Giveaway Contest: Weâre giving away fifteen paperback classics that were hand-picked by you! Wonât this collection look lovely on your shelf? đ
To win these classics, you must: 1) be following macrolit on Tumblr (yes, we will check. :P), and 2) reblog this post. We will choose a random winner on December 29, at which time weâll start a new giveaway. And yes, weâll ship to any country. Easy, right? Good luck!
Like, if youâre gonna be an adult whoâs really into childrenâs media the least you can do is actually internalize all those themes of being a good and kind person
Once upon a time, there was a city ruled by three sister princesses. They were much-loved in their kingdom- the eldest with eyes of brightest blue, the middle with lips of sweetest pink, and the youngest with hair of deepest red. They were incredibly close, acting as each otherâs friends and confidantes. They were just, and kind, able to balance the people and keep the peace in their land.
For a time, all was well.
And then it wasnât.
Mother?
Shh.
A neighboring kingdom, jealous of this cityâs prosperity and peace, sought to disrupt it. They dragged to its gates hideous war machines, made of magic and steel and human skin. The king, a man of great magical learning and power, demanded the princesses surrender their city to him, and if they did not, he said, he would raze it to the ground.
Mother, Iâve never heard of this story.
Then listen when I tell it to you.
The youngest daughter, when she heard, did up her deep red hair, put on a delicate crown, and clothed herself in a beautiful dress. âI will offer him an alliance,â she told her sisters. âI will give him my hand in marriage for our kingdomâs safety.â
The other sisters wept, understanding the sacrifice that their youngest was making, and held her close until dawn. They saw her off at the castle gates, and watched until she disappeared into the still city.
When the youngest daughter reached the enemyâs camp, she stood tall, and did not show her fear. She spoke kindly to the weary soldiers, curtsied before the cruel sorcerer-king as custom demanded. She was brave, oh, my darling, she was so brave.
And the king spat at her fine words, and spoke the words that drew all the light from out of her, until she went mad with despair. As the sun set on the day, and on the youngest sister, who lay despondent in the middle of the camp, a soldier came upon her, and killed her in a fit of mercy.
But you said that she was brave.
Yes. She was.
When the other sisters heard, the middle sister donned silver armor, borrowed from the guards in the castle, and took up a crossbow. âI go to kill the king,â she said. âI go to avenge our youngest.â
And the eldest held her close, and wept, until she let her go and watched her disappear from sight into the streets.
When the middle sister arrived at the camp, she moved quietly, looking through the tents with eyes and a heart made cold with fury and grief. She reached the kingâs tent- asleep, inside was the enemy, and she raised her crossbow to finish the job. And she would have, darling, she would have, had she not seen, hanging from the post of the kings fine bed, her sisterâs delicate crown.
The king awoke when she sobbed at the sight of it, and spoke words that caused her to wither and decay where she stood, crumbling to rotted remains inside a suit of armor.
Mother, I donât like this story.
You must hear it.
The eldest sister heard the news and she did not weep. She drew her courage about her, and set off into the forest to find her and her sisterâs mother, who was a powerful witch.
Her mother answered the door and bade her come inside, offering her condolences about her sisterâs fates. Once the door had closed, her mother hesitated, then spoke.
âI left you in that castle long ago, and I will give you your answers, and then I will give you your vengeance against the king.â
And so the daughter listened.
Mother, I donât want to hear this.
Listen, daughter.
Long ago, there had been a queen with great magickal abilities, but she was never able to find a love, so she used those powers to create three daughters.
One, she formed from a bottle of light captured at the sunâs violent surrender to night. It woke last, a child with beautiful red hair, and so it was the youngest.
One, she shaped from a gentle pink anemone, the last in her castleâs courtyard to survive winterâs onslaught. It woke second, a child with curved pink lips, and so it was the middle.
One, she carved from a piece of sapphire the size of her fist, and as she did, she cut her finger with the blade, so it was made with blood, as well. It woke immediately, with bright blue eyes, so it was the eldest.
The sun took her first child home, she told the sapphire-girl. Her body turned to light, and then to nothing, what it always was. The body of her second daughter rotted in the encampment like a flower decayed beyond its lifespan. âAll the king can do is turn you back to what you were before,â she told her daughter. âHe will turn you back to stone if you are unprotected.â
She gave her daughter a vial full of black liquid. âThis will turn your heart forever to sapphire. The king will be unable to change you- but you will never feel again. No blade shall pierce your skin, but no joy or grief will stir within you. You will never be warm, or cold. I offer you not immortality, but a half-life of invincibility.â
The daughter regarded the vial, and uncorked it. She brought it to her lips, but before she drank, she asked her mother, âWhy did you leave us?â
And then she swallowed, so she would not care about the response, and she left her mother in her home before she found the answer.
