#“Everyone actually hates me and is just being polite”

[olenoidedserratuspilled]

You spent this entire response talking about how, unfortunately, I wouldn't read it and surely I would block you

Because that is genuinely what I expected, and genuinely what the more long-term productive move in your end is.

and then at the end you basically asked me not to respond. Lol.

Yes, because I don't believe this conversation is productive to either of us, especially when you yourself stated that it's besides your original point. Keep reading if you like, but I know you are not going to shift on your stance, and neither am I in mine.

None of the examples you gave are using man-hating as a cover for anything, at least not successfully.

Emphasis on "Not successfully". The notes on all of those posts were full of the OOPs and their defenders arguing how their takes shouldn't be considered racist because they're only targeted men.

But women don't ask people not to complain about cisness or whiteness or wealth, just to stop singling out women and being misogynistic.

And I never said women should not complain about men. Only that the statement that TERFs like men is incorrect (it is), and that there very much are people who use man-hating to excuse actual bigotry to themselves and to their peers (there are).

Everyone else can complain about their oppressors, but women can't, because someone somewhere might use man-hating as a justification for something else.

I never said that. I only pointed out that it's something that happens, that it's something TERFs specifically do, and that it's a reason why the notion that TERFs like men is wrong.

If a woman makes a post about misogyny and singles out Indian men, it might because she's racist or it might be because she lives in India.

I wanna ask you if you saw any of the screenshots I posted and thought "Well, maybe that OOP is part of the racial minority they singled out". I don't think you did, because people talking about a racial minority they're part of tend not to paint them as demons or deserving of violence and death.

TERFs on the other hand, do that, and it is racist to do that. Pointing that out was the point of my post, and nothing else.

There is a long history of women of color being pressured to stay silent about misogyny within their own communities using the reasoning that the community must be united and any negativity will give ammo to racists. This puts women of color in a really difficult situation. It also serves to prevent them from forming solidarity with other women.

That's true, yes. It's also entirely unrelated to anything I said. Women of color are free to speak up against misogyny from men of color as long as they neither A) single them out as being somehow innately worse than white men (like the posts I showed) nor B) paint them as deserving of racially motivated violence for behaviors that aren't exclusive to their race (like the posts I showed).

Man-hating is not a good proxy for other kinds of bigotry.

Sure. It doesn't mean people don't use it as one. All I did was point out that they do.

You focused a lot on whether or not TERFs like men, which was really tangential to the actual point of this post.

Did you read the tags I was responding to? Because I was responding to a tag saying that TERFs like men. I focused on that because that's the statement I was responding to.

"TERFs like men actually" was referring to their eagerness to form relationships with right wing cis men to gain political power.

Right, so you can agree TERFs don't actually like men (especially not POC men), and that saying they do is just factually wrong. If you can agree with that statement, then you agree with my point, because that's the only point I'm making. You're also not the one who wrote those tags, so you don't know what their person meant.

Also, before it finally got taken down, a decent number of the posts on the TERF subreddit were from cis men claiming to be radical feminist allies who the TERFs gleefully and hypocritically pointed to as "one of the good ones" while they bonded over hating trans women.

Again, not remotely related to what I said. If what I posted doesn't count as evidence of TERFs disliking men, why should posts from a dead subreddit count towards evidence of them liking them? Didn't you just say this was just tangentially related to your post? If so, why is not conceding to that point seemingly so important?

TERFs live in the same society as everyone else (unfortunately) and in a society as patriarchal as ours, few people really hate men as much as they think they do.

Cool that you can read TERFs minds I guess, especially when I didn't think there'd be anything to read in there, but in my experience when somebody says something it's because they meant to say it.

Using man-hating as a shield for bigotry doesn't make a lot of sense because man-hating isn't socially accepted just about anywhere. It always gets pushback.

It is in TERF circles, and while TERFs do have many racist tendencies, a lot of them still at least performatively frown upon bold-faced racism that doesn't have "men" attached to it. They use man-hating as a shield for bigotry in the circles where it is socially accepted, and to justify it to themselves. That is the only point I'm making.

And TERFs spend a lot of time with the far right, where hating men is certainly not acceptable.

