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Mafia sex cults work out great right until the second they don't.

The general series-wide perspective is that it was a bad decision made by well-meaning people who ignored the red flags because it had worked out for them so far, but it takes quite a long time for the other shoe to drop.

The problem with that is that it denies the broader context - the blanket support of Netanyahu's opposition for ethnic cleansing and/or genocide (they just don't believe he should be in charge of it) and the apartheid conditions in the occupied territories that long preceded October 7th.

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The Turbines are most interesting for how their situation plays out in Season 2 (which is, in general, the 'find out' to Season 1's 'fuck around'), but you've got quite a few episodes from here to there.

Iaculus @iaculus.bsky.social · 7h

Because their primary competition for their electoral niche is the Conservatives, and... well, you've seen the 'Badenoch Tapestry', right?

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Real estate event in London ‘advertised sale of land in illegal Israeli settlements’

The Edgeware Synagogue notoriously held the Great Israeli Real Estate Event, which sells land in the occupied West Bank. That probably moves their support into political/economic spheres. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

theguardian.com

Pamphlets from event featured projects in West Bank and East Jerusalem despite previous denials by organisers

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Eeeh, it can sometimes be worth checking whether there's any political/financial ties between specific Hindu temples and the Indian occupation of Kashmir. That's been getting pretty grim.

This goes all the way down to the series's 'Zaku'. The Graze looks a lot more like the Leo (OZ's basic grunt-suit) than is common for a Zaku-expy.

The EB-06 Graze, thirty seconds before getting squished by a grotesquely huge melee weapon.

The OZ-06MS Leo, thirty seconds before exploding for no particularly good reason.

Gjallarhorn itself probably draws most heavily from OZ (the primary antagonist faction of Wing) as well. They're a corrupt, tyrannical pseudo-UN with an aristocratic power structure. They're vastly more entrenched in IBO than they were in Wing, mind you.

... but that said, just as Mika and Kudelia are distant descendants of Heero and Relena, the Gjallarhorn aesthetic probably has its Patient Zero in Gundam Wing's Treize Khushrenada.

Treize Khushrenada from Gundam Wing, looking extremely smug about his immaculate fit

Gundam has a tradition of its antagonists dressing like they stepped out of the nineteenth century going back all the way to the very first series (the Zanscare Empire even had their officers wear deeply unwise wigs for formal events)...

Though with a weird twist in that while the pseudo-A-V system has obvious, horrific grounds for abuse, the one guy who used it treated it as a way to respect and honour a fallen comrade. Kind of like incorporating a war buddy's bones into your arms and armour.

They did with poor old Ein. Traditional single-reactor suit (if very heavily modified) plus even more horrific A-V modification.

Iaculus @iaculus.bsky.social · 11h

Army wants more tanks. There, done.

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Iaculus @iaculus.bsky.social · 12h

He's a leader-figure for a bunch of feral child soldiers who the entire solar system has been out to murder since long before they hit puberty. He's a compulsive gambler defined almost entirely by his fear of failure, due to its likely-horrific internal and external consequences.

Iaculus @iaculus.bsky.social · 12h

Well, she does discover bisexual polyamory and go 'yes holy shit I want that'.

Robert Smalls - Wikipedia

Robert Smalls with superpowers would be a cool NPC to work with. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...

en.wikipedia.org

It looks quite like him (yes, he does actually have surprisingly pointy ears), but still a bit too close to the world's most infamous antisemitic caricature for my tastes.

Caricature of John Healey looking a bit more Happy Merchant than it probably needs to there.

More of these two from back when Chloe (the dog) was one year old:

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My description was accurate - we got Gracie (our cat) from a rescue after she'd already had a litter, so when a nine-week-old puppy showed up a few months later, she just saw the event as an extension of her parenting duties.

The New International Version is less favoured with many Christians for small-C conservative reasons (it's not the version of the text they and their parents grew up with, which matters quite a bit with a two-thousand-year-old religion built on shared tradition), and because its language is blander.

It was the most successful of the early English Bibles, both thanks to its effective mass-publication and its own literary/poetic merit, and has gained religious reverence from people who assume that since it's the oldest version of the Bible in a language they can read, it's also the most accurate.

Cat with improbably large, stupid kitten.

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I dunno, this seems like they've decided on a final solution.

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Stealth tech that gives your fifteen-metre-long warplane the radar profile of an underfed pigeon is useful for exceedingly obvious reasons. There's lots of objects in the sky, and folks generally don't assume that all of them are out for their blood.

IBO has some really cool visual storytelling in its mechanical design, and that's never more clear than with the gradually shifting appearance of the Barbatos.

It's interesting because he kind of goes on a parabolic character arc, becoming increasingly interested in learning to become more than a simple killing machine before eventually deciding 'naaah, that's too much effort' for reasons both inside and outside his control.

Damn, girl, you really the Queen of Limbo? Wanna see how low I can go?

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The original couple, for reference:

Relena Peacecraft, also from Gundam Wing

Amusingly, Turn A also splits its Char clone into two - a deranged manchild in a red suit who has an obsessive hatred for Gundams (Corin) and a noble-but-eccentric masked ace pilot in a gold suit who goes from enemy to ally (Harry).

Though Tomino did reference it in his franchise retrospective, Turn A Gundam, with Harry, Loran, Diana and Kihel's whole complicated business.

Uso and Shakti from Victory Gundam and George and Maria from G Gundam may have had an influence on Heero and Relena, but they're not who every subsequent pair is referencing.

Interestingly, this was first truly codified with a Gundam AU, not Tomino's original UC shows. Heero and Relena from Gundam Wing are the original pair that everyone else draws from.

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Just to be clear here, you can do this if you want, but you really don't have to. The whole point of the AU shows is that they're designed to be fully accessible for newbies.

It's the Goku principle. You want to try to beat up Goku, then yeah, he's totally going to be up for that.

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I feel like the opportunity is fairly readily available. He's a nice guy, but he's also really enthusiastic about his art. If someone challenges him to a match, he's almost certainly going to say yes.

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This is in many ways a throwback to the really old folklore, because TES's initial writers liked to crib directly from real-world mythologies. Norse/Germanic dwarves were indeed a type of subterranean elf - it was Tolkien who chose to more sharply distinguish them.

Mari Okada Gundam is certainly a trip. Also, the way the tech influences the fight scenes (everything above a certain size has incredibly effective energy-deflecting armour that requires massive kinetic impacts to breach) is quite a striking deviation from the franchise norm.

They did make his features a little sharper and moved him away from having yet another of Takeuchi's blunt, delta-shaped faces. He's got a pointy nose rather than an entire face gently extending out to a point.

Iaculus @iaculus.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The number of rotten eggs in the Universal Century is frankly terrifying.

Iaculus @iaculus.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This is definitely something he inherited from one of his in-universe inspirations, Amuro Ray.

Iaculus @iaculus.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The difference is that Bison understands that he's a supervillain, and only pretends otherwise in order to fuck with people. You can taste the irony in the 'Pax Bisonica' speech (which Zangief is, of course, completely oblivious to).

Iaculus @iaculus.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It doesn't help that we're discussing it in the Anglosphere, where it's been the topic of lurid, overheated imagination for millennia. One of my favourite examples is the delightfully insane 'history' book Caligula: Divine Carnage: www.branchfloridians.org/plebeian_scum.html

branchfloridians.org

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Iaculus @iaculus.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Though there are also his relationships with Lalah and Haman, so even if the truth is more nuanced (and frankly, more bizarre), Char doesn't exactly do himself many favours on that count.

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Iaculus @iaculus.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

'not even your final form, rejected'