ok im waffling on about fallout instead of having breakfast but i saw a criticism of how the prisoners were treated that's stuck with me.
spoilers!
so i think the criticism wasn't incorrect, per se: it condemned the way the show portrayed the vault dweller's naive intention to rehabilitate their murderous captives. it found fault with a common, and horrible, message that tv shows like to say, which is that carcerial violence and even the death penalty is the only effective way to deal with criminals, who are a fundamentally Bad category of human. im sick of that message too! but i think that wasn't what was going on here, actually.
so like, the vault dwellers had only ever experienced violent loss the once, and didn't really know how to cope other than denial and repression of the ordeal. but they were all hopeful and enthusiastic that their prisoners, the invaders that came to kill them all and take their stuff, could be eventually welcomed into the community as their comrades. the champions of this cause were nebbishy dorks and painfully out of touch academics. this is pretty normal for how prison reformers are portrayed, if extremely fucking annoying for those of us who ARE in favor of prison reform.
but so of course when the son of the former overseer, Norm, speaks up and suggests killing the prisoners, because why should they share resources with invaders who explicitly wanted to keep hurting them? why should they show mercy to their attackers? everyone is appalled by this suggestion. because they had to reinvent the whole concept of vengeance right then and there, because grudges and cycles of violence are anathema to a bottle society like theirs. they have been raised all their lives to forgive and forget and now, put to the test, they're recommitting to this ethos: get along, let the past go, look towards the future, believe the best of everyone.
but the prisoners die, anyway. the prisoners are killed with rat poison. and the thing is that Norm who suggested it didn't do it himself. and the prison guard who's blamed for it, even though she privately agreed with Norm that the prisoners are dangerous and unforgiveable, she didn't do it either. it's not a moment of triumphant, cathartic vengeance and it doesn't prove that there's no way to negotiate with terrorists and invaders but kill them like vermin because that's not what the message is meant to be.
the message is that norm stands there in the middle of these inconvenient prisoners, these corpses dressed in his own people's uniforms, and he looks at the new overseer. and he knows that she killed them, and she knows that he knows. she wanted him to know. this is her message and he's reading her loud and clear. and he doesn't look like a guy who's just been backed up by authority, who's just been validated in his desire for the ultimate control over those who have wronged him.
he's scared and pale and the music is ominous as fuck. and he's inside the cell, he's directly in the middle of it.
because what just happened is that he realized his entire society is being held prisoner, and the overseer is the one with the rat poison. and that he doesn't know, anymore, what freedom and safety and justice actually mean, just that he doesn't have them and he doesn't know where to find them.
that's what that scene meant. not that rehabilitative justice is a pathetic delusion of people who have no idea how to make hard choices.
but that before you advocate for killing prisoners, you might want to see how big that prison is, first.
and which side of the bars you're standing on.
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I’m I the only one who thinks elvis got a good tan in Germany? Bcs I’m looking at photos while he was in the army and his hand look DARK idk if it’s bcs of the lighting or anything but his hands look so dark compared to the rest of his body😭
I see what you mean! even though the majority of his photos from Germany are in black and white, he still manages to look so glowy (?)
which I’m not surprised about it considering they made this man work and sleep outside for almost 180 days out of the year due to his job in the military 😭
“The outfit I was in had quite a bit of field duty, we stayed in the field six months out of the year”
interview with Elvis on March 7, 1960
it’s giving a Toby Kwimper in Florida level of tan ⬇️
sigrid schutz was really outside that man’s home every day and I’m jealous!!
also what a contrast to these professional photos taken of him in 1959 where he looks like a literal marshmallow
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Good Omens Hc (Ineffable Husbands + Ineffable Interns and a mix of family) to help the fandom recover just a tiny bit
-If Aziraphale gives Crowley freckles when he gives him kisses, Angel gains a beauty mark from Crowley’s kisses (like falling/dying stars)
- I feel like since Eric can multiply, it’s the opportunity to give Muriel tons of kisses
- Aziraphale and Crowley share a garden, these two are always bickering about how to treat the plants
- Muriel asks question after question about demons, a lot are ones Eric doesn’t know the answer to and giving that he likes mischief, he makes a bunch of stuff up (all in good fun)
- Muriel sings incredibly and Eric loves to listen even if his ears can’t stand it (because it’s literally heavenly)
-Aziraphale has taken on whistling centuries ago and had become quite the professional, Crowley will sometimes catch him whistling “be-bop” (only because it reminds him of the demon)
- Aziraphale accidentally left his ring before he left for heaven and Crowley kept it (giving it back when Azi came back to reconcile)
- Aziraphale wrote, preformed and produced an entire play as an apology (Crowley couldn’t even get through the first chunk before he was sobbing from laughter)
- When Aziraphale blushes, it has a glow to it that only ethereal beings can see, so when he’s red in the face, to Crowley, he looks like a Christmas light
- Aziraphale picked up a few hobbies while Crowley asleep for the century, Dancing being one of them and another being Piano. The Piano is something Crowley doesn’t know about because he’s a little embarrassed and doesn’t play when he’s around (like dancing, Angels aren’t meant to really play instruments despite owning harps)