And they don't use man-hating rhetoric with them. They use it with themselves, with each other and to outsiders that are still receptive to it.

I don't know where you live, but on the anglophone internet man-hating is not generally accepted. And even when you do hear "I hate men," the power dynamics of patriarchy are such that it's just not a real problem.

Notice how I never said it is. That is just not a thing that I said. I only ever said that TERFs, specifically, hate men and use man-hating to excuse their own bigotry. You say you didn't mean to put words in my mouth, but you keep doing just that.

Quite often in hate movements like that, the ideology is a post-hoc justification for the bigotry. So the logic of men oppress women -> trans women are men -> trans women are bad because they oppress [cis] women may be what TERFs say but it's often not an honest representation of their thought process.

It is how they justify their thought process to themselves, to each other and to those they want to recruit, however. That is what I'm describing. That's the point I'm making.

TERFs will even say, disingenuously of course, that it would be fine if trans women would only live as gender non-conforming gay men. It's transness that transphobes despise, the act of existing while trans.

Yes, I'm aware. I've never said that wasn't the case, only that TERFs will use man-hating as a post-hoc justification for their own transphobia.

In general, a post that singles out transmascs is probably not okay, because the relevant part is that they are trans, and being cruel to trans people is… wait for it… transphobic.

Yes it is. It's transphobia that is being rationalized by the people doing it as acceptable because they're singling out men. That's the thing that I said is happening.

but that's an intracommunity issue that I'm honestly not qualified to speak on, because I'm cis. I only bring it up because I've dealt with analogous intracommunity in some communities I am a member of; it's a fairly universal concern but the particulars here are outside my lane.

That's cool, trans men still have to deal with takes like these, though:

These are people using man-hating to excuse their rancid behavior towards trans men. That is exactly the situation I described, and the one you claimed doesn't make sense and doesn't happen. And that you replied to by saying man-hating isn't a real problem - which is not a thing I said at any point, ever. Here or elsewhere.

I am not saying man-hating is a real problem

I am not saying you should not be allowed to do it

What I am saying is this:

A) Bad-faith actors have and continue to use it to excuse actual forms of bigotry. Even if you don't think they count, I've shown proof of it.

B) Whether or not it is relevant to the discussion, the statement of "TERFs like men actually" is just not factually true.

If this is what you wanted to read, I'll gladly say I agree with your original post's point. I simply reblogged to disagree with one person on the tags who said that TERFs like men, because that pure and simply isn't true.

If you're done putting words in my mouth, I do think we should stop talking here, because this is only tangentially related to your original point and fighting each other is a waste of time.

But I know you're not going to read this. And that you're not done putting words in my mouth.

Something I want this website specifically to reflect on! Are you mad at women for talking about men the same way you talk about cishets or neurotypicals? Why?

[showerthoughtsofagoldengoose]

why Okarun is a real g

-he was bullied and had no friends and somehow came out of it without any exceptionally strong feelings of hatred or resentment towards his peers.

Trust me as someone who has been in that position (minus the bullying) it is SO easy to hate everyone. From what I’ve heard we learn very little abt this character’s life but I’d assume he might have at least had a good upbringing to turn out like this. I did not so that might be part of why I literally despised everyone and became a bit of a femcel for a while…

-polite, puts others first.

Legit who doesn’t like someone like that? I see no need to even elaborate on this point.

-he respects women’s boundaries.

It’s so common for boys in shounen to be creeps and so seeing a male shounen protagonist who actually is decent towards women is really refreshing! Especially one from a show whose premise revolves around him losing his dick and balls! (The only other shounen I really like is chainsaw man which takes an incredibly nuanced approach to a perverted male protagonist, and I wouldn’t really call Denji perverted as much as he is horny, desperate, and a typical teenaged boy. He reminds me a little of my boyfriend when he was younger lol)

unrelated but even tho the “scenes” of creepiness in the show are kind of unnecessary (I think they’re there so turbo granny can come in clutch and save Momo from whatever is happening to her, since turbo granny’s whole schtick/initial redeeming quality is protecting girls from those kinds of threats. That and the series is batshit insane and needs ridiculous ways to get from point a to point b. I still see why people don’t like these scenes tho) it is kinda interesting to me that the most pervy fuck it I’m gonna use the real word RAPEY literal attempted sexual assault moments in the show seem to be used to make us dislike a character and view them as fucked up. (Allegedly they stop being used which thank God but I digress I’ve been talking abt them too long lmao)

