oops! it seems i tripped and dropped several million free books, papers, and other resources
https://annas-archive.org
https://sci-hub.se
https://z-lib.is
https://libgen.is
https://libgen.rs
https://www.pdfdrive.com
https://library.memoryoftheworld.org
https://monoskop.org/Monoskop
https://libcom.org
https://libretexts.org
http://classics.mit.edu
https://librivox.org
https://standardebooks.org
https://www.gutenberg.org
https://core.ac.uk
in annas archive we trust
western women loooooove saying they’d trade their rights so they can bake burnt brownies while xanned the fuck out with their loser alcoholic husband on the way home from a shift at the pulp paper plant or wtv like there’s not actual women in the global south that work as indentured servants in their in-laws homes or have no licenses or finances of their own and they’d face consequences from the entire community if they tried to leave
“i’d love to be a drugged up housewife so i don’t have to work!” my mother moved to a foreign country at the age of 25 years old with less than $10 and a passport in her pocket so that she could finally finish high school and get an entry level job :)
there are women in afghanistan fighting for the things you’d give away to live a life of leisure right now. just by the fucking way.
the thing about mothers in fiction is that a lot of fandoms seem to be under the impression that the worst thing a woman can possibly do is be a bad mother. like they can forgive deadbeat dads easily but the moment a woman is a bad or even mediocre mother she's the devil incarnate to them. and then you're like "i like her and i think she's interesting" and they immediately go "oh so you think it's okay to be a bad mother (which is the most evil thing a woman can be)". and don't even get me started on how they react to female characters who are bad stepmothers
put ur zodiac sign in the tags & if you like or dislike:
- pineapple on pizza - mint ice cream / mint chocolate - ketchup in mac n’ cheese - fries dipped in ice cream
I love playing god in crusaders kings
I hate my heir, I’m fucking his wife. I married my second son to William the Conqueror’s daughter. I hope this causes infighting
I have no (grand)daughters and all of my grandsons are redheaded despite having a Basque mother
I accidentally united ireland
My child was stillborn I wanna kmy
I have accidentally united ireland again this time as a woman
I love playing god in crusaders kings
I hate my heir, I’m fucking his wife. I married my second son to William the Conqueror’s daughter. I hope this causes infighting
I have no (grand)daughters and all of my grandsons are redheaded despite having a Basque mother
I accidentally united ireland
My child was stillborn I wanna kmy
i dog and i dog on grrm but every time i go on that damn subreddit i get so defensive of that old man. oh you think it's so easy? you think it's all fun and games to write a thousand page book in a multipov multicontinental densely structured narrative setting with all the world's eyes on you? go ahead u/chudmeister0621 pick the pen we're all waiting
Rhaenyra Targaryen
i don't know how you can "the curtains are just blue! ACAB lol" fucking Death Note of all pieces of media
this is a show for thirteen-year-old boys. the only writers I've seen who are less subtle about what they're going for were fucking Victorians.
@rawr-monster and @eyestumblin asked me to elaborate so here goes:
Death Note is a show with a very clear central premise: no one should have the power to kill others without consequence. Not the cops, not corporations, not the Mob, not civilians, no one.
Even outside of the 2000s-era criticisms of the Japanese justice system, even if you're looking at it in a vacuum, Death Note makes it incredibly obvious what it's trying to say. It starts this off by making it very clear, right out of the gate, that the audience identification character really, really should not have this power.
For Death Note's original target audience, Light is everything you're supposed to be. He's smart, diligent, good-looking, athletic, popular but not too popular. He's The Perfect Middle-Class Japanese Teenage Boy. If you're the kind of edgy, smart Japanese teenage boy who would want to watch an anime supernatural crime drama in the mid-00s? Light is built for you to imprint on like a baby duckling.
...And then the show goes out of its way to point out, in the first proper story arc, that Light is the villain of this piece. From the introduction of L to the end of the Raye Penber/Naomi Misora arc, the show makes it very, very clear that Light is a hypocrite with a massive ego. Sure, he says that he's only killing criminals to make a better world. Sure, maybe he panicked and killed fake-L in self-defense. Sure, maybe the life of Reye Penber and any law enforcement chasing Kira were worth the clear drop in the crime rate. Maybe.
But then Light kills one of the very few unambiguously Good members of the Death Note cast, does so in a smug and cruel way, and the entire scene is framed as tragic in a way that none of the criminal deaths really were. The whole world goes quiet. And Naomi Misora stumbles off to commit suicide. By the end of that arc, even if you'd otherwise be sympathetic to Light- even if you're still rooting for him to get away with it- it's a lot harder to justify what he's doing. He's not just breaking a few eggs to make an omelet- at this point, he's actively happy to kill anyone who gets in his way.
