Latest Posts by nutjob427 - Page 2

Brought to you by the unhinged thought of "what if merrical, skyjade, and sabezra were all canon in stealingpotatoes' The Last 4 Jedi AU?" (Credit for the au goes to stealingpotatoes, but I'm not gonna tag her because I'm pretty sure she doesn't ship sabezra.) Anyways, here's a comic about it. I don't think Ahsoka, the galaxy's biggest lowkey canon anidala shipper, would genuinely react this way, but I thought it was a funny scenario to draw out.

Bonus: original concept sketch of the second panel:

ok im sorry but this part was so funny to me

I just don't understand boromir haters. Most of them likely haven't even read the books and just because he made a few mistakes in his life he's now unforgivable? They don't even have good reasons, it's just things like "o he tried to kill frodo" or "he was being selfish and wanted the ring for himself" like what?

He did not want the ring for himself. He wanted it to protect his people who very likely had the most damage because they are so close to mordor. And in the books he only commented about it once (except for the end). I love movie boromir but I hate how they make it this huge thing where he just constantly is thinking about the ring. Not to mention he was around the ring for at least two months. There were so many others who gave into the ring after only just seeing it. I think the ring was trying to specifically get him to try and take the ring. Seeing as it probably knew he was the most vulnerable to it because of everything else going on in his life (e.g his people and cities dying, the pressure from his father, everything with faramir, ect,)

Boromir is not a bad person. Yes, he makes mistakes, yes he's prideful. But that doesn't mean you can't forgive him, he repented, and without him where would the fellowship be? Aragorn wouldn't have known what happened to the hobbits, therefore Merry and Pippin would probably be dead. There's just so much he did for the people he loves, and if you think otherwise then that's your loss.

I will never shut up about how Kingdom Come: Deliverance is the most tenderly written game served to the most loutish horde of jackasses. I think it is possibly one of the greatest pieces of popular fiction made about feudalism in recent history, even if it's not always the most historically accurate.

And that's because the whole damn thing is about the profound, authority-enforced inhumanity that self-propels feudal order... but this time, it's written from the perspective of, for lack of better word, "humanity undermines, and humanity wins."

Love wins, if you want to be cheeky.

This was originally meant to be a reply to @feelinungry's excellent post on the subject, but it outgrew itself and got super bloated, so I'm plopping it in its own post to not be obnoxious...

KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW

And the reason all this about humanity and love is so important to the core of the story, to the very backbone of the narrative (even beyond the plot), is that it exists in opposition and to the impairment of the feudal system. Kingdom Come: Deliverance means to teach us, by way of deeply dramatic plots following individuals, how feudalism works and why it worked the way it did. And why and how that system fails.

The vehicle by which the game does this is by showing us, over and over, how the stratification of feudal class is eroded and sometimes outright dissolved (either in general, as with Henry and Hans, or when it matters most, as with Radzig and Henry) by plain and simple love.

Feudalism, like most class-stratified systems, relies upon 1. dehumanization of those beneath one's appointed status; 2. fealty (mock-love) to those above one's status, their title-appointer class; and 3. the maintenance of a deep separation between these artificially bestowed statuses, as enforced by church (as in word of clergy, not word of god) & state (legal rules and law). Those words and laws existed to propel the system by divide-and-maintain (of the workforce populace, placing it firmly below the next class in line, etc.) in the service of unify-and-profit (for the ruling class).

Sigismund & his invading army are wholly separated and adherent to the feudal theory, even if they have flouted codes of warfare & inheritance; they are presented to us as the main dehumanizing force of the story world, a wave of Order that indiscriminately burns opposition flat rather than an individual leading a royal coup, a cyclical destruction that paves the way for the next flavor of rule to continue the feudal system ad infinitum. They're thoroughly separated from the story even when they are burning down a village in front of our eyes and generally move as one, with Markvart occasionally stepping out of that mass of Feudalism and its antihuman nature to give it a face. They're more a force of nature than an individual as far as the narrative goes.

And we are meant to understand that in sharp contrast to the "close" story, the cast we get to know and watch as they attempt to answer this force of nature. And the second we see these characters get close enough to each other, by raw proximity, to poke a pin into the wineskin of feudal order as dictated to them by authority, it bleeds--everywhere. Not in the sense of ruination but in the sense that a tiny wedge of empathy cracks open the dam and leads, yep, to rehumanization--and love, the most human driving force there is.

