Prompt 203
Another Hydra prompt! Because I am enjoying the designs I’ve made lol. And perhaps it’s a bit inspired by @radiance1 ‘s different dragon prompts too.
So they’ve succeeded! They’ve managed to combine their powers- with a bit of shapeshifting helped along by so many ghost allies- and become a giant duck-you dragon! Well, originally they were going to do something else, but they couldn’t agree on an animal, so dragon it was!
And how mighty they are! They’re giant, absolutely massive- dwarfing the couple of skyscrapers still in Amity. Damages via ghost attacks and general sparring made it where people really didn’t want to rebuild those types of buildings.
But anyway, dragon! Them! They’re absolutely stunning! And did they mention powerful? Because boy oh boy, are they powerful. The GIW’s guns do practically nothing against their combined might, and barriers shatter before them!
The uh, issue is that they erm… can’t turn back. Which is fine, they’ve all sort of outlived most of their generation- thank you possessions and ecto-contamination, it’s just a tiny bit of an adjustment. But really it’s not too bad, and someone needs to stop the GIW from trying to poke their heads into Amity. Like it’s been a solid couple of generations, it’s time to stop, thanks.
Actually they’ve been a bit quiet. Meh, that surely isn’t a problem. Probably. Honestly they’re all going to use the opportunity to sprawl out where the school yard once was, their favorite place to sun their scales. Huh. Usually more people are around now that they think about it- or really, as Paulina points out, sharpening her fangs on one of the rocks.
…
How long had they been sleeping, because it couldn’t have been that long. One of them was always awake, they slept in shifts after all! Yet there are things missing now as they patrol the skies, both Wes and Tucker pointing out specific buildings that the others didn’t particularly notice usually that now lay empty.
Hm.
Oh. That is a… strong barrier there. A really strong barrier actually. Pfft, they can take it! They’ve shredded every barrier together before- Ow.
…
Okay this might be a bit of a problem. Shit.
You want a general size reference? :P
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The thing is, Jean Valjean’s “nineteen year prison sentence for stealing a loaf of bread” from Les Mis isn’t actually unusual….not even today! I see people talking about it as if it’s strange or unimaginable when it happens every day.
In modern America — often as a result of pointlessly cruel (and racist) habitual offender and mandatory minimum laws— people are routinely sentenced to life in prison for minor crimes like shoplifting or possession of drugs.
The ACLU did a report in 2013 detailing the lives of various people who were sentenced to life in prison without parole for nonviolent property crimes like:
•attempting to cash a stolen check
•a junk-dealer’s possession of stolen junk
metal (10 valves and one elbow pipe)
•possession of stolen wrenches
•siphoning gasoline from a truck
•stealing tools from a tool shed and a welding machine from a yard
•shoplifting three belts from a department store
•shoplifting several digital cameras
•shoplifting two jerseys from an athletic store
• taking a television, circular saw, and a power converter from a vacant house
• breaking into a closed liquor store in the middle of the night
And of course, so so so many people sentenced to life without parole for the possession of a few grams of drugs.
And we could go on and on!
Gregory Taylor was a homeless man in Los Angeles who, in 1997, was sentenced to “25 years to life” for attempting to steal food from a food kitchen. He was released after 13 years. The lawyers helping to release him even cited Les Miserables in their appeal, comparing Taylor’s sentence to Jean Valjean’s.
And there’s another specific bit of social commentary Hugo was making about Valjean’s trial that’s still depressingly relevant. He writes that Valjean was sentenced for the theft of loaf of bread, but also that the court managed to make that sentence stick by bringing up some of his past misdemeanors. For example, Valjean owned a gun and was known to occasionally poach wildlife (presumably for his starving family to eat.) . So the court exaggerates how harmful the bread theft was—he had to smash a windowpane to get the bread, which is basically Violence— then insist the fact that he owns a gun and occasionally poaches is proof that he is habitually and innately violent. Then when Valjean obviously becomes distressed traumatized and furious as a result of his nakedly unjust sentence and begins making desperate (and very unsuccessful/impulsive/ poorly thought through) attempts to escape…. the government indifferently tacks more years onto his sentence, labels him a “dangerous” felon, and insists that its initial read of him as an innately violent person was correct.
And it’s sad how a lot of the real life stories linked earlier are similar to the commentary Hugo wrote in 1863? Someone will commit a nonviolent property crime, and then the court insists that a bunch of other miscellaneous things they’ve done in the past (whether it’s other minor thefts or being addicted to drugs or w/e) are Proof they’re inherently violent and incapable of being around other people.
