#I literally don't know how we're ever going to progress as a society if not even feminists will put in the effort to become comfortable

[gofancyninjaworld]

No one is born knowing how to communicate

A: And that's okay...

Dr Kuseno made it look so easy. He just swanned into Saitama's apartment, proferred him a gift of beef and the hero's hostility melted away.

Fubuki felt positively foolish, and yet encouraged.

Since then, however, she's found that the only thing meat bribes pull in are dogs. Literal dogs:

And even dogs need more than meat to be loyal.

What gives? Well, it's obvious that Fubuki mistook Dr Kuseno's gift for a bribe: more on that later. Probably. And yeah, it's funny, but it's more interesting than that.

Learning how to communicate is complex. There are a ludicrous number of unspoken conventions and rules in every human society, so much so that we don't fully learn how to smile socially until we're in our forties. Dr Kuseno carefully judged his gift: he had a legitimate reason to offer Saitama a gift in the first place, out of gratitude for Saitama going out of his way to mentor Genos. Then he chose a gift Saitama would be sure to appreciate and presented it at a time when Saitama would be thinking about dinner. The worst that could have happened is that Saitama took the gift but insisted on the doctor going home (and taking Genos with him) -- it would still have left the desired positive impression. And things went really well. Kuseno made it look effortless.

Fubuki is only in her early twenties and her experience to date has been far from typical. She's learned that either she can intimidate people or she can flatter them into doing what she wants. With Saitama (and later Bang, Bomb, and Kuseno), she has to learn how to talk to more powerful people whom she cannot overpower, over whom she has no leverage, and who are unimpressed by her looks, simpering, or flattery.

Fortunately, Fubuki is nothing if not astute. She's worked out that she needs to develop complementary skills if she's to make herself useful to the S-Class heroes she wants to hang with. How to talk to them to get the help and cooperation she desires? Ah, that's a work in progress.

B: ...Unless it's not

Let's move onto another miscommunication.

Something that I hadn't before was that, unlike the webcomic version where Saitama only thinks to himself that Genos seems depressed, in the manga, Saitama out and out asks him if this is the case. He wants to know.

It mirrors King asking Saitama that very same question and getting Saitama to open up and be vulnerable for the first time (ever, in any version of the story). So it is very appropriate to see Saitama trying to do the same for Genos, particularly as he is openly fond of the guy.

However, it goes wrong. Saitama feels himself under pressure to say something wise to make it better. So he puts on his best 'confident' face and inadvertently makes everything much worse. Oh dear. What makes this particularly painful in the manga is that Saitama is much more invested in trying to reach Genos, and it's made Genos think that Saitama saying that he doesn't see what he's doing must mean that earlier times when he's praised him must have been just Saitama being nice. For sure, Genos could have pushed back and made Saitama clarify what he meant, but he's even worse at communicating: and Saitama's glib remark about being bright struck him square in the insecurities.

I'm going to come to something that I only realised once I started typing this up. Even though I've pointed out their abilities to communicate, neither King nor Kuseno have the perfect words to say. Kuseno started out by first committing a faux pas in bringing his great big outside boots into Saitama's flat, then nearly boring Saitama to death with a long-winded explanation. King started out by trying to guess what was bothering Saitama. Both, however, did the most important thing about effective communication: they picked up on their going wrong and changed tack.

It's not about saying the right thing: it's about responding to the person you're talking to.

The thing that King did that Saitama was trying to do for Genos was to ask Saitama open questions, and shut up in the interim, letting Saitama talk to fill in the silence. He'd only speak to ask more open questions when Saitama ran out of things to say, and through that, gently started to challenge Saitama's thinking.

But doing so means being comfortable with several seconds of silence. And that is excruciating. It is almost irresistible to jump in and say something, anything. And it would have been a longish wait, for Genos to slowly sit down and decide to start speaking, which might well have started being about something only tangentially related to his worry. King did that for Saitama: Saitama started out talking about what was bothering him on the surface -- being too strong -- before eventually coming to what was really bothering him, feeling lonely and profoundly isolated from everyone around him. Saitama does not yet know how to wait a person out.

It's a problem in this case because it's introduced a big barrier between those two, not an insurmountable one for sure, but one that could easily compound later.

Ah well, no one is born a communicator. We just have to wait and see if they work out a way to open up and be honest with each other. So it goes! There's more ways to introduce conflicts than to have a monster trample Tokyo, after all!

And so help me, the struggle to learn how to communicate is 1000% worthwhile.

[officeshelpdesk]

Ok I do want to give an actual serious take on this but imma hide it because it's gonna be pretty long so I don't want to commit more dash terrorism than I already have

People keep saying shit like "the saddest part is that if she had run a more progressive campaign she would've still lost" and honest to God I do not believe that is true.

The main problem with the democratic party since 2016 is that it's reactive, while the Trump campaign has always been proactive.

People say shit like "well voters like him cause he tells it like it is" but he doesn't! We know that! People like him because he creates issues to be passionate about. Immigration was not the number one issue for most voters until HE DECIDED IT WAS, and then wheels started turning in people's heads and they went "yeah actually I hate immigrants!!!!" And retroactively "I've always cared about this deeply actually". Most Americans never meet a trans person and the Republican machine says "they're the biggest threat to your children " and voters go "yeah I always new this!". Only the most ardent zealots wanted Roe gone, until it was, and now it's the official opinion of the Republican party that it's good that it's gone!

How do Democrats react to this? They let him win! They think they're the "big ticket party" that's "hearing what voters want" but voters don't fucking know what they want for the most part! Especially the undecided ones! And Trump gets that. So instead of saying "look, Trump convinced you of all these immigration related non issues, let's go back to the official position on immigration both parties kinda shared for decades" they say "wow! Americans really care about immigration, let's make sure our border policy is tougher." Instead of saying "Trans Americans have the same rights you do, and to use them as a scapegoat is deeply evil, we need to combat that and make sure we're a truly equal society" Harris instead goes "wow! The normal American™ is really worried that woke is going to trans their kids! Let me tell them about how the evil Trump administration let evil prisoners get evil sex change operations"

"Kamala pushing against Israel wouldn't have helped" are you sure???? Sure if she got up there and said some shit like "the Zionist entity is uniquely evil and we must do everything in our power to stop it" she'd still lose. But what does Trump do with literally every foreign policy issue besides Israel? "You actually don't want to be the world police!" He says "you want us to be isolationists! Except for Israel!" And the voter goes "yeah that's true"

"Your tax dollars shouldn't go to a war that most of the world identifies as genocidal, under me that money will go to fuckin,,,, healthcare or something " could be a winning message, but they don't ever dare to try!

And so what do we get? We get a man who tells everyone what he thinks is the truth, and an opposing party that says "yes! He's right about almost everything! But we'll combat these issues better!" Instead of countering with other actual issues! And guess what? When you tell everyone that the one guy is usually right, they go "oh ok cool, I'll vote for him then"

And they of course won't learn this! They'll listen to him forever because they think they're some "peoples party" when in actuality they're a bunch of B+ Georgetown students

[yakuzabrainrotlive]

I have had NO time to play lately fr. And when I have played, I've been growing Ichiban's social network, picking stuff off the ground and taking pictures. AND killing hundreds of evil santas at the mall because their money yield levels are nuts and I want good gear.

But. I HAVE also made progress with the main plot too. And have had time to... process it a bit.

Yeah, I got to The Reveal :) I am Suffering :) Got to the beginning of chapter 5.

So. What witty lil' thing am I supposed to say here? Like... fuck. Just. Fuck. It shattered my heart to see him break the news with this smile I can't interpret. I mostly see a man who's accepted his fate and made his peace with it, which would be in-character considering... well... *gestures at this man's entire life and then the way he was in Gaiden*. I feel like I'm sadder and more bitter than Kiryu himself is about the whole situation. Or maybe he's just hiding his true feelings very well.

I hate the fact that Kiryu's disadvantaged position in society as an orphan keeps hurting him even this late in life. It feels so unfair, it hurts, it's... incredible writing.

....yeah. Not even remotely surprised. This is just Kiryu in a nutshell. Always looking for people in need of help, a job that needs to be done, a cog he can help turn. He's always looking for a purpose; something to keep him going. And while that's something most people want, I feel like Kiryu is always living to be able to benefit other people. Very noble, but not healthy.

The start of Y3 felt like the closest we'll ever get to him properly settling down and BREATHING for once. I can never go back to that game without breaking down, huh.

THANK YOUUUU ICHIBAN WE'LL BE DOING EXACTLY THAT ❤️ we'll drag that old man into the hospital kicking and screaming if we have to ❤️❤️

Ichiban's overall reaction to the reveal surprised me. I know he's VERY compassionate and caring, but he felt so genuinely distressed it was almost shocking to me. I know they had like... mutual respect and trust going on in LAD, but I didn't get the vibe that they were THIS close. Maybe I have to go back to their shared cutscenes from LAD again. Or maybe Ichiban just feels that strongly, especially after this brief... thing they've had here in Hawaii. Nothing wrong with that at all. We love and respect Ichiban in this house.

Ichiban and Tomizawa... hmu. I will give you soup and warm cinnamon rolls. No questions asked, no need to pay.

Kiryu... please, for the LOVE OF GOD, let them help you. Let someone help you. No, don't just let them help you help others, LEAN ON THEM.

Love to see how effectively Ichiban brings out the sass in Kiryu. This dynamic is peak. They're so silly together.

*banging on my apartment walls* LET ME OUT!! LET ME OUT OF HERE!! PLEASE!! HAVE MERCY 😭😭 I don't wanna see Kiryu like this!! I'm gonna throw up!!

We're in chapter 4 and I wanna crawl into a hole to cry. I am NOT going to survive this game.

:)

ANYWAY YAYYYY!! New party member ^_^ she's SOOO cool, she's STAYING.

Okay so I already kinda have a team I really like and everyone works well together?? How the hell am I supposed to pick 3 people when the old squad (besides Eri, RIP my MVP queen 😔) is definitely coming back as well? Tomizawa and Chitose have grown on me so I don't wanna bench 'em, and I will literally be 6 feet under before Kiryu even looks at the bench, so... I'm in trouble 😭

I'm gonna have to see if Tomizawa and Chitose can be built around Ichiban and Kiryu, or if others will fill roles better. If anything's gonna make me bench 'em, it's going to be my hyper-optimizing, excel-sheet making brain that loves to make my teams as BROKEN balanced as possible.

OKAY ALSO. That better not have been it for the Barracudas. Like, for real. They were portrayed as SOOO spooky and dangerous and they honestly felt like The Threat to me. Are they really folding this early? I hope not.

THE SQUAD HAS ASSEMBLED! So pleased to have a full team ^_^

[rjalker]

but after all, aren’t you calling blue voters genocide apologists?

you don’t have to forgive genocide to vote.

there have been people in the past who voted for red candidates for political positions in order to get them kicked out.

voting is a complicated thing, and casting your vote doesn’t say anything about you.

Yes, people who voted for the party currently comitting genocide are, in fact, genocide supporters.

The people who have been screaming at minorities, including Palestinians, the literal victims of this genocide, for over a year now that we all need to shut up and support genocide to make privileged white people feel better, are in fact genocide supporters. They are in fact faschists. They are in fact racists.

That is how this works. If you vote for genocide, even to protect yourself, you are a supporter of genocide. You are by definition a racist and a fascist. You cannot vote for genocide and call yourself anti-fascist.

If you vote for the party comitting genocide, and scream at and threaten every minority who refuses to condone genocide, you are a fascist. That is how this works.

If you vote for genocide, you are complicit in genocide. If you scream and try to threaten minorities, including the literal victims of the genocide that you will wish death on them and their families if they don't support the genocide, that's fascism. That's racism. That's white supremacy. That is comitting genocide.

If you vote for people currently, happyily, loudly, and proudly comitting genocide, you are literally telling them and every single politician who comes after them that you are okay with genocide and they can and should comitt it because it won't lose them any votes, because you don't care how many people they slaughter as long as it doesn't affect you, the privileged white American who wants to keep the privileges that white supremacy and colonialism have gotten you.

If you think the people I was calling fashists weren't saying anything fascist, then that's because you don't know what fascism looks like unless it's dressed up like a Nazi and saying heil Hitler.

Fascism is privileged white Americans insisting that we must vote to commit genocide to protect their privileged positions in society. Fascism is when these people insist that we just hate Kamala because she's a Black woman and we're misogynoirists, or that we only hate Joe Biden because he's old and we're ageist.

Fascism is when people claim that Joe Biden is the most progressive President the United States has ever seen, while he is sending multiple billions of dollars worth of bombs to Israel for the sole purpose of them comitting genocide.

Fascism is when privileged white Americans speak over Black Americans, Palestinian Americans, Native Americans, and every other minority you can think of to tell us that voting for genocide is harm reduction because the most important thing in the entire world is making sure privileged white Americans get to keep their privileges.

The Vote Blue No Matter Who crowd has been filled with lying racists since before 2016. Not even 24 hours after this election was called they were en masse declaring that they're going to report anyone who didn't vote blue to ICE, even if they just didn't vote at all, or voted third party.

They literally hate non-voters and third party voters more than they hate actual real Trump supporters because they know that the people voting third party and withholding their vote are the actual minorities that its safe for them to attack.

Here's one of the articles that I have linked over half a hundred times now.

If you are actually trying to learn this time instead of just insulting me and claiming I never explain anything to anyone because I don't debate fascists, you can read it.

And here's a meme. Which I have also shared too many times to count.

[Image description start. The three panel, “Do you think Margaret Thatcher had girl power” meme, now edited so that the first panel shows the TV host asking: “Do you think you are protecting democracy by voting blue no matter who?” The second panel shows someone responding, “Yes, of course.” Panel 3 has the TV host asking, “Do you think you are protecting democracy by announcing to all politicians who will ever exist from now on that they can commit as many genocides as they want and they’ll still get elected because you literally don’t care what they do as long as they don’t do it to you?”. Image description end.]

If someone votes for genocide, that person is a fascist. If someone screams and threatens every minority they can see and try to browbeat them into supporting genocide under threat of death, that person is a fascist.

If someone refuses to admit that the current administration is even comitting genocide at all, that person is a fascist. If someone tries to pretend that genocide is good as long as it's the blue team doing it, that person is a fascist. If someone tells you that there are only two candidates in the presidential race and you have to pick the one they tell you to otherwise they'll wish death on you and every minority you care about, while ignoring the fact that there are other candidates who are actively opposed to genocide, that person is a fascist.

If someone tells you that voting third party or withholding your vote in protest of genocide is "the exact same thing as voting for Trump", because they want you to vote for the Blue Team that is literally currently comitting genocide as you read this, that person is a fashist.

If White Queer People™ tell you that you have to support the genocide of Black and brown people overseas to keep them safe, they are fascists. There's even a special word for that -- homonationalism.

If you can only recognize fascism and racism when it's blatant and Obvious, you don't know how to recognize it at all.

[mariacallous]

Your use of Reaction Images from the new Feid is inspired. Do you have any particular take on the new season? Personally I thought it was a bit melencholy and less campy that I would expect from a Ryan Murphy show (I know he didn’t write or direct this one).

I think it had some interesting things to say about the complex real life and media trope of the Gay Best Friend, and the resentments that build on both sides of that relationship but also the joys of it, but the structure and timeline of everything was kind of off putting.

Thanks for reading! Love your blog!

Aw, thank you!

My sister and I were talking about the series last night, and here's where we landed:

-The story or narrative was vague and/or undecided. At no point did Murphy and the others writing and directing ever decide, really, how they felt about the characters involved, and, by extension, where the audience is supposed to land or approach the characters. There's a difference between "these people are flawed and complex but ultimately we should be [sympathetic/unsympathetic] towards them" and "they're complicated and flawed!"

-The characterization, and indeed the writing in general, was very clunky and...not great. Lots of cliches, lots of stereotypes, lots of generalities, and at times the characters all had the same kind of voice.

-There was SO MUCH Telling as opposed to Showing. It was the only way viewers would be given any kind of indication what sort of stake or element was involved. It was lazy and detrimental.

-There were also what felt like Obligatory Virtue Signal Moments put in because it was expected or necessary and then things could progress. The sexism/misogyny element which kind of gets introduced in the first/second episode gets dropped very quickly and is almost never referenced again. The homophobia and Gay Best Friend element is mentioned sporadically throughout, with the heaviest concentration in the James Baldwin episode) but doesn't really come to any conclusions about how we're supposed to feel.

-The pacing and timeline *were definitely* off-putting - I think the jumping around was a detriment (especially because a lot of establishing moments for the friendship of the swans and Capote were scattered about). Starting with La Cote Basque 1965 was the wrong choice, because you have the explosion up front and then have to figure out how you're going to build up and progress from there. There's also, because of the Telling versus Showing, a lot of build up for certain events and moments, which don't pay off or get pulled off - the Black and White Ball is an example of that, I think.

-Additionally, the shifts in the kind of framing for the show hurt it - the first two episodes are a conventional set up, then you have the shift to the black and white documentary, then you're kind of back to the conventional set up, and then the last two episodes are weird dream sequences and kind of shoddy conjecture?

-As much as I like Molly Ringwald and Demi Moore, choosing to include/elevate Joanne Carson and Ann Woodward to this extent was a poor choice, as was not including what I feel are the more actual interesting swans (Pamela Harriman, my personal fave, as well as Gloria Guinness and Marella Agnelli) and making Babe the primary Swan wasn't necessarily the best choice.

-So much time was spent on Babe's cancer and Truman's alcoholism, to the detriment of fleshing out literally any and all of the other characters and stories, and both of those story elements were handled poorly.

-The James Baldwin episode was probably my least favorite because of how all-around bad it was, which is really unfortunate because there could have been potential there.

-Going into this series, Murphy and the others seemed to have made what my sister and I are calling the "Somehow, Palpatine returned" choice, aka the Marvelization Maneuver. In order to really follow along, you either had to be familiar with Truman Capote and the Swans and 1970s New York society, *and/or* have read Laurence Leamer's book, which the series was inspired by. So much was not explained or depicted, and so you have a higher bar to clear to engage with the material. And if you do have that background, because of the other choices, you would be disappointed because you *do* know the background and saw what was chosen to be used.

-I also think that an emphasis on the aesthetics versus the story was involved, which is also unfortunate.

I was excited and there were moments I *did* like, but there was a lot to be disappointed about.

[fleapit]

“No one is saying gender is a choice”

https://www.tumblr.com/genderkoolaid/752910129568055297/we-should-start-having-the-gender-talk-with-our

They quite literally are. Though. As well as identities, treating as them as if they’re just toppings you pick and choose rather than descriptors that have minimal criteria. Calling yourself ftm because you “like the label” and being ftm bc you have sex dysphoria and wish to/try to/are transitioning to a more male body are two incredibly different things, you don’t “choose your gender” you simply are a gender, and the “progressive trans people” (ie people co-opting this for whatever reason, to feel special mainly) pushing this idea are fucking over actual trans people to a fucking giant degree.

dude im going to be so honest with you, youve been in and out of my inbox for three days and it's kind of weird that you keep refreshing my blog to send me asks about this still. that is NOT what the post you linked is talking about and you need to work on your reading comprehension. that post is talking about how we should make it EASIER FOR KIDS TO COME OUT AS TRANS because gender identity is fluid and is something that they can change, which a transphobic society tells them is impossible. fuck, dude.

literally nobody is saying that being trans is a choice. but fucking honestly man, even if it was, why do you care? it doesnt affect you. i mean this in the nicest way possible but if someone does/doesnt experience dysphoria, how they identify, what their personal feelings are on THEIR presentation and their gender? that's just none of your business! and you don't get to go around demanding to know every little bit of someones traumatic experience- or lack there of- to decide if they're 'trans enough' or not.

nobody is pretending to be trans to feel special dude. thats right wing propaganda bullshit that you've fallen for. you just dont know their life and you are not the fucking authority on it. your experience will never ever be 1:1 with someone else and you can't decide that yours is the superior one to have. you don't get to decide that someone isn't trans just because their identity doesn't make sense to you. fucking grow up.

someone else's joy is not obliterating yours. it's not a random trans person on the internet's fault that you have dysphoria. stop blaming other people for your problems when they're struggling just as much as you. you aren't entitled to the details. move on with your life and MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY instead of trying to make OTHERS just as miserable as you are, because no matter how much complaining you do, someone isn't going to just STOP being multigender or STOP being a trans man and a woman or STOP being nonbinary just because YOU DECIDED it wasn't real and they were 'faking for attention'

honestly. we're all just trying to pay our fucking bills. it doesn't fucking matter to the people trying to murder us if you're a binary trans man good perfect ideal tranny who passes 100% or a multigender fagdyke they/its 'pick-me attention seeker' - THERE ARE NO GOOD QUEERS IN THEIR EYES, AND THEY WANT US DEAD. i think that takes priority.

just mind your fucking business and you'll find yourself a lot fucking happier. good lord.

[system-of-a-feather]

Honestly, I think the best thing the Riku-Data combo has ever said is that "This is probably going to be one of the hardest periods in our life save for any unexpected disaster, death, or massive illness" cause like, yeah damn right it is and we are more than ready for shit shit cause literally it's the silver lining to our trauma and abuse actually put into play. Like our trauma didn't "benefit us more than harm us" and I'm not gonna be like "This is what our trauma trained us for uwu" cause fuck that shit

But quite frankly since we survived the brunt of the trauma and the first 5-7 years of healing enough to restitch ourselves together pretty strongly, the side effect of having this adulthood shit pushed on us and having a (unhealthy but moderated) sense of extreme adulthood and budgetting skills and sense of having no support paired with the fact we kept a highly strict and minimalist life to set ourselves up with a good foundation of money and in a good place like...

We're good honestly. Like we're 22 and honestly having divorced the fucking stupidity that is Capitalism (not @ people still in it, its brain washing, Capitalism is stupid not victims in it) and it's fucking bait of chronic self torture, having a fucking amazing fiance, making great progress in whatever our transitioning goal is, having a number of hobbies and joys in life, having a decently set career and stable income with no plans for children because this world sucks, too queer for kids, and having kids in this economy is impossible - so as long as we know how to care for ourselves, manage money, and slowly upgrade shit towards the number of plans between Riku and I until we can have a mostly self sustaining life style save for a few things that aren't worth it - save any unexpected disaster we honestly have shit in the bag.

The thing that is a far out ideal if we play this "end game content" well enough would be to literally just buy a plot of land and transfer whatever we do for our personal life on there and either move friends and shit onto there to have a cheap sustainable life and/or leave it an open resource wherever we live for homeless and people in need to get shit like for real.

I really don't fucking get this need and desire people have to like idk take a vacation to Baja to sunbathe and buy some arbitrary keep sake that just shows off your wealth when you could just invest into having a fucking nice and peaceful life you can vibe in.

Like yeah I want some nice guitars and some nice clothes and shit but like I really don't get these stupid vices of wanting to live in a Mansion *sparkle* and have Gucchi *sparkle* like cool live in an empty mansion where you have to call your family on a phone to talk to cause thats fun and not isolating at all.

Fuck Capitalistic Materialistic "I'm Rich Look at Me" goals like literally they're stupid and just empty beyond the immediate joy of it. The real deal is just getting shit you can have to enjoy the world better and improving crap like.... for real I'm a self centered person but its really not about being "uwu selfless think about others" just like why

I still really don't fucking get why people don't just make shit better. Its not a moralistic thing is just you could buy a yacht youll use like once a month tops or you can actually just work to solve a problem that will have a longer pay out of both entertainment and enrichment while also building good terms with others

Like why

Why buy such stupid lavish things you probably will never use

It's really not a moralistic thing here for me. It really isn't. It's just so much more fucking entertaining, sensical and overall a fucking better decision to try to build a more sustainable way of living that is cheaper for people and thus help address some of the largest issues and problems plaguing society than idk, buying a yacht or a mansion that I'd only use like 3 rooms of regularly.

Like yeah I'd buy a stupid expensive guitar and leather and good clothes because you cant expect anyone to just sit here and be 100% giving 100% of the time and never treat themselves without burning out + this ISN'T A MORALISTIC THING AND JUST A HOBBY / PROJECT but that shit is all shit I *would regularly use*

Just like... why.

WHY.

WHY BUY SHIT YOU ONLY WILL GET JOY FROM WHEN YOU BUY IT AND USE IT ONCE A MILLENIA WHEN YOU COULD INVEST IT INTO A PRODUCTIVE PROJECT

Like isn't the WHOLE thing about Capitalism is investing into Capital??? Then why do all the Rich People Buy Stupid Shit. Like JESUS christ it pisses me off how fucking stupid and brain dead American Capitalism is and how they fucking trap people in this fucking STUPID circle of suffering. Like in it's own fucking fundamentals it doesn't FUCKING make sense

Like fuck man as a part I was grilled to be a capitalistic war machine before I looked at that and said FUCK that so I GET how capitalism works which makes me look at this crap and Im like YOU GUYS AREN'T EVEN INVESTING INTO CAPITAL WHY WHAT DOES THIS SHIT SERVE YOU

Anyways fuck man, I was trying to reflect on how we are doing good and it just (de?)evolved into a capitalistic rant #SorryNotSorryMan

-XIV

[000life-is-meaningless000]

life is pretty Hollow empty and meaningless.

. . .

we all work hard in our life so that we can just fucking Die and get forgotten.

🙁

All of your sacrifices will always be in vain.

. . .

there is no God that cares about you if they did they would not let you be alive.

. . .

life is meaningless and we're not really sure existence is real.

. . .

the fact that you had to give yourself a purpose is more proof that life has no purpose no value and nothing is great and nothing is Good.

. . .

Beyond sex most people don't have any use for each other then they want men to do everything and men want sex with women but if you turn out the sex drive most people wouldn't want each other.

. . .

well with & in morals Getting in the way of everything progress and potential all good benefits and all things of usefulness getting are blocked or stopped or killed by laws and morals.

I often see the morals of a human being is some sort of mental illness, there's a lot of benefits that you can get for those who have no morals there's a lot you can gain look at animals and look at plants although I know they don't have a mind nearly as fast and grandiose is that of a human being, at the same time both of them great gain so much more in life by lacking morals.

if you want a human example fine I'll show you to a sociopath those greedy fuckers that rule the world like Jeff bezos & Elon musk & Bill Gates among other Greedy Sociopaths.

sociopaths have immense amount of time and pretend to be on your side and care about you many of them feel this miserably low functioning sociopaths don't have really good charm but high functioning sociopaths can pretend to be your friend while they secretly don't give a fuck about you.

. . .

these people can have so much in their life they've gained and gone so far because they got rid of their morals they chose their intelligence over their stupid fucking heart and look at how much they have, but I wonder if they're even happy.

there's an old saying what is the man to lose his soul but getting the whole world but one of the man loses his soul and doesn't even get the world, or anything ?

. . .

I really just watch Society, I watch the insanity I washed the stupidity I just watch.

🙁

because I know the vast majority of them are deeply fucking stupid.

🙁

I just watch, the world go by.

. . .

I watch as I know that the world is literally anything slowly, I only wondered deep inside if I'll be alive when I see the World End ?

I often wonder if I'll be alive but then again I always say the end I'll be happier when I'm dead because I know I will.

once I am dead you're probably going to wonder what we do then well if I'm not forced into internal damnation or some stupid play some high in the cloud's with God !

I'll spend eternity in a big black empty void of nothingness called the spirit realm it's full of infinite Souls which I have no idea where in the fuck they all came from.

but I'll just try to spend eternity alone with no one with me ever again I'll never find the other fairies also known as insectoid's, I'll never find my people ever again the Grays fucked all that up and they're stupid idiotic agenda.

My, Soul is Eternally Doomed.

[korrasera]

Like I said, this is a good example. When you're arrogant you tend to think you know everything despite being uninformed about the topic you're talking about. People who are like this also tend to either react really poorly or retreat into their talking points when called on it.

As an example, aside from the fact that Israel isn't a vassal state just being obvious on its face, you can also look at that talking point up there about Biden sending smaller amounts to bypass Congress, which is just straight up not what happened.

It's because people like the above don't understand what the congressional bypass is or how it works.

The US sends aid to Israel every year. Period. We've done it since the country was founded. The power to send that aid, in the form of military sales, is invested in the office of the US president. Congress has a 15 day period to review such sales before they go through. If Congress wants to block the sale, they can pass a joint resolution to do so, but no Congress ever has.

In the case of what Biden did, he didn't choose smaller amounts to bypass Congress, he used a waiver that's also part of his powers to send aid in situations where it's deemed a special case, something Biden did to provide aid to both Israel and Ukraine. If he'd sent smaller amounts of aid he wouldn't have needed the waiver at all because Congress wouldn't even get a chance to review it.

So, as you can see:

These arguments try to convince you of is that Biden is some sort of genocidal cowboy that's bypassing the checks and balances meant to keep deals like this from moving forward. That's not just propaganda, it's not just false, it also demonstrates that the person making the argument doesn't know anything they're talking about.

Also, this aid is the aid that was delayed, by years, by Biden, as a political poker chip.

Oh, sorry Bibi, we approved the aid but you know it's just going to take forever and also why don't you listen to all of the military advisors we sent over telling you that you should stay the hell out of Gaza?

As an example, the last time that I know of where the US did something even remotely like this was when Reagan banned the sale of cluster munitions to Israel because the Israeli government had been using them to strike civilian targets. And apparently even Reagan had a limit.

Is the US complicit in Israel's genocide? Absolutely. Unfortunately, it's just part of being an American. We've been fighting constantly to tear out the authoritarian warmongering parts of our society and this is as far as we've gotten.

Is the US a fascist genocidal state? No, not literally and not figuratively. We are very much a people working to build a better tomorrow, built on unthinkable bloodshed and crimes against humanity.

We have not yet won that fight, but it is absolutely going in our direction, and the work the Biden administration has put in to oppose Netanyahu's government is a sign that it's gotten better. His administration is the first one that's taken meaningful steps to rehabilitate our foreign policy towards Israel.

It really sucks that all of that progress is going to be lost when Trump takes power, but we've been knocked down by setbacks before. We're not done fighting.

Don't listen to propaganda. Don't let people tell you it's hopeless. They're just scared and looking for you to be scared with them.

Be brave instead. Fight.

We tried to warn you, and you wouldn’t listen to us over the sound of your own self-righteousness. You must be so proud of yourselves.

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

Light From Uncommon Stars, April

I do love this brief history about Caputo's Pizza. One history and tradition slipping into another. I can imagine Evan and his group from way back in February turning their nose up at "an Italian restaurant trying to make inauthentic Chinese food." But we can see, by way of this change being allowed to happen at all, that the community around Caputo's has accepted the changes, and even loved them. It has become its own thing, with its own special history and quirks.

I do wonder if this is a bit of an echo to Katrina's own transition, changing more into her own self now that she has her studio and stability.

Tremon Philippe is once again the picture of an editor that is leaning on the deadline. He knows the end product will be good but is similarly frustrated it can't be rushed. He wants this grand, astounding finale to Shizuka's works and is stymied that his usual routes for getting it aren't working. At the least he's a very polite demon, he's picked up the tab.

I really do wonder what his opinions on intergalactic society and the Endplague are. Does Hell care about other planets? Or do they just operate locally? Would he like a galaxy full of madness and torment or is he of the opinion that mindless strife is boring and useless outside of Inferno? I can hope we get some answers for these, I'm really curious.

Speaking of the Endplague, I now know it a bit better. The emotional bit here, comparing it to the arcade game Stargate, was brilliant. Me, knowing how arcade games feel to play, at least. An endless progression that you can only get a "game over" on. Yet people play them all the same. And all the time. It's something Lan marks as a curious human behavior. Seeing humanity from her eyes is always a treat. I like how we're the communication aliens. We literally just can't stop talking about bullshit with one another. We care so much about wooden sound boxes and clumps of pixels drawn in a vacuum tube or accountings of a history that has never happened.

This is really Lan's first time dealing with triviality. The fact that we can wake up to unimaginable, ever-present horror just so that we might see a flower or a smile in the infinite cosmic soup. It's appreciable. It's what I appreciate in humanity, is being able to love such a small piece of the world so deeply.

Deeply enough to sell your soul for it. Shizuka's secret is out, to Lan's family and Katrina. I do want to say, I think it's incredible that Shirley already cares for Katrina to the point that she would intervene on her behalf. The problem is that Katrina already knows.

The details never mattered. Katrina knew that by going with Shizuka, she would pay in some way. There is always a price to be paid. The book frames this as knowledge that living as queer bequeaths, and for my part I can't help but agree. Living as myself had a price within my family. The tolerance of others is paid with palatable silence from me. So it goes.

To see Katrina's resolve to pay for her own voice with her soul, is such a sorrowful beauty. I would like to take the chance to speak more of how some friends of mine who left the church so they could be themselves have gone through this feeling. Imagine believing in Hell all your life and now, no matter how much you may disagree or know otherwise, being unable to shake the what-if of internal torment. Literally deciding that a chance of falling to Inferno is worth it if it means being able to be yourself.

For my part, I'm a pagan, essentially. the metaphysical concept of punishment everlasting isn't in my beliefs, and I still feel so sharply for Katrina's answering song. M voice was bought with the hell of marginalization and public scrutiny over my lifestyle, after all. Something I definitely don't feel I'm alone in feeling, either.

Gosh this scene... this scene. I want to keep talking about it but at a certain point I'll just flood out the rest of the chapters.

Ahem.

Of course, Shirley found out about the Queen of Hell and the frightening potency she's been erased from everything with. And she told her mother, of course. Lan's not wrong to be concerned, I should think. Of course she's not! She just learned her love interest is going to condemn her wonderful student to endless torment. And it's only when Katrina tells Shirley, through her music, that she knowingly entered this deal, that Lan finally realizes. She's never asked. Never sat down to listen. To Shizuka or to Katrina, to the intricacies of relationships and meanings. I do wonder how she'll grow, because even after listening, I do not think Lan would want either of these women consigned to Hell. Not when she's already been there. Not when she returns every night.

This month ends with a lesson now that Katrina is frustrated with the safety, the "meekness", of her newfound voice. "...In your hollows. In your nothingness. There is where your music gains its life."

Aye. It really does. The plucking sounds can't convey without the opposing nothing. In writing, at least, I find that the pieces that echo the most are the ones that are surrounded by quiet.

[mistergoddess]

something something last pride i was in a disastrous gender tailspin doing so very bad on the gender front deeply closeted staying briefly with my parents between apartments working at a normie bar where there was a lot of pressure to be cute and feminine and appealing but the most dysphoric ive ever been because ive been quite masc ever since i realized i was trans when i was fucking 13 and somehow at 25 decided to put my own ass back in the closet and went to pride in a bikini top and booty shorts and fishnets and was miserable with myself and so repressed and had nobody but myself to blame for it and spent the whole time thinking haha wouldn't it be funny to go to the gender clinic booths and get info about testosterone while dressed like this haha how i look with he/him in my bio and all that haha right but i wouldn't because im in denial about being a guy rn haha im just a funky they them lesbian or whatever idk haha. and now just 1 year later i'll be going to pride 6 months on t and having made the first grueling steps of coming out to family and people close to me and i'll definitely be boyly boying it up and its all very surreal and gooooood?

idk it's weird because i feel 100% positive and happy and right about transition so far like... internally. independently. but the social aspect is still very funky and scary and i'm sure that's completely normal because society sucks! it's a sucky cultural situation we're in rn! and it's scary and bad and easy to invalidate yourself and get imposter syndrome and be bitter and jealous and feel weird and scared about being socially out and trying to socially transition and make it known that yeah i know i don't seem like one but actually i'm a guy! and i'm literally still not even saying that i'm still just letting ppl assume im a woman and misgender me bc i'm fucking avoidant and don't have the guts to like correct restaurants when they get my order wrong let alone correct everyone when they get my gender wrong! arrgghhh! but i'm very excited for ~my first pride~ and i hope being in a space where people are expecting it and won't be shocked or confused will give me some confidence and i can be open and at ease there and i can take some of that with me back to everyday life. idk. something along those lines.

also i'm definitely in my fresh out the box overcompensating era lmfao like i'm still nonbinary as hell and i still wanna be fruity and i'm definitely not Just A Guy and i'm definitely not Just Masc and i haveeeeeeeee a really really bad history with that and some big ugly Gender Trauma that makes this stage of like. just trying to be more masc and a dudething. kind of a very bad vibe but i'm doing it on my own terms this time and am aware of how that plays on my mental state and i feel confident that i'll grow out of it and that it's ok for now and as i progress i'll settle back into the things i like because i DO like fruity shit and i DO like the booty shorts and the fishnets and jewelry and painted nails and i'm not fully a dude and there's a sick ass nonbinary trans culture that i'll figure out how to occupy!!!!!!!! but yea i'm accepting that for now i'm just like hrrgnnnghhhh yes im a Man :) a fucking Guy a Dude Bro hahaaaaa

[caffeineandsociety]

Honestly though, if I were to be really inflammatory about it - I'd say that actually yeah the majority of men ARE oppressed for being men.

Now that I have your attention because you're pissed off, let me explain. No, I don't mean that in the dudebro meninist "men and women are on equal footing actually, if structural misogyny exists then clearly there is an equal and opposite structural misandry, checkmate liberals" way.

I mean that when it intersects with other axes of oppression, gendered power dynamics get a hell of a lot more complicated than "men big scary oppressors, women innocent victims!!" Like, despite how much the radfems and the terminally online people who treated them as the source of expertise try to redefine it to "the more axes you're marginalized on the more support you should win from progressive spaces, they're basically collectibles but otherwise totally separate", this is a major part of what intersectionality means.

Note how everyone becomes a "feminist" the moment a Black or brown man breathes in their general direction. He exists, suddenly EVERYONE knows toxic masculinity is toxic and violent, and aggressively police him in the name of Protecting Women(TM). Women of color face their own unique brands of oppression, yes! Including being ignored in a lot of these violence statistics or memed if they're actually noticed! But MANY cases of racist police brutality are because a MAN, OF COLOR - very specifically someone at the intersection of those two groups - was read as a threat for being A MAN, OF COLOR. MANY names and stories on any lynching memorial are Black MEN, who were lynched because a white WOMAN saw his very presence as a rape threat. The interplay of race and gender in these interactions is unique.

Or, queer men - when someone says "homophobia is the fear that gay men will treat you the same way you treat women," that's not just a snappy slogan, that's literally how a major facet of it works. The "gay panic defense", in 35 states, lets people reduce assault or murder charges to a lesser offense for "I found out they were queer and I was afraid they were going to hit on me". This is, overwhelmingly, invoked against gay men...

Or trans women - which, however much any radfem tries to tell you otherwise, are still people that mainstream cishet society sees as men, at least until it is convenient to gender her correctly to discount her opinion as the shallow mindless ramblings of an airheaded woman. Like, that's a major aspect of how transphobia intersects with gender in all directions - depending on what's most convenient for the accuser, you're just a silly brainless helpless pathetic woman...

Or a dangerous, predatory, burgeoning, toxic man.

Again, it's another form of "man (or 'man') sets one toe out of line and suddenly the whole world recognizes that toxic masculinity is bad."

And this is coming out in a fascinatingly disturbing way against trans men. There is a concept of "double discrimination" - a term with a frustrating dual meaning; it can refer to being marginalized on two axes and being, for instance, discriminated against for being queer even in spaces meant to support disabled people and vice-versa, or it can refer to being discriminated against by mainstream society, but also by marginalized communities for "not being marginalized enough" (in other words, a less maliciously "neutral" term for the effects of exclusionism). The latter definition has been heavily studied in bisexual communities and has been shown to have nasty adverse effects on both physical and mental health-

And that is also happening to trans men right before our very eyes. Mainstream society hates trans men because, again, depending on what's convenient to demonize us, we're either silly brainless shallow women just hopping on a trend to try and feel special because that's ALL women ever do don't'chaknow and anyone who helps us transition is a predatory drug-pusher, or we're horrible evil predatory dykes (because obviously all trans people are straight relative to our actual genders, which means gay relative to the ones cishet society reads us as) willingly morphing our bodies into a horrifying predatory form to hurt poor innocent cis women-

And among queer groups, we're ALSO treated largely as the latter, and then told "talking about your issues, and GOD forbid trying to come up with a NAME for them, is just Not All Men-ing, sit down and shut up like the good little girls you are, at least you're not being murdered in the streets (except when you are and get reported as women)". Even just sharing resources is treated as "stealing from" or "displacing" other "more deserving" queer groups.

Like, I don't know how to break it to you, but this whole idea of "men are bad, women are good, end of" isn't feminist at all. It's "oh, boys will be boys" in a pink-and-rainbow hat. It's the exact same tool wealthy, white, cishet men use to insist that their dominion over everyone else is just The Natural Order of Things(TM).

And yes, it oppresses most men. It is only the men who have all the other privilege qualifiers who escape it.

No, Men(TM) as a broad single-axis group are not an oppressed class, but there are unique, gendered ways that the hammer of oppression on other axes comes down on marginalized men, because the wealthy, white, cishet men at the top see men (or """"men"""") failing to live up to their platonic ideal of what wealthy, white, cishet manhood means as a threat to their rule - and they're laughably transparent about it; look at all their talk of how men failing to live up to it is "degeneracy" and "the downfall of society". Maleness as a real identity that actual people have, and manhood as a platonic ideal within the power structure of white cishet patriarchy, have a lot of overlap but they're pretty damned different things. The latter is fragile, and violent, and cruel, and hostile to everyone - yes, to women more than men, but very much so to men as well. The former is...literally just vibing.

And yes, women can be enforcers as well. Especially wealthy, cishet, white women. In fact, insisting that they can't be is often in and of itself a precursor to white supremacist patriarchal violence.

We have monuments to prove it.

(Inb4 "you forgot about disability" - no, I didn't; that one is WAY too complicated and deserves a whole breakdown of its own. I have some of the same disabilities that are, for That Most Privileged Class of Men, an excuse for basically anything up to and including murder, but for ME, not even an excuse to need a very minor accommodation or be a little too enthusiastic about something that's not mainstream enough; believe me, I cannot forget.)

[tittyinfinity]

I've noticed that the vast majority of people that I've come across who hold this "vote blue no matter who" opinion are white.

And I know firsthand that a major part of white USamerican culture is making sure that white people stay comfortable. And I don't just mean that as far as politics - white families even expect their family members to never bring up any topics that make them uncomfortable, lest you be accused of "ruining the mood." I can't talk about disability rights without getting scolded on how my complaints "turn everything too negative." And just because you have progressed further left than your white family members does not mean you have completely unpacked just how much USAmerican society is based on your white personal comfort.

There are white people being oppressed for their gender, sexuality, and disabilities, yes. But any issue we face, BIPOC are affected by twice as hard. But again, because of White Comfort, we have to pretend like we're all equally oppressed for these issues. "Omg don't make it into a race thing, don't play oppression olympics, we're all in this together!"

If we're all in this together then "together" should include allowing them to safely voice their opinions. Even if you don't agree with them.

the fact that there has been never-ending genocide from the US ever since it was was "founded" and we're still gonna believe that electoral politics can save us just because they haven't committed genocide towards the able-bodied white people living here "yet" is extremely concerning in terms of seeing just how far we'll let democrats go as long as the genocide goes to someone else. I guess we're gonna completely forget about the BIPOC and disabled people who have already been dealing with murder & oppression here in this country for hundreds of years. Let's just forget about the fact that we still have camps at the Mexican border to throw people in while stealing their children and adopting them out to white families. Let's just forget about the fact that the government still poisons the water in black neighborhoods. Let's just ignore that our government allows disabled people to suffer and die because of lack of access to healthcare, money, and accessibility in general. ESPECIALLY disabled BIPOC. Let's just ignore how Native Americans haven't stopped dealing with genocide ever since the first white man showed up.

People here who have been continuously oppressed throughout every presidency have been trying to tell everyone this for years. I noticed a lot of the BIPOC bloggers I used to follow are no longer active on their accounts, because Y'ALL DROVE THEM OFF THE WEBSITE. Because you put this expectation on them to be super polite about their criticism of the government lest they be accused of being too rude or angry, which is literally a racist talking point that has been used to suppress the voices of black women. Many of them being accused of being "Russian psyops." A lot of white people posting about supporting BLM while telling POC to shut up every time they criticize our system.

How many more years do we need to wait for liberation just to make sure those of us who aren't who aren't impacted can be comfortable, because "at least that's less genocide?"

And I can't speak for every disabled person, but my life has gotten significantly worse under Biden than it did Trump because he's doing nothing to stop the inflation crisis. They give me $760 a month. And that was after I spent a year fighting to get it raised from $700. But then they also took away $100 of my food stamps right after raising my SSI, and this month, they reduced it by $70 more. So they actually took $110 a month AWAY from me. I won't give Trump any credit for it, but I got enough food stamps to feed my entire family of 5 at the time, and now, with a total of $170 less food stamps for the month added onto how food prices are skyrocketing, I can't even feed my family of THREE for two weeks. I'm living at my mom's because I lost the ability to afford the $100 increase in my rent. I'm starting to think maybe the presidential election doesn't matter much if neither candidate can stop bad shit from happening and keep INCITING it instead

i can't shut up i'm sorry I'm ranting about Biden again

I'm starting to think Trump's presidency really wasn't any worse than what we have going on now, he was just targeting different people.

Bear with me.

The thing is, Biden has been the president for most of the pandemic and he hasn't been doing anything to stop the spread of it, so when people say "but Trump would kill US here!!" I wanna mention that Biden is already killing people of all parts of the political spectrum with his passiveness on covid

Biden is smarter than Trump. He's been in politics longer. He has had decades of learning how to maneuver politics. He has agreed with a lot of bad policies, many more than Trump even had the ability to do w his only 4 years of presidency. Trump is more interested in his image than anything else. Which is also dangerous! But it's much easier to convince people that Trump, a guy who is loud about his prejudices and caused a lot of damage because of that, is worse than a guy who pretends to agree with you on issues and then commits literal genocide.

Like I said, it just changes who is targeted instead. But is that really the case? We're already being targeted in different ways. A few good things have passed under Biden! But we also lost more bodily autonomy rights as far as abortion and trans rights go (not everywhere, but many states have become dangerous to live in). "That's not completely his fault" sure! Well then if the president doesn't have the power to change things truly for the better themselves, then worrying about who the president will be doesn't really matter. Also, presidents in the US have the ability to make executive orders.

And maybe he has spoken up on these things more and I just haven't heard about them - but Biden does not take the time to speak out about the anti-abortion, anti-trans, or healthcare related issues, except for the occasional quip here and there before he goes right back to not giving a shit. And I'm only using those as an example because a lot of "vote blue no matter who" people apparently only care about what happens to people here instead of in other countries.

And it's just really shitty to say "well what about the people who COULD die under a republican presidency instead of the real people dying from Biden's incitement of genocide right now!"

Trump incited a LOT of hatred in our country, yes. It pushed people to be more loud and open about their prejudices. But the deaths caused by hate crimes and COVID here in America were not on near of a large and deadly scale as what Biden is doing right now. We didn't watch our entire cities get destroyed and have our entire families wiped out.

So it seems, again, like the "vote blue no matter who" crowd only cares about politics when it comes to how THEY will (or MIGHT) be affected.

Am I saying vote for Trump or DeSantis? Fuck no. I'm saying prevent the next election from happening and burn this imperialistic genocidal government to the ground. The US has caused enough death, well into the millions, ever since it was created, and hasn't ever stopped committing genocide. But it only seems to matter when it (COULD) happen to white Americans.

Mexican people are still being put in cages and having their children stolen, too.

Indigenous people are still being murdered.

Disabled people are still dying from lack of accessible healthcare.

And the prices of everything have SKYROCKETED since Biden became president.

People are already suffering under a democratic president. You just won't care until it happens to you.

[charmixpower]

You both misunderstand me

I call Bloom's outfit horrible because it's ugly

I call Musa's outfit horrible because it's completely out of character

These are two very different sins, and one matters way more to me

Bloom's outfit hurts my eyes, but it at least looks like a progression from her season 3 look. A bad and ugly progression, but I can tolerate this

Musa's s4 outfit ripped what was left of Musa's gender nonconformity and tomboy style out of her hands and then kicked her real personality into a ditch as she was replaced with Bloom lite after raiding Stella's middle school closet

If Musa dresses like in s1-3 It would have been revealed 2 seconds afterward that she was forced into the outfit, but these are her normal clothes in s4

I'm not even saying the outfit isn't cute, on any other character that would literally be my favorite outfit it looks so cute to me, it's just not something that s1-3 Musa would ever wear

Musa's fashion was always super casual compare to her friends! Her outfit for the formal dance in season 1 was a modified kimono with pants!! Might I even mention that her pant legs were so long that they could have hidden sneakers under them? Because she was definitely wearing sneakers under that outfit. Her back-to-school outfit has jeans when everyone else was dressed up. When she went to the dance with Aisha, she where's an outfit that requires tights or leggings under it. Her concert outfit was a jersey, cargo vest, baggy jeans, and a beanie!!!

For fun, let's take a look at all the times she doesn't wear anything on her legs in s1-3. S1, dance casual, her skirt looks like it was made to exercise and run in. Flirting with Riven. S2, cute red Cheongsam with fucking knee-high boots. It was the first big party since they started dating, she wore that outfit to get Riven's attention. S3, Eraklyon Formals. She is in high society for the first time in her life, I don't think she could get away with pants here. The only reason other outfit without pants is something that Stella got her designers to make with no input from the girls themselves, so why even mention it.

THEN YOU GET TO S4 AND SUDDENLY MUSA IS WEARING: A MAGENTA POKA DOT BLOUSE, A PLEATED SKIRT WITH NO LEGGINGS OR TIGHTS UNDER IT, AND FUCKING POKA DOT PINK HEELS?!

Is this a joke?? Is someone laughing at me??? Am I going insane over a cartoon for children?? Yes to all of the above.

FIVE of Musa's s4 outfits are heels, four of which are pump heels. Do you know how many times Musa wears straight-up heels in s1-3? Twice. Neither we're pumps, and both she wore for partying.

If demonia boot's we're popular when Winx was coming out in s1-3 Musa would of worn them. S4 Musa would literally never wear platforms. She dresses like a completely different character!!

Musa's original style was somewhere between e-girl and grunge, at most Musa's s4 style can be described as alt prep. And it's more prep than alt most of the time!!!! Musa was the alternative girl of the Winx!! And they made her dress like everyone but her!! Electric chair!!!

Musa's season 4 outfit is an abomination on God and I want a handwritten formal apology from whoever decided to steal what was left of my girl's personality and turn her into THIS.

[gncrevan]

on internet leftism, public shaming, and how to grow as a person

at the moment of writing this, social media is hotly debating a tweet and the track record of a leftist streamer called badbunny. i'm not tuned into any of that enough to comment on who she is or if her platform is harmful. but i do wanna take this opportunity to talk about something that has been weighing on my mind for a while now.

this text was forming as i read lindsay ellis' statement leaving youtube, as natalie wynn went through her fifth or so twitter "cancellation", as sia talked about her relapse and suicidality following the backlash to music, and as pretty much every day a niche microcelebrity or normal person with the bad fortune to go viral got eaten alive on social media for their bad takes ranging anywhere from questionable media opinions to genuine antisemitism. i want to be clear that i think all of these people said and did things that deserve various amounts of criticism. this text is not to defend anyone. it's a look at group dynamics within leftist praxis.

preamble: because nothing is ever fully original, i wanna give a quick shoutout to the podcast you're wrong about, specifically the episodes "public shaming" and "cancel culture", for kickstarting a good chunk of my thought process here.

i don't use the term "cancel culture" to describe the phenomenon i'm discussing because i find it exceedingly vapid and unhelpful. the right and the left use it to mean entirely different things, none of which are well described as "cancelling".

i think the progressive/leftist online sphere is creating a more and more toxic environment by expecting perfection from people. having a big platform is a responsibility and it can be very harmful to even have so much as a bad take. but to paraphrase this video by alex peter: we don't hold people accountable, accountability has to come from within. the only thing we do is punish people. and as an abolitionist i don't think we as leftists should believe in punishment, but in rehabilitation.

yes, public shaming and deplatforming serve an important function to a) reinforce the ethics of our in-group and b) take away power from those who abuse it to harm others (since as we know the justice system does not come for the rich and powerful). but in most cases on the internet, that is not what we're doing. we're not serving a social safety measure, we're getting off on being in the in-group and doling out punishment. hell, maybe we're even getting our 15 minutes of fame out of it by commenting on a trending topic. or maybe we feel compelled if not outright forced by in-group/out-group dynamics to clarify our position on this topic, on every topic, always. but how does any of that serve the betterment of them as a person, or our society as a whole?

i want you to think of all the things you have said in your life that would cause backlash if you were in the public eye. more than that, i want you to think about the people who don't like you, who think really badly of you, and imagine that they were leading the public discourse about you (credit to rayne fisher-quann for this imagery). none of us would look good, even if we've grown and changed and made amends. i don't wanna live in a world where that is our normal. i believe that as leftists we need to move towards a restorative approach, fueled by empathy.

i believe and have personally witnessed that humans fundamentally have the ability to change and become better. but nobody can grow in an environment that puts them under constant attack. if you're busy defending yourself, you just purely psychologically cannot critically examine your behaviour and beliefs because you're in survival mode, sometimes literally. that's why we constantly see creators (and artists, celebrities, twitter's bad person of the day) doubling down on and defending their bad takes and talking about their mental health instead of apologizing. it's not fucking helpful.

there's a time and a place for public shaming, and there's a time and a place to stop and let the person actually process what happened. and you don't have to personally forgive them if they change their ways, or like them afterwards — there's plenty of creators i don't like purely because they said too much dumb shit or have politics i can't agree with or just give off bad vibes and i'm a hater. but that's a completely different issue. criticism is always valuable, but if i want our community and society to progress in any meaningful way, i need to ask myself if calling someone out serves a purpose or is just contributing to a pile-on, if i'm approaching them with goodwill and empathy or just dunking on them. if i want them to learn and change for the better, then i need to afford them the space necessary to grow. we can't build a community on punishment and fear of repercussion. our foundation must be one where we recognize each other's humanity and engage in good faith as peers.

[nicanario]

this post is a product of its time

tw: discussion of racism, homophobia, misogyny and a short mention of sexual abuse.

ok, this is basically gonna be a very long rambling post about my not fully developed thoughts on the justification many people give to bigotry when talking about the past: "it was a product of its time"

it would be fair to say, with me being a raging SJW socialist scumbag, that I don't think this is a very good argument and is most of the time actually an excuse to not think about the problems inherent to our society, historical or not, and, by extension, the problems with ourselves. but I do think that sometimes, just sometimes, this can be a valid point, or at least one that raises some interesting questions.

I'm going to cite examples from several pieces of media, but fear not, I'll try to make this as accesible as I can.

so, let's take Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) as our first case study. this show has, correctly, been called progressive by everyone except for clueless people who don't know much about Star Trek's history, Star Trek's crew, Star Trek's cast, or, frankly, Star Trek. because if you ignore the clear, sometimes in-your-face political history and present of the franchise, I don't think you know much about it at all. I do think you can call yourself a fan if you like it, you may have watched every single episode for all I know. but lots of mental gymnastics are needed to ignore the political progressiveness Star Trek has had since its very beginning.

episodes like Let That Be Your Last Battlefield are obviously anti-racist, at least in their intention. but the episode in question really is "a product of its time," and at the very end fails to uphold its ideals. the episode ends with the two aliens (who are LITERALLY. BLACK ON ONE SIDE. AND WHITE ON THE OTHER. BUT IN THE OPPOSITE SIDES.) fighting each other on their devastated planet, and the crew is like, "oh yeah if they both would give up on their hatred that they both share both of them equally" when it has been firmly established that one is the oppressor and the other one is the oppressed.

and that's a lot of Star Trek, not just TOS. even Discovery, one of the most recent series, has done Bury Your Gays (and Trans) TWICE (though both times literally rectified it, which is cool). there are episodes of the franchise that are overtly racist, or misogynistic, etc. TOS is lauded, mostly justifiably, as very progressive, especially for the standards of the time. they put a woman of colour as one of the senior staff, for fuck's sake. of course, when you analyse that same character, as with most of their intentions at being progressive, you'll see that she was relegated and sometimes even outright mistreated when she had the potential to be much more. but, at that time, it was a lot.

I had a friend (emphasis on "had") who, after I told him about TOS's both progressiveness and constant misogyny, told me something like "imagine feminists trying to complain about a show from the 60s." so, with unearned spite, he was, in some way, trying to make the argument that it was a product of its time.

you could say Star Trek, all of Star Trek, is "a product of its time" in the sense that it's not always perfect. uh, yes, I would agree. but that doesn't mean people have to accept it. well, I mean, the show is kinda over, you have to accept it's that way. but you don't have to accept that it's not wrong just because it was a product of its time.

H. P. Lovecraft, as another example, was a greatly influential writer whose works still shape a lot of people's ideas to this day. I have only ever read like one of his stories, so don't expect me to have an opinion on his works. but I can have an opinion on what I know about him as a person (he did have a life outside his writing, after all). and, yeah, he was a huge asshole. if you want to know more in depth about the subject, please watch Hbomberguy's video on him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8u8wZ0WvxI

but basically, he was incredibly racist & homophobic. some people might even say, "he was a product of his time." well, there are two possible rebuttals to that. the surface level one, and the one that examines why that argument is wrong to the core.

The Surface Level Response to "it was a product of its time": um, no it wasn't. Lovecraft was more racist than a lot of people even in his time. he wasn't just a guy who carried the racist beliefs of his society like everyone else, he was a reactionary who actively thought and discussed how racist he was, and how right he was for being that way. but that's only applicable to Lovecraft. one can't argue the same for Star Trek: TOS, because TOS did try to be more progressive and more anti-racist than the rest of its society. that leads us to the next response.

The Response that Actually Deals with the Fact that No Matter How Progressive You're Trying to Be, Your Failings Can Still be Criticized: the thing is, trying to excuse Lovecraft's or Star Trek's bigotry because they were "products of their times" misses the fact that racism is still wrong, and some people knew that in those times as well. people from these times weren't all naive or stupid or whatever. they had the capacity for rational thinking. they could stop and think, "hey, maybe what we're doing is wrong." and the fact is, some people did. not perfectly, not to our standars, but they did. everyone could have stopped and think. but most of them didn't, and we can criticize them for it. racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. HURT PEOPLE. horribly. massively.

also, even if you agree with the "it's a product of its time" argument, some people aren't criticising people's or work's bigotry: they're explaining why they don't want to experience it.

The Talons of Weng-Chiang is a 1977 Doctor Who serial, and it's one of the show's more racist stories. almost all the villains are Chinese, every single Chinese person is a villain. there's yellowface, slurs, stereotypes, the Doctor speaking nonsense words instead of actual Chinese, and a general belittling of Chinese culture.

note that I'm neither Chinese nor of Chinese descent. I have been searching for hours for a few posts I've read a while ago (some by people who are of Asian descent) about this episode and I can't find them. sorry.

suffice it to say, even though I love Jago & Litefoot (the audio series and the characters), it's not an acceptable episode at all. but it's also important to remark that, because of it, some people aren't going to want to watch it. sometimes, people aren't saying "the episode shouldn't be this way," which causes others to answer that it was "a product of its time." sometimes, people are just saying, "this is an episode that attacks real people. I don't want to see it. I don't care if it was common in that era to be racist, i don't want to experience it."

however, there is an interesting point to the "it's a product of its time" argument. after all, everything is influenced by its society, for better or worse. and we can't change it anymore. TOS sometimes didn't quite understand the political themes it wanted to explore. Lovecraft was a horrible bigot. Talons was racist towards Chinese folks. and that's that. I don't think we should change the episodes/stories or anything. edit them in any way. that would be, in a sense, changing history. and we wouldn't learn anything from it, about how we can do better.

I think there are two solutions to this:

1. warnings before starting the text: this was done with The Talons of Weng-Chiang. on Britbox, where you can watch Classic Who, this serial has a content warning before the start. that's good.

2. the removal as a whole of the text from some places: I think before applying this one, there should be a lot of thought put into each case. I don't think removing a whole serial of Doctor Who or Lovecraft's stories from anything would be, well, fair. especially on tv episodes a lot more people worked on those, not just the writers and the directors. Lovecraft's writing influenced thousands. we shouldn't erase them or anything. but sometimes, for some cases, we should.

those in the US might seen a Confederate statue being taken down. that is, in a way, a form of removal of a piece of history.

but that is a good removal. statues glorify. one sees a statue and probably thinks "this was a person worthy of admiration." they should be taken down, maybe even with a permanent mark of why this was done (a plaque that reads "a statue of X was here, but he didn't deserve it because of Y" could be put in place of the statues, for example).

another example is the removal from DVDs of the short episode A Fix with Sontarans, a Sixth Doctor minisode that featured Jimmy Savile, a presenter who was later found out to be sexually abusing children.

the removal of that minisode is good, actually. it's not a full episode (it's not even Doctor Who). some might say that's "erasing history" but, like, you can still find it online or information about it if you want. this minisode deserves removal from DVDs and Blu-Rays and whatever more than content warnings. it's not an important part of the show and it prominently features a horrible person who did horrible things during that time.

so, after all that, I have explained why I don't like the "it's a product of its time" argument. it is an interesting point that deserves to be examined, but it's not very good.

I have had this in Drafts for so long I've probably forgot some of the points I was going to make, but eh, what can you do? hope you enjoyed reading this.

bye