ValiantVillain

“so you’re saying you’d represent someone who has admitted to domestic violence?” i’m saying i have.

"so you’re saying you’d represent someone who has admitted to child abuse?" i'm saying i have.

and i am saying i have given each and every one of those clients the same level of professionalism, effort, and zealous advocacy i have given my clients who are victims of the same. that is how due process works, and every person is guaranteed it.

i have nothing but respect and admiration for my colleagues in the public interest sector who represent those who have committed and/or been accused any and all crimes, no matter how "morally reprehensible" others may find them.

Any power you grant the state must be evaluated against the damage it will do when (not "if," when!) the state turns it against the most marginalized and oppressed groups under its authority.

There must be high quality, professional, dedicated and well funded public defenders in a democratic society, and they must be available to everyone. Not because Nazis and pedophiles and racists and etc should have nice things, but because the moment the state can get away with abridging people's right to a fair trial it will turn that power on the vulnerable. Inevitably, and usually instantly.

So for those of you who don't know yet, this is Colleen Darnell, also known as The Vintage Egyptologist on Instagram where she goes full colonialist in 1920s/1930s clothing complete with pith helmets and using Egyptians both living and dead as props. (Not kidding: she takes Aesthetique™ photos in tombs.) She's married to John Darnell, who was formerly her professor and PhD supervisor at Yale, and it's quite a well-known scandal in Egyptological circles that the two were having an affair before and at the time of her working on that PhD. John, who was married during that affair, eventually divorced his wife and then married Colleen.

In the field, they're considered bad scholars. Beyond the Yale scandal, beyond the fact they're being ridiculously colonialist in the way they present themselves and their "vintage fashion" choices, which they will extend to wearing on actual digs in Egypt itself, their condescending attitudes bleed through in their scholarship. A scholarship that's mediocre at best to begin with, especially John's. However, because they (especially Colleen) have such a strong social media presence, they keep getting asked for docus or to serve as consultants for popular media (e.g. Jodi Picoult heavily consulted them for her novel The Book of Two Ways and whoof it shows), and most people won't question their fashion choices because "ohh aesthetic".

However, by far most Egyptologists severely dislike them for their academic dishonesty and refusal to acknowledge the loaded history behind their chosen mode of dress.

You are not supposed to know how your devices work. You are not supposed to modify them without paying a service fee, you are not supposed to add functionality to them unless they sell it to you, and you are DEFINITELY not supposed to repair or reuse them when they could make you replace them at full price.

What a day of unexpected splendor💕

quick-ish pieces based on the crow's outfit concept art

"Fealty," a follow-up to this illustration: 👀

Gotta save the Wardens.

I rewatched Mulan and I had a dumb idea, that’s it really.

Shepard/Garrus

Everyone at the Grove only seemed to know of him as a leader, scholar, healer, and powerful Druid. In truth, he hated the first, understood the importance of the second but did not actually enjoy it, was proud of the third but again, didn't consider it part of his identity, and rarely acknowledged the fourth as anything but a way to serve nature.

Even in the way they addressed him it quickly became clear it wasn't who he was. Halsin NEVER shows any comfort using the title of "Master Halsin"; it was a title the others used for him that he reluctantly went along with. The instant he leaves the Grove, he never uses it again. He's just Halsin.

He may have been fond of some of the Druids at the Grove, and most of the others were fond of him right back (hell, even Kagha, if she is pushed away from the Shadow Druids, and then learns that Halsin perished in the goblin pen, laments that she will really miss him)... but none of them saw him. What they saw was a mask he had to wear, a role he had to play, because he had to. Because he was forced to and no one wanted the role back. (And seriously, he was desperate to give it up. It took his Grove nearly being taken over by the Shadow Druids and Halsin having to leave to help end a potentially world-ending threat for them to agree to send a replacement. You can't tell me the guy didn't try to pawn the position off before, only for his Circle to say "no".)

The refugees see him as a protector (which he is) but as the leader, as the most powerful one. The Druids see him as a lot of things- a leader, good or bad; some see him as weak and a failure, others see him as beyond a reproach and someone to put on a pedestal; they see him as the BEST healer of all, the most POWERFUL Druid they know, the SMARTEST, the STRONGEST, an "elf with the presence of a bear"...

But the one thing he can't be around them is "just Halsin."

He couldn't even trust any of them with the full truth when he discovered the altered tadpole; Nettie had suspicions, but he didn't tell her the full truth, he immediately swore off telling Kagha with the reasoning that she would demand answers he couldn't provide (expecting too much from him), and in fact, he was so worried about this that he split his notes into two.

So then along comes the player, who first finds him in an extremely vulnerable position- being tortured by goblins. Halsin says in as many words that he didn't think anyone was coming for him. Halsin didn't think the people he was charged to lead and protect cared enough for him to mount a rescue mission- and he was tragically right. (Granted, for some it was a matter of fear, inexperience, etc, but the fact remains.) The player rescues him, treats him as an equal despite this (and that's what he wants, he wants to be an equal with some expertise to share, not a leader), helps him to correct what he sees as the biggest mistake of his life, possibly pursues a romantic relationship with him where they are kind enough to not even hold it against him where he loses control of his powers and accidentally polymorphs during sex, and, in the newly added post-Drow scene, offers him guidance and counsel on something he's been unable to talk about for over 100 years, admitting that he lost perspective on it for just this reason. He had no peers and was forced into a leadership role so stressful that it made him romanticize his past as a sex slave in his own head because he was that desperate to not be responsible for the wellbeing of others, to not be relied on- even if the alternative was being treated as literal property and his autonomy repeatedly violated. That's how desperate he was.

Halsin's entire arc is how he's been lonely and isolated, always in different ways, but still the same thing. Misunderstood and scorned for his size, or kept as a prisoner, or with few friends, or losing his peers, or being forced into a leadership role with no equals or friends to take care of him, or so focused on his leadership duties that the chance to have a family (which he wanted desperately) passed him by... just one thing after another.