So. Okay. The Perfect Japanese Teenage Boy (TM) can't be trusted with the power to kill indiscriminately. Maybe the problem is just that Light, as a person, is an asshole with impure motives, and if you gave the Death Note to someone who's a better person, you'd be better off. Maybe you could find someone who's motivated by love, and they'd do a better job with that power.
Everyone, say hello to Misa Amane, who is utterly driven by love and devotion, and probably one of the crazier/more evil characters on the show! She'd do anything, no matter how terrible, just because Light told her to do it. She is utterly without remorse, utterly without fear, and utterly driven by a darkly Romantic fanaticism.
Light gets to dodge what's coming to him twice because of Misa and love- once because Misa's love for Light lets him start the Yotsuba arc, and once because Rem's love for Misa becomes a diabola ex machina. In the world of Death Note, love is not a pure enough motive to let you kill indiscriminately - in fact, it makes you worse.
Okay, well, (our hypothetical edgy teenage viewer might say), cLEARLY the problem is that everyone here is too emotional, and you need to be able to detach from the situation to use the power of life and death. Of course you'd kill indiscriminately if you've got feeeeelings about it, but someone who is driven by Logic and Reason? Surely they'd never do anything wrong.
...And then L gets his hands on the Death Note, and immediately starts trying to figure out how to use it to prove that some of the rules in the Death Note are fake and Light is guilty. L's plan is to have a criminal on death row write in the Death Note and wait the 13 days to see if he dies. It's simple. Logical. Effective. It's also extremely reminiscent of the stuff Kira's been doing this entire time, and the implication is that, had L lived longer and used the Note more, he might become No Different.
(I think it's significant that in The Movie, L uses the Death Note exactly once, with himself as the victim, and he turns down the Death Note when it's offered to him. TheMovie!L is an unambiguously heroic character, and therefore, he will not kill without consequences.)
The power to kill without any consequence to yourself corrupts you. It makes you want to use it to solve more and more of your problems. It turns you into a fucking monster, one name at a time. And nothing can stop that process except refusing to use that power. Love cannot shield you. Rationality cannot shield you. Justice cannot shield you.
And every other character who gets the Death Note reinforces that theme. The Yotsuba Group? Big corporations should not get to kill without consequences. Mello? Criminals/genius detectives should not get to kill without consequence. Mikami? The Perfect Japanese Adult is outright sadistic about how he uses the Death Note. And on, and on, and on.
Near outright tells Light, in their final confrontation: "You are a murderer, and this notebook is the worst weapon of mass murder in the world." Using the Death Note is not justice; it's not going to bring about a perfect new world. It's murder, full stop. Light has become a mass murderer, a monster, by killing over and over again.
Death Note has a theme: no one should be allowed to kill without consequences, because it makes you a monster. It is not subtle about that theme. It is very, very blatant, and the only way it could be more blatant is if Near stopped to deliver an Atlas-Shrugged-style monologue about it.
and so seeing people reduce that to 'haha ACAB' gets my goat, because no. No, it's not just ACAB. anyone with the power to kill indiscriminately and without consequence- whether it's a cop, a megacorp, an autistic supergenius, a mob boss, or a perfect audience-insert- would become A Bastard.
this is a show that makes it abundantly clear that there is Symbolism and it has a Point, in the way that only stuff aimed at teenagers that's trying to be Deep can do. how you get through the entirety of Death Note and walk away with "there's no point! a cop's son decides to be the worst person ever! Light is Uniquely Terrible and that's all there is to it!" is fucking beyond me.
I was just going to blithely reblog this, and then I thought of something.
There is a category unmentioned here in the 'people who use the death note' and that category is the Shinigami. Yes, Rem's mentioned in the 'things you do for love' situation, tho she's not the only one who uses the Death Note in a selfless way (even under manipulation).
Because Rem and Gelus both use the Death Note to save Misa, and they both DIE for doing so. And that's an important context here, the Shinigami, the people who are MEANT to use the Death Note, are near-immortal immoral monsters. And the one way for them to be killed? Is to use the Death Note to benefit someone else.
Not only is there no 'good' way to use a Death Note, it was never INTENDED to be used for 'good', just as a way to elongate the lifespans of actual literal monster people in another dimension.
Death Note goes out of it’s way to have characters just straight-up monologue several times about how it’s the power to kill that’s evil and that corrupts anyone who accepts it, that there’s no good way or good person to have power over life and death. They even put the Death Note in the hands of someone who refuses to use it either directly or by proxy (Light’s father) and he gets to die peacefully with the belief that his son was innocent and Ryuk straightup explains this to the audience just to make sure everyone gets it.
You can really just sum it up with this:
hey why do u automatically draw butches dark skinned and femmes light skinned. just wondering why your femmes are always pale, especially always being put next to darker skinned butches. just wondering why dark skin is masculine and pale skin is feminine to you. just wondering why you always draw butches as predatory masculine darker skinned people grabbing on swooning pale skinned people. just wondering. just wondering!!
"no"
