I read the Uniform Code of Military Justice when I was in the Navy. It not only allows service members to refuse an unlawful order – it requires us to.
Obeying an unlawful order is a crime under UCMJ, and no, “I was only following orders” is no defense. We already settled that, at Nuremburg….
“I was only following orders!” isn’t a defense, it’s an INDICTMENT.
being a guy in love with a guy is not always cute or romantic or soft or tender. sometimes it’s pushing your boyfriend’s face away yelling because you have viral bronchitis and he keeps trying to kiss you knowing this because he’s a himbo with no sense of self preservation
I hate it when your parents are like “I know you better than you know yourself!” Like no you don’t
Like oh, you’re an expert on the inner machinations of my psyche? Name three of my top ten existential dreads
“But I raised you!” Ya and the only version of me that you know is the one I carefully crafted so that you wouldn’t ask me questions because it became obvious early on you couldn’t handle the honest answers
actually there were 0 time travellers on the Titanic, because the time cops have an entire outpost to safeguard that one particular point in history. every rookie spends a least a month on Titanic duty and they all complain bitterly about it since it is, essentially, the time travel equivalent of being the guard who has to stop tourists from licking the Liberty Bell.
listen. LISTEN. there’s going to be somebody, maybe several somebodies, at the travel hub who’s dressed nice and knows all the right words and swears back and forth that they can sell you the credentials that will get you into the Titanic’s timespace. they’ll sell you IDs that pass you and your friends off as 23rd century history students or, worse, some 24th century brats who will go crying to their corporate sponsors if you ruin their paid vacation.
the IDs will look very impressive. they will not come cheap. they will not help you.
there’s no checkpoint to bluff your way through and nobody who wants to hear you try. if you try to time travel anywhere near the Titanic, whether you try to board with all the other passengers or appear on the boat in the middle of the voyage, you will get slammed directly into a whitespace dragnet - a time bubble, in layman’s terms.
and you will be surrounded by at least a dozen time cops, all of whom are bored and cranky and very eager to flex their newfound authority, which means they will absolutely detain you for as long as possible and insist on giving you a lecture when a slap on the wrist would do. if you talk back they might double your fine or even suspend your chronal permissions for up to a year.
and then they’ll send you back to the hub in your period piece clothing that will suddenly look very stupid, and the guys who sold you the ideas will have fucked off to 1998 by then and you won’t have a chance in hell of getting your money back, and what I’m saying is that it’s not worth it, dude. it’s just not worth it.
This is too specific to not be from experience
what are you, a time cop?
The only way to travel to the titanic is to go to the ice age and go into cryostasis on the mass that will eventually become the ice berg.
Pearl: Guys we gotta be careful, someone here is possessed by an owl Diamond: Who? Pearl: I don’t know but— (stops, cuts to a close up of Pearl’s face)
I introduced a friend to ATLA a few nights ago, and they had only
known two things about the entire show: the cabbage meme, and that Aang
apparently wants to ride every large and dangerous animal he can
possibly find. We got through the first five or so episodes, and my
friend noted that Aang is exactly what a 12-year-old would be like if
given godlike powers, and that this is literally just what he
could do with airbending. He can’t even wield any of the other elements,
and he’s one of the most powerful people on the planet, because he’s an
airbender.
And that got me thinking.
This snippet from Bitter Work is one of the few pieces of concrete information we get about the airbenders, at least in ATLA. Iroh is explaining to Zuko how all four of the elements connect to the world and to each other.
Fire is the element of power, of desire and will, of ambition and the ability to see it through. Power is crucial to the world; without it, there’s no drive, no momentum, no push. But fire can easily grow out of control and become dangerous; it can become unpredictable, unless it is nurtured and watched and structured.
Earth is the element of substance, persistence, and enduring. Earth is strong, consistent, and blunt. It can construct things with a sense of permanence; a house, a town, a walled city. But earth is also stubborn; it’s liable to get stuck, dig in, and stay put even when it’s best to move on.
Water is the element of change, of adaptation, of movement. Water is incredibly powerful both as a liquid and a solid; it will flow and redirect. But it also will change, even when you don’t want it to; ice will melt, liquid will evaporate. A life dedicated to change necessarily involves constant movement, never putting down roots, never letting yourself become too comfortable.
We see only a few flashbacks to Aang’s life in the temples, and we get a sense of who he was and what kind of upbringing he had.
This is a preteen with the power to fucking fly. He’s got no fear of falling, and a much reduced fear of death. There’s a reason why the sages avoid telling the new avatar their status until they turn sixteen; could you imagine a firebender, at twelve years old, learning that they were going to be the most powerful person in the whole world? Depending on that child, that could go so badly.
But the thing about Aang, and the thing about the Air Nomads, is that they were part of the world too. They contributed to the balance, and then they were all but wiped out by Sozin. What was lost, there? Was it freedom? Yes, but I think there’s something else too, and it’s just yet another piece of the utter brilliance of the worldbuilding of ATLA.
To recap: we have power to push us forward; we have stability to keep us strong; we have change to keep us moving.
The air nomads brought fun to the world. They brought a very literal sense of lightheartedness.
Sozin saw this as a weakness. I think a lot of the world did, in ATLA. Why do the Air Nomads bother, right? They’re just up there in their temples, playing games, baking pies in order to throw them as a gag. As Iroh said above, they had pretty great senses of humour, and they didn’t take themselves too seriously.
But that’s a huge part of having a world of balance and peace.
It’s not just about power, or might, or the ability to adapt. You can have all of those, but you also need fun. You need the ability to be vulnerable, to have no ambitions beyond just having a good day. You need to be able to embrace silliness, to nurture play, to have that space where a very specific kind of emotional growth can occur. Fun makes a hard life a little easier. Fun makes your own mortality a little less frightening to grasp. Fun is the spaces in between, that can’t be measured by money or military might. Fun is what nurtures imagination, allows you to see a situation in a whole new light, to find new solutions to problems previously considered impossible.
Fun is what makes a stranger into a friend, rather than an enemy.
Guys the most amazing thing happened at work today.
So I was working at the counter, and then the great beast rose out of the sea, his ten crowns adorning his seven heads, upon which were written the names of blasphemy. And then, I couldn’t believe it, the seven trumpets sounded, as the words that no man can hear were shouted from the heavens, and th
I am Silver Tongue, I am an artist. I have many characters and you can check out my art in the art tag. I occasionally practice witchcraft though I don't do anything too complicated. I am girl 2 and don't know what else to put here.