And that changes everything, for everyone. Not just internally, as with a character's personal development arc (i.e., Hans learning why his duties, which he resented and viewed as an impingement on his freedom when dictated to him by authority, are incredibly important for real people who experience pain) but externally as well (as @feelinungry so elegantly points out in the original post).

Over and over, at every stage of the story, it's the rehumanization of and by these decision-makers (at a family level, at a community level, at a regional level, at a national level) that cracks the feudal cycle, even if in very small ways. Hans really brings this back home in a petri dish in late game, after the siege, when he complains to Henry about the noble's code (letting Istvan go) potentially leading to pain and disaster for the common people Istvan's machinations are likely to harm in the future. He chafes--and we chafe, and so does Radzig, and so does Divish--against feudal stratification because he has learned a general empathy through loving an individual, and that has in turn reshaped the way he sees the world.

And that's exactly why and when feudalism begins to fail, and why it thrashed itself the way it did, from the enforcement of sexual mores (though this wasn't exactly like it is in movies) and gender law to terror upon its own populations.

And it's the crucial understanding I think we begin to forget after being exposed to so much Hollywoodification of history, where the oppression always exists for cruelty's sake alone rather than in active and deliberate service to a political construct.

And I think it's why we've "lost the plot" so horribly when it comes to understanding that people in history were still people, not monolithic one-mind entities (as the feudal system demanded they be). And why we somehow forgot that such people fall in love, in all kinds of love, in a way that has never given a damn about authority. And that this in turn undermines supposedly supreme authority, even divine authority, and will always continue to do so, as long as people are people.

This is what it always comes back to. Always. From Henry's parents and their mysterious bond with Radzig informing the protagonist's journey from "the past"--to Henry & Hans falling into stupidly fierce soulmatehood with each other in the present--from Istvan & Erik's destructive fuck-the-world romantic love on the "enemy" side--to Divish's humbling, humanizing realization that he loves Stephanie in some way, he really does, despite the chasm of age/gender enforced upon them by their adherence to feudal order that doomed their romantic love to failure.

People will always love each other, even when the world orders them not to, even when faced with death and worse. People will always, given proximity and shared experiences, learn to see each other as human again. KCD reminds us of that. It's why the "slow" storyline exists and why it works.

And that is why this game is so fucking fantastic, and why the genpop fandom has utterly failed it.

Can we get some headcannons about the BOYS? (thats what im calling them)

I like it, from here on out they are the boys.

since you didn't specify for what exactly, I chose random things that I have thought of, too many times before.

Altaïr 🦅

• more than once this man has walked into a glass door, and on a few occasions broke said door. he walked away like nothing happened.

• I've said it once and I'll say it again : this man is terrible with technology. like, the only stuff he's good with is old time, back in the day kinda stuff. keyboard? can't use it for shit. typewriter? this guy is like a damn journalist. laptop? the thing is destroyed because he got so mad when he couldn't figure out where the mouse was, even when desmond showed him where it was. old desktop that's built like a t.v.? perfect, everything makes sense now.

• when checking out at stores and the cashiers say "have a good day" on multiple occasions, an embarrassing amount of occasions this man has responded with: "what's so good about it", "thanks.", "you have good days?", "I didn't even want to get out of bed this morning.", "im leaving now"

• due to the last one: this man never uses a credit or debit card. cash only.

• before he broke the pasta noodles in half in front of ezio, he's thought about doing it way too many times. the reason he finally acted on it was because ezio brought up the many fires, explosions, and overall chaos that has happened when he "cooks". Altaïr internally said "fuck you, AND your pasta noodles"

• has set the microwave on fire before, blown out the front of it. cue desmond and arno running into the kitchen frantically putting the fire out, taking out what was inside it. there was a can of green beans. cue des and arno asking him why the hell he put a METAL can in the microwave. "oh you're not supposed to put metal in the microwave?"

• he is NOT a morning person. if you go to wake up this man and he's in a deep sleep, he's waking up swinging. Jacob has been slugged in the face a few times.

• I feel like Altaïr would like to nap in the sun/warm places.

• believe it or not, he was the weird kid that ate dirt.

• as a kid he was gifted an bald eagle as a birthday present from his dad, he was gifted a little yellow parakeet as his birthday present from his mother. he named her sunflower and the eagle apollo. he came back from training one day wanting to spend time with apollo and sunflower. apollo was there but sunflower wasn't, but there were yellow feathers everywhere. his dad told him apollo ate sunflower. Altaïr plucked all of apollos feathers on his head out. "you really are a bald eagle now aren't you, you little shit" vengeance for sunflower was served.

