Blue

A half-arsed blog for XIV shit...mostly....maybe.... Stellato Debesis on Balmung, I main WARrior. Roll on Lalamonth!

[plushdablush]

Random thing for people to consider is that since Laika is the saint of one way trips should Felicette be known as the saint of safe landings since she did make it back to the ground safely

[somefishycat]

tu LANCES félicette ? tu lances son corps comme la fusée ? oh ! oh ! prison pour les scientifiques ! prison pour les scientifiques pendant Un Mille Ans !

[littlepinkgremlin]

[iamnmbr3]

Not to be a wet blanket or anything but I kinda hate the normalization of animal suffering that I see online. This cat was put through a terrifying, potentially fatal, and deeply traumatizing ordeal. She didn’t choose this or understand what was happening. This is an image of a strapped down, frightened animal that was put through something terrifying because it was considered expendable. This picture doesn’t make me laugh. It makes me sad.

[iamnmbr3]

And same for Laika. Except that one’s even worse because she died. A poor stray dog was grabbed off the street and used for experimentation that resulted in her being killed in a frightening and painful manner. Why are either of these things cute or funny??

[iamnmbr3]

oh by the way. Felicette - the cat in this picture - survived the terrifying ordeal she was put through but was then euthanized 2 months later so the scientists could cut her open and study the effects that space travel had on her body. Both she and Laika lived short miserable lives filled with fear and suffering.

[thestuckylibrary]

#wokeness leaving a tumblr user's body when they have to defend an abused animal instead of a fictional character#these comments are all so fucking sadistic man wtf#“lol I bet she scratched everyone!” what the FUCK is wrong with you man via @stealcorpses83

[mookimooks]

I for one am shocked, shocked I tells ya, that tumblr users have very loose integrity.

[decemberwinter]

maybe if you’re not a feminist then you’re just a misogynist and like… I don’t think there’s any “in between”. because feminism is not hating men. feminism is not thinking men deserve less than women. feminism is not rooting for manipulative females. feminism is not thinking abusive women should not face any consequences if their victims are men. feminism is not girlboss. feminism is not women superior. feminism is the belief that men and women are equal, so if you’re not a feminist then I think it’s safe to assume you think women deserve less than men, and that sounds misogynistic to me idk

[gardenvarietydegenerate]

That's egalitarianism. Feminists didn't do enough to oust the radicals from the movement.

[truthandlibertarianism]

"Label yourself with the specific word I want you to or else you're evil" is not the argument in favor of feminism that you think it is.

[hoshizoralone]

my utau lilith

[hoshizoralone]

why so many notes… thank u

[winged-void]

just remembered that my middle school bullies were named Chase and Hunter. what was up with that. what was going on there.

[winged-void]

were you bullied by the pope?

[shadow27]

[witchofprose-deactivated2020041]

This is the FUNNIEST SHIT I HAVE EVER SEEN

[untitled12573]

Reblogging for cultural enrichment

[lab-gr0wn-lambs]

bout time I brought back the Laurel and Hardy flex tape-

[knitmeapony]

From The Killers, 1946. A Film Noir Classic

[theprofessional-amateur]

I’m an archivist, behold my growing collection was of old photos mirroring timeless memes I’ve come across at various places I’ve worked.

[californiaispurple]

kris, why did you take those golden flower seeds. the ones that have warning labels all over them. the ones that 'stick to you', no matter how much you try to drop them. why can't we drop them? we get very few things in the light world, but we can still drop most of them. why do we need this. kris.

[voyaging-too]

It's a cliché to say that Tolkien's experiences in WWI affected all aspects of his writing, how he wrote about friendship and grief, how he wrote about desolate blasted landscapes. But I wish someone who knows more about Tolkien's military career could help me understand how Tolkien related to retreats. His description of Faramir keeping his people together on the retreat from Osgiliath is one of the best-written sequences in the trilogy, and hardly anyone remembers it. It's about a desperate retreat, and a leader whose presence, whose strength manages to keep it from turning into a rout. There's something very vivid in the descriptions: don't break formation, don't start running or they'll pick you off one by one, keep together, keep moving, hold all of that fear at bay. Tolkien describes that retreat as genuinely heroic, a superhuman act of will, one that exhausts Faramir almost to death, and Denethor still does not accept it as heroic because it's a retreat. It saved men but it lost territory, therefore in his eyes it's a failure.

Tolkien has strong opinions about heroic retreats, in the Silmarillion he sometimes gives the retreat-through-the-dangerous-wilderness plotline to female characters (Emeldir, Idril), he always writes them with respect. Sometimes, getting out of there and keeping most of your people alive is a great act of valour. I feel like he must have had a personal experience about what it means to retreat, and what it means to hold a retreat together, and what it means to get no thanks for it.

[anghraine]

While I don't know much about WWI, I think it's worth mentioning that Denethor does not regard Faramir's retreat as a failure per se. On the contrary, his entire strategy depends on Faramir leading a slow retreat, and it's Faramir who had reservations.

In Tolkien's version, the geography and architecture of the region very much favor the Gondorians, but they're drastically outnumbered. So the strategy is for the Gondorian armies to inflict massive casualties as they retreat over favorable ground, including half of Osgiliath, the river crossing, the Rammas Echor (the wall around the Pelennor Fields), and then through the farms and townlands of the Pelennor Fields. Meanwhile, Denethor has the knights of Dol Amroth prepared to burst out of the city in a shock cavalry attack as soon as the retreating army starts to get overwhelmed, allowing the remaining infantry to get safely within the city. Denethor is also careful to order the knights back in the city as well so they don't get overextended, preserving the bulk of his armies. This occurs over several days, essentially forcing Sauron's armies to spend multiple days repeatedly attacking and overwhelming these highly defensible locations before they ever get near Minas Tirith, taking heavy losses as they go.

