27fireflies [they/them]

the only song that exists

i've been sinking into the recurring one piece hyperfixation that i've had since like age 6 when i watched and read it on and off with my older brother and i've been really into the revolutionary messaging within the show.

the world government are at first portrayed as the bad guys on account of the main character being a pirate and the world government/the marines hunt pirates. but there are officers in the marines that legitimately want to help people - hell, the first secondary character we meet in the story wants to be a marine and this is shown as a worthy ambition because he wants to do it to help people. pirates aren't all happy-go-lucky folks who go around overthrowing repressive governments like the main characters - pirates are pirates. they aren't, as a whole, good. and then again, the marines are still deeply corrupt as an institution - the navy's main function is protection of a system that is fundamentally oppressive - there's what amounts to state-sanctioned slavery for fuck's sake, the marines as an institution are, at the end of the day, defending this system.

and that means that another faction, unrelated to the pirates, forms to fight against the injustices that the system of the world government perpetuates: the revolutionary army. and this third group might be the one of the few undoubtedly moral groups that exists in this world, and is portrayed as such, and thats bitching. no "they might have a point but they're Too Extreme so they have to be stopped" bullshit like you see in a lot of other lib media. here it's more of a "theres Individuals within the system that are moral try to behave morally but what is being perpetuated as a result of said system and what the system enables is unambiguously immoral and the use of violence is not shied away from because the system itself is violent and uses violence to subjugate the people" type situation.

as is i can't really see where else the story can go other than the overthrowing of the state and abolishment of the system that permits and is built upon the oppression of the people

and then the author is fucking terrible at drawing women and is so reliant on sexist tropes it ruins interesting characters. also on an individual-case basis (the individual islands/places the crew go to) there's still the perpetuation of governmental systems like fantasy monarchism. anime was a mistake

rammstein is pretty cool. the vocalist and the main guitar player used to beat up nazis and skinheads back in the ddr and while some of their takes are :LIB: they at least have a good repertoire of apparently being at least leftish which is lovely to see in a metal band. also their keyboardist misses the ddr which is pretty cool

noted, i don't use reddit often but i might lurk when my usual feeds get slow lmao

just joined after more than a year of lurking both on the original sub, MTC, and on here. will be proud to join the posting wars :sankara-salute:

absolutely. i've been rereading it in bits and pieces again and i just got through skypiea. interested to hear some other comrade's thoughts about it

100% agree - small tangent but the way that rsd messes with your relationships to authority figures within the educational system is something that can totally fuck you over even if you perform well within that system.

my refusal of reading feedback on assignments and such due to the dread of having to face criticism even from teachers that are "cool" is coming back to bite me in the ass because i just keep pushing it further and further back into my mind bc of rsd even though i logically know that they're trying to help me and it's never as bad as i think it's going to be. even if i know i've half-assed an assignment and i shouldn't care as much about it it still hangs over me like a fucking cloud. & sure learning how to deal with that is part of having (undiagnosed) adhd or something similar but it still sucks.

i have no idea where i was going with this except something like the way we communicate is inextricably tied to our surroundings and giving teachers and nd kids ways of communicating that don't lead to the kind of bullshit that grades are tied up in and so on is probably a small but important step. sorry for rambling you know how it is

edit: formatted for readability