Ezio 🌹

• this man is a 5 star chef when it comes to authentic Italian food. don't ask him to make American food. anything other than Italian food he can't cook.

• after becoming great friends with Arno, ezio too is now a hopeless romantic.

• ezio and arno send each other memes either during conversations or as conversations.

• doesn't hesitate on the intrusive thoughts. just does them.

• has worn both his mother and Claudia's make up before, and he is flawless when putting on eyeliner. he doesn't go all out, he's more of the natural beauty kind of guy.

• this man can take one look at a person and correctly guess their clothing size.

• he and arno like to get together and have gossip sessions with a nice (few) bottles of wine.

• I whole heartedly believe that ezio is an amazing artist. he and leonardo bonded over painting, sketching, drawing etc. and on more than one occasion has joked with Arno with the whole "paint me like one of your French girls" gets a smack to the back of the head everytime.

• loves teasing Altaïr, he's so easy to rile up and ezio gets a laugh out of it. that is until Altaïr breaks pasta noodles in front of him. fists are up and ready to go.

• hates horses cause they have a long face, it makes him uncomfortable.

Arno 🥐

• has punched both edward and Jacob multiple times for pronouncing "croissant" wrong.

• gossip time with ezio is one of his favorite days of the week.

• when having conversations with ezio its either with memes in it, or how the conversation is being had.

• will not hesitate to roast you. loves roasting people, in fact he deep down hopes that someone will piss him off enough to roast them. even though he doesn't really need a reason.

• is very protective over the boys. (this man has trauma, can we blame him)

• an amazing singer. ezio has asked Arno for tips/lessons and once Arno heard him sing he said "can you hear yourself? no? good, cause trust me, you don't want to."

• he's really good at writing: poetry, songs, stories and even plays, but he's self conscious so he'd never try to get them to actually be put out there. ezio and desmond are his #1 hype team.

• I can see him being a great figure skater. don't know why, but I do.

• is a great baker, another 5 star chef when it comes to making authentic (french) food.

• he and Altaïr like to people watch and judge them like Simeon Cowell.

Connor🐺

• this man has a petting zoo of animals, from childhood into adulthood.

• calls animals fur babies, change my mind.

• is another one who is protective over the boys

• believe it or not, he's more in tune with his emotional side like Arno and Ezio.

• loves wearing flannels, not only are they comfy but he likes the way they look.

• wants to build himself a cabin, like the ones you see some youtubers do. chop down the trees, use them to build it and all that jazz.

• wants to have a timber wolf as a pet, it's his dream pet. he truly wants just a wolf, but knows it's not a good idea.

• brought a turkey into the house as a kid, Ziio was not a happy camper. but she didn't want connor to be sad, so she said he could keep it as long as it stayed outside.

• the turkey and Connor were playing outside of their village. it was November. there was a loud bang, Connor turned around and turkey had been shot...and he was shot by none other than Charles Lee. another reason he hates the man so much.

• (for this one we're gonna say Haytham and Ziio stayed together) whenever Charles Lee came over to visit, Connor never liked him. when his parents weren't looking he would do this to Charles Lee; bite, kick, pour salt in his food and drink, make faces etc. Haytham knew, but it also amused Haytham so he said nothing.

Edward🏴‍☠️

• cried while getting his first tattoo, like sobbed.

• Mary on more than one occasion has gotten him (when he's drunk ofc) to cross dress (like she does as james)

• is a huge fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series.

• sings sea shantys when doing things around the house.

• has slept outside many times while drunk. doesn't remember how he got there, when he got there, or why he stayed.

• has wanted to try those swimming like a mermaid trend.

• wants the boys to get a pirate themed tattoo with him.

• he and Jacob like to go out drinking together and watch each other get drunk because of the way they act. unfortunately while doing this since the both of them are drunk neither knows what in God's name is going on, until they wake up outside half naked wondering why they're wearing lipstick.

• has said many times "im never drinking again" yet is holding a cup filled with alcohol.

• has pushed Jacob off the side of the jackdaw when he pissed him off.

Jacob🎩

• being evies worst nightmare is his favorite passtime.

• teases evie for having a crush on 2 of his best friends, she tells him if he ever told them his manhood will be missing when he wakes up.

• woke up on a roof one time after drinking escapades with Edward the night before. Edward was on the roof across from him.

