#I want to believe most people are good

[ghostickle]

Genuinely so afraid all of the time that I’m a horrible person and don’t know it

[inkskinned]

it is totally okay to be hurt and tired and fed up with the american schooling system but i need you to understand that we need to be better about loudly and routinely defending public education.

yes, many teachers suck, many schools utterly suck. i also got bullied and was absolutely not given the right support for my needs. i am not defending public education because it was kind to me. i am defending it because it needs to exist.

right-wing republicans do not want an educated population. they want kids to be homeschooled or in private school. there is a huge religious undertone to this.

the most common argument is that despite high costs, the "result" is not "good" enough. they point to failing schools as proof that public education is just never going to work out. there will be arguments made here that you actually agree with: that teachers can be bullies, that we taught online for 2 years and still charged the same amount of tuition, that we have no recourse for students to actually have agency or a voice, and that schools are now unsafe for kids due to risk of illness and gun violence.

these are all placing the blame in a fraudulent way, one intended to get your parents to homeschool you. the less kids in a school, the less federally-awarded funding for that school, the less any school succeeds. they will not mention the fact it is their legislation that takes away important funding opportunities, that teachers are living at or below the poverty line, that buildings are not kept up to code, that administration is overpaid and forces specific curriculums, that corporations like (my personal enemy) Pearson Education control certain classroom goals because teachers can't afford other options. they pretend to be ignorant of the gun violence and say "oh just get a gun" - but these are the same people who will be sending their child to a private school with a bulletproof backpack. they don't care if your kid dies, though. they "don't believe" in covid, but they did get their kid vaccinated, because of course they did.

it is a closed loop. conservative parents hear the fearmongering and remove children from the system. frequently these parents are also deeply religious. the kids are raised without access to other media & learn to parrot their parents. you have now created a new generation of conservatives. additionally, one of the parents/caregivers must stay home and homeschool the children, usually for free. i will give you 1 guess which parent tends to stay home to homeschool the children. these parents are encouraged to have many, many children. those children are most likely not getting access to safe sex ed.

we might laugh at fox news suggesting teachers are forcing children to use kitty litter but: first of all, there is kitty litter in the classroom. it's part of an emergency kit in case children are locked in due to a shooter. so that's fucking dystopian, and the fact they've completely reimagined the scenario to somehow make the teachers look bad when it's instead a fucking huge symbol of our failure as a country to protect our children.... it feels a little intentional.

secondly: don't just dismiss the situation. because, yeah, obviously, no teacher is encouraging kids to be a catboy. but the actual undertone that fox news is trying to sew is an outright distrust of teachers and of public education. they rely on the dehumanization of trans people as a common touchstone to hide the fact they're pushing two agendas at once. (which is ironic. because the thing they accuse teachers of. is pushing. an agenda.)

whenever someone tells you they want you to read less, you should be suspicious of that. when someone tries to separate you and your education, you should be suspicious of that. i don't even like incel rhetoric nor would i want my kids exposed to it - but i would not take away my child's (age-appropriate) access to the internet. i would just provide more educational materials, not less. the difference here is that i believe we can resolve ignorance with knowledge; whereas conservatives believe that ignorance is bliss.

they misappropriate funding and demonize teachers. they pull the same trick each time - the same thing we are seeing with anti-trans rhetoric. they do not want you to have access to safe sex ed, so they act horrified, claim sex ed teaches you how to thrust deep, claim that we have no idea what "age-appropriate" means. since the mid-nineties, the united states has spent at least 2 billion dollars on abstinence-only education, even though to quote the above link: "a preponderance of studies has found no effect of abstinence education at reducing adolescent pregnancy". conservatives want you to think less of any person struggling with addiction so they can continue their racist "war on drugs", so they spend up to $750 million dollars a year on the DARE program which has absolutely no effect. acting like teachers "must" be "grooming" children is just the same thing - so they can demand that funding either goes to their causes or the funding doesn't "exist" ("i'm not paying for our kids to learn that thing!")

and they want you to feel uncaring about this. they are aware that you will hate some parts of your school experience. pretty much everyone does. they want to lean into the parts that you hate so that you don't put up a fight about it when they take it away for not being "good enough."

i know i maybe sound like a conspiracy theorist. but truly. truly. it is beneficial for conservatives to reduce your faith in the american public schooling system.

one of the explicitly stated campaign promises of the conservative party: to axe the Department of Education in 2024.

i know we are all tired and burnt out and there is so much else wrong with their entire platform. but maybe just - pay attention to this one.

[shorthaltsjester]

the mighty nein - critical role

this is a place where i don't feel alone. this is a place where i feel at home.

[bruciemilf]

One of my biggest pet peeves is the justice league being labelled as " The Avengers of DC" and its like. No? The avengers are law enforcement. The Justice League are volunteers

[thatswhatsushesaid]

i think fandom spaces would become much more enjoyable across the board if people stopped flipping their pancakes over other fans enjoying characters that they don't like. or, god forbid, like them but in 'the wrong way.'

[transmaverique]

amab and afab, if they were used as shorthand for the actual full phrases that they signify, with emphasis on the "assigned" part, and an understanding that they are enforcements of normative (ie, dyadic and cisgender and binary) sex, would be like. really useful. but people took the terms and started using them as shorthand FOR normative sex instead of the ENFORCEMENT OF normative sex. so when other trans people (almost always dyadic trans people) ask for your agab they are almost always asking for your Original Genital Situation. your starting point, so to say. and the reason FOR asking is also almost always bc they are trying to also enforce a certain kind of normativity within queer spaces (which is stupid bc being queer is inherently non-normative but here we are). like, you cant be a lesbian if you're ftm, bc you ARE m, so if you ARE a lesbian, then that means you're lying about some aspect of your identity. does that make sense?

it is always always always incredibly.... i do not trust dyadic trans people that use cagab terms, even moreso than i do not trust dyadic trans people that just use agab terms. agab is also coopted intersex language, but the "coercive" part of cagab SPECIFICALLY refers to medical "intervention" of intersex characteristics, such as "corrective" surgeries and hrt. i am deeply fucking suspicious of any dyadic trans person that uses those terms exactly the same as described above, even moreso if they do so bc "all gender is coercive".

like. yeah. that's true. but you use these terms to erase and overtake intersex discussions on the medical abuse of intersex infants. and i cant help but wonder why you would feel the need to do that.

[ineffabildaddy]

if you’re posting fanart/fanfiction/meta/gifs/any kind of fan content for the first time or without a large following, please don’t be afraid to tag me or dm it to me - i would love to check it out & tell you what i like about it:-) it’s vital that you know how important your contributions are and i want to make that happen for you so please let me<3

[heartisbrave]

bottoms doesn’t need a sequel but I need another movie with the exact same cast and crew. time for gay people to have their own brat pack

[godsfavoritescientist]

I've been seeing a bunch of people adding disclaimers to their billford posts clarifying that they have critical thinking skills about abuse and abusive relationships, and I 100% understand that impulse. When I first made this blog I added disclaimers like that onto nearly everything. But, if it makes the folks adding those disclaimers feel any better: after I stopped writing essays trying to prevent people from taking my billford posts in bad faith, absolutely no one got mad at me in my inbox or on any of my posts, and I've been posting about billford for years now. In my experience the majority of people who are uncomfy with this ship nowadays will simply block and move on. Some folks will disagree no matter how many disclaimers you add, and that's ok

[takethelx3]

WIP I'm not going to find time to finish bc busy. Sad.

[astralhope]

Yuma's unshakable trust in Astral makes me cry every time

[dukeofthomas]

"Angry robin" "violent robin" "misbehaving robin" shut up and accept my alternative; spunky Robin. Determined and head strong, can out-stubborn the Batman, has a strong moral-backbone and does what he thinks is right regardless of what anybody else says, Robin. Jason who was sassy and quippy and made crude jokes with a smile on his face. Jason who hid in Bruce's cape and whispered gossip to him. Jason who, if Bruce refused him something, could keep bothering endlessly until Bruce caved. And also dramatic Jason. If Bruce tells him no, it becomes a whole theatrical show; a monologue, a narration, embellishments, and falling onto the floor in his grief upon the fact his cruel father has denied him once again.

(Jason who has suffered through abuse and homelessness and poverty and starvation, who is the Fight out of Fight or Flight, who's built up defenses and walls and when pushed and triggered responds with the thing that's always protected him; anger. He's sweet and kind and funny, and when he sees a pimp hitting a prostitute he gets furious and responds with violence.)

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

do you think that what the doctor usually feels for companions, rather than romantic or sexual attraction, might just be idolisation?

[thefabledpheasant]

Let me know your thoughts/reasoning in the tags!

[rmbunnie]

Red Hood Characterization

This is really long so I'm putting a cut here, I've been thinking about Jason Todd's character motivations and the question of whether or not his actions are based in a Moral Code (I don't think so, not to say he's without any morality) and I talk about that in more depth here.

I saw someone say on here that Titans: Beast World: Gotham City was some of the best Jason Todd internal writing they'd seen in a while, and I've been a Red Hood fan for 8 years or so now? pretty much since I read comics for the first time, so I went and checked out and I thought it was good! The way the person I saw talking about it as if it was rare and unusual made me wonder though, because as well-written as i thought his stances on crime were, there wasn't really anything in it that went against the way I conceptualize Jason?

This kinda plays into a larger question I've been thinking about for a while with Jason though, which is that, do people think that the killing is part of a fundamental worldview that motivates him a la batman, and that worldview is the reason he does the things he does?? Because 8 years ago i was a middle schooler engaging with fiction on the level that a middle schooler does, so I simply did not put much thought into it beyond "poor guy :(" but ever since I actually started trying to understand consistent characterization, I don't really see Jason as someone who's motivated by a moral code in his actions the way batman or superman is!

tbh my personal read is that he's a very socially-motivated guy, his actions from resurrection to his Joker-Batman ultimatum in utrh always seemed to me like every choice made leading up to his identity reveal was either a. to give him the leverage and skill necessary to pull off his identity reveal successfully, or b. to twist the knife that little bit more when he does let Bruce find out who he is. Like iirc there's a Judd Winick tweet like "yeah tldr he chose Red Hood as his identity because it's the lowest blow he could think of." And I think that's awesome, I think character motivations rooted so deeply in character's relationships and emotions are really fun to read! I also think it's where the stagnation/flatness of his character comes from in certain comics, because if his main motivation is one event in one relationship that passes, and he is not particularly attached to anything in his life or the world by the time that comes to pass, it's a little harder to come up with a direction to go with the character after that, because there isn't much of a direction that aligns with something the character would reasonably want? But I do think solving this by saying "all of the morally-off emotionally driven cruelty he did on his way to spite Batman was actually reflective of his own version of Batman's stance that's exactly the same except he thinks it's GOOD to kill people" isn't ideal. To be fully honest, it seems to me like he never particularly cared one way or the other about killing people to "clean Gotham of crime," he just did everything he could to get the power necessary to pull off his personal plans, and took out any particularly heinous people he encountered along the way (like in Lost Days.) Not to say I think the fact he killed people keeps him up at night anymore than everything else in his life events, I just never really thought he was out there wholeheartedly kneecapping some dude selling weed or random guy robbing a tv store for justice.

Looping wayyy back to my question, Is this (^) contradictory to the way he's written/the overall average perception of the character? Because like I enjoyed his writing in Beast World i have zero significant issue with anything there, I just didn't believe it would be a hot take, like yeah, that is Jason. It's been a while since I've read utrh and lost days, but I don't think my takeaway directly contradicts either of those too bad iirc. Idk all this to say I think Jason killing and being alright with killing is an obvious and objective fact, but i guess i've always seen it as more of a practical tactic than a moral belief, and I think taking the actions made during the lowest points of a character's life where he is obsessively focused on this ONEEEE thing and trying to apply it as a Motivating Stance to everything he's done after that, doesn't really follow logically for me.

[kyouka-supremacy]

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