#I'd say responses like this from antis baffle me but they really don't

[helluvabinge]

Oh calm the fuck down.

A. This is a reblog, not a repost. Reblogs do not show up in searches or tracked tags, so literally no one on the main HB tags is seeing your post because I added tags on mine. Tags on reblogged posts serve one function and one function only - organizing posts on your own blog.

B. If you want to stand by the claim that you're pointing out the "truth" about Stolitz, put up or shut up. I came to this discussion with receipts and completely eviscerated your arguments with silly little things like reading comprehension, critical thinking, and logic. But sure, I'm only saying these things because I'm just so sad that a stranger on the internet doesn't like the same ships that I do.

I've said it before (like... literally in the post you reblogged, not that I think you read it) and I'll say it again. You don't have to like Stolitz. That doesn't offend my sensibilities. It's not everyone's cup of tea and I legitimately don't care. Dumb arguments, on the other hand, always offend my sensibilities, no matter what they're in response to. And while I don't like to dwell on that shit, sometimes I do feel the burning desire to say something. Which brings me to...

C. There's a block button right there. Feel free to use it. No one's forcing you to defend your arguments or engage with people who disagree with you. You can go on being wrong without being bothered by anyone who will ever challenge your opinions. I honestly don't care if you block me. Have fun. Adios. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

The way "Look My Way" has no purpose for existing besides being a Stolas pity party. I'm gonna dissect some lyrics I hate.

"A deed we forged to mutual gain." Excuse me while I throw up <3. You mean how Blitzo has to have sex with you or else he won't be able to do his job? Is that what you mean?

"What's left for me and my broken heart, if I cannot have you?" Oh I don't know, maybe your daughter?

"Unless it's me, and no matter what in this world I could give, it's not enough to save you from the walls you've conjured up to live." ....Maybe he doesn't want to date you because you forcing him to have sex with you?

"I don't care if you're of lower station, or primed to state my dark temptations" Ah the hellfire scene, the perfect example on how Stolas fetishizes imps. Also, nobody really seems to have a problem with Stolas and Blitzo being together? Except in Ozzie's, nobody seems to care about it.

"Why can't you understand? Let me explain!" Are you seriously asking him why can't he understand that you love him when you've only shown interest in his body and literally called him your impish plaything.

Yeah I'm not feeling bad for Stolas, this song just made me hate him more <3

[ourladyofmaplemurder]

Riverdale is Bad and I’m So Smart

So, I was going to make a response video to Friendly Space Ninja's video on the finale...but honestly, there are just other things I'd rather do with my time...

I did, however, write a script for the video. You can read that here if you wish.

The short version is that people who talk about art the way he does are fucking idiots and I'm tired of being nice about it. If you don't know what you're talking about, either figure it out or shut the fuck up. **And let me clarify: There is a big difference from expressing a personal opinion to friends and standing on authority with a huge platform to provide "critique". Huge difference. Not understanding or not liking the finale is totally valid, (It wasn't necessarily what I would have done with the final season) but what makes me angry about this guy in particular is that he positions himself as an authority on media criticism and analysis. He then provides the shittiest fucking examples of both. I can't stand it.

Hi. So. Our dear friend Friendly Space Ninja put out another video about Riverdale. This time, he took it upon himself to discuss the finale. Anything for a click, right, buddy?

Well, he made all sorts of claims about the finale and the final season. He gave his thoughts on the show as a whole. And all of it, dear viewer is entirely worthless. Strong statement, I know, but hear me out.

He didn’t watch the latter half of season 5, nor season 6 at all. He didn’t even watch all of season 7. He watched the first few episodes with specific expectations and when those were not met, he skipped to the end only to be baffled by its conclusion, claiming that it was all meaningless and even going as far as to “explain” quote unquote that Angel Tabitha’s rework of the timelines erases the other shows that Roberto Agurrie Sacasa has made. This, by the way, demonstrates such a lack of understanding of the surface level plot, that I can’t even respond to it.

For these reasons, I will not be refuting his assertions as I did in my last video response to him. It’s simply not worth it. His video is so deeply stupid that picking it apart would be giving it more credit than it deserves.

I was very diplomatic in my last response video, but I really don’t wish to be this time. I really don’t think it’s worth it.

However, I would like to say a few things, just to give you a sense of why I am so fucking angry.

Firstly, I’d like to talk about the work of Barnett Newman. In particular, I’d like to talk about Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III. The first time I saw this painting, or even just paintings like it, I scoffed and said, “Why is something like this in a museum? It’s stupid. It’s just red, yellow, and blue. Is this even art?” Years later, however, I learned an interesting story about this painting.

In 1986 the painting was vandalized in an anti-Semitic attack. Daniel Goldreyer attempted to restore the painting in 1991. Should be easy, right? I mean, it’s just three colors.

However, the effort proved utterly unsuccessful as the depth of the color was incredibly difficult to replicate. The skill required to create this painting was far more than the untrained eye could perceive.

The first time I saw this painting, I did not understand it and condemned it as stupid because I was an arrogant prick.

And I’m sure hundreds of thousands of people who also don’t understand painting would agree with such a dismissive sentiment.

But just because I have millions of people agreeing with me doesn’t mean I know anything. It just means a lot of people don’t understand painting. That’s it.

Friendly Space Ninja’s video on Riverdale is the equivalent of someone looking at this painting and calling it stupid without understanding anything about abstract expressionism, painting techniques, and the works of Neoplasticism that this series was responding to.

It is watching Sunset Boulevard and complaining there is no color.  

It is the equivalent of an incel giving you dating advice.

But let me address Mr. Space Ninja directly and I won’t use any metaphors because I want this to be understood.

More than making a stupid response to Riverdale, your crime, Mr. Space Ninja, is arrogance. You look at a piece of art, you are utterly baffled by it, as you yourself say in the video, and you assume that the art must be the stupid one. It couldn’t be that it’s going over your head. No. It must be meaningless because you can’t grasp its meaning.

This is very troubling and also quite sad.

Though, I suspect you have no interest in providing useful insight into the works you discuss. It’s far more lucrative to provide inflammatory confirmation bias and, at the end of the day, that’s all you’re really doing. And to be clear, that is an insult. Wouldn’t want you to miss that. <3

Now, I also watched Alex Meyer’s video on the finale as well out of curiosity, as he also has a large platform. I haven’t watched his other videos because they seemed overtly negative about the show and I figured they wouldn’t be even remotely enjoyable. Curiosity won out though and honestly, though the sacred cow he is mocking is mine and thus, I disagree…I can’t fault him for this. There was a lot of care and thought that went into this. Even if he thinks the show is silly (and it certainly is) there’s a clear affection for it.

Not only that, but towards the end of the video he says this: “Time will be kind to your show. And all the chucklefucks like me with our kneejerk reactions? That's all going to fade away."

He also acknowledges the fact that there might be more to it than just the silliness. He doesn’t talk about it because he prefers to joke about the show rather than analyze it. He’s a jester, not a scholar. I could never fault him for that.

But I also don’t think anyone in their right mind would consider this critique. This is a comedy bit. And I’m not saying that comedy is less important or valuable than analysis. Not at all. It’s just different.

Anyway. Friendly Space Ninja. Fuck you.

[sapphire-weapon]

I want to ask this bc youve been in the fandom for longer and I'd like your analysis of this as a social phenomenon.

So the tweet that was deleted was a mutual saying Ada is an anti-hero and she is important to the narrative but she is not part of the main cast. He was attacked by so many ppl he deactivated.

Most of the responses were "Keep Ada out of your mouth, talk abt your fav". What is this lmao. When did expressing your opinion on a character from a videogame become such a big deal.

Is this new in the fandom? Bc God knows I scroll past dumb takes all the time bc like you keep saying, nothing we say here truly matters and defending your fav character to death or bragging abt how many likes your edits have on TW or TT aint gonna make a difference. Capcom aint really looking.

They're so quick to jump to defend pixels. Is it projection? They think they're the character or sth so it feels like theyre being attacked? It truly baffles my mind bc it got super ugly.

This is a new thing...ish. There was always "Ada's a bitch who manipulated Leon" discourse, but Ada fans always historically celebrated her anti-hero status. It was one of the main things they liked about her character.

This strikes me as the younger generation not knowing what an anti-hero is. Because it's not being taught in schools anymore. They don't realize that an anti-hero still performs heroic acts and is generally looked at as a protagonist. They looked at it and probably read it as "the opposite of a hero." And that's not their fault. But as a Vegas folk, if I were to bet on this, that's what I'd put my money on having happened.

Also bragging about engagement on your fan edit isn't a new phenomenon, but this generation takes it far more seriously than mine did. My generation looked at numbers purely as clout within the fandom or a mark of quality of their work. This generation thinks their numbers mean that Mr. Capcom himself is going to see it and make their headcanons canon. It's insanity to me.

But in terms of an overall jumping to defend pixels? Oh yeah that was always a thing. The Ada vs Claire arguments got so viciously misogynistic in a way that outperformed fetish anon, even. But it wasn't constant, because social media didn't exist. These arguments happened between 2-4 people at a time in multi-paragraph essays on livejournal and various forums -- not single-sentence dogpiles of constant bombardment against one fucking person.

Social media has made fandom demonstrably worse in every way. It has done nothing to improve or build on fandom. It has only eroded the experience and made it shittier.

[enbyleighlines]

Leigh plays Tellius prt 19

We are in the final arc of part 1 of Radiant Dawn! Which starts with this terrifying scene of Tormod almost losing his surrogate father all because Izuka is up to his racist bullshit again. I'm so glad that Rafiel was around for this.

That said, I feel like this is sort of beside the point, Tormod. I do know that he goes on to say that the feral drug destroys a laguz's sense of self, but I feel like that part should have gone first. That seems like the more important bit. Anyway, the fact that Tormod chose to stick around after this is baffling. If someone tried to turn my surrogate parent into a mindless zombie, I'd probably be committing murder.

I am kind of interested to see how the feral drug might affect one of the Branded. We know how they affect laguz, and how they affect beorc (via Renning), but how would it affect someone of mixed decent? I like to imagine that it would transform them, but instead of turning them into a full dragon, bird, or beast, it turns them into something in-between, kind of like a werewolf situation.

Here comes the biggest douche in town. I feel like his character art in this game is drastically different from his art in PoR. In PoR, he gives off the vibes of a grumpy chef. I much prefer this art, because it makes him look like the self-righteous bastard we all know him to be. I cannot wait to destroy him.

Next was the solo Micaiah map. I did have to redo this one once, only because Micaiah failed to dodge a series of hits, despite the enemy's low hit percentage. Ah, but that's Radiant Dawn in a nutshell.

Alder always bewilders me. He doesn't seem to be much of a character, but then here he does this, and even has this arguably touching bit of dialogue with Jarod. If only Jarod wasn't an absolute monster of a human being. Otherwise I might feel something other than disappointment that we don't get to kill Jarod here. I know this would make an anti-climatic ending to part 1, so he has to survive here so that we can do the big battle in the next chapter. But man. The fact that he could have died here but doesn't is such a tease.

Micaiah, I love you, I really do. I know your core character trait is your compassion. But this man is responsible for all the pain and suffering of the Daein people. Just let the Black Knight execute him. Again, I know it would make the story less interesting, but Micaiah. Jarod needs to die.

Oh Pelleas, you adorable awkward bean. But I have to give credit where credit is due. This takes a lot of courage, courage his spineless body does not usually possess. And though his speech starts out rocky, in the end he does a much better job that I could have done. So kudos to you, Prince Pelleas!

The next chapter is the finale of part 1! But before getting to the map, I'd like to go through my Radiant Dawn babies to compare their stats to their averages and see how they're progressing, so I'll do that in part 20.

Ciao!

[darael]

Made it to a desktop machine, so I can give a better response and consolidate from a few points in the thread (and a couple from another branch). This is gonna be a long one! But first, your essay:

Opening with two and a half paragraphs of well-poisoning to the effect that anyone who doesn't agree with you is bourgeois and opposes real socialism while claiming that theirs is the real socialism is… certainly a choice. It is likely to be persuasive to those who already agree with you totally, but to put anyone else off. I'll certainly try to give your arguments a fair shake in spite of that, but I'm only human, so I acknowledge that seeing this has likely biased me against your essay. I've dealt with that kind of argument too many times in other contexts (largely dealing with Christofascists) to respond otherwise. I do not claim this makes you wrong; I mention it more with the intent that you can use the feedback to make it more persuasive.

On the subject of style, and again as feedback rather than argument, I'd suggest phrasing footnotes 3 and 6 as "see 2" and "see 7", respectively. More concise and still unambiguous. Also footnote 4 is blank? Probably want to at least put in a placeholder there. Okay, now back to substance:

The implementation of state capitalism, however difficult it may be to do successfully, ultimately benefits the workers, as developing the bourgeois means developing the proletariat.

"Developing the bourgeoisie is socialist because the proletariat sees some incidental benefits"? Really? You could have made a much stronger argument here that developing the proletariat will necessarily benefit everyone including the bourgeoisie, since the conditions of the proletariat form an effective floor on the conditions of the general population, and therefore the simple fact that something can benefit the bourgeoisie is not itself evidence that it is anti-socialist — but for some reason you chose instead to lean on something that is also used as a (supposed) defence of capitalism (and I don't mean SC): that empowering the bourgeoisie benefits the proletariat. If this were true, we'd have had a successful global revolution already, because the proletariat would by the same token have gained enough power to overthrow the whole structure. This decision (passing up a better argument in favour of an obviously-fallacious one) baffles me.

I intended to go into much more detail on the rest of the essay, but here's the thing: much of what you've written is actually a pretty solid defence of a proletarian state engaging with preexisting capitalist systems. Obviously I don't agree with all of your framing, but the core of the argument? Pretty good! Unfortunately, this is undercut by conflating that engagement with the imposition of market economies where they previously did not exist, by making brazenly false claims like that no leader of any socialist state including real ones that have existed which you insist were socialist could possibly gain outsize control over the state's policies even when they are well-documented to have done so, and by the previously-mentioned well-poisoning.

There's more I could say but given the tone of your essay I don't think you'd be willing to listen, so I'm going to move on to some lingering things from earlier posts:

One thing is that you earlier said "china is socialist, cry about it" in response to my paraphrasing you as "The US and its allies lie a lot about their enemies [true] therefore you should disbelieve all criticisms of those enemies because they're socialist and therefore in the right [false]" — I think you misunderstood, which is on me, because I wasn't entirely clear. I wasn't actually saying at that point that "they're socialist" is false, but rather that "they're socialist and therefore in the right [implicitly, automatically in all things]" and "you should disbelieve all criticisms of those enemies because[…]" are false. I do argue that claiming the PRC is socialist when it does not give control over the means of production to the workers but rather to an internal ruling class is wrong, but that's not what I was saying at the time. I could completely agree that the PRC is socialist and still raise the objection that I did.

In that same reblog, you said:

i am not, in fact, saying to ifnore all criticisms of the prc. i am saying to ignore the imperialist lies of the usa and its allies.

…but when you de facto define anyone making a criticism of the PRC as a US ally telling imperialist lies, this is a distinction without a difference. Put it this way: the fact that the US and its allies are willing to tell lies to smear the PRC — which, again, is undeniable; they do so routinely and I don't claim otherwise — does not necessarily mean that everything they claim is a lie. If the PRC does something that (nearly) everyone can see is bad, the US and its allies will capitalise on the opportunity to make legitimate criticisms. We can still point out, in such a situation, that they're hypocritical by doing so, but the simple fact of their joining a criticism does not ipso facto mean it's an imperialst lie. It means one should look into it, because there's a decent chance it is — so I did, and my criticisms of the PRC's policies towards both political Tibet (the Xizang Autonomous Region) and ethnic Tibet (a larger area, and we'll come back to that) are based on what I've learned in so doing.

Speaking of ethnic Tibet, which includes not just the Tibet/"Xizang" Autonomous Region but also parts of Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan provinces, together taking up most of the Tibetan Plateau, that situation raises some interesting questions about the PRC's regions being designated such that they represent the minority nationality most populous there. The portions of those provinces which are majority-Tibetan are all geographically contiguous with "Xizang", so why were they carved off? Why, if the PRC is encouraging local culture and not attempting to force it to become what they want, do Chinese leaders speak repeatedly of the need for "Sinicisation" of both Tibetan culture in general and Tibetan Buddhism in particular?

To conclude, then, I wish to remind you that I am not in fact taking the position that China is bad, or that all US and US-allied criticisms of the PRC are true, or anything of the sort. My position is that in this specific area the PRC's policies are harmful and act in opposition to the genuine liberation of the Tibetan people, and that we do not need to pretend otherwise for our rejection of the many false criticisms to hold up.

whatever you think about the PRC or the CPC, if you try to equivocate between usamerican imperialism and 'chinese imperialism' you out yourself as knowing absolutely nothing about history!