• has worn his shoes on the wrong feet all day long to annoy evie, but also was too lazy to put them on the right feet.

• he tries to trip evie whenever the two of them are going up the stairs. jokes on him he actually trips himself.

• is the king of intrusive thoughts.

• 95% of the time he gives into those intrusive thoughts, that small 5% is evie being able to stop them before they happened.

• got a drunk tattoo with Edward once, it's a tramp stamp.

• he's the one filling Edward's cup whenever Edward says he's never drinking again.

• even though he's a jokester and does stupid stuff, he's honestly one of the most trustworthy people the boys know. "he may be an idiot, but he's our idiot" and evies like "go ahead and have him. I should have killed him in the womb"

Desmond🐶

• was adopted by the Auditores when he left the farm.

• when he first started bartending, he broke over half the glasses they had.

• debated on becoming a therapist about a year into bartending, he sure as hell felt like one. might as well get paid the right money for it.

• he doesn't like to drink alcohol very often due to how he's around it so much while he works, and sees how people act. not a favorite pass time, but he does enjoy having a glass of wine with Arno and Ezio.

• he's really good at playing guitar, he and Arno like to do little karaoke sessions, ezio is there but isn't allowed to sing.

• is good at cooking all types of foods, just don't ask him to bake. he's not good with precision so the sweets always come out messed up. leave that to arno.

• wants to get more tattoos, and has tried talking the boys into getting the brotherhood/creed insignia tattooed.

• I see desmond as a piercings kind of guy. what they are, who knows.

• Desmond is the golden retriever friend, everyone loves him.

• Desmond is the epitome of "I didn't want to wake up today, im tired you're lucky I dragged my corpse out of bed today"

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, to listen to doctors and get my flu vaccine and any shots i could because they remembered Before.

then they started fighting Covid precautions.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that the ozone was disappearing and the earth was dying and we needed to recycle and save the planet.

now my parents think climate change is a myth.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that racism was a plague, that we had to love and accept everyone, that we should never judge before walking a mile in their shoes.

then they told me that protesting for my Black siblings was wrong.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that we needed to give to the poor. working at soup kitchens. making quilts. collecting food and money and supplies. building houses. because it was the christian and just plain right thing to do.

now they look at me, on food stamps with their grandchildren, and lament the "welfare state".

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and that any rich man, especially an immoral one, should never run our country.

you can guess who they voted for.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, so very much.

when did they forget?

!

Lord of the Rings was published in the fifties, and largely written in the forties. Tolkien’s opinions on society and morality and technology are at some points genuinely more conservative than what I’m comfortable with. And yet, the more I think about it, the more sure I am that Tolkien actually deconstructs most of the clichéd fantasy tropes he supposedly originates. Some examples.

The long-lost heir is not the hero, he’s a side character who deliberately uses himself as a decoy.

The real hero actually fails in his quest, his goodness and determination and willpower utterly fail in the face of evil, and the world is saved by a series seemingly unrelated good deeds.

The central conflict is not between destroying the world and preserving it. An age of the world will come to an end, and many great and beautiful things will perish, whether the heroes win or lose. The past may have been glorious, but preserving it is impossible, and returning to it is impossible, time has passed and the world has moved on. The king returns, but the elves are gone and magic fades from the very substance of Middle Earth. The goal is not to preserve the status quo, the goal is the chance to rebuild something on the ruins.

Killing the main villain seems to instantly solve the problem, eradicate all enemies and fix the world, except it doesn’t, not wholly, since the scouring of the Shire still has to happen.

Also, the hero gets no real reward, and what he gets, he cannot really enjoy. He is hurt by his ordeal, and never fully recovers.

There is a team of heroes, a classic adventuring party, except the Fellowship is together for less one sixth of the series. The Fellowship is intact from the Council of Elrond to Gandalf’s death, four chapters. The remaining eight are together until Boromir’s death, an additional six chapters. This is nothing compared to LOTR’s length of sixty-one chapters, if I count correctly.

Tolkien is not classic high fantasy. If you actually think about it, there is very little magic. The hobbits’ stealth is not magical, most elven wonders are not unambigously magical, wizards are extremely rare, and even Gandalf hardly uses magic if you compare him to the average DnD wizard. Most magic is indistinguishable from craft, there is no clear difference between a magic armor and a very good armor, between magic bread and very good bread, between magical healing and competent first-aid plus a few kind words.

