#2 fascists down. hundreds to go.

[goldenpinof]

i love when russians bite each other's heads off. please, continue <3

[notyouraryang0dd3ss]

Scrolling through twitter every day and seeing countless of people begging for donations in order to fucking survive while knowing that celebrities like Taylor could literally solve everything makes my blood boil. Ariana Grande did the bare minimum by sharing (not even donating) a link and thousands of dollars were gathered immediately. In conclusion, fuck any swiftie who says 'oh what is taylor going to do/it wont help'. Like genuinely go fuck yourselves. I hope people keep reminding her for the rest of her fucking life how she remained absolutely silent when children were being butchered by the fascist she encouraged her fans to vote for (yeah i remember your little biden cookies bitch)🤬🤬🤬🤬

how was your day?😇

Oh my god do I feel this ask down to my soul. Seeing Palestinians having to get down on their knees and beg for people to help them flee their homes so they and their families aren’t murdered by the Israeli government next to people posting and praising their faves who have said NOTHING…I want to commit heinous crimes to say the least.

I said this before but Taylor Swift could pay to evacuate every single person in PALESTINE and have hundreds of millions left over. The financial impact it would have on her would be so small it’s laughable.

What is going on isn’t localized to TS but a reflection of the active downfall of the celebrity and celebrity culture. I’m grateful for #Blockout2024 movement currently happening, forcing celebs to act, but it isn’t enough. Especially with fanbases like Swifties, where they are experiencing infighting about whether or not Taylor should speak up. If your favorite celebrity is your moral compass, you are beyond lost.

This is so consistent with her past behavior, staying silent during the 2016 elections and then conveniently rebranding once she had seen which direction the culture had gone (and then rebranding to fit that current moment as she is always a trend follower). She is going to release a documentary 2 years from now about her regrets on not speaking up and being afraid (using the exact justification Swifties are using now) to speak out because of her safety. Let’s be honest, if she does speak out, it’ll be after she finishes her European leg of the Eras tour, so she could maximize those zionist dollars. She did the same thing with the Reputation tour, where the day after her North American leg ended, she spoke out and openly endorsed Marsha Blackburn, a Democratic Tennessee representative, for the 2018 midterm elections, on Instagram.

Fuck Biden. Fuck those who defend and will vote for Biden in the upcoming election. I doubt Taylor will endorse him again either. FUCK THOSE BIDEN COOKIES!

Fuck Miss Activisticana. Genocide enabler.

tl;dr

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸 FREE PALESTINE! 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

🌊 FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE! 🍉

[useless-catalanfacts]

Pls pls pls share any info you have about marches and solidarity in Catalunya/Barcelona for our brothers in Palestine. I don’t see anything. A genocide is happening as we speak, that has been going on for 70 years of struggle for freedom. They are civilians, with the majority under 18, not Hamas. They have no water, no electricity, no hospitals. They’re told to run for their lives like animals but the borders are closed!!!! Isreal bombed Lebanon and Egypt to stop them from even opening their doors. This isn’t a war. They are being buried alive, families are staying home in the hope of dying together. Imagine going to the funeral of a friend and coming back home to your kids under rubble, the faces and garden burned by white phosphorus. The media relying countless debunked lies. Nothing said of the illegal settlement, kidnapping, sexual abuse, UN crimes against humanity, nothing is done. The US and Europe are rolling out laws to stop even showing the Palestinian flag, can’t write on insta or twitter. Few jewish ppl are speaking up against the violences but are immediately shut down. Anyone expressing support is automatically a terrorist. Sounds familiar? Sounds fascist? Have we forgotten that the colonizer’s gov has always been religious far-right since it’s creation. They desperately want to us to believe they are defending themselves in a 2 sided war. It’s not 2 sided when one side is being obliterated with and the other side can take a commercial light to their second house in New York. It’s not 2 sided when one side is waiting for death and the other side can go around the corner to a McDonald to cry about how horrible it is that the other McDonald is closed. Nothing makes sense. I feel sick. My heart cries, their struggle is our struggle, of all the oppressed minorities fighting for their right to freedom, their right to speak their language and live on their lands

Hi. Hm I think if you haven't seen anything, you haven't been looking much, nor watching the news. There have already been rallies to show support to Palestine in Barcelona.

Last Monday in Plaça Sant Jaume, Barcelona:

Photos shared by Crida LGBTI.

On Wednesday, hundreds protested in front of the EU delegation in Barcelona:

Photo from Europa Press.

Today (Saturday) again, more than 700 hundred people have marched in the center of Barcelona:

Photo from ACN.

The movement in solidarity with Palestine has been very strong in the Catalan Countries for decades. You can keep up by following the Palestinian and solidarity organisations in our country, I'll copy-paste the links from a post I made some months ago:

Organitzacions de solidaritat dels Països Catalans amb Palestina:

Prou complicitat amb Israel: web, Instagram, Twitter.

BDS Catalunya: web, Twitter.

BDS País Valencià: Instagram, Twitter.

Comunitat Palestina a Catalunya: web, Twitter, Instagram.

I a nivell internacional:

Jewish Voices for Peace: web, Instagram.

BDS National Committee: web, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

(That being said, of course Israel is the only one who can stop the violence because they're the ones who are occupying Palestine and enacting violence on Palestinians every single day since the creation of the state of Israel, but there are parts of your ask that don't seem very tactful where right now there is also Israeli people dying. That doesn't change the fact that this was fabricated by their state, but I don't think it does anyone any favour to pretend like they're not having a bad time as well. It just seems like an odd way of phrasing this.)

[rametarin]

I hate Woke because it's propaganda. You hate Woke because you said slurs once and were told to stop.

Every time these charlatans on youtube try to Ben Shapiro it up, they do the hard-left's job for them by making criticism of the hard-left look inherently fundamentalist religious conservative, or crypto white supremacist. Which they then take advantage of to roll their eyes and go "this is how they all are" to people criticizing Wokeness as just seeing them in every decision to feature a brown person or hagard woman in a commanding position.

In particular, I've been seeing a video float around about a dude complaining about the Imperial Guard featuring women, and in particular, women that aren't white. In more particular, as a commanding officer.

My dude. My guy. Pick your battles, bro. Shut up. This is NOT the hill to die on. This is not the fight you want to be having.

While yes, it is on their agenda to try and make unattractive women as the "sexy" protagonists in a weird purist redistributionists way to make less than "ideal" beauties be "the hot character," to "lower society's expectations of femininity," or whatever they're railing on this week in academia, that is not always what's going down when you see a hagard professional woman in a position of authority.

While yes, the imperium of man in WH40K is a despotic hellhole and it does unironically have a eurosupremacist bias and in the greater imperium, the population has had that for tens of thousands of years, it also has incredible amounts of immigration and inductment across the Imperium from literally hundreds of millions of planets. And yes, some of those planets are.... Planets of Color (tm). And if they didn't start that way, by probability and circumstance, they ended that way.

In fact, some of those planets ended up similar to how Australia's Aboriginals didn't start out black (they began as Asian, actually) but tens of thousands of years of natural selection and exposure to their environment shaped them, and now many people mistake Australian Aboriginals for black. And THEY weren't even a culture and population shaped by the Warp. Abhumans and even mutant human populations exist in WH40K that have transcended what they used to be, whether they were white, Asian, or black. They may've started Middle Eastern, but there's one planet where they'll look like Djinn, now. It is MORE than reasonable that the Imperial Guard is the most diverse instittution in the Imperium.

And the Imperial Guard have always been gender integrated. Always. Man, woman, you are meat for the grinder. This is in fact part of the horror of the Imperial Guard, and how the Imperium handles war, and how grim and desperate they are in the fact of endless hordes of aliens and supernatural antagonists that roll 1d20 and kill entire armies per success. While yes, it is a tool of theirs to take Minority Type Here and elevate them to a position of power in order to make a lousy statement, that does not mean legitimate and genuine characters cannot be in those positions, and it be a genuine intent to just have it be normal.

And for fucks sake, geneseed DOES NOT RACECHANGE YOU TO LOOK LIKE THE PRIMARCH. Vulcan's geneseed making you darker is not fucking blackface. You don't become a ripped blonde Chad by becoming an Ulramarine, though you may become a ripped Chad.

You are seeing false positives in Space Marine 2. Stand down, stop grasping at straws. All you do when you try to find Wokeness in every possible instance is allowing them to put you under a magnifying glass and go, "SEE HOW RIDICULOUS THIS ONE GUY IS!? THIS IS HOW ALL WH40K FANS REALLY ARE! The fandom is SO full of fascists and white supremacists!"

You know, like they've been doing since that one singular Spanish asshole showed up thinking he was clever with his minis painted and stylized like Nazis, and his uniform that way too. They haven't shut up about how even a minority of WH40K players are "unironic fascists" ever since.

And people bitching about how having an Indian woman as a commanding officer position is somehow wokeness aren't helping.

[canmom]

other news, I went to the Palestine demo at traf square today. something like a reportback.

if you're not familiar with the British protest scene, there's a few standard 'types' of political demonstration. there's the large scale gathering at Trafalgar Square or Parliament Square, which will typically march from one to the other and then stand about listening to speeches. (other popular destinations include the BBC HQ). these happen pretty regularly, and they serve as a recruiting ground for odious Trotskyist cults like the SWP, who print out hundreds of signs prominently displaying the name of their newspaper along with a slogan to unwitting protestors who never heard of Comrade Delta.

then there are smaller demos by the anarchist/antifa/etc. set, which often aim to be more disruptive. these have a bunch of standard tactics associated with them - black bloc, flag lines etc. - but because they're riskier, it tends to be a much smaller group. sometimes this will be a mobilisation against a fascist demonstration, other times it will just be marching about and making noise for the sake of it. these are sometimes called 'spiky' protests. they tend to end up in a police kettle, or yelling at the fash from the other side of a cop line. usually the police make a few arrests and let the rest go. although they are definitely more exciting, they are rarely ever much more effective at changing shit than the former category of demo.

finally there are direct actions of various types which aim to actively disrupt something like an immigration raid, deportation flight, arms fair, weapons factory etc., often accepting the price that the participants will likely be arrested and imprisoned. but that's way too broad a subject to get into.

this demo was of the first type. so numbers were impressive, but by the same token, it was a pretty static demo - the speeches and chanting kind, not even an A to B march. very few people wore face coverings. a lot of police were present, but mostly did not attempt to kettle us, just hovered at the sidelines.

so, it was a huge gathering of people wanting to express in some way that they do not stand for what is happening in Gaza, demand the politicians call for a ceasefire, wave the Palestinian flag, and chant. here, some chants I caught:

"from the river to the sea" / "Palestine will be free"

"free! free!" / "Palestine!"

"1, 2, 3, 4" / "occupation no more!" / "5, 6, 7, 8" / "Israel is a terror state"

"in our thousands, in our millions" / "we are all Palestinians"

and of course the usual standards - arse treats, no justice no peace, etc. the protest signs were pretty to the point in general - inevitably you had the SWP signs but there were a lot of handmade signs expressing the hypocrises and ironies or just showing faces of the dead.

there were a couple of weird pro-israel guys behind a triple line of cops, I couldn't really hear what the hell they were trying to accomplish by showing up to the Palestine demo over all the 'shame on you'.

the most spiky part was when some people did a sit-in in charing cross station, which is just a street away from trafalgar. by the time I got there the cops had it blockaded and were closing the shutters to the station, so it was pretty successfully shut down for that hour or so.

after a while, when people started to leave, and the cops abruptly grabbed a young black guy out of the crowd. people reacted fast but not really fast enough, so it became a stalemate with a triple line of cops surrounding the guy against a van, and us surrounding the cops, yelling at them to release him. some white trot guy took the opportunity to propagandise on a megaphone about how a young black guy speaking in solidarity with palestinians represented a threat to the state, which seemed a bit like he'd already given up on a de-arrest or release. it was a pretty surreal situation, the cops had cameras pointed at us (to identify and arrest people later) and we had phones pointed at the cops (to make sure they behaved themselves and maybe help the guy when things get to trial, in theory).

unfortunately they weren't fully surrounded, so the pigs got him out of there around the back of a van, with our group following. hopefully somebody knows where he was taken to do arrestee support. honestly, it felt pretty frustrating - I think a bolder crowd could probably have pulled off a de-arrest, or even kept a tight bloc to stop him getting grabbed in the first place, but it wasn't that kind of demo.

numbers died down into the evening, but by the time i got too tired to continue, there were still sizable groups in the square drumming and chanting. cycling past it was quite a sight. of course, a few streets over in Soho you would see similarly massive crowds of people going for a night out between theatres and nightclubs. that's the thing that always gets me, how you can have no idea that there's a massive protest going on a short walk away. big cities are weird. (hell, on the way up there I passed a pub with a small crowd of dress-uniformed navy guys drinking and chatting. p sure they were navy, they had the little hats.)

I'm glad I went, I feel ashamed for not making it out in previous weeks - but that said I do still feel like neither sunak (the current prime minister, representing the conservatives) nor starmer (the leader of the ostensibly left-wing labour party) will give two shits if this is where it stops. Sunak is mostly using these protests as a chance to score culture-war points as we saw this morning. they are bringing in cops from as far as Wales, but I'm not convinced they really see the Palestine movement as a credible threat, more an inconvenience to manage. I don't know what it will take to shift that balance of power.

next week the protest falls on the 10 November, the weekend of Armistice Day. it seems unlikely there will be a ceasefire by then - and perhaps tactics will evolve.

[firendgold]

If you're still doing the choose violence ask game: 2 (👀), 9, 10, 22 ?

I got such a rush from finally answering the first ask that I'm doing this for as long as people send me questions. So here we go again!

2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

anon, I'm at work. I'm seeing this at work. :'D

Okay, serious face. Albus Dumbledore is probably my fave if I have to choose between him and Harry on this blog. I just have to figure out why he would never...

Bottom. Albus would never, I'm sorry. He won't. He can't. Like, maybe when he was having his whirlwind summer romance with Gellert, he bottomed every single time they fucked because he was so in love and this was his equal and his partner and so what if he was a little rough and distant sometimes in the bedroom, and always wanted to top and tug his hair and hiss out orders? This was The Man The Universe Had Crafted For Him, and he would absolutely bottom for him every time... and then the summer of 1899 ends. And Ariana dies. And Aberforth breaks Albus' nose. And Gellert fucks off to go be a fascist.

And Albus, alone and heartbroken, resolves to never trust someone that completely again, never love someone that same way, and never let anyone get into a position of power over him where they might be able to use his knowledge and talents for ill. That means physically, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically... carnally. So he has sex with plenty of other people, and even falls in love with a few of them, but he is in control at all times. He never bottoms again.

That's all I've got for that one.

9. worst part of canon

So the first answer that came to mind is posted here, but for fairness' sake I'll try to come up with another worst thing. (That's not related to ships, because I'm trying really hard not to be THAT violent on the violence ask game.)

I think... that if That Woman was going to introduce international schools, students and characters in the middle book of the series, she should have done more with them than having them vanish after Goblet of Fire, only to come back for either fake romantic tension and one line of exposition about the Hitler allegory Dark Lord of the Before-Times (Krum, Deathly Hallows) or to be married off to a Weasley for an aesop of It's Not About His Looks Now That They're Jacked Up (Fleur, Half-Blood Prince). I'm not saying Fleur and Viktor HAD to be best buddies forever with Harry, but it is weird that they have this unique bond that no other young students have had with each other in hundreds of years, they even lost one of their fellow champions, Dumbledore gives this very moving speech about remaining connected and not letting darkness and prejudice sever new ties, and then... nothing. No side adventures in France or wherever Durmstrang is, no communication from either side, nothing.

Feels like a huge letdown in hindsight.

10. worst part of fanon

Oh, no. That's not fair. There's just so many.

If I had to consolidate what I currently don't like about the HP fandom/fanon into a few lines, I think I would say that I hate the pureblood/Dark side apologism. I do believe in nuance in characters. I do believe redemption and/or walking different paths is an important theme in Harry Potter, and I think it's fascinating to explore that with any and every character you can think of, even characters I may not personally like. But I really, really hate the way the fandom has taken that and twisted it into this idea that we were sold a lie at the start: that the British magical government was fine the way it was, and so was the society around it; that Dark magic Isn't All That Bad, Really, and there are actually Good and non-prejudiced things about a few rich bitches passing down their knowledge and secrets and slurs for generations within the Family, and keeping the Family "Pure" is cool actually, and none of this has any relation to real life ideas about miscegenation and classism and racism and eugenics, what are you talking about?

It's just so worrying. As a minority, when I see people on tumblr/twitter/AO3 gleefully agreeing that we need to eat the rich and fix society and eradicate all the horrid -isms and -archys ruining all our lives, then watch them turn around and write a 200k epic where Dumbledore was the evil one for locking the Horcrux books away and championing marginalized members of society, Hermione is just uppity for wanting to make necessary changes to the darker parts of magical society that That Woman was literally pointing out for a reason, and Tom Riddle is only bad because he took the good segregationist pureblood ideas and added murder to them... and when that fic gets thousands of comments agreeing with them full stop with no examination of any of that... it makes me anxious, at a minimum. The same thing is happening now with Grindelwald now that he's actually a figure on the screen and not just some dude mentioned a few times in the book series: same apologism, same justification of atrocities, same good-guy-blame-games, same blorbofication even.

On the one hand... fiction doesn't always directly reflect or affect reality. On the other... this unironic pro-pureblood meta is a pervasive concept that has popped up in thousands of fics written by thousands of fanfic writers. It's happened for years, and it keeps happening, and I see very few fans speaking out against it or even acknowledging it as a problem. So that makes me ask myself, who actually is willing and able to examine the injustices of our society and build a better imaginary society through the lens of HP fanfiction, and who's okay with the prejudice in the HP world as long as it's coming from the faves they're attracted to?

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

Happily, this is a harder question to answer because I've been finding so many like minds in the past 5 years who go feral over the same 20 HP scenes as I do. ^^ But give me a sec, I'll think of something.

...

Okay. Got it.

In order to answer this question, I have to go back to the first time I, young teenager, avid reader, recent reader of the HP series once book 5 was out, realized that Harry and Dumbledore had a much deeper relationship than just headmaster and student. The thing that made me latch on to them and project like crazy, basically.

It's the scene in Goblet of Fire chapter 36 where Harry has been rescued from Fake Moody and he's in Dumbledore's office with Dumbledore and Sirius. Dumbledore asks Harry to relay everything that happened to him once he touched the Portkey in the maze—and immediately Sirius tries to protect Harry from having to relive it now, so soon after it's happened. And then this scene happens.

Dumbledore stopped talking. He sat down opposite Harry, behind his desk. He was looking at Harry, who avoided his eyes. Dumbledore was going to question him. He was going to make Harry relive everything. “I need to know what happened after you touched the Portkey in the maze, Harry,” said Dumbledore. “We can leave that till morning, can’t we, Dumbledore?” said Sirius harshly. He had put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Let him have a sleep. Let him rest.” Harry felt a rush of gratitude toward Sirius, but Dumbledore took no notice of Sirius’s words. He leaned forward toward Harry. Very unwillingly, Harry raised his head and looked into those blue eyes. “If I thought I could help you,” Dumbledore said gently, “by putting you into an enchanted sleep and allowing you to postpone the moment when you would have to think about what has happened tonight, I would do it. But I know better. Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it. You have shown bravery beyond anything I could have expected of you. I ask you to demonstrate your courage one more time. I ask you to tell us what happened.” The phoenix let out one soft, quavering note. It shivered in the air, and Harry felt as though a drop of hot liquid had slipped down his throat into his stomach, warming him, and strengthening him. He took a deep breath and began to tell them. As he spoke, visions of everything that had passed that night seemed to rise before his eyes; he saw the sparkling surface of the potion that had revived Voldemort; he saw the Death Eaters Apparating between the graves around them; he saw Cedric’s body, lying on the ground beside the cup. Once or twice, Sirius made a noise as though about to say something, his hand still tight on Harry’s shoulder, but Dumbledore raised his hand to stop him, and Harry was glad of this, because it was easier to keep going now he had started. It was even a relief; he felt almost as though something poisonous were being extracted from him. It was costing him every bit of determination he had to keep talking, yet he sensed that once he had finished, he would feel better.

This is one of the best scenes in the entire book, the entire series. It completely refutes the fanon Dumbledore who is often cold, cruel, inflexible and unrelenting in his quest for whatever the author wants him to be inflexible and cruel about at the time. It shows that Dumbledore, the real Albus Dumbledore, is one of the few people who understands what Harry needs and is able to provide it to him, even when others who also care for Harry would rather protect him or shield him from what he needs.

Kid me was particularly taken by how gentle Dumbledore is with Harry here. It made me look back and see how in some ways this scene, this closeness, is the culmination of all the times they've met and spoken before.

(You can imagine how painful it was reading Order of the Phoenix right after this.)

But yeah, that's probably one of my favorite scenes that other people ignore or haven't talked about/drawn/written about much. Which is ironic, because the scene right after that where Harry talks about Voldemort taking his blood and Dumbledore's eyes do the triumphant "lol Voldemort just fucked up" gleam is probably one of THE most talked-about scenes in the fandom (even though to this fucking day in 2023 people still don't realize what the gleam meant, when even That Woman has clarified what it meant in INTERVIEWS).

...And for me, safely at the end of the questions, that's all she wrote.

[grandhotelabyss]

Speaking of fin de siècle end-of-history texts, I’m perpetually on the verge of finally reading through Sexual Personae, though there always seems to be another philosophical work half its length or a novel of comparable size to read… In any case this will be the year I think. I’ll confess based on the little Paglia I’ve read always pegged her as the last of the great intellectual trolls, but we’ll see. I was amused to discover recently that she herself identifies as transgender while opposing gender ideology, which throws a rather different light on a joke once I made (in the fashion that all properly educated people do, throwing around the names of thinkers whom they’ve not read comprehensively and have only a mental caricature of) that my own position on gender is the dialectical synthesis of Butler and Paglia.

You don't have to read the whole book, though, just the long first chapter, which is the "theory" part. The rest are almost freestanding critical essays on the literary or artistic exempla of the theory; they can be visited and revisited whenever you're actually reading Spenser, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Wilde, etc. I'm sure I've read every page, some many more times than once, but I've never sat down and read the book qua book cover to cover. The "cancelled preface," collected in Sex, Art, and American Culture, is really fun too:

I pity the poet or novelist in this age of mass media, but my envy is frank and unconcealed for the musician, who is able to affect the audience with such emotional directness, a pre-rational manipulation of the nerves. I long for a prose of Classic structure yet Romantic fire, as in Monteverdi or Chopin. A prose with both clarity and passion, eternal opposites of Apollo and Dionysus, a harmony of brain hemispheres. My domination by music is total. Sexual Personae could be subtitled, after a 1972 Stevie Wonder album, Music of My Mind. My "reading" of Western civilization was directly inspired by the four Brahms symphonies, which entranced me in college—in particular, the third, which I listened to hundreds of times while writing this book.

Her transgender provocation is similar (which is to say maybe I stole it from her) to my own probing at the nonbinary category, since it seems to me that I am nonbinary if anyone is, and yet I am really not, and I would pretty much die if anyone called me "they." I'm just not going to go back to the playground where brutes and mean girls said my tastes, interests, and disposition meant I wasn't a man!

The "dialectical synthesis of Butler and Paglia" is, I think, already more or less contained entire in Paglia underneath the shock rhetoric, not that I've ever been the world's great reader of the turgid and humorless Butler. Paglia does believe in the autonomy (thus necessarily the performativity) of human culture, except that for her it's (1) constrained more than it is for a poststructuralist like Butler by a biological base and—this is the far more important part—(2) subject to aesthetic criteria rendering illegitimate the kind of clumsy, coercive interventions activists and bureaucrats dream up. I know she said "you can't change sex" recently, but I think that whole question is an angels-on-pinheads abstract imponderable of no great relevance to on-the-ground questions of, say, civil liberties or pediatric medicine—themselves two distinct and separable issues, by the way, which I say as a strong civil libertarian who strongly distrusts technocratic institutions.

(P. S. The last time an anon used the phrase "gender ideology" on here, I got yelled at for an entire day by a graduate student, who, following Butler, called me a "fascist." I couldn't care less about the phrase "gender ideology," and if it bothers anybody, please substitute a more neutral label for what is, after all, an extant phenomenon, namely, the anti-essentialist critique of gender and sexual categories. I am practically a pacifist who doesn't give anybody a grade lower than "B" for finished work. If people think I am a fascist, I really hope they are able to remain sheltered and therefore never encounter the genuine article.)

[unforth]

So I've read way too many comments on this so I could block all the antis and it's honestly intriguing.

1. They routinely are suicide baiting like this is a normal thing to say to people you disagree with.

2. They are thoroughly convinced that we would do these things in real life.

3. yOu WoUlDnT tElL yOuR mOm. I literally do. I literally have. She doesn't care either.

4. Saying yta should go to hell. Your Christian is showing I don't give a single fuck about your hell nor do your rules apply.

5. "You should lose your job for this!" My boss at my last job was a huge Game of Thrones fan I guarantee she never thought consuming fictional incest content was dangerous.

6. "You're all freaks." Eh I've been called worse. At least I'm not telling strangers to kill themselves over an aita post.

7. "If they thought it was okay, why'd they make an alt?" Maybe so people who say this wouldn't harass them? Like if people know others will come for them, of course they're gonna protect themselves. As it turns out that doesn't mean they're in the wrong, it means they're scared of harassment. "Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear" is such classic fascist thought policing and yall just saying it here unironically like a gotcha, it's insane to me.

8. "None of the ytas have siblings" I can't think of anything more disgusting than imagining fucking my brother, tyvm, and anon is still the asshole.

But the part that intrigues me the most I'd the way their rhetoric is self-enforcing. As in, these people already believe that Most Strangers Are Dangerous and to them results like this confirm that. They truly believe that this result reflects 60% of Tumblr being "pro incest in real life" and therefore dangerous, and this increases their isolation from reason and logic and any form of sense whatsoever. Their echo chamber can't let in a peep that suggest maybe we're actually just. Normal people. Who are anti-censorship. Who understand that writing incest isn't normalization or grooming.

These people have so much to unpack of their own behavior. It's honestly terrifying that there are hundreds and hundreds of them on this post, who really think they're heroes and people who disagree with them should die and somehow believe this makes them the normal ones.

I'm scared about the way censorship is getting rationalized in so many circles on tumblr. I'm honestly horrified that nta has such a high percentage.

I'm so worried about the future yall have no fucking idea.

Also if you see this and think voting yta means someone is a freak, should die, whatever, just fucking block me. You're creepy and really need to sit down and have a long, hard think about the differences between fictional characters and real people. Fiction can and does influence reality, but not in the way you think, and I will die on the hill of defending a real person from harrassment over the stories they tell. Do you guys go this hard at VC Andrews???

AITA for 'outing' someone for writing inc*st?

I (20F) am in a moderately large fandom that got popular during the pandemic. Most of the fic for this fandom is gen and platonic pairings, which is a rarity and fantastic. One of the most popular creators in the fandom puts out a ton of gen fics that I really loved. Unfortunately, I learned after that they write fics on a different account, and not just any fics, but inc*st. I'm not talking about found family. These characters are literal brothers in canon. I can't believe anyone would ship them together, much less this person. I unfollowed them and now, whenever I see anyone talking about how much they love this creator, I inform them about the alt account and their ships. Ignorance may be bliss, but I felt awful when I found out and realized I'd been supporting them for so long and I don't want anyone else to feel that way. But someone replied to one of my comments calling me the asshole, telling me I was outing the creator, and to mind my own business. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[lanomin]

Alright my 2 cents on arcane, esp the last season bc I didn't rewatch the first and it's been too long

Rambling under the cut

Season 2 was rushed, everyone can agree on that. I'm not sure where the claim that the last episode was supposed to be 1.5 hrs came from, but true or not it would've helped a lot. I think they really should've just...not done any of the witch/black rose plot at all, or maximum just do mel breaking out, maybe only barely activating her powers? Idk it just felt so shoved in, and as cool as Mel is I really would've liked more focus on the other main characters. It really felt like execs forced the writers to make sure there was a clear plot connection from here to the next Noxis show.

Ambessa invading the city was under explained and bizarre, it took up so much time that really should've been used for every other storyline. And yet even with so much time dedicated to it I still barely understand why she did it? Was it using the gates to get to the black rose? General power takeover? Why didn't she just do this when she was still good with caitlyn? idk! It wasnt well explained!

It really does suck that the zaun/piltover class war stuff got benched, the first few batches of episodes really felt like they might actually hold some of the upper class accountable for their actions against zaun and there might be a little societal reckoning. But no, unfortunately the liberal to fascist pipeline character had to survive to date her class traitor gf. #jinxfireanothermissile #caitlynshouldvediedyesimserious

No actual hate to vi, I think she's a pretty good character that deserves better than caitlyn lol. But that's a whole other post needed for caitlyn as a character, I really think dying for like idk isha or violet should've been her redemption.

Extremely funny how that guy loris is just...no one? He's not a league character at all? And then he died? ok girl give us nothing. Also the rebound girl being a spy was just like...well ok. What did she do? How was her being a spy impacting the plot, or anything? And then she dies. Ok girl etc etc

Oh god you could esp feel how rushed writing wise this was with that sex scene, holy shit. I knew people didn't really like how it was handled but it really was just vi going "Hey I'm mentally breaking down bc I feel like Im responsible for losing my entire family multiple times due to my choices" and then her and caitlyn just fuck right there in the jail cell, no transition or dialogue that would make this a sexy charged moment lmao

I've seen some people say victors turn is ooc, and I think this is one of the hardest hit plotlines with not enough time. But i do disagree with this being ooc, I can absolutely see him going this way. I don't think him turning away from humanity is out of the question or even that far off of a possibility, but there really needed to be more examples than just jayce shotgun blasting him in the chest as the catalyst before he starts controlling hundreds of people. It wasn't bad, but I wish he got more time. Also I wish he got more time bc I'm deeply attracted to men who have dark bags and sunken eyes.

Hey speaking of Victor was it related that the character with the russian accent started making a communist utopia and talking about glorious """evolution""""? But ruh roh communist utopia too good to be true? Like is that too on the nose? Who can say

Jayce was just down in a ravine eating chaos rats for like 3 weeks, I guess it's fair he was acting weird and aggro and didn't try to talk to Victor more about what was going on before just assassinating him. Thank god for that beard though, sorry to be a hater but I thought he always looked goofy with how his lower jaw is lmao

Ekkos episode was so good like. No notes. Don't really understand why heimerdinger had to get evaporated but sure w/e, so maybe like 0.5 notes

I really liked jinx this season, like I know people have analyzed her writing much more effectively than I can but she really is the platonic ideal of the harley quinn archetype. It's so important for her character that even though her style is very quirky she as a character is still grounded and serious. Also I just really love her facial design features? Like looking at her in game model vs her arcane model is so wild bc arcane jinx looks like a real person vs in game that's a fantasy elf for how realistic she looks. I know that's the case for almost every character compared to their league counterpart but jinx always stands out to me for it.

The music is dog water. Truly incredible how it takes me out of the scene EVERY time a modern song plays. Yes even Enemy. Especially Enemy

But listen. Despite all my gripes with the 4/10 writing and the stupid music, the characters and visuals bump this to a 7/10, even an 8/10. I really can't think of any other media where the visuals and animation are so good I really can almost fully tune out the bad writing, it's incredible. Worth every penny spent on this show. Give Fortiche $500 million and a decade to work on their next show idgaf. I cannot believe any show, let alone a league show, looked like this, absolutely wild.

[worldofwardcraft]

The awfulness of Alabama.

October 2, 2023

Usually, the competition to be the worst state in the Union focuses on the two fascist dystopias of Texas and Florida. While the other red states (e.g., Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma) merely vie for third place. But lately it seems Alabama has broken out of the pack and is moving up fast on the outside.

To be fair, Alabama has always been among this nation's most abysmal states. According to a recent CNBC survey, it's the fourth worst state in the country in which to live and work, ranking low in voting rights, worker protections, inclusiveness and health. The survey rates it only the 42nd best state for business. Plus, it has the third-highest rate of premature deaths.

In a state, where almost 30% of the population is Black, there isn't a single person of color in statewide elective office. All nine justices on the Alabama Supreme Court are white, as are all ten judges on the two appellate courts. And among its seven congressional seats, Alabama has only one Black representative.

This is no accident. Alabama is so racially gerrymandered that a federal district court struck down its congressional map in 2022 and ordered state legislators to come up with a new one. And so they did, except their new map was essentially the same as the old one. "Deeply troubled" by this defiance, a three-judge panel issued an order on September 5 scrapping the new map and handing the responsibility for redrawing congressional districts to a court-appointed special master. Last week, the US Supreme Court agreed with that edict.

But Alabama's dreadfulness doesn't stop there. When it failed to execute convicted murderer Kenneth Smith in November (they couldn't find a suitable vein for the lethal injection), state officials announced their intention to execute Smith by forcing him to breathe pure nitrogen. But how they will go about this novel punishment remains confusingly unclear. Says Deborah Denno, a death penalty expert at Fordham Law School, “This is a vague, sloppy, dangerous, and unjustifiably deficient protocol."

Of course, no discussion of Alabama's failings would be complete without mentioning its pea-brained senator, ex-football coach Tommy Tuberville, who continues to hold up the promotions of hundreds of senior military officers, thus paralyzing military reassignments and jeopardizing national security. Explains the Alabama Political Reporter,

This is the reason Alabama is last in everything good and first in everything bad. The majority of voters in this state vote FOR the awfulness. In many cases, and Tuberville is certainly one of them, the awfulness is the only qualifying attribute for them.

[currins545-sav]

Where am I?+ Where I Want 2 Go? Blog #2

An interest that I have in art is accessibility.

There are a number of ways to make art accessible to all. Historically in my education I have focused on financially accessibility. Often there is a financial barrier for students when it comes to the fine arts. This happens for two main reasons that I have observed:

Students and their parents cannot afford the supplies that are necessary for art making in the home. It's not cheap to maintain an art practice.

Students have unsupportive families who are unwilling to put time/effort/money into something they don't deem as worthy of their students time.

Often the arts have systematically been discredited as a good career path or something worthy to feed into. I say systematic intentionally. Art is a way to understand the world around us. It is engrained into our society. There is nowhere you can go in the vast world we live in where you will not find art. So if it is everywhere why is it not a 'viable path' for these young minds?

Because to know art is to know the world. Knowledge is power and power is something scary to those who want to maintain it as a tool for oppression. Art is a tool in resistance again and again in history & into modern day. We see this in posters in times of protest, in murals in cities being ravaged by capitalistic greed and in photography highlighting the impact that our society has on human beings.

Above is an example of a photograph that had a powerful + meaningful impact on the world. During the Hong Kong protests this photo and others like it cemented umbrellas as a symbol of the people & resistance from a fascist government.

Outside of the reasoning for why the arts are the way that they are and moving into how we as the community need them to be, attached below is a resource for free infographics teaching how to illustrate a multitude of subjects.

Having resources like this is really important because in the days of the internet things are more shareable than ever, which can translate to more accessible than ever creating less and less of a barrier between artists and creating their art.

Resources:

[icharchivist]

I’m glad to be seeing more post about the bullshit going on in France right now and tumblr actually not being dismissive for once, but with how much there is to catch back some infos don’t make the posts and i never know if i should bring them up or not

when we say systematic islamophobia is getting very bad in France we do mean it (see this post that sums it up well), we need to also mention that recently there’s been discussions of new laws that are less flashy and less obvious in their intention to harm Muslim people yet, imo, are even more insidious and worth talking about.

-There’s been discussion of an amendment to limit the topics being allowed to be discussed on university ground, mainly that we should “not discuss anything that discourage our laicity values” and “we shouldn’t encourage or allow islamic ideas”. The amendment itself is worded so that it’s just “not discussing things that do not align with the values of our country” which means that any topic and conversation the state may deem “unfit to the republic” could actually be censored, real censor. The main target at the moment remains Muslim people, and the right to defend their human rights in university, as well as the right to explore and study their culture in cultural studies.

-Meanwhile on a related note the government is also trying to pass laws to limit student protests in universities, right after this announcement was made. Protests on university ground could lead up to 3 years in prison. Student protests have been the core of a lot of civil rigths movement in France and a lot of the support for the communities in danger has happened in university ground. To target specifically the university, actually trying to limit the “freedom of speech” France loves to say they fight for, is also a clear move to try to cull the way people has been protesting about those laws being passed against Muslim people.

-(same as the first article, but it’s a wider problem) the state is starting to target anyone on the left that speak up to protect Muslim people by qualifying them of “islamo-gauchiste” (islamo-lefty). It is becoming a wider problem (the moment you link a political party to “your enemy” anything the political party says can be used to discredit them even if it’s unrelated to “the enemy”.), and it’s important to mention that the government believe universities are the core of the problem because it’s where “people become radicalized to the left and in defense of Muslim people”.

-Currently they’re also trying to pass laws to “forbid prayers at school” (also here), to not allow students to “pray” in “school’s corridors” anymore. This one baffles me because it is not a wide spread phenomena (and as many people brought up, students praying in corridors is often because they’re being anxious about exams anyway why is that that big of a deal), but the exemple taken to justify why it’s a thing that must be done only targets Muslim people and the way they pray, not Catholic people or the likes. 

-Another thing i almost forgot is the fact that they’re trying to pass laws to put back into question the notices you can get from doctors to not go to class specifically to target Muslim girls. This one is going to be hard to explain, especially since i’m finding only an older article and not the newest polemic.  In France we have sport classes that include swimming class, it’s mandatory, unless you get a doctor’s notice mentioning you cannot do this specific class for whatever health reasons. As mentioned in the first post i linked, it is especially a problem for Muslim girls since modest swimsuits are also forbidden. Any students, no matter their background, has the possibility to ask their doctor to make (fake?) health notice in order to avoid such class, especially a class that requests you to be half naked in front of your peers.  currently the government is trying to discuss a way to allow teachers to REFUSE those notices if they believe they are fake. This is especially made to target Muslim girls who have done this sort of notice to escape having to be half naked in sport class. As usual with this post, note how it’s going to screw over as well any people who for any reasons do not want to do sports (which is within their rights, some of the sports are extremely demanding), and especially throwing under the bus disabled people if their disability isn’t obvious to the teachers.

and i’m forgetting so much more because the government keeps throwing those possible laws out now, at the moment, while we’re still all in lockdown where we can be penalized if we go down the streets to protest, while most of the university are closed (which also brings home the disgusting irony of passing this many laws about “what happens in the university” while none of us can even set a foot in those university for over a year). 

A lot of them are pretty obvious in what they’re targeting, some others are trying to pass under the radar and pretend like it’s not because of Islamophobia. It is. It always is. And if this is not enough to be furious, each of those laws can be abused against any other group if the government sees fit eventually - their vagueness to protect themselves from the (rightful) accusation of islamophobia is ultimately setting up for this vagueness to be taken advantage of.

[seemingmusic]

WHERE WERE YOU (parts 1 & 2)

New single tomorrow morning on Bandcamp. It's about the way now becomes then, the people we lose in the process, and the compromises made.

Election day is coming up. Please vote.

______________________________

WHERE WERE YOU (parts 1 & 2)

[part 1]

Where were you in ’22? The end of the honeymoon The mask is off and the creature is coming through Out of the void that cuts between the eye and the screen

What does she see, young futurist, 1913 Crystal ball, looking down on me— Who damns them all among the fallen— She who fell in with the yelling shiny metal boys? Yes they knew there’s an art to noise That now’s where the time ahead destroys the ashen past But they left their caskets wide Half of them turned fascists while the other half died

Why’s it that a ticket out Is always a Faustian deal with the devil? The field’s not level; whatever— Give me the lever, just give me the lever Just give me a lever and a place to stand I can move the world, I can move the world Give me a lever and a place to stand And I'll move the world, and I'll move the world

But where am I? And why’s this mirror here? Why does it shine with the disappeared? World War One and all to come The spiral swallows up a hundred years Is it wrong that I long for correction? Some invective retrospective court To flex a hand around the necks of Bush, Thatcher, Musk Bastards all who stacked the decks

So who is next? Not Benedetta Cappa, or the table-rapping Foxes yet Tried to escape from their boxes Without a say in their age or their sex Besides, who can test whether the perception I got is correct? Whether I’m inventing a special effect? Am I a lone tall tree in the woods unwrecked unchecked from dusk to sunset?

Where were you in ’22? The death of solitude The end of your tolerance for the call of a prophet Who fed you dreams or the fear of a bloody coup But how did you get here? What did they do to you? And when is now? I mean really, what in hell is now? A junkie who, caught between the memory of flight and terror of the night Begs: what can my money do?

That’s what I get for having two eyes to read with, see with Maybe size up the summer roughness From above this burning forest, California’s poorest, smoke on all horizons Who let all the flies into this version of my life? Am I dying? Where were you in ’22? Go get your alibi, son Make it a good lie

Where were you in ’22? Where were you in ’22? Got one more window to look through Where were you?

[part 2]

The Angel of History turns an eye to the graveyard Growing and churning without a border or safeguard But blown back by the force of the past, The tyrannical gnashing of teeth and the panicking death screech, The Angel of history is paralyzed by a shock to the spine called progress Trinity bomb test, 1945 Everybody ever alive, when you rise, I’ll fall and apologize

I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I dreamed of Kemdi Amadiume, where I could see the future And I’m sorry was I all I could tell her Creation is sorry; you deserved better I’m so sorry, sorry The words echo wide to the first ever suicide in the Kalahari And everything tumbling after Hell of a way to conclude the first chapter

So where were you in 22? Who am I talking to? The slaughterhouse animals in the cages all going blue Illegal to film but they’re killed for you to chew And the angel is crying at the Bronx Zoo Are you talking to the meteor in space You’re hoping will break through, come and erase Cut the Gordian knot, plot dissolves, columns fall All our problems going small?

Or are you talking to your parents whom you even still make excuses for 'cause you’re in the will? Executor, testatrix, execution in the matrix Am I talking to entitled generational wealth? The feedback loop spins a Fabergé shell Gilded with rubies and amber gels Waiting to be smashed, cast a spell

Hell, I guess what I mean is take yourself back to fourteen The first and only evening you could see with clarity right and wrong And share with me: do you owe that kid a song? Or were you killed by the age-fifteen version And the guilt that made age sixteen worse And seventeen, eighteen like dominoes And when they come, can you tell where the kid goes?

Are you swallowing the previous minute down? Does this verse chew the last and spit it out? Animal to animal, cannibal to cannibal Man ate the neanderthal What claim do you have at all? Don’t blame the black hole’s gravity well Don’t blame the crocodile eating itself But where you in '22 when the curtain finally finally finally fell?

[the-ghost-king]

Schizophrenic Nico, here's why I think it's possible:

I want to start off by saying these are just my thoughts, there is no one way to be schizophrenic or to have schizophrenia. It's also important to note that many of the schizophrenic symptoms overlap with other mental illnesses/nuerodivergences like ADHD, Autism, Depression, and OCD which I know many people who head canon Nico as having. I'm not arguing schizophrenic Nico is more correct, more canon, or more right, but to explain some thoughts on why I think it's possible/very likely he does so I can use this for future reference in various thing.

I am using the term schizophrenia as a catchall for all "types" of schizophrenia, but not for schizoaffective disorder which I would say Nico probably doesn't have.

Children born in the winter/those who were "sickly" as babies are more likely to develop schizophrenia. It may also be possible if your mother was sick while pregnant with you, or having a father who was significantly older when he had you.

A stressful life, especially trauma, are more likely to develop schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. It likely has something to do with excessive dopamine production, but it may also have something to do with the same genes that control the sleep-wake cycle. Schizophrenia is more common with other mental illnesses or with other nuerodivergences or developmental delays.

Common symptoms include:

Hallucinations

Delusions

Disorganized thinking

lack of motivation

slow movement

change in sleep patterns

poor grooming or hygiene

changes in body language and emotions

less interest in social activities

Now what does this mean for Nico, and why do I think it's likely he has Schizophrenia?

Let's start with Nico's childhood, "children born in the winter/those who were "sickly" as babies are more likely to develop schizophrenia". Although Rick proposed two birthdays for Nico, the fandom generally accepted the January date more fully. We also know that Nico is described as small when he was younger, smallness is common in children who grow up sickly, but it is also common in children who's mother was ill while pregnant with them. We obviously don't know if Nico was sick as a kid, or if Maria was sick while pregnant with him, but again being born in the winter makes these things more likely, as well as consideration for the time period Nico grew up in and the larger variety of illnesses going around at the time. (He is vaccinated against some things though).

Trauma and Nico... do I really have to go into super detail on this one? He spent his childhood growing up in a fascist country that was extremely racist/anti-Semitic/homophobic/etc, his mom died when he was a child- in front of him, his father intentionally gave him amnesia, his sister died when he was a child, he then proceeded to become homeless living/spending lots of time with Minos who verbally (and possibly physically) abused him, becoming aware of his past memories, becoming aware of the fact that many people hated him because of his father and because they thought he was joining the other side (therefore, he was "bad"), he fought in many battles as a child, fought monsters alone, was often faced with life or death situations, went to Tartarus alone (where the goddess of misery told him he was "perfect"), was trapped in a hostage situation with little/no air for a long time while people debated whether or not to save him, was outed against his will, was freed only to travel again fighting monsters and then win a battle, was eventually made to quest with Apollo despite still having lots of healing to do in ToN. So stressful life? Fuck yeah, that doesn't being to cover it.

Genetic factors, obviously nothing here is confirmed so I'm speculating a little bit again, but the common idea in regards to Hades children through the series is that they are "bad". Mental illnesses have been stigmatized for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and often mentally ill people were made out to be weird/bad/etc. It's more than possible there is some sort of genetic factor taking place, also "having a father who was significantly older when he had you". Although I doubt godly genes work the same as mortal ones (trust me I have lots of thoughts on how god genetics/DNA work, but that's not the point right now), I think Hades being the oldest out of all his brothers and having a reputation for having "questionable" children says something... We have no information on Maria's family history at all.

As for schizophrenia often occurring with other mental illnesses and/or neurodivergences: Nico canonically is implied to have either ADHD and/or Autism, and is canonically stated to have PTSD. I think most people would agree that saying Nico has or has had depression isn't a stretch in the slightest.

So canonically we can all agree Nico has severe trauma and coinciding mental health issues/neurodivergences, so out of 4 possible issues I’ve first presented we guaranteeably have two. If I wanted to stretch this a little I would give myself a half point for him being born in the winter and a half point for the aspect of Hades genetics but I won’t do that.

On top of that schizophrenia usually appears during teenage and young adult years in people who receive diagnosis; most people live with mental illness for a few months or a few years in some cases before they're able to receive a diagnosis. Nico being 15 (16 by the end of ToN/shortly following the end of ToN) is about the age that schizophrenia would start to make an appearance. It's also more likely to be found in men, with men also noticing the appearance of schizophrenia appearing early in their lives, and experiencing more negative symptoms in comparison to the higher commonality of affective symptoms in women. That's a really complicated explanation to basically say there's 3 more things that would make Nico having schizophrenia make more sense.

Alright, let’s go back to the list of symptoms I provided:

Hallucinations

Delusions

Disorganized thinking

lack of motivation

slow movement

change in sleep patterns

poor grooming or hygiene

changes in body language and emotions/behavior

less interest in social activities

Once again, some of these are not solely related to schizophrenia and can be the result of other mental health issues, I’m just going to go down the list and add in some moments from the books in which Nico shows some of these traits/behaviors.

Delusions/Hallucinations (more later)

Our best chances for understanding Nico's thought process is in Blood of Olympus where he has a P.O.V... Sometimes Nico's thoughts do derail, or sometimes they get a little confusing, but not always, and when talking to others he is consistent and aware of what he's saying, as well as blunt. Anything "off" about his thought patterns to me just seems like ADHD..

Dietary changes (whether or not you think he has an eating disorder) are behavioral changes (I personally think Nico has AFRID)

Within House of Hades Nico's poor sleep patterns are constantly referenced, and I'll give him a pass on poor hygiene because he's in the middle of a quest but still..

I have extremely complicated feelings on what Will says here, it's possible Nico is an extremely unreliable narrator (unlikely, it seems many people are bothered by him and only maybe a handful aren't), I've also thought at many points this was Rick trying to backtrack some stuff with Nico because he realized he'd made his story a little too harsh for a kids book, it could also be Will's trauma kicking in and that happening... I'm not counting it as full proof about Nico disliking social interactions, but Nico does try to leave even after this conversation and isn't convinced to stay until the last chapter, so maybe there's something to be said about people's dislike of him for being a Hades kid- but I think it's fair to say Nico also dislikes people at least some because he doesn't have interest in trying to befriend anyone either, and is quick to assume all people dislike him (paranoia/low self esteem/and some other possible stuff). There's lots of discussions to be had about this quote and other similar ones, and I don't think a broad brush approach of "Nico good everyone else bad" is accurate it's more, "Nico is good but he fails to try and you have to work on your own mental health everyone won just go to you, and also people dislike Nico for silly reasons and need to get over themselves and make an effort too". (I'm extremely oversimplifying my thoughts and feelings to keep it brief.)

More on delusions and hallucinations:

Now I want to state that lots of schizophrenia symptoms share a lot of commonalities with ADHD and with depression, so although I might include some moments you think are just ADHD/depression I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with you but they could also be schizophrenia or coexisting mental health issues/divergences. I also went through the DSM-5 for schizophrenia (the DSM-5 is just this big book with lists and it’s how doctors diagnose any mental health issue/divergence), I also looked through the DSM-IV (an older book from before DSM-5 which is no longer really used) and the differences between the diagnosis was fairly minimal but they quit categorizing types of schizophrenia and instead rely more on a couple of word descriptions that seem more in line with a spectrum rather than a checkable box.

In order to receive a schizophrenia diagnosis, two (or more) of the following, each present for a significant portion of time during a 1-month period (or less if successfully treated), and at least one of these symptoms must be (1), (2), or (3):

Delusions

Hallucinations

Disorganized speech (frequent derailment or incoherence)

Grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior

Negative symptoms (i.e., diminished emotional expression or avolition).

It’s important to note that only one of these need to be checked off/true if the patient has voices which narrate their actions/behaviors/thoughts or if the person has more than one voice conversing with each other.

Nico deals with auditory hallucinations (2), he believes the voice belongs to Bob, his titan friend he left in Tartarus:

However this isn’t and immediate diagnosis because Bob’s voice doesn’t talk to another voice(s) in Nico’s head, and we don’t know if Nico has voices running commentary on his behaviors/thoughts.

The reason I state we are unaware if Nico has commentary isn’t because Nico hasn’t said anything, but because many people with schizophrenia before their diagnosis believe the narrative voices are just their thoughts and are a normal internal monologue- usually patients don’t realize anything is wrong until the voices start providing commentary on their actions so instead of “washing the dishes now” the voice(s) might say “wash the dishes now, you’re so lazy you can’t do anything, idiot” during a period of psychosis which may help them acknowledge that the voice(s) isn’t the way most people experience internal voice(s). It is very possible Nico is unaware he is experiencing narrative thoughts and simply assumes that his experience is something most people have, but I won’t use this to argue my point because it’s not confirmation of anything.

Returning now to Bob, Nico knows he is hearing Bob’s voice but he believes Bob is calling to him from Tartarus. Now, Nico says the voices are calling to him from Tartarus but there’s no confirmation of this anywhere… What I think is happening is Nico has a guilty conscience. He feels bad for “using” Bob to get out of Tartarus and various other things, so he feels bad that he is still down there. However, we don’t really know if Bob is calling to him or if Bob is able to do that- what I personally think is happening here is Nico’s brain is convincing Nico that Bob needs him because Nico is upset with himself for not helping Bob more, but also because Nico has never “sat still” before without a quest. Nico has also always felt the want to be needed/important...

It very well could be a delusion.

Schizophrenic patients often experience delusions which make them think they are destined for greatness, or that they have some divine/high force calling out to them for help that only they can provide. It’s an extremely common thing in individuals who experience delusions, and is in fact one of the most common delusions experienced. So although Bob could really be calling out to Nico, I don’t think he is, it doesn’t entirely make sense and there’s lots of little things which point to it being not entirely real- like the fact that nobody else knows about it? Or how absolutely sure Nico is that he need to return to Tartarus? It seems like a mixture of PTSD, delusions, and trauma response (returning to the trauma), working against him. I’ll say delusion is very likely (1).

Using these two factors alone there’s sufficient evidence for diagnosis, but let’s keep going just to see.

For disorganized speech (3) this isn’t something Nico seems to struggle with, and even if he did “derailing” could be ADHD or Autism, so I don’t think this symptom pertains to him.

Changes in behavior (4), seem to all be explainable via depression and/or PTSD- he has begun to express emotion again in Tower of Nero upon learning of Jason’s death he is said to be upset by Will and he walks off to be alone, seems like depression to me. Emotional/Behavior changes from schizophrenia tend to relate more to bipolar disorder rather than a depressive disorder, so I would say if Nico has schizophrenia he probably doesn’t have emotional or behavioral changes from it. If he did he might have some catatonic behavior, but this seems to be clearing up some in Tower of Nero so I’m not super sure on that, maybe during bad periods of psychosis behavioral changes occur, but I would lean more towards this isn’t a symptom Nico personally deals with. Negative symptoms (5) tie into this same idea, it’s possible it’s schizophrenia, but it’s more likely PTSD or depression at work.

So why do I care so much about the possibility of Nico being schizophrenic?

I feel like canonically/fanonically making Nico schizophrenic does a few things, firstly schizophrenic rep in media is extremely extremely awful- can you think off the top of your head of a schizophrenic character who isn't from a horror film/a murder/a villain in their own story? Maybe, but personally I can only think of one which is Charlie from Perks of Being a Wallflower- and even then? That's not canon, it's only implied- and it might not even be true

Schizophrenic media representation always paints schizophrenic people as bad, scary, and evil, and although the horror genre is extremely well known for being super ableist, transphobic, racist, homophobic, and misogynistic (just the final cherry on top) having one of the first- if not the first openly confirmed schizophrenic characters in children's media not only be someone who has lots of character development, and isn't a stereotype, but also be someone people have grown up with, cared for, and sympathized with- would be extremely monumental.

People with schizophrenia and other related disorders aren't something to be scared of or to think of as bad, and often times they're more bothered by whatever they're experiencing than you are.

I don't have schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder or anything like that, but I have various undiagnosed mental health issues which often lead to me questioning reality, or having to set aside time to convince myself that no there isn't a man living in my wall... Having a character have to question those things, work through those feelings, and learn to trust themselves and care for themselves even with those difficulties would be really great to see in media, not just for people with schizophrenia but also for people with similar/related disorders who might share symptoms see parts of their own struggles in a good, educative way.

I have to finish this in two parts because tumblr keeps breaking because there's too many words in my post lmao (2nd part here)

[beautiful-basque-country]

I don’t even know how to get started with this post.

- A post from 2 years ago you resucitated btw, and that isn't even a post but a response to someone else's comment that was already resolved between them and us.

I will let it clear; ETA did nothing for Spanish society, it killed hundreds and created a state of fear. Just because a brat like you said so with a bunch of incorrect facts that you didn’t even bother to check out before posting this doesn’t make it true, and it gives many people a wrong idea of what happened.

- Please, breathe. You're going to suffer a stroke with all that rage. And insulting doesn't suit you, we're sure you can argue without disrespect. You want us to check facts and agreed, it's necessary.

For starters, Spain at that moment wasn’t in a state of famine, in which people barely managed to subsist. The country had had an impressive economical development during the last decade, thanks to the end of the economic blockade imposed by the US, amongst other elements. The same can be said of the rest of the other things mentioned in the same paragraph, those are things characteristic of the repression after the civil war and the economic crisis and starvation caused by the aftermath of the war and increased after the IIW by the blockades in hopes of taking down the regime.

- The other elements conviniently not mentioned is that the fascists in charge believed in and implemented autarchy in Spain. So don't blame other countries because the blockade doesn't explain even half of the dreadful economic situation. Also, blockade by the US???? The same US that supported Franco during war and afterwards???? 🤦Besides, economy blooming doesn't mean the fucked up regime was gone. There were still executions, anti-LGBTI laws, sexist laws, etc etc etc. So what.

It was still a dictatorship, brutal, unfair, and without many freedoms, I don’t mean otherwise, Franco was a fucker, although it would be great if you at least gave accurate data.

- You mean like... You did? 🤔

Continuing with my point. Everything that you said about Carrero Blanco’s death forcing Franco’s hand regarding the naming of an heir is bullshit. Juan Carlos was designated heir in 1969, and Carrero Blanco died in 1973. You don’t have to be a genius to see something is wrong with your reasoning.

- True, our bad. Sometimes we don't recall dates correctly by heart. However, you don't have to be a genius either to understand that one thing is the chief of state - aka a muppet - and another one being dictator / president. Which was the job Carrero had and was presumed to have kept after Franco had died.

Anyway, I cannot find any sense in what you implied about ETA fighting for the Spanish people.

- Please quote us on that? Don't confuse your reading comprehension with our text. Where did we say that they fought for Spaniards? We just said that yes, unlike Spaniards, they rose against Franco; and yes, the killing of Carrero affected every Spaniard's life and did Spain's future a favor. Concluding that that meant they fought for Spaniards is way too much.

Do you even know what was their purpose?

- Please tell us.

I mean, they didn’t even consider themselves Spanish, it is truly ridiculous to say they fought for the Spanish people.

- Again, quote us on that.

They fought and killed anyone who was opposed to the independence of the territories they said were their country’s.

- Are you absolutely sure about that claim? Sources?

They didn’t care if the fucker they had to fight was Franco’s government or a democratically elected government. In fact, they killed more during the democratic transition than in any other phase.

- Maybe due to the tiny fact that ETA's 1st attack was in 1968, way closer to democracy than to the war. Besides, what's the point of discussing when they killed more or less? We've never denied any of their crimes or claimed there were more crimes when Franco was alive? What's the point again?

Please do not remember them as heroes, they were fuckers who murdered civilians and politicians alike. They did not have a moral code, they just killed what stood in their way.

- Unlike the francoist / post-francoist police forces or the far right terrorist groups, that lived by a strong and honorable moral code. Also, politicians are considered civilians also. ETA killed 853 people, and around 60% of them were members of different security forces.

Do you find right that civilians, adults, and children, were murdered during that period?

- Of course not. What a stupid question. The same way we don't find right that civilians, adults and children are being murdered right now in Spain. Just some facts and data to compare and see how violence lives on in Spain: 1,206 murdered women by their partners or relatives since 2003. +4,000 cases of torture by policemen just in Euskadi in the last 50 years. 47 children murdered just to hurt one of their parents since 2013. With this we're not justifying / whitewashing ETA's crimes by saying that they were not as bad. This is obviously not a race to be the most lethal and every victim is as valuable as any other, and every killer is as despicable. We point it out just to have a perspective of how violent not just some armed groups were, but this society still is, sadly, and that for us at least the reason behind any of these attacks is not better or worse than any other.

For example, you see, I’m from Navarre, and I’ve been told by family (I was fortunately not old enough to live it) that it was common for them, something that happened almost every day, to hear a bomb exploding while coming home from school, and that it was a lottery. All they could do was hope their family was not the victim. Do you not think that’s fucked up?

- It'd be fucked up if it was true. We're old enough to remember some things, but even if we weren't, you asked us for facts and data and we will serve, even if you failed to provide any: there were 40 murdered victims in Nafarroa in the whole history of ETA, and 6 car bombs in about 20 years in the university that luckily only left victims with superficial wounds. So that tale of bombs exploding every day in Nafarroa leaving every family without a member is just that: a tale.

Do you really still believe what they did was right?

Btw, regarding the paragraph naming the actors of the end of the dictatorship I could name for example the first president of Spain, Adolfo Suarez, or any of the fathers of the constitution. Many of them had been exiled during the dictatorship and were completely opposed to the regime.

- You mean assassinating the fascist, ultra catholic and antisemitic Carrero, which was what we were discussing in the first place? ABSOLUTELY YES.

- And did they take the regime down from exile? Were they in a position of power to change things while Franco was alive? Did they finish the dictarorship before Franco died? Please read more attentively before trying to refute us and eventually ending up confirming what we said.

And yes, nobody wanted to continue with the dictatorship, for starters, because nobody wants to live in a dictatorship, in which you lack many basic freedoms while many European countries had embraced the democratical system without issue.

- "Nobody wanted to continue with the dictatorship" 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Yes, Franco killed most people who opposed him when he took power, but you cannot kill all the population, and 36 years happened between the end of the Civil War and Franco’s death, many people can be born in 36 years.

- "Most people who opposed him" ? That's an actual number? Let's see numbers: more than 150,000 dead, thousands exiled and missing. Data for the awesome decade of the 60s: tens of thousands of babies stolen from the beginning of the dictatorship in Republican women's prisons until well into democracy. Slave workers. Students tortured. Activists murdered. Teachers purged. Workers expelled from their jobs and condemned to absolute misery for their political ideas. Another example: in 1974 alone, some 25,000 workers had been suspended from work and pay, while an unknown number had been dismissed for these reasons. Tens of thousands of women were locked in their homes, subjugated to men and not even free to sign an employment contract. Thousands of LGTBI people were judged and condemned as vagrants, thugs and dangerous. It is estimated, for example, that in 1976, with Franco already dead, there were 698 homosexual men in prison because of their 'dangerousness'. The Special Tribunal against Freemasonry and Communism, which operated from 1940 to 1963; or the Tribunal of Public Order, created in 1963, which tried more than 50,000 people, 70% of whom were workers.

That aside, do we have to be grateful in the end because Franco didn't kill all the people and graciously let babies be born or...? Not sure what you're trying to defend with this paragraph tbh.

Such harsh and cruel repression is not sustainable, and definitely not when facing also an economic crisis, the aftermath of a war, and all the shit that happened there during that time.

- Thank gods for the economic crisis then!!

I’ll be clear; Franco was an asshole dictator who did many horrible and shitty stuff during his dictatorship and deserved to die.

- Amen!

ETA was a terrorist band that killed their way to their objectives, which were not selfless and compassionate.

- Also true!

ETA killed thousands, adults and children alike, and not because they wanted to overthrow the regime. Have you forgotten how they placed a bomb in a normal cafeteria or a supermarket, and how many they killed? Or how they used to place bombs where the police officers lived with their families, killing them in the process?

- Wait wait wait. Let's rewind. In your first paragraph YOU said they killed hundreds and by now they've killed thousands?? 🤔. Nobody forgets the 853 murdered victims of ETA, obviously, as nobody should. But have we forgotten about the ~30 attacks against Navarrese people committed in just 10 years by the far-right terrorist groups?? And the 66 murdered people they left?? With bombs placed in bars?? In magazines offices??? Because we all should feel the same outrage and few people ever mention these attacks.

Don’t forget ETA was a terrorist group that did not have any intention to help anyone and killed hundreds.

- We're back to hundreds, ok.

They did not bring any breakthrough in Spain, but fear and death.

- They killed Carrero Blanco and changed history for the better with that single action, and every antifascist could agree. Franco was the one that didn't bring anything but fear and death to Spain - for non-fascists, that is.

What you’re doing is justifying terrorism,

- Really? If saying that ETA members were terrorists and killers but that killing Carrero was the right thing to do at the moment is justifying their existence and everything they ever did, okay.

posting something like that, and expressing your uninformed opinion regarding a conflict you clearly don’t have any fucking idea of.

- We're ignorants with irrelevant opinions, we're the first to admit. We won't ever believe that we know the most - or even more than a stranger. We're ignorants, not narcissists 🤷. We have lived in Euskadi - where ETA committed the most attacks - our whole life, and were born while they were active. We know things. Not everything, of course.

So please stop, you are not doing anyone a favor.

- If you feel so outraged by our ignorance, please block us, live on, and don't waste your time digging up responses that weren't even for you in the first place to be mad at. Be happy and blog on, but don't tell us what to do or post.

@navigating-fandoms

We tried to just let this comment be, but we just can't:

- yes, ETA was a terrorist group that killed during decades. The same can be said of the fascist, criminal regime of Franco who had concentration camps, executions, forced disparitions, imprisoned people without evidence, let people die of hunger, kidnapped and sold babies. For decades.

- "the end of the dictatorship was due to many actors, including politicians and society at large as the main achievers". With all due respect, what? What politicians are you talking about? Because as far as we know, all politicians with real, tangible power in Spain were Franco fanboys and shared his ideas. Hadn't Carrero Blanco been assassinated, it's guaranteed that the fascist dictatorship would have lived on. Killing him was a key point since the factions supporting Franco couldn't find any other successor that was liked by all of them, what led to Franco changing plans and thinking about having Juan Carlos as his heir. Society at large??? We're sorry, could you tell us what parts of society AT LARGE fought against Franco? Because we can be wrong, but the regime had a huge popular support, Franco made a good job killing anyone against it.

- so yeah, ETA were terrorists, but not the only ones in "the worst of humanity" gang back in the day: the dictatorship, the far-right terrorist groups, the corrupt police were there. Yes, ETA were terrorists, but with that attack they f*cked Franco's plans up, punched the regime in the face and changed history for the better.

So please, don't forget that either.

[theusurpersdog]

Hi! I've just discovered and been reading through your metas on Dany, and while I agree with and disagree with many things in them, my big issue (as I find it usually is with antis) is the death of the 163 Great Masters. I honestly can't see this as even a morally dubious decision tbh. She didn't ask for 163 random citizens, she specifically asked for 163 leaders. 163 Great Masters. 163 SLAVERS. A lot of people seem to put high regard in Hizdahr's speech about his dad being against it 1

but even if that were true it changes nothing. If any one of them wasn't directly responsible for this particular atrocity they were for a hundred others. There were no innocent victims here. This was justice in it's entirety and I genuinely can't understand seeing it as anything else. 2

There’s a lot to unpack here. (Forgive me if some of my details are a little foggy, I haven’t revisited Dany’s chapters since I wrote those pieces.)

First, I don’t put any stock in Hizdahr’s speech. That’s a detail Benioff & Weiss added to take the nuance out of GRRM’s point; to them, that was a clear, flashing “Dany is wrong!” sign that was supposed to make the audience side with Hizdahr and think Dany had crossed a line. You can agree or disagree with that conclusion, but I think that was undeniably their intention in writing the scene. GRRM doesn’t write like that; he’d rather present the audience with something morally grey, and let them do the work and decide for themselves (ie GRRM is a good writer and D&D are not).

My problem with how Dany crucifies the 163 Masters is that it just fundamentally makes no sense. For many different reasons.

She lets the Great Masters pick the 163. That means that they probably picked the 163 with the least money/social standing. That means the men who died were a completely random set of men. The punishment has no connection to the crime. Most of the Masters are spared with no punishment, and the 163 who are punished were not punished because of their connection to the crucifixions. Of course all Slavers share moral culpability in the crime of slavery, but Daenerys was specifically not punishing them for that. Most Slavers were given what is essentially a pardon. Remember, if Dany was crucifying Slavers, she’d have to put herself on a cross. The 163 who were crucified were only crucified because of the 163 slaves who were crucified. 

If Dany had thought to herself I’m punishing these men for slavery, then I’d have to admit her punishment has some percentage of logic to it. But she thinks in her head specifically that she’s punishing these Slavers for the dead kids. So why doesn’t she ask who is responsible for the dead kids? 

The answer is simple: she got so mad that she didn’t stop to think. So Dany’s “punishment” for the Slavers turns into an empty symbolic gesture. 163 dead masters for 163 dead kids.

I’m not in any way trying to morally condemn Dany for this action. I don’t think anyone reading asoiaf could predict how they would react in that situation; and I’m not losing sleep over dead Slavers.

BUT, I am judging Dany for this in a political sense. And from a political angle, it’s a disaster. Dany opens herself up to a lot of critiques by doing this.

Because Dany acted on an emotional level, picking random Masters and a random number (163), while letting the rest of the Masters face no punishment, the only justification she can use for this is that it was the morally right thing to do (which I mean arguably it was). 

But then Dany gladly pardons all slaves of the crimes they committed during the sacking. This means that child murderers and rapists are allowed to go free (which we see in ADwD). Very quickly, Dany loses her moral superiority. This creates room for the Slavers to argue that Dany is treating them unfairly, which ends up being a very useful tool in creating the Harpy movement.

More broadly, this is an optics disaster. To bring in a real-world example, leading up to and during the Spanish Civil War, anarchists killed a shit-ton of Catholic Priests. It was a pretty similar situation to Dany vs the Slavers, cause the Catholic church was terrible and in bed with the Fascists who were trying to do a coup. But the anarchists weren’t giving the Catholic Priests trials or anything, they were just gunning them down. This gave people the feeling that the killing was indiscriminate and unjustified. The optics of this situation gave France, England, and the US cover to not join the war. It’s arguable that those countries never would have helped fight Franco’s regime anyway, but the optics disaster gave them a ready-made excuse.

Dany never tries to do anything like Coalition building in Meereen, and killing the Slavers is a tale that makes it very easy for her enemies to unite against her. (Part of her problem is also that she’s not really super revolutionary and just wants to ride the social justice wave to power so she’s immediately willing to make concessions as long as it helps her, and she never even tries to mobilize the masses into some kind of direct action. But that’s a whole other post)