This is an incredibly risky and dangerous strategy because it essentially trades the lives of a portion of the Gondorian army for the chance to drastically slow Mordor's assault and inflict massive casualties—but the defending armies are less able to afford these kinds of losses with 9/10 of the country's armies elsewhere. So Faramir's position is that the trade-off is too high even if they're successful. Denethor's is that, well, it has to be done anyway, and requires a highly skilled commander to pull it off successfully. Faramir is likely the only person in Gondor other than Denethor himself who could conceivably carry it out the way it needs to be done with Nazgûl and evil magic afoot, and in fact carries out the strategy precisely as planned while under the effects of the Black Breath. Faramir manages to hold his troops together as long as he's conscious (he falls partly from the illness and partly because he stayed with the rearguard—the most vulnerable part of the army in a retreat—to get all his men to safety) and 2/3 of the infantry he's leading survive to fight in the later battle.

The days taken up by this punishing tactical retreat end up buying the necessary time for both the Rohirrim and the southern Gondorian armies to reach Minas Tirith and relieve the siege. As a result, Sauron's armies never even get past the front gate of the city, and their numbers are reduced when they have to defend themselves against the Rohirrim and the armies brought by Aragorn. It comes at a steep price—Denethor bitterly describes himself as "spending even my sons" and a lot of Gondorian lives are lost, even if the larger portion of the army is preserved.

I actually this is important to the original point, though, because all this makes it an excellent example of what the OP is talking about—retreat as both clearly heroic and, in the right circumstances, an entirely valid and effective strategy if you can carry it out.

[shymathlesbian]

This is touched on a bit in Bret Devereaux's really good analysis of the whole battle.

Denethor is doing a defense-in-depth, which is a strategy that allows him to take best advantage of the built-up defenses without having to risk a single pitched battle he would definitely lose. This is a good strategy! but it requires callously spending his son's life, not because he just doesn't care (like in the movie) but because it Has to Be Done.

and it turns out to have been totally necessary! if they'd yielded the Rammas Echor unfought, and the Witch-King had never blasted sections of it apart, the Rohirrim would have arrived to find a wall defended by the enemy - a difficult position to overcome with an all-cavalry force.

I would argue the description of the retreat is somewhat more grounded in Tolkien's historical knowledge than his WW1 service though. maintaining a rearguard in a retreat is one of the historically most difficult tasks for a general, but largely didnt exist by the time of WW1.

[shaftking]

Leftists will really say shit like “I hate the place where half the Jews live so much it’s unreal” and then get shocked when the people agreeing with them are nazis. Fork found in kitchen.

[memeuplift]

[pmamtraveller]

by Robert Gonsalves

[bold-baddie]

[fr3nstimu1ator]

[skulki-d]

If she lives to be 120 she might have survived every camp known to man

[knuckle-actual]

Death camps, known for their intercamp socialization programs. Definitely had the level three gold star at the end of it

[maybeiamamist4ke]

need people to stop saying shit they dislike is "spiritually israeli" like ok well i think you're intellectually american. now what

[meanjewish]

Calling shit spiritually Israeli is also Nazi rhetoric

[meanjewish]

Reminder that the term Zio is a slur against Jews coined by former klan grand wizard David Duke. Imagine saying you're just anti-Zionist and calling people antisemitic slurs

[trasheen01]

they are currently carpet bombing children in the name of Israel but let’s focus on Jewish feelings being hurt by a word

[meanjewish]

Go fuck yourself. You added nothing to this conversation. I mentioned nothing about the war, but in order to invalidate my feelings, you brought it up. You're an awful human being.

[theres-a-hole-in-my-wall]

just because Israel is doing something doesn't give you the right to be antisemitic and use slurs. Do you call awful people who happen to be trans/disabled/black/etc etc slurs??? I fucking hope not.

[meanjewish]

THAT'S WHAT I'M SAYING!!

[pedro-friedeberg]

How the New York Times covers the victims of terrorism:

How the New York Times covers terrorists:

[meanjewish]

Let's give empathy to terrorists and put all the blame on Jews

[hermthejewishwyrm]

Oh good to see that liberals are also conspiracy brained "false flag" claimers now too

[meanjewish]

Bc a whole ass country actively being bombed by their neighbors definitely cares what you have to say. Get a life. You were doxxed bc you're Antisemitic

[meanjewish]

Reminder that the term Zio is a slur against Jews coined by former klan grand wizard David Duke. Imagine saying you're just anti-Zionist and calling people antisemitic slurs

[trasheen01]

they are currently carpet bombing children in the name of Israel but let’s focus on Jewish feelings being hurt by a word

[meanjewish]

Go fuck yourself. You added nothing to this conversation. I mentioned nothing about the war, but in order to invalidate my feelings, you brought it up. You're an awful human being.

[the-elf-witch-from-space]

Do the bad words hurt your feelings? The shortening of zionist to zio? If we stop everybody from calling you a bad word will you stop committing genocide and holy war and slaughtering innocent children?

You should be happy, former klan grand wizard David Duke also believed they were the descendents of David in the bible too, that's what the blood drop over the cross symbol means. They are just like you!

[meanjewish]

Would you ask anyone else if a slur hurts? You're a Jew hater, and it's fucking offensive to compare a Jew to the KKK considering that Antisemitism is one of the pillars of white supremacy. I dare you to ask any other minority if "the bad words hurt their feelings." But then again, you don't see Jews as a minority so it's okay to use KKK slurs, right?