TLDR: Stop praising recent fantasy for deconstructing Tolkien if they’re “deconstructing” something Tolkien has never actually constructed.

A collection, for a well loved garf

A bonus picture for anyone who wants it

About a week ago I posted this.

I’ve been getting horrible messages like this in my ask for months, including:

and my personal favorite

After getting the message saying “Just go kill yourself” I was completely done dealing with this person’s horrible messages and replied with just an “Okay.” and logged off tumblr.

About a week later I logged back on with 17 messages in my ask, most of them from the anon. I scrolled down and at first when I logged off, the anon messaged me things like

I scrolled up more and all of a sudden they started sending me more and more messages like

This was extremely surprising to me. I thought “After all those horrible messages you sent to me for MONTHS about hating me and wanting me dead, you say ‘sorry’ and that you ‘cant be responsible for someone’s suicide’?”

But I guess the lesson goes like this:

DONT TELL ANYONE TO KILL THEMSELVES UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED FOR WHAT MIGHT ACTUALLY HAPPEN

Unmute !

Gee, I thought these people were the ones who were like “If you don’t like it, you can just move to a blue state.”

And now they’re mad the guy is doing just that?

You can’t oppress and discriminate against someone then be mad when they take their highly useful skill elsewhere.

I wanted to meme before the big day.

Not yet, Brutus.. not yet..

Been playing AC 2 a lot lately

US state borders but they are based off rivers and mountains

Art by Elliot Lang

"how does master tapal feel about the new cut?"

"he hasn't seen it yet 🏃"

based loosely on this fic! which is so good and made me feel things

Good Night, Son. I’ll be home in 3 rotations.

Star Wars AU in which Anakin doesn’t turn to the Dark-Side. He is instead a General in the Rebellion, and Luke still grew up on Tattooine.

SITH! AHSOKA & ANAKIN SKYWALKER | WHAT IF? STAR WARS BY ME. "YOU FAILED ME! DO YOU KNOW...WHAT I'VE BECOME?" "I GAVE YOU A CHOICE". This is not dark against light. This is more personal. It's not even master against apprentice. It's more than that. It's brother against sister. It's Anakin against Ahsoka. Face to face.

So my favorite Star Wars AU is when the Clones are just a little more than human, in the other worldly sense.

Like, yeah, Anakin's half force, but everyone who goes through ARC training can't die and no one's really sure why, but some asshole just shot Fives in the temple and all it did was make him mad.

And sure, Mace can see shatterpoints, but Commander Fox has eyes the color of freshly spilled blood and once threw a man threw three durasteel walls.

And maybe Obi-Wan is the consummate Jedi, but he's pretty sure he just saw Tup reach through a man, but when he questions Cody about it there's something eerie and ancient in his gaze that Obi-Wan doesn't want to question.

Luke Skywalker is proof that vulnerability and gentleness can be sexy as hell.

A couple years ago I saw a production of Sweeney Todd done by my university that featured an extra song, the Beggar Woman's Lullaby. Sondheim added it briefly after the show originally opened, but then cut it back out again because he felt it slowed down the pace of the ending scenes. Essentially it's a moment when Lucy enters the barbershop searching for the beedle, she stops for a moment and has a moment of near lucidity as she starts to remember her surroundings. She goes to Johanna's empty cradle and sings a lullaby to the tune of "Poor Thing" to "my Jo, my Jing." Sondheim wrote it originally to address the issue of audiences not figuring out the plot twist in time for the dramatic ending, but removed it again when he realized that everyone ends up figuring it out at various times throughout the show anyway.

Anyway all this to say, I think that song should be restored in an official capacity. I think that whether or not it serves the plot twist is immaterial. I think what it actually does is bring a much needed pause in the middle of the frenzy of the final scenes, it gives Lucy another dimension, and it makes what immediately follows so so SO much more heartbreaking because she was THIS CLOSE to remembering everything. Literally every time I listen to the final scene, everything happens so fast it feels almost unsatisfying. Like we're just rushing through everything to get to the end. And I think that song gives it a badly needed breath of air, without interrupting the flow.

“I have the high ground!”

Exploring Koboh | Jedi Survivor

No, actually I will never be over Annabeth throwing her knife into the ocean hoping Percy will notice and come help only to have Percy, king among boyfriends, make the most dramatic ass entrance, knocking out attackers with a giant wave, ocean waves cascading behind him as he casually walks up onto the beach to Annabeth, hands her her knife and says “I think you dropped this.” Fucking legend.