the good guys in the series are like, actually pretty innocent. Aira looks at her dad’s porn to figure out how romance works, Momo and Okarun have this incredibly sweet and innocent romance, and don’t make it weird or creepy when they see eachother in a vulnerable position, Jiji is just a very close childhood friend of momo’s and while he might like her he seems to be pretty respectful and again, innocent. Have yet to meet the rest of the cast but I do hope to see this pattern of innocence continue.

I might also be reading into it too much idk

[siggiedraws]

As someone who considers Silver to be her favorite Sonic character, I had spent a good while wondering why I keep feeling frustrated with him in the IDW comics as compared to Archie and I think you might had put into words why. His lack of a backbone is kind of weakening him in hindsight. I still like him all around and there are parts of IDW that do justice to his character and even expand on it (I will never not be happy for his journey as a gardener cause that is both in line with his love of nature and very refreshing to see for a male character to have unabashedly, especially someone Silver's age). Though I will disagree with you saying that Archie had NO backbone. He was constantly in conflict with Sonic over finding out who the traitor to the Freedom Fighters that lead to his bleak future is and he consistently makes mistakes that make him come off as cocky and bratty, to the point that Sonic eventually grows to hate Silver and even disregard his warnings when he does discover the actual truth until it's too late (that truth of course being that Sally betrayed everyone unintentionally with her Robotinazation, something no one wants to be true until they have to face it after the fact). Archie Silver is still flawed, but he is closer to his game counterpart more than IDW Silver is, at least in my opinion he is.

Thank you for your sharing your opinion and being very polite about it! To clarify something, I did not mean to say Archie Silver had no backbone. I was using him as a point of comparison because I noticed similarities with IDW, in that he is portrayed as more polite/timid than his game counterpart. I understand your interpretation of my previous post because I didn't get into it for the sake of not getting off topic. In the future, I will avoid making points without providing evidence in order to avoid confusing people or derailing my argument.

What I want to argue here is that I think your point arguing that Archie Silver has a backbone is still compatible with my position of both comic Silvers possessing noticeable character differences from game Silver that share the same problem with Silver being portrayed as polite or timid, just to different degrees.

I absolutely do not want to be unreasonable here! I agree with you that he is more similar to his game counterpart than IDW is and I won't deny the examples you just listed. I hope the examples I bring up can help illuminate my perspective a little bit and why Archie Silver is a bit too similar to IDW Silver for my liking.

Sonic the Hedgehog #195 - Silver tries to politely interject in on the fight, to the point of saying "excuse me" and "ma'am."

I am aware that he stops them all directly after this moment, however, it should not have happened in the first place if Archie Silver was aiming to be like Game Silver.

Sonic the Hedgehog #235 - Silver stammering in front of Sonic and allowing himself to get dragged through the dirt by his quills.

I think it's not in-line with the games for Silver to allow himself to be disrespected like this. If the Rivals games teach us anything, he gives back equal if not more aggressive energy when he perceives that someone is disrespecting him. Silver calling Sonic a jerk is really small potatoes.

If Silver reacts this way to being called crazy, how do you think he would react to being dragged through the mud by his quills? Not well, I can tell you that.

Silver's stammering here is also of note because it communicates that he's intimidated by Sonic when he has no reason to be if this were an accurate portrayal to the games.

Sonic Universe #43 - Silver tries to lie.

In the games, Silver is so honest and sincere when he speaks that it could be attributed to a source of his rudeness. Lying and deception is simply not something he ever considers doing. We've been shown in Rivals 2 quite clearly that Silver is honest to a fault. This panel also shows Silver being polite and timid in his mannerisms.

Silver attempting to lie happens to be a trait that is shared with IDW Silver in the 2022 annual.

Sonic Universe #25 - Another example of Silver not defending himself from being disrespected and using the term "sir."