- Muriel has intimate knowledge of what Heaven can and can’t detect, they use this to their advantage when Eric wants to “stir up mischief” (He’s too embarrassed to call it a date)
- Muriel has taken to drawing Eric and Eric gets a little weird about it (it’s the sweetest thing anyones ever done for him and it makes him feel.. awkward. He loves it btb, he just can’t show it right)
- Muriel blushes a lot around Eric but has no idea what it is, so they think they got hell fire on their face (They glow too)
- Eric and Muriel are the opposite of Azirphale and Crowley when it comes to sleeping. Once Muriel learned what it was and how to do it, you couldn’t stop them from taking a nap anywhere, Eric on the other hand has taken to watching over them (Aziraphale gets jumpscared walking into a room and seeing multiple Erics watching over Muriel) (Like (Demon) father like (Angel) child)
- Angel plays the piano for Muriel and teaches them how to, and they pick up the skill immediately (He also teaches them how to read sheet music)
- Aziraphale is not allowed to call Crowley “Anthony” outside of a private area or things may happen
- Chat gave me the idea that the Z. In Azi’s middle name is Zebidiah and I will hold onto that, Crowley calls him that on occasion to be funny because he couldn’t have chosen a worse middle name (Not that “Janthony” can talk)
- Crowley has taken on eating a little more but it’s rare that he’ll finish what he has
- Crowley takes great passion in watching Muriel tell people to piss off when they walk in the bookshop, even when Muriel learned it was considered rude
- Omg!! Crowley and Azi introducing Muriel to Warlock, siblings!!
- Crowley listens to audio books (I.E. makes Aziraphale read to him)
- Eric shared a piece of candy with Muriel, not knowing they’ve never had food before and now they have a huge sweet tooth
- When Eric threatened to Eat Muriel, they laughed in his face and that’s how his crush started
- Muriel’s started after Eric kissed their hand to rial them up when they first met (Angel and demon beef)
- Omg Muriel learning how to dance from the first ever Angel to do so (So now the number is a straight forward two)
- Muriel miracled facial hair on their face because they've seen Crowley with it before and wanted to try it (they have long sideburns now, much to Crowley’s dismay because it reminds him of Brother Francis)
- Eric and Muriel once held hands for “safety reasons” and now do it often
-Crowley still gets called to watch over Warlock and he always bregrudingly obliges
- Since I assume Muriel has a more Cockney accent, maybe they learn some of the slang words that come with that (Aziraphale gives them a book on it and deals with the repercussions)
- Crowley and Aziraphale has separate bedrooms (not that they don’t love each more than heaven and earth put together) but having their own space to decorate and do their thing helps tremendously (even if they end up in the other’s room most of the time)
- Crowley took Aziraphale’s last name and it’s very funny when they go out together and when someone says “Mr. Fell” they both turn
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not entirely sure how to best articulate this, but something i've been rotating in my head lately is the :handshake: solidarity between black and disabled american experiences:
both experience other marginalized groups' progressive movements actively exploiting them to further their assimilation and acceptance into current power structures; notably, the feminist and queer progressive movements
both experience a form of oppression centered in their visible bodies, blocking them from utilizing acceptance within power structures to their own benefits (or temporary safety) moreso than other groups who are able to temporarily "blend in" and reap the benefits of assimilation
both have presumptions of violence enforced on their bodies via thin-slicing
both actively and specifically targeted by eugenics, including for the benefit of progressive movements
related to the prior bullet point, however, both in living memory and currently experiencing mass literal nonconsensual medical experimentation, among other genocidal medical tactics (mass forced sterilization, etc)
both the highest targets for lethal police violence among any marginalized groups in america (over half of everyone killed by the police in america has a disability--literally, over 50%--and black folks are killed by the police at a higher rate than any other racial group by orders of magnitude)
both plagued by the constant phenomenon of highly publicly-visible grifters from their own marginalized groups attempting to push social narratives about their oppression being overblown or actually "privileged," despite those grifters being extreme outliers in not facing most aspects of marginalization the rest of the group broadly faces
and of course, because of this overlap and interaction between forms of oppression, the black disabled experience is intensely marginalized and subject to extreme social + state violence
and as i've been thinking about this, i am infuriated by the attempts of social-media lefty grifter types to pit disabled and black experiences against one another--as if the groups are mutually exclusive and have no overlap, as if the groups don't experience a shared history and current experience of being stepped on and exploited in other groups' frantic clawing for assimilation into white supremacist abled power structures. as if we aren't both historically actively left behind and pushed farther down by movements like the queer and feminist progressive movements' active utilization of the power structures that view our bodies as disposable trash, in order for those movements to profit off our bodies and gain power in society--power over us, because we're the disposable underclass.
our fights are linked; ableism and white supremacy don't only go hand-in-hand, they also prop each other up in a horrible incestuous clusterfuck of hegemonies. to pit disabled and black experiences against one another in a thread of clout-driven twittok rage-click fuel is to leave our black disabled community members to rot, and to ignore the solidarity we could have.
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