But why did their mother leave them?
Because she knew, daughter, even then, that her eldest child was capable of committing this act, and she was afraid.
The eldest daughter marched to the encampment, and to the kings tent. She was attacked, but nothing drew blood, and so she went forward. The king, upon seeing her, spoke the words that would have crumbled her to so many sapphire shards, but nothing happened.
She pulled out the kingâs heart through his armor, and she felt no relief at having killed him.
She felt nothing.
The end.
Mother?
Mother, that canât be how the story ends.
Mother, that is not how the story ends.
Do you want another ending?
Yes.
Very well, then.
The people saw what their queen had done, and began to fear her. The queen, unable to feel love or even affection, went back to her mother to find a way to make a child that her people would adore, because, without emotion, she saw that that was what they needed.
The child was made of ice over a pond, and her hair was the orange-white color of the fish, still alive in the cold.
And the queen raised her daughter to love the kingdom, to rule well, and to one day overthrow her mother.
If the purge only hit child porn and porn bots we would be perfectly fine with it. But thatâs not the case.
Weâre upset that after years of us complaining to Staff about the bots and child porn that it took Apple removing the app from the store for them to take action.
Weâre upset that many artists, both safe and not safe for work, were purged. Many of them make their livelihoods through their art.
Weâre upset Staff continues to lie to us and avoid our questions. It shouldnât be that hard to tell us the truth.
Weâre upset Staff made it impossible to search for NSFW content and the subjects theyâve deemed NSFW even if our settings allow it. For example âYaoiâ is currently one such search that now shows nothing.
Weâre upset that despite this all the bots are still here. Many people are saying theyâre actually getting worse.
Weâre upset that Staff continues to make changes to how the site functions without informing us until itâs too late.
Weâre upset that we still donât know all the details about what blogs get purged and what ones donât. Some say any blog marked NSFW is a target, others say it only takes an external link in the bio, others say itâs only artists, others say itâs anyone.
Weâre not upset theyâre trying to get rid of kid porn. Weâre upset theyâre failing at it in every way possible!
I knew a NSFW wlw blog. Its owner was a great girl who made sure all her content was appropriately tagged and marked as NSFW, she answered all questions truthfully and helped every girl who came to her asking for advice. I didnât follow her because she posted a lot of porn but I checked her blog once a week to see what sheâs up to and, admittedly, enjoy her NSFW posts.
This girl, who was careful and appropriate, who did literallynothing wrong, got purged.
But when I look at a post, its first ten notes are still porn bots.
I want to talk about Star Wars in the context of left-wing politics for a second. Itâs actually really good, maybe even better than we realize. It might actually be the best massively popular mass media franchise of the modern era – not because it is undeniably really good entertainment, but because it actually attempts to say something meaningful and positive about rebellion and change.
Many left-wing writers and critical theorists have written about a general problem that plagues mass media. In many stories, the only real movers or changers to the status quo are the villains. In other words, the task of the hero is to merely uphold the status quo against some deviant force that wants to change it. You can see this in works like Harry Potter, where the ultimate goal is really just the defeat of Voldemort and the preservation of the way things are. People that want to change things drastically are either laughed at (like Hermione with the house-elves) or are themselves villainous. This same dynamic is also true in many comic books and comic book movies – The Avengers arenât looking to fundamentally change the structure of society. Thatâs what the villains want. The Avengers are supposed to defend the earth from change, not instigate change themselves.
This dynamic points to a sort of end-of-history view of things, where liberal democracy is the best anybody can hope for, and anybody attempting to change it is either worthy of derision or villainous. It propagandizes the audience to be more happy with the way things are, because every possible alternative is worse.
The other side to this particular narrative is the straight dystopia, where liberal democracy has somehow been lost, and the hope of the hero is to restore it. Even though this narrative takes a different approach, it still points to the same thing. This narrative acts as a warning to a similar end – âimagine how bad things could be, you really ought to be happy with the way things are.â
But then there is Star Wars – a story that takes place in a galaxy far far away, but is perhaps more relevant to us on earth than any other mass media franchise. In Star Wars, the heroes are the Rebellion, a rag-tag group of people fighting against an evil Empire. Right from the beginning, the changers are the heroes, not the villains. Itâs the heroes that shake things up, or in many cases blow things up, and the goal of the villains is the preservation of the status quo. Thatâs a huge flip to the problematic narrative right out of the gate.
