I want to talk about my twinswap AU right now but I can’t feel assed to ramble about the whole thing. God dammit. I guess I will just mention a few things Tori can do in it. He can dance to utilize master runes. So fire-leaping techniques can lead to suddenly EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE. Life in the Master’s house has made him somewhat more accepting of what he can do and so he solves a lot of problems via sleeping. The world is on fire around him and no sorry the Highlord’s “sister” needs a nap. Goodnight. As That-Which-Creates’ avatar on Rathilien he is creating a tradition of Highborn ladies who know Senethar. Lyra Lackwit was his first student. He knows the intricate stitch based language of the Women’s World and in general is far more successful at being a lady than his sister is in canon.
Tori/sleep is a good pairing and I approve.
about those Extra Features (theory about Shiro’s galra arm)
(caps credited to @xtokyoshinjuu, except for one kinda shitty one of Shiro’s hand taken by me)
so something that’s been bothering me for ages is why on earth takashi shirogane, who was a prisoner of the galra, has such an incredibly badass weapon installed as a limb by his captors.
More specifically: why is he able to use this arm against the Galra at all?
We don’t know much about Shiro’s arm, as Shiro himself doesn’t remember its installation or what it’s even capable of until most of the way through the first episode. What we do know is:
it’s the work of the druids, which seem to be the Galra magicians, of which Haggar is one
it has incredible cutting force, to the tune of cutting holes into ship hulls that are six inches thick
it can act as a power source for galra tech
it grants shiro access to lots of galra information and passage through locked doors
This is a ridiculously powerful weapon.
there’s a lot fan theories floating around about him being intended as a double-agent, about his being brainwashed into being a galra soldier, etc etc - and these are all really great theories with a lot of canon evidence to back it up. Haggar outright states he ‘could have been [the Galra’s] greatest weapon’, so he was never meant to just be gladiator entertainment. How far that ended up going, we just don’t know.
But let’s rewind for a second. Even if Shiro was brainwashed or mind-controlled into being a force of evil for the Galra, did they seriously gift an unknown alien with this incredibly powerful weapon installed into his body and just trust him to never use it against them? Because it’s obvious throughout the series that the Galra have no way to stop Shiro from using his arm as he pleases. He faces off directly with Sendak and Haggar and neither of them have any way to remotely or otherwise turn off his arm (and it’s implied that Haggar is the one that gave it to him).
the short answer is: no, of course they didn’t.
The long answer is: Shiro’s arm was probably granted a lot of cool shit in exchange for doubling as a shock collar - but something lets Shiro overpower its effect in episode 1.
The first time Shiro’s arm does the Glowy Thing is most of the way through episode 1, when Shiro and Pidge are about to fight some Galra soldiers.
Which is a total (unpleasant) surprise to Shiro, because it causes him so much pain that he falls to his knees.
(save him! D:)
okay, but take a look at that weird black-purple energy around his hand. What the hell is that?
Well: we don’t know. Shiro fights it for a few upsetting seconds and then he seems to get control and straighten his hand; the black stuff dissipates.
And Shiro gets up and kicks Galra android ass.
(and back to where this post started.)
This never happens again. Shiro is able to activate it at will from this point onwards, and it never appears to hurt him to do so. Importantly, it also never activates against Shiro’s will.
This first time is an aberration:
his arm activates without Shiro actively willing it and
it hurts him when it does.
I think we’re seeing the arm’s secondary function in action: specifically, it’s acting as a shock collar. When Shiro goes to fight his Galra captors, the arm activates on its own and causes him pain, incapacitating him and leaving Shiro defenseless against being subdued.
However, whatever was causing the arm to activate against Shiro’s will is something Shiro is able to fight against and, in this moment, finally break (as represented by the black energy around his hand). Also, the delightful irony is that if the arm did not have this shock collar effect, Shiro might not have ever realized what his arm was capable of. His memories are still largely fragmented.
In conclusion: In ep 1, I think Shiro broke the safety lock on his Galra arm, and the Galra spend all of season 1 paying for it.
(also we should all appreciate that Shiro was prepared to go up against several galra android soldiers with nothing but his bare fists, as he had no idea about his Extra Features. What a guy.)
I should warn people that I have absolutely no chill on this subject. Dumbledore haters piss me the fuck off, because for the most part they clumsily glue tumblr style social justice style discourse over the Harry Potter story and ignore what actually happened in the books. And they tend to be the same people who hate JKR and aren’t shy in expressing it. Dumbledore hate makes me feel sick.
The fact that Dumbledore loved Harry very, very deeply leaks out of every pore of the text. You have to be willfully blind to miss it. He was in a horrific position: set this boy on the path to destroy Voldemort or let Voldemort win. You need to make bloodless choices in a position like that. You need to keep a certain distance, or emotion will make you screw up. As it did when Dumbledore didn’t give Harry as much information as he needed during OotP, and as Dumbledore admitted. He was flawed, he struggled, but he was ultimately incredibly strong.
He had no choice but to leave Harry with the Dursleys, because Harry needed Lily’s blood protection (which saved Harry’s life in the end). Additionally, knowing that Harry was destined to die and that he was going to have to usher him along that path made him want to keep an emotional distance. Which you cannot blame him for. He couldn’t let himself get attached. Love, for Dumbledore, always ended in disaster. And yet, once he met Harry and watched him, he couldn’t help himself. It says this right in the text and there’s no reason to think Dumbledore was faking it.
People call him cold, uncaring, but he was never cold with Harry. He was always gently supportive, he praised him when he succeeded, he counselled him when he was grieving. He let Harry learn on his own and make his own choices, because it was vital to Harry’s eventual task. Harry knew that in the end.
On another literary and thematic level, Harry’s relationship with Dumbledore is meant to evoke humanity’s relationship with God. God is meant to be all knowing and all powerful, he’s meant to love us, and yet we’re all destined to die and go through the agony of losing people we love along the way. We’re meant to be good people, to make the right choices, when God is distant, seemingly absent, and allows horrible suffering in the world. How do we come to terms with that?
I am not a religious person, so I can substitue fate or biology or nature or whatever forces govern the universe for “God” and it still works. It still poses the same questions, the same challenges.
And I know I’ll get hate for saying this. Because the discourse imposes this innacurate stereotype of “abusive manipulator” over Dumbledore and people jump from that to “Omg you’re supporting abuse if you don’t hate him!”
I’m honestly so scared by how many Americans I see who are going to vote third party in the election.
Listen you privileged fucks that’s exactly the same kind of bloody statement voting that got us more of the Tories here in Britain.
Take it from someone who knows; don’t fuck up your government by letting Trump win. I would let Hillary Clinton spit on me before I’d let that monster anywhere near the oval office.
when millennials were first heading into high school and college there was a huge trend in news stories about how stressed out our kids are, how their backs are getting messed up from carrying so many books, how they’re sleeping less and doing more school work, and how we should do more to help our kids have the childhoods we had because our kids are falling apart from stress and being forced to be more productive than kids should be. but then once millennials started hitting the workforce all the news was about how millennials are lazy and narcissistic and entitled lmao you were real concerned about us until you found out a 23 year old is more qualified to do your job than you
