#Probably only post ill make on real crime

[zero-day-s-sober]

rip dylan you woulda loved edblr

[elsa-fogen]

hi ! i have a question, i was wondering something when it comes to your 'breakfast au'. ive read through a lot of this, and ive seen you and multiple other people state velvette "deserves" this? that just confused me in general, because out of all the people in the show, velvette probably has done the least amount of bad things. so how would she deserve this? i saw a few people saying its because of the love potion thing she collaborated with valentino on, but i dont really think thats a valid point. given it states in the wiki that its unconfirmed what that actually was. (ill send an image of where it says this.) it couldve been anything. and given velvettes line of work, (fashion, social media) id assume itd be some sort of perfume made to be taken orally. like perhaps a pheromone perfume which ive seen is commonly promoted by influencers, or just these types of people in general.

the next point i saw was somebody saying shes a narcissist? which, she really isnt. if you do any research on npd you could see that. velvette is shown to be confident, maybe even egotistical. she acts like a confident teenager would. she doesnt have npd.

ive seen people say she deserves this type of thing because shes friends with the vees..? which honestly would make no sense. so far in the show, shes shown to only really speak to vox. (which isnt bad, given vox hasnt exactly done anything big and bad like say alastor or valentino, or hell, even sir pentious' crimes.) everytime shes really talked about valentino, its been in a bad way. shes shown to not like him. so its not like those two are best friends or even anything more than business associates from what ive seen??

anywho, i was just a bit confused. i was also a bit confused on alastors behavior aswell. while yes, hes a horrible person, yes he eats people, YES he would do something like this; he has no reason to with velvette. he gains nothing from this. so whats the point of him doing it?? its not to spite vox, given alastor is shown in the show, not to give too fucks about vox 😭

I personally said that she deserved it only to spite that hater, i should've clarify that 😅

Alastor gets to mess with Vox and to make HIM suffer from screams (Valentino comes as a bonus). He GIVEs fucks about Vox tho, maybe not as much as the said TV man, but still. He spills the tea about Vox asking him to join the Vees, and does so clearly to humiliate him. The way he tells about it implies that. so he WOULD spite Vox if he had a chance that wouldn't take too much effort.

but still, Velvette isn't innocent. she's in hell and it has to be for a reason. she joined the Vees which indicates that she supports their activities. Velvette had no problem with Val killing her models except that it causes troubles to her show.

about Vox, he's also fucked up. And maybe he isn't killing people left ang right, he does many bad things, like hypnotizing people, stalkering and so on. He supports Valentino's attitude too. He knows what Val does to Angel and doesn't give a fuck.

Problem here is that you only count things shown on screen. While characters have life outside of it. And for now we've seen only Val being a horrible person. Bonus points that he's being mean to the chracter we know and love. Other Vees didn't get the time to show their fuckedupness. I know for a fact that in season 2 we'll get at least Vox' fucked up side. and, hopefully, Velvette's too, and people will finally stop thinking that they're poor little meow meows that ended up under bad Valentino's influence.

Also, as i was saying in the first post about this AU - Velvette really shouldn't have said that the can eat other overlords for breakfast (au namedrop!!!) in front if 2 real cannibals. They took that personal.

[apomaro-mellow]

Whispers of the Night

Steve is content to spread the word of the Lord among the people of Hawkins, unaware that a demon has their sights set on corrupting him.

Ficlet inspiration / Read on AO3

Steve started every morning by thanking the Lord for allowing him to wake up to a new day and promising to spread His good word as gratitude. Which started with watching the morning news while eating breakfast. The morning stories were usually quite tame, catching everyone up to speed in case anything happened the previous night. But in a town as small as Hawkins, it was mostly fluff pieces and traffic.

Before the program ended, it always capped off with a preview of stories to come later in the day. One of Indiana’s senators had been caught having an elicit affair with someone and he had to tune in at eight to find out. Also there was something spreading around the youth that parents should be on the lookout for, also at eight.

Sufficiently notified of what he needed for the day, he set out for his mission. He was entrusted by the Reverend Brenner, who led their parish and was a shepherd for lost souls. Today, Steve would be tending to his own flock, the inmates of the prison just outside the town limits. Usually Jason led the service there, but he had fallen ill and so it was passed on to Steve.

He was more than happy to oblige. Besides, Jason seemed to have ambitions to head a church much larger than Hawkins could hold. Something in a real city. Commendable, to be sure, but Steve was content with their little community. Their goals aligned nicely. As Father Brenner’s son, Jason might’ve been considered the one to take over when his dad stepped down. But he talked more and more everyday about building a grand temple of his own.

And if Father Brenner saw fit to pass his post down to Steve instead, well…

“Don’t get too proud now Harrington”, he said to himself as he parked.

He checked himself over in the mirror first before stopping himself. He’d already made sure his suit was ironed right and hair looked perfect. Well, as perfect as it could be anyway. His tie was blue and neither too loose nor too tight. He entered the prison and went through security just fine. The only thing he needed on him was the Good Book. 

A guard led him to the room he’d be working in and it was simple, as to be expected. They didn’t have a single room dedicated to worship, like a larger facility might. A fact Jason often complai-lamented about. But there was a podium for Steve to put his book and chairs for the men. 

“Did we finally scare that lil boy away?”, one of the inmates gruffed as he came in.

“Poor thing probably got tired of Gus always making passes at him”, said another.

“I only hoot at the pretty ones”, a third, apparently Gus said as he looked Steve up and down. “This one’s safe.”

Steve’s lips tightened together. He wasn’t offended that a random man thought Jason was prettier than him. Certainly not. Vanity was sinful and what did the opinions of his appearance matter? Especially from the likes of these men? Steve blew out a calming breath. They might be criminals, but they were still God’s children. And through him, they might be able to find salvation. He turned to the