An argument could be made that Star Wars falls into the dystopia trap, and that the end goal of the Rebellion is merely the restoration of liberal democracy – but two huge things challenge that narrative. In the first place, Star Wars is not presented as a dystopia. In most dystopias, the dystopian environment itself is the central narrative. We are told in great detail just how bad the government is, and how bad they have made the world. Star Wars doesnât do that. In fact, the amount of time spent on the Empire and its inner workings is minimal. The central narrative to Star Wars is instead the rebels themselves – particularly the three central heroes – and their personal journey and interactions. Their personal acts of rebellion are explained in far greater detail than any Imperial actions. Star Wars could be seen to celebrate rebellion itself, in this way. We arenât bogged down with an explanation for why opposing the Empire is the right course of action. We are simply made to believe that resisting power itself, in any capacity, is good and should be done.
In the second place, the prequel trilogy actually did a really good job of deconstructing the trappings of liberal democracy. In the prequel trilogy, itâs the Republic that grants emergency powers to the Supreme Chancellor, essentially creating the Empire. Itâs the Republic that willingly sacrificed thousands of clone troopers to the scourges of war. Itâs the Republic that financed both sides of the civil war. Itâs the Republic that let liberty die with thunderous applause. After the prequel trilogy, if the end goal of the Rebellion is just the restoration of that same type of Republic, the audience would not be satisfied. We believe that the Rebellion is fighting for something greater. We have to.
For this reason, the current sequel trilogy actually plays a pretty central role in the interpretation of the series. Depending on what the Resistance ultimately ends up creating, the series could come to a fantastic and satisfying conclusion, or it could stumble into the same trappings of other mass media franchises. Iâm not sure if I have total faith – but I honestly have more than I normally would, just because Star Wars has been so comparatively fantastic so far. And Rogue One kept with the tradition, portraying a firmly left-wing insurgency, willing to use whatever means necessary.
Thatâs the tradition of Star Wars – the heroes are the rebels, the changers, the movers. Weâre actually here to create something radically better. Come join us in the galaxy far far away of our wildest dreams.
This is part of why out of the newer Star Wars movies, Rogue One has to be my favorite. This is of course just my humble opinion, but although I love the characters in the main sequel trilogy, I feel like Rogue One was more thematically coherent and had a more meaningful theme in the first place. Itâs one of the few Star Wars movies that clearly introduced a scenario in which both sides of the war are doing the wrong thing (the tyranny of the Empire and the passiveness of the Rebel alliance) and the main characters therefore have to break away from both in a sense. Itâs one of the few Star Wars movies that blurred the line between good and bad in terms of factions, not just individuals having dark or light in them (nothing wrong with the latter).
As far as the sequel trilogy is concerned, canon verse outside of the films and fanon are the best places to look in my opinion if you want to analyze Star Wars in terms of politics. (That being said, Iâm NOT trying to say that liking certain characters or factions in Star Wars predict a personâs political beliefs in real life.) All we see of the New Republic in the sequel trilogy is the destruction of the Hosnian System, but that canât be the whole story. If you listen to Huxâs speech, he hints at a more complicated relationship between the New Republic, the First Order and the Resistance than the âFirst Order is bad/New Republic and Resistance are goodâ view. He mentions that the New Republic is âsecretly supporting the Resistanceâ and âlying to the galaxyâ. There are a lot of ways you could interpret this. Either a) Hux is being a lying asshole and making up all of this or b) Thereâs some truth to what heâs saying, enough that would make people angry enough with the New Republic to support the First Order, even if the First Order is not necessarily good either. I feel like the latter makes for a more interesting story, but is sadly more or less unmentioned in the movies.
Now, Iâm probably preaching to the choir with that last part and people are probably sick of having me talk about the New Republic and the First Order⌠Iâm also not even sure how related that was and probably not what @9ofspades wanted to hear my thoughts on⌠but I typed all of this⌠and I donât want to feel like I wasted my time.
But in conclusion, Rogue One is awesome and I like talking about politics in the Star Wars universe.
Thanks for the meta =D =DÂ
I hadnât noticed that before, but thatâs so very true – in the originals we see the Empire being awful while the Rebellion is full of good people, and then in the prequels you have both factions being kind of not-great but Anakin ditches one for the other, so Rogue One is the only version where they stay on the good side but revise the agenda a bit…Â
Anyway, sorry for the ramble – appreciate hearing your thoughts; theyâre super interesting – thanks!!Â
NineofShades 