They!!!! Husbands!!!!!

we return to snow leopard

one of the biggest things I can advocate for (in academia, but also just in life) is to build credibility with yourself. It’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking of yourself as someone who does things last minute or who struggles to start tasks. people will tell you that you just need to build different habits, but I know for me at least the idea of ‘habit’ is sort of abstract and dehumanizing. Credibility is more like ‘I’ve done this before, so I know I can do it, and more importantly I trust myself to do it’. you set an assignment goal for the day and you meet it, and then you feel stronger setting one the next day. You establish a relationship with yourself that’s built on confidence and trust. That in turn starts to erode the barrier of insecurity and perfectionism and makes it easier to start and finish tasks. reframing the narrative as a process of building credibility makes it easier to celebrate each step and recognize how strong your relationship with yourself can become

still thinking about my very religious grandmother being super proud of me for being into saint michael the archangel while I'm like this because a gay book with him being lucifer's boyfriend (and I'm regularly drawing them making out)

Ojos de guerko / Eyes that see all

nothing is as tender as annotating your favourite books. it’s like leaving a piece of your heart on the pages for somebody else to find.

at the wedding

im going crazy with how people are starting to agree with snow that sejanus was really stupid and deserved what was coming to him. reading the books first should be a pre requisite to the movie idcccc if that takes away the wider audience, the wider audience all have smooth brains anyway.

“why was he colluding with rebels when he could’ve just thought about it pragmatically 🙄” i’m in your fucking walls. sejanus was never dumb, snow just kept pushing that perception of him through the book to deflect the fact that sejanus was an actual good person. snow thought himself the personification of good and benevolence, which was why everything he did had to have some half-assed excuse as to why he was justified in doing it. it was why he was actually tweaking in the woods when lucy gray left him, because he wanted to rid himself of her but he didn’t have an actual reason so he convinced himself of the most random scenario ever to justify trying to shoot at her. so we can establish that snow was an evil broke boy who clearly wasn’t good— then sejanus was a direct confrontation of snow’s own shortcomings towards that (i don’t think i have to detail how sejanus was genuine, it was obvious). coriolanus and sejanus are like the direct opposite characters of each other, and snow knew and took pride in this to an extent. which is why snow couldn’t admit that sejanus was good to himself, thus sejanus was deemed ‘stupid’ to protect his own deluded self actualisation (but this also includes other aspects like how the war made the plinths rich and the snows poor, leading to resentment and jealousy from snow).

“but that still didn’t mean he wasn’t doing dumb things throughout the book” was it really that dumb? a rebellion will always include some level of risk but i don’t hear anyone calling heavensbee stupid because it actually worked out for him. plus sejanus is district, so if we use our common sense of who he is as a character and emotional intelligence of his situation, it’s pretty easy to see why he would get in touch with rebels. he’s literally always yearned for the districts, he never once cared about his money or safety, which isn’t stupid, it’s sad. this was his way of dealing with the guilt of profiting from his people’s suffering— again, not stupid. you could argue he was reckless, especially when he went into the arena, but most people who simply cast him as a ‘dumb character’ ignore how troubled he is and fall into the very filtered lens of snow who was just concentrating on his stupidity.

sejanus’ growing radical actions had nothing to do with stupidity and everything to do with feeling helpless and like nothing was changing. he tried minor/low-risk things such as attempting to change the perception of the districts in the capitol, advocating against the hunger games etc etc. of course it didn’t work, so his options grew limited to more radical courses of action. its a natural line of thought— activists literally do it in real life when they feel as if their cause isn’t getting enough attention (eg. setting themselves on fire). sejanus is a desperate character who is so selfless in light of snow’s constant self-preservation. snow will always put himself first and be paranoid that he will be betrayed like he’s betrayed others, so he never understands sejanus’ disposition to help and trust people, so he labels him dumb. omg. like. sejanus is so not-stupid i’m actually gonna start freaking out!! this is defamatory leave my boo alone!! plz go read a book and work on media literacy i am begging!!!

Warning : not very coherent

I so badly wanted the slow extinction of fremen culture in dune messiah and children of dune to be an examination on how the colonial rule destroy indigenous way of life and fuck up the local ecosystem causing untold damages for the sake of "modern development" when its actually just a mindless chase for profits. But I know its not. There were some bit of writing that pointed in that direction (how terraforming destroys the habitat of desert animals, especially the worms, gradual loss of knowledge on water discipline, how riding the sandworms becomes rarer and rarer) but overall, it doesnt seem like its what frank hebert actually wanted to say.

From the first book, the fremen is seen as 'noble' or special because the harsh conditions of Arrakis made them into a society of honor with the strength and battle prowess that rivaled the sardaukar. The sardaukars were defeated by them because they've gotten too confident and comfortable from constantly winning. In dune messiah, we see the fremen slowly undergoing through the same thing as their planet becomes less harsh. The fact was regularly noted by people who went through the sietch days and somehow, its all they care about. Feeling resentment over how the new generations are weak and waterfat. Cultural things like music, communal gatherings, camaraderie, were all treated like a footnote. There was a scene in dune messiah where a veteran, Farok was complaining about living in suburban houses instead of the caves. IRL, suburban houses on a desert climate took so much to maintain. It's expensive. It wastes water, power that are currently sourced by burning fossil fuels, and it kills the local ecosystem. It also promotes loneliness because people are separated in tiny family units. There is a lot of plot potential in there. But in the book, its merely a rant that describes how Farok wanted the old ways without specifying why and how it was better for him and fremen as a whole. Meanwhile in dune it was specified how awful living in the old days are. And then of course, a part of why Paul had his downfall was because the fremen thinks its disappointing that theyre not brutal savages trained by the desert and a fear of the shai-hulud anymore

It's a wasted opportunity! The book wants you to believe the old ways of the fremen are better, but all it focuses on is how better living conditions makes them soft. They resent not sacrificing virgins and leaving blind people to die. The things they lost that the book narratively cares about is the things that aids the Atreides and their empire, not the things that makes the fremen who they are (communal living in the sietch, solidarity, appreciation for the environment).

Despite being glorified, the fremen is not treated like people. Their way of life is universally seen as best for the planet, but there is no sincere examination on why it actually works for the fremen. And the book suffers because of it. In the end, the fremen is merely a placeholder for frank hebert to spout his weird beliefs about survival of the fittest instead of a story about indigenous culture. My friend, you were so close but you missed it!

The fact that you can’t raise taxes on billionaires even slightly without them pouring money into fascist political movements is, of itself, evidence that billionaires as a class shouldn’t be allowed to exist in the first place.