A small very petty fandom side note: This is also why I dislike all those common jokes you see everywhere along the lines of “lol it’s so unrealistic for the police to want to arrest Valjean over a loaf of bread, there must have been some other reason the police were pursuing him. Because the state would never punish someone that harshly and irrationally for no reason. so maybe javert was just gay haha”. (Ex: this tiktok— please don’t harass the creator or poster though, I don’t think they were intending to mean anything like that and its just a silly common type of joke you see made about Les mis all the time so it’s not unique in any way.) because like.
As much as I don’t think Les Mis is a flawless book or that its political messaging is perfect….the only way that insanely long unjust sentences for minor crimes is “unrealistic” is if you’re operating on the assumption that prisons are here to Keep You Safe by always only punishing bad criminals who do serious crimes. And that’s just, not true at all. Like I get that these are just goofy silly shallow jokes, and I’m not angry or going to harass anyone who makes them. but it feels like there’s an assumption underlying all those goofy jokes that “this is just not how prison works!” “Prisons don’t routinely sentence people to absurd laughably unjust pointless sentences!” “Prisons give people fair sentences for logical reasons!” When like…no
Valjean being relentlessly hounded and tortured for a minor crime in a way that is utterly ridiculous and arbitrary in its cruelty is not actually a plot hole in Les mis. It’s a plot hole in …..society ajsjkdkdkf. And the only way to fix that is to fight for prison abolition or at least reform, and (in America) stand up against the vicious naked cruelty of habitual offender and mandatory minimum laws.
But yeah :(. I hate how Les Mis opens with a prologue saying the novel will be obsolete the moment the social issues it describes have been resolved— but two hundred years later, the book is still more relevant than ever because we’re dealing with so many of the exact same injustices.
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i can’t wait for petrigrof to work out their toxic yuri next episode like I’m rooting for them but I need them to rip each other apart first. i need betty to call simon out for nearly throwing away his sanity again after all she sacrificed for him. i need simon to finally insist that he never asked her to.
they’re both always so ready to throw themselves away, because it’s an act of love, because it’s all they know. but it’s always a selfish decision too. no one wants to be the person who has to figure out what they are without the other.
They love each other. They’ll do anything for each to the point of causing them pain. And neither of them stop to wonder if maybe that’s the problem. That maybe, if they could find a way to choose themselves first, that would make a path for them to be together. But all they do is sacrifice: expeditions, sanity, whatever it takes. And they’re never gonna be happy until they make the choice to value their life for its own sake, rather than as a bargaining chip.
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hi hello i was thinking abt it bc of ur posts on vani and ven recently. what are ur thoughts on what bits of feelings vanitas gets from ventus. i am. curious tm
hello. you are in so much luck because I’ve been thinking about them somehow even more bc I just received a zine and also get to see them soon again with my friend. Hi. Hello
i tend to think it works like a sieve. Vani’s heart isn’t healed over, so it thinks it should still be getting feelings from the other part of it, which it does if they’re strong enough. He can get REALLY specific with them too — Ven’s happy because Terra gave him a strawberry tart. Ven’s relieved because he had previously been nervous but Aqua told him a story so everything is fine. — but he only ever gets the good feelings consistently (because that’s what he’s missing), and only gets the bad feelings if they overflow. At which point it kind of becomes dangerous for the both of them because they can get caught in a feedback loop of negativity and push it way worse than it needs to/they originally wanted to be and overstimulate each other just on pure Feels Angry or Feels Bad. Because!! Also! Ven can feel what vanitas does Only if it overflows from his side, only if they’re close proximity, and only the really nasty feelings. Most of them slough off into unversed or chimera unversed so this rarely ever happens, and it only becomes a problem when they’re too close and too busy and too upset. Like their boss fight. u could probably feel the nasty energy radiating off them
anyways I was getting off track vani can feel positive emotions from ven a lot and he can only really understand them when they’re happening and he ceases to really get it once they leave. His negativity reacts to ven’s positivity like fire and wood. It’s like depression+sisyphus’ eldritch madness. yaaaaay. Like this
Vanitas genuinely hates him. For a lot of reasons not the least of which is it hurts him to keep being taunted and never given the reward. but in those moments of feeling happiness maybe he can pretend the feelings are his and cherish them for a moment…
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