Silver's childlikeness is emphasized here, as he is put in direct contrast with an elderly character who comes across as an authority figure, one he seemingly accepts and calls "sir" to be polite. This is an example of what I meant in my post when I say that Silver's naivety keeps getting conflated with being childish. He even says "b-but he started it" like a child telling on a sibling to their parents.

I acknowledge there is a tiny moment where Silver speaks passive-aggressively in the second to last panel, but Silver listening to the order of "don't sass your elders" directly afterwards quickly negates this moment.

Another moment from the same issue shows Silver becoming timid and lacking in confidence when faced with six enemies.

This directly contradicts the games where Silver is very confident in his abilities when faced with a horde of enemies. In Colours DS, he shows an eager willingness to fight and gets disappointed when Orbot and Cubot flee instead, which is opposite to how Silver attempts to avoid fighting in Archie.

Now, in the Archie example, Silver gets defeated by the enemies, which indicates that his timidness is because he is outmatched. I would argue that this is still not true to Game Silver. In '06, Silver readily and confidently fights Iblis, despite Iblis coming back time and time again and never truly being defeated.

Another example is when he fights Shadow. Despite losing to Shadow, and being told that it's no use fighting Shadow due to his Chaos Control ability, Silver does not start behaving timidly. He is still as determined as ever.

-

Thank you very much for your ask! I hope the examples provided illustrate why I brought up Archie Silver as an example in my previous post about this topic. I agree with you about gardening being a good recent addition to Silver's character, it's very wholesome to see him indulge in his love for the world around him.

[birdiebirdjay]

what are your thoughts on Severus Snape?

AW HECK YEAH I FREAKING LOVE SEVERUS SNAPE!!!

I've talked about him a lot on my blog lol- not as much recently, but rest assured I still love him <3

He's one of my favorite dudes!! Percy is awesome because he is me and I am him sometimes but Snape is awesome because HOLY SHIT the amount of trauma this man went through just to become one of the saviors of the wizarding world?? holy shit it's insane

I have so much love and admiration for him as a character. He's the most heroic hero to ever hero tbh (overexaggeration I know.. but still)

Also, honestly, no I don't really care about the whole thing with Neville. In the most polite way possible, canonically, that kid was either a cowardly idiot or a kid who didn't listen in class and needed to get straightened out. Signed, an autistic nerd who would have hated him in real life. I'm sorry but I just cannot listen to any argument that basically goes 'ohh but he BULLIED CHILDREN!!' like no he was a strict teacher and Neville was a bad student who endangered others 😭😭

Oh also I absolutely love the John Nettleship lore!! (Basically Snape was based off JKR's old chemistry teacher, who she hated for like no reason lmao. He was super nice and everyone else loved him and he dressed up as a wizard and sang songs in Welsh. He was also most likely autistic and most definitely a mega feminist!! Absolutely based dude tbh. He even had disability accomodations installed in their building for JKR's mother!) Anyways book!Snape is autistic and you can't convince me otherwise <3

OH!! ANOTHER THING!! I love Alan Rickman, think he was an awesome actor, but movie!Snape is inferior to book!Snape in every way to me. He makes me shudder. Canon Snape is screamy and rough around the edges and mentally unstable and traumatized AND IT SHOWS! Movie!Snape is... smooth speaking... and calm... and slaps student... and is NOT book!Snape in any way shape or form!!!

Oh speaking of (can you tell I love yapping about Snape?), despite being pronounced a student-hating abusive bully by a certain side of the fandom, he's actually one of the only teachers that canonically never put the students in physical danger, and I think that's very snexy of him.

Anyways yeah I love Snape :) there's literally only one thing he's done in canon that I can't defend. Ask me questions about him anytime <3

[thebaldursmouthgazette]

First of all, this is about an active refusal by some people to acknowledge that solas has done some really bad things, in favour of pretending he’s a good person who just made some “mistakes” (genocide), and the way that effects their ability to engage with a plot that is about the character as written, and their subsequent insistence that it must be bad writing because it doesn’t work with the version of Solas that never existed in the story. I am not, as you are saying on your blog, saying everyone else is incapable of understanding. Not only have most people got this, I’m sure those who haven’t are completely capable of doing so, if they were willing to admit that Solas isn’t a good person and was never intended to be.

This post is also directed at the people who are so insistent in their belief that this is a terrible game and Solas is a wonderful person who’s done nothing wrong except a “few mistakes” that they come into my ask box and notes calling me homophobic slurs and sending me sexually graphic hate mail for seeing solas through the lens of not being a good person (he has committed genocide) and thinking the game is well written.

If you aren’t part of one of those groups, the post isn’t directed at you.

Onto Solas, I have a couple of points. First, human morality is the only lens we can interpret this through, because spirits don’t exist. This game was written by humans and for humans, and Solas is a constructed character, not a guy who actually exists and is beholden to a spirit nature. This means that being the embodiment of egotistical pride doesn’t absolve him of his actions stemming from pride, they make him a metaphor for being consumed by egotistical pride and how that’s not great. He is not an actual guy who actually can’t help himself, he’s a character who serves a purpose.

As for him being a mirror, I don’t think it’s to the extent that his nature fundamentally changes. Regardless of how nice you are to him in either game he still: sundered the titans, murdered Felassan, was directly involved in murdering everyone at the conclave, is racist to dwarves and qunari (to dwarves for the effects of HIS crime against them), planned to kill literally everyone who currently exists, blocked Briala from her efforts to improve the lives of elves in orlais, killed a BUNCH of people in his preparations for killing everyone else, murdered Varric, used blood magic on rook to gaslight them into thinking he was still alive, trapped rook in a fade prison for the crime of literally just being in his way, and tried to manipulate rook into being complicit in his second genocide by misleading them about the veil.

All of these things are bad and they all happen regardless of your attitude or actions towards him. In fact, the only two things about him you can actually change through your actions are:

1) If you have high enough approval in inquisition he starts to realise that actually the people of thedas might be real people who’s lives have value, but that doesn’t even stop him planning to murder you all and destroy the world, and it makes his choice to isolate himself for the next decade while he continues his plans seem, if anything, more insidious because now he knows it is wrong.

2) If you get the essence of Mythal and choose to convince him he’s wrong after the final battle, he will realise that he is wrong. But that doesn’t make him not wrong throughout the rest of the games, it’s literally an admission that he was.

If he mirrors your demeanour to him it’s very surface level. You exchange niceties, and he’ll be polite as he plans the mass murder of all of your people and manipulates your mind with blood magic to make you hallucinate your friend that he murdered still being alive. He is still the embodiment of egotistical pride, regardless of how you act towards him, and he still behaves accordingly.

His overall actions do not change, and these actions are not ones that can be separated from the person doing them. It’s not that he’s had a bad day and he’s been a little rude but that doesn’t say anything about him really, he’s committed genocide. He’s committed multiple murders in addition to that. He’s planning another genocide. That makes him a person who is willing to do that. You cannot hand wave away crimes of this magnitude.

I also quite strongly believe that when someone has committed crimes of that magnitude, and has treated people with that amount of disdain and dehumanisation (I know they’re not all human because fantasy setting, but you get what I mean), people are under no obligation to be nice to them. If you want to be nice, fine. But this is a guy who, regardless of how you as a player treat him, has committed multiple atrocities, used every chance he is given to commit more, and denies personhood to those who don’t meet his personal definition and then treats those people like their lives have less value. I don’t care if being rude to him makes him rude back. People should not feel obligated to bend over backwards to pander to and be nice to a person who thinks their lives are less valuable than a minor convenience for his own people and therefore murdering them all for it is justified. And they certainly shouldn’t when the reason is “he’s a little bit less of a dick if you’re nice to him. No he doesn’t stop trying to destroy the world and kill everyone in it, but he’s a little less rude about it”. His surface level demeanour doesn’t change my opinion on the atrocities he’s committed and is planning to commit.

Solas is not a mirror in the sense that he’ll act to you as you act towards him, because no matter how nice you are to him he is still actively gaslighting you by using blood magic to alter your senses, planning to imprison you, and planning to kill you and all of your people. Which even at your absolute meanest to him you can get, you are not even approaching. The characters in this game are all reflected against each other, but to compare and contrast, not because Solas fundamentally changes based on your approach.

You mentioned coercion vs free will in your tags and I think that brings us nicely back to the point I was making in my post. Because Cyrian is being coerced by Anaris, but that doesn’t change the fact that if he goes through with Anaris’ plans, that is a horrific crime he will be responsible for. Coercion doesn’t absolve you of responsibility, and on crimes of this scale if you decide to help them you are complicit, even if being coerced.

That’s partly what this post was pointing out, that every debate you could have about Solas is played out at some other point of the game. Cyrian ultimately does not help Anaris, he chooses to stop him. Solas could have chosen this too. He didn’t, and chose of his own free will to sunder the titans, and is therefore responsible for it. Following orders does not mean you aren’t responsible for your own actions.

These themes run deeply through the game, and what this post is about is that if you refuse to acknowledge that Solas has done wrong and try to force the game through the lens of Solas being a misunderstood pookie who’s done no wrong (again, if this is not your opinion of Solas then this post isn’t directed at you. Because it’s directed at the people who are like that) then no, none of these themes will make sense and none of the game will make sense, but that’s on the person actively refusing to acknowledge that Solas has done wrong, it’s not the game not making sense.

I think a huge factor in people not being able to understand this game is that the game as a whole relies on understanding Solas’ character as written, and people are refusing to understand it

Solas is, and has been since his first appearance, an egotistical, hubristic, racist, manipulative, abusive and condescending asshole who regularly commits atrocities and pretends that being sad about them is enough penance. He is a terrible person who insists he’s actually the hero of the story. He is a liar and a manipulator, and he lies to himself as well. He uses other people like chess pieces and sacrifices them for his cause without much of a thought, and without them even knowing they are being used.

This is who he is. This is who he was always written to be. And veilguard is almost entirely about deconstructing that. Every member of the veilguard is a foil to solas. They are all who he pretends he is, and his false hero fantasy falls apart when you put them next to him.

Every single companion storyline is about that character successfully doing something that Solas is incapable of, but would be capable of if he wasn’t such a terrible person. And they all face a dark reflection of themselves and come out the other side mostly unscathed by that, aware that this dark reflection is not them because they are not actually like that.

Solas faces many of the same challenges the companions do, and fails each and every one of them, because, unlike them, he is not actually a hero. He is not a good person. He does not learn to accept that just because something is broken doesn’t mean there aren’t parts of it worth saving. He does not learn to accept the harsh truths and move forward. He does not accept that he is responsible for his own actions, even if someone else orders them. He fails every time.

Solas faces not one but two dark reflections of himself, Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain, the prideful god who always thinks he’s right no matter the consequences, and the servant and lover of another god whose atrocities are not justified by having been pushed by their lover and mistress, but does not come out the other side unscathed because it turns out he IS actually like them. His reflections are accurate, they’re real parts of himself that he pretends don’t exist, not just twisted versions of their fears like they are for the companions. At the end of the game he even admits that yes, he is very similar to Elgar’nan.

Pretty much the entirety of veilguard is a very careful and deliberate deconstruction of Solas’ character and self image. We go through, in elaborate detail, all of his crimes, all of his mistakes, all of the reasons why he is wrong, why his actions are unjustifiable, why his regret doesn’t absolve him of responsibility, how he thinks it does anyway.

We completely tear down every single aspect of the image he has constructed for himself. We destroy every single excuse with clear examples showing that that was not how things had to go. Every justification. Every insistence it’s okay because he’s sorry. Every time he insists he knows best and we should leave him to it. Every single illusion that he is a good person is shattered. By the end of it there is absolutely nothing left, and his repeated attempts to keep up the facade come off as pathetic and ridiculous. In all his banters with companions he tries to use his usual tricks, pretty excuses, belittling comments, fake niceties and every time he’s completely shut down.

He tries to imply Davrin has a biased view of him from stories about the dread wolf, Davrin responds with evidence the truth is even worse. He tries to apologise to Harding, she comes back with a list of all the terrible things he’s done that an apology can’t cover. He tries to appeal to spite, spite points out he hurt Rook so why should he trust him. He comes up with excuses for killing Varric and Neve points out that there’s no pretty excuse for using blood magic on Rook in such a cruel way afterwards. The illusion is shattered. That’s what the entire game has been building up to. And it makes his last attempt at betrayal seem embarrassing, because we now see through the facade and know that he was too obsessed with himself to even consider we’d see it coming.

But the thing is a lot of people refuse to see this. This is where his characters been heading since the beginning. This is who he’s always been. But a lot of people ignore any and every negative thing about him, and then complain the game doesn’t make sense. Of course it doesn’t make sense. You’ve ignored every single theme, plot point, and piece of characterisation to make up a version of Solas in your head and that’s not the Solas the game is about. It makes complete sense when you see Solas as he truly is, as he was written to be. It’s such a good bit of writing when you actually let yourself experience it as it is and allow yourself to be open to the idea that the guy who is trying to commit his second genocide might be a bad person.

[finitestateai]

I hate how many of my brain things become self perpetrating loops of feeling bad.

Today was "I feel like a burden" day. Which is a really, really hard feeling to tell people about because telling someone that I feel bad because I feel like a burden makes me feel like even more of a burden.

I already know that most people don't think of me as a burden, which makes me feel terrible because I can't help feeling like one. Which makes me feel like a burden because I can't even deal with that, and then it loops.

I know the thoughts aren't true. But the fact that I can't shake them makes me feel worse. Annoyingly.

[phoenixcatch7]

Reading loz/lu fics and it's just so interesting how wide the spectrum is of their personalities.

Sometimes it's got an in universe reason (different past (usually gender or species change), recent or ongoing traumatic events, a spectacularly bad first meeting), but sometimes (often) the characters are just... Weirdly angsty or peppy, there's no in between!

And I'm beginning to think less people have played more than one game than I thought XD.

Not that it's anyone's fault! One game is more than enough to be part of it all, and loz is exclusive to Nintendo consoles - and all the older stuff is frustratingly hard to get hold of. Heck, I'm still looking for wind waker, and that was really popular! And then you have to play it! They're not small games!!

But could people writing wild please ease off just a tiiiiiny bit so he can be a semi functional member of society pretty please XD? He's just as much a polite boy as any other member of the chain! He won't even run in shops! He can't attack npcs! He talks to every single person he's ever seen and remembers every single name. Yes, he's three quarters woodland creature with a hefty amount of trauma but he's also a fashionista who managed to avoid accidentally taking sides in a mayoral election and that's not easy!

[sovonight]

thanks for being so vocal about bg3 lmao the entire hype around the game and the way its sexual content has been presented is so thorougly offputting as a sex-repulsed ace person. and i've loved bioware-style crpgs ever since i was a kid!! just feels like i'm being pushed out of a genre i love because these games are so unrelentingly horny because that's what gets headlines and makes cash. yuck

i feel the exact same way 😭

and honestly the worst part for me isn't the game itself but the game's reception. the mainstream, overwhelming approval of bg3's style of romance content has been really alienating in a way no other game in the genre has been

[here-there-were-dragons]

my mother is absolutely convinced of some nonsense conspiracy theory that (in her words) "originally humanity lived in peaceful all-woman societies of goddess worshippers who took care of eachother and lived in harmony, while males were roving loners that had no society and never cooperated. that changed when the men banded together and overthrew the peaceful woman-dominated societies, and enslaved us all." and, according to her, this is proof that a woman-dominated world would be innately more peaceful, and that men are innately violent and evil and should be either barred from holding any legal power or leadership roles or at least should be (again in her words) "gelded like bulls" to remove their testosterone before even being considered for such a thing.

she also evidently believes that the problem with all religions today is primarily that they aren't "goddess worshippers", because she seems to think goddess religions are inherently peaceful and pure too and seems to be especially obsessed with "Isis" in particular. the very very few times she's openly considered it unambiguously bad for some population or another to have been exterminated (she's got a bad case of devil's advocating genocide brain), she's gone out of her way to make up some crap about how said people were a peaceful society of goddess-worshippers, almost always of isis. delusions of isis-worship seem to be the only thing that ever causes her to consider any arab or middle-eastern culture, society, or ethnicity to be relatively uncomplicatedly undeserving of extermination, in fact, because every fucking time she doesn't immediately start devils-advocating it and making remarks about how "the rest of the world should box them in and let them blow eachother up" it's when she's whinging on about how whatever specific micro-ethnicity she's thinking about are or were traditional persecuted isis-worshippers.

the sole major exception to her weird fixation on isis worship justifying worthiness of life is the whole israel thing going on, in which she has consistently made very obvious that literally the only reason she's against the genocide of palestine is because it gives her an excuse to even more openly hate jewish people than she already did. and honestly i'm not sure even that's true because i think she's made some offhand remarks about palestinians having probably been peaceful isis worshipers before the jews infected them with christianity or something anyway.

so for the last, however fucking long it's been i've been constantly having to listen to her go off about how this behavior is in the jew's blood or whatever and that they literally invented all genocide because somehow the concept didn't exist before them and wouldn't have ever been invented by the rest of humanity without those jewish aliens dropping it in i fucking guess apparently and she furthermore goes on about how every single genocide and mass-oppression movement in history is directly inspired by them, ESPECIALLY the nazis, and THEN i have to listen to her rant about how, basically, wwii was something they entirely brought on themselves by "dominating the economy and treating everyone not them like shit" and the nazis were just "using their own tactics back at them". and then she goes on a rant about how the people the original jews exterminated back in the day (aka the first ever genocide, which they invented, because jews invented genocide and hate according to her) in the middle east region were peaceful matriarchal isis-worshipers.

and then she starts making comments about arabs being backwards and palestinians either being mysogynist muslims that should be boxed in to blow eachother up with everyone else or secret peaceful isis worshippers corrupted by men's cruel hand, sometimes in the same sentence, entirely dependent on which group she's more in the mood to hate at the time.

it's exhausting. beyond exhausting. her sole purpose in existence seems to be to have the singularly most exhausting set of politics physically possible to fit into one person.

just, sometimes i think, if there really is anything at all to the incredibly stupid and inexplicably popular idea that anyone or anything has a Purpose tm to exist for, i feel like my mother's purpose is to be walking proof to me of a Type Of Guy That Is Real, cause i sure as fuck would have trouble inventing this mess if it wasn't standing right in front of me spewing confusingly bipartisan hate. all of her thoughts and opinions are these long winding nonsense chains that feel like if that man carrying thing sketch about the friend with confusing politics was a person. on meth.

[pepprs]

i literally need there to stop being situations circumstances events developments complications and happenstances. for the fucking love of god

[snekdood]

ive literally never understood antisemitism and i dont think I ever will. literally 0 basis for any of the conspiracy theories. its always just projection from christians.

[6ebe]

the English people who constantly hate watch England hoping they lose need to seek love and light fr it’s cringe pandering at this point

[furrysmp]

congrats to everyone that is still following me after I saw I had way too many followers to not have at least one antisemitic person following me, the fact that you don't think I murder children for fun is truly a comfort

[mako-island-moon-pool]

I really do deserve a fucking apology for all the times my friends and family valued strangers on the internet and their opinions more than me

How am I supposed to be just fine with being ignored for years and years or bullied for openly liking what I like, only for those same fucking people to then turn around YEARS LATER, AFTER THE DAMAGE WAS ALREADY DONE, and be like "actually this is cool, so glad I found it" while still ignoring me. Why am I not allowed to be fucking pissed about it? Why is it considered ""gatekeepy"" when I get upset someone who deliberately ignored me for years and insulted the shit I enjoy when I asked them to get into it cuz I thought they'd like it suddenly finds interest in it because it got popular online, not because I'd been begging them to give it a chance and to listen to me for years???? Why is that not allowed????? THAT'S SUCH AN ASSHOLE MOVE, WHY IS IT 'NOT OKAY' TO BE MAD? WHY DON'T THEY GROW A SPINE AND APOLOGIZE FOR DISMISSING ME FIRST? HOW ABOUT THAT?????

[linabirb]

also hi while i was talking about my ocd and anxiety during today's therapy session my therapist literally googled the wikipedia definitions of the things my brain called me to prove that it's wrong and that those thoughts don't matter

[daffypsyduck]

x