you arrest/look down on/at best see as weak civilians, until whatever element of you that would also be targeted by systemic violence is wholly eradicated and this is definitely good for the soul and doesn't cause irreconcilable paradoxes within your sense of self......... right?

the ease with which one can be un-personed and the lack of protection, ultimately, being "one of the good ones that plays ball and enforces these systems" affords you. at best the death of the soul through escalating violence

[variousqueerthings]

should add as well that characters like vic and many others who're suffering despite ostensibly being at the top of the food chain -- they're still fundamentally working class. they don't get enough money to have a family (especially not a family with two autistic children that need support), so they start to cut corners here and there. then they start to make deals (deals that make the streets safer, comparatively, because they're controlling it so it's "better" than if they weren't in charge of who could prostitute/deal drugs/fence stolen goods/etcetc) then they're a gang, but they're still the Good Guys and they're making the system work for them and cleaning up the streets, while consistently drowning more and more in the messes they're making

but they're cops, so they're in charge right? they're doing the right thing, because they're cops, which is a shorthand for Being A Good Guy. the reasons why things aren't working has nothing to do with the structures they're actively upholding, they couldn't possibly also be victims of it, because they have all the power....

and it's power belonging to The Good Guys

[pigtailedgirl]

"What separates them from us.

Loyalty, that most disposable of virtues."

[highways-are-liminal-spaces]

[alicent-florent]

The Handmaid's Tale — S6E5: Janine

[alicent-florent]

The Handmaid's Tale — S6E5: Janine

[alicent-florent]

The Handmaid’s Tale — S6E9: Execution

[bethanydelleman]

Jane Austen was meta before “meta” existed. Look at this sentence from Pride & Prejudice:To be sure, it would have been more for the advantage of conversation had Miss Lydia Bennet come upon the town; or, as the happiest alternative, been secluded from the world, in some distant farmhouse.

“Come upon the town” means fall into prostitution. Now let’s forget for a second how horrible Meryton is being (Wouldn’t it be better for gossip if she was ruined forever?) Jane Austen just referenced her last book and teased her next one!

In Sense & Sensibility, Eliza Brandon, the divorced and disgraced love of Colonel Brandon, was found by him in a sponging house, probably dying of syphilis, after falling into a life of either prostitution or becoming several people’s mistress. “I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a life of sin.”

Then, in Mansfield Park, Maria Rushworth, also disgraced and divorced, ends up in a distant farmhouse with Mrs. Norris, “It ended in Mrs. Norris’s resolving to quit Mansfield and devote herself to her unfortunate Maria, and in an establishment being formed for them in another country, remote and private, where, shut up together with little society, on one side no affection, on the other no judgment, it may be reasonably supposed that their tempers became their mutual punishment.”

All three women were failed by their guardians/parents and we see the three possibilities: prostitute/mistress, banishment, or married to an unworthy man.

I also get the feeling that Jane Austen couldn’t bear to leave a woman suffering. Even though Lydia is in a terrible marriage, we know that Elizabeth and Jane provide money and allow her to stay with them. She is safe. And as awful as it would be to live with Mrs. Norris, Maria has the benefit of her aunt’s income and the provision from her father. Both of them are in bad situations, but they will be okay. Eliza Brandon dies, but she receives the best care at the end. There is mercy for the fallen women in Austen.

[avadcniels]

THE HANDMAID'S TALE ⇢ 1x03 | LATE

Why didn't you report the conversation? Because she was my friend.

[2productive]

[birdmans]

[mangonetics]

[charitydingle]

Brief Encounter 1945, dir. David Lean

[potpourri-of-ecclecticism-deact]

There are things in this room to discover. I’m like an explorer, a traveller to undiscovered countries. That’s better than a lunatic lost in her memories. Words. Someone wrote [the message]. In here, where no one would ever see it. Was it Offred? The one who was here before? It’s a message, for me.

➥ The Handmaid’s Tale (Rewatch) • S1E4 “Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum”