#JUST HAVE A CONVERSATION

[honesttoglob]

Cesare, and the underworld by extension, believes Steve caused the Kellwasser event, a global extinction event, on purpose, and the set up a sytem of Watchers to monitor the planet for other trickster entities so no similar event ever happens again. They've been monitoring Steve under the Earth ever since (hence the line from DOWN "Chaos Gods Rise From The Deep", they believe Steve is a god of chaotic destruction), and make him Cesare's #1 priority when they sense that he's heading back up to the Earth's surface. Cesare genuinely believes Steve is an evil entity bent on wiping out life on the planet for a second time, which is why he doesn't pull his punches when trying to catch him. However, Cesare begins to doubt what he's held as truth for a thousand years when Steve shows a lack of knowledge/understanding of the fact that he's been under the ground for millions of years (if Steve was unconscious all that time, it could have seemed like only a moment that he was down there) and also calling into question whether or not Steve even remembers/intentionally caused the extinction event in the first place. If this is the case we'll just have to wait and see how Cesare reacts to finding out that he's been "living" a lie for the past thousand years. Him saying "Did you not know?" in response to Steve's confusion while in his jail cell makes me think he may possibly have a change of heart. I doubt the Underworld will take Steve's word at face value, obviously, but Cesare seemed convinced, or at least willing to be convinced, for a moment there.

[beebfreeb]

Messaging people for the first time is so hard. What am I supposed to say? Like, "You seem really odd and your blog intrigues me. Do you want to have philosophical conversations or perhaps talk about fictional characters?" What! Whatever. I will just follow you back and stare at your blog with my big beautiful brown eyes.

[runawaymarbles]

The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.

Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.

[beepboopappreciation]

Is this anything

[nouverx]

"I want to eat you" is their love language and you can't change my mind

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Must be a Sugondese joke.

[gayrudeboys]

yesterday i was ringing up an old man at work and he asked if i wanted to see his pride and joy, pulled out his wallet, and in the place where you’d keep a picture of like your family he had this

[lesbianfakir]

You’re placed in a room with an animal. The door is closed and you cannot leave. The animal is completely calm and has no intent of harming you. You are in no danger unless you provoke the animal in some way.

[trans-androgyne]

I’d just like to ask folks to have a little more sensitivity about the “Tampon Tim” stuff—the way Donald Trump and U.S. conservatives are making fun of the democratic vice presidential candidate for putting free tampons in boys’ bathrooms. My girlfriend broke the news to me as though I was supposed to laugh, and it wasn’t until she saw the look on my face that she realized how personal this was to me as someone who’s advocated for menstrual products in men’s restrooms at my school and lobbied for access in prisons in my state. This is about trans guys and I want people to remember that.

I remember seeing a Kaitlin Bennet video where she went around smugly asking people if they thought tampons should be in men’s restrooms, with the obvious intended answer being of course not. We’re a joke to them; being connected to menstruation and menstrual products is already considered embarrassing for women, but for men, it’s downright humiliating and disgusting. As people who need tampons, who can get pregnant, who have breasts, but claim to be men, we are considered a perversion of the sex-gender binary. We cannot exist, and they make that clear. When you leave trans men and mascs out of these conversations, such as by pivoting to jokes about fictional cis men, you are contributing to our erasure. Please just remember who is actually harmed by these sentiments, and listen to our perspectives on it. Thank you.

[castielsprostate]

i hate you "influencers", i hate you tiktok, i hate you "content creators", i hate you "unalive" and "s€x" and "dr/ügs", i hate you instagram, i hate you consumerism, i hate you family friendly, i hate you puritans, i hate you facebook, i hate you family vloggers, i hate you violating other people's privacy, i hate you modern day social media

[technically-human]

Payneland² 

[crookedfandomquill]

This is very situational, and sadly may not be realistic for everyone, but I need y’all to understand that a very important part of political activism is fucking talking to your conservative or moderate friends and family.

My dad voted for Trump in 2016. He’s a middle class white evangelical from Arkansas. He raised me with conservative Christian values, just like his parents raised him. When he voted Trump, he was holding his nose, but he didn’t feel too bad about it, and went on to vote red down the ticket in the 2018 midterms, as well.

But I started college in 2017. Higher education and independence changed everything for me, and I went home over holidays and summers with fire in my belly and a thousand arguments ready at the drop of a hat, to my father’s dismay.

I remember crying in my room after emotional, intense arguments with him. I told him over and over that I felt betrayed by his choice to vote for a man who admitted to sexually assaulting women, who built his platform on dehumanizing immigrants and the disabled, who spread overtly-racist rhetoric, who flouted the values of kindness and self-discipline that I’d been raised on. And my dad always had some justification about the “greater good”: fighting against abortion, bolstering the economy, getting other Christian politicians into office.

But over time, as we grew further apart and I lost my will to discuss anything with him at all, he softened. He started asking me why I thought the way I did about the things we disagreed about. He would listen to my answers without interruption, and mull them over afterward instead of expressing his own opinion. And all the while, he watched the Trump presidency become cruel and absurd and devastating.

The first time he openly expressed regret to me, I had come home for a weekend after Kavanaugh was confirmed to SCOTUS. My dad realized he had helped elect a man who preyed on women… and that man had opened the door to more predators. I can’t tell you what it felt like for him to admit that he’d made a mistake, not just in voting for Trump but in defending him for so long. We kept arguing, but it was more debating than fighting. I knew he was capable of seeing my side of things, even if it took a while, and he knew I wasn’t just a sensitive college student with shallow new ideas about the world.

And then 2020 hit. Specifically, George Floyd was murdered, and the events that followed played out on the national stage. My dad was incredibly shaken by it. He asked me if I had any books from college about racial issues. I loaned him The New Jim Crow, one of the required readings for my Race and the Law class. Then I gave him Just Mercy. Then he watched the documentary 13th. Then he joined a racial harmony group he learned about through one of the few Black families at our church and insisted our whole family come. He held up signs at a protest against Confederate monuments in our conservative southern town. In three years, he went from defending Trump’s comments about “Black-on-Black crime” to publicly advocating for racial justice and opposing the death penalty.

We went together to vote in the 2020 primaries. I couldn’t help asking who he’d voted for; I didn’t even know if he’d asked for the Republican or Democratic ticket. He admitted he’d voted for Bernie. fucking. Sanders, then made me promise not to tell my grandma he’d voted liberal. When the election rolled around in November, he voted Biden. I’m sure he held his nose to do it, just like he held his nose voting in 2016. But I know he doesn’t regret it.

I am, of course, unbelievably lucky to have a parent who loved me enough, and was empathetic enough, to choose his relationship with me over his strongly-held opinions. He kept searching for truth because, as much as he’ll deny it, he’s a very smart and curious person. No degree of intelligence or curiosity makes you immune to propaganda, especially if you were raised not to question the party line. It’s easy to dismiss our conservative, conspiracy-pilled loved ones as stupid, hypocritical, and cruel. Sometimes they are. But sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they will bend to keep their relationships from breaking. Sometimes, if they can be made to understand that their beliefs and actions are harming someone they love, they will make concessions. And sometimes they just need one person in their life to put a foot down, to be vulnerable and assertive and argumentative, to bring the impact of their politics close to home.

As the most important election of our lifetimes approaches, do not put peace over progress. If you have someone like my dad, someone who is good-willed and smart and loves you more than their own opinions, tell them how you feel. Tell them what their choices will mean for you, for your friends, for your community. Tell them what they could lose: your trust, your affection, your respect. Don’t avoid conflict if it could be productive. Because my conflict with my dad didn’t just win him over–it won over my moderate mom and one of my conservative brothers. And it put us in community with other like-minded people and led my parents to a healthier and kinder faith.

All of this to say, there is hope in conflict. There is hope in our relationships with people who think differently from us. There is hope in exposing your fear and anger and pain to people you love. And hope is a form of activism.

[bluegiragi]

aware (part 2)

early access + nsfw on patreon

[kittykatninja321]

Jason does reach out to people it’s just that the reaching out often involves dramatic theatrical violence. The final confrontation in under the red hood was Jason’s version of reaching out to Bruce. It’s not like Bruce was ever going to be the one to be like “hey let’s sit and talk about your death and why you’re mad at me”. Yes it did involve kidnapping and possible murder suicide plans but hey at least he started the dialogue agshshshs

[quantumshade]

there's an interesting thing rtd said from the commentary about the "real mom" line:

i get not liking the line but like. it's an intentional mistake and an intentional character choice, and something we'll return to in the future, and that seems like important context to have when talking about the episode.

[bonesaints]

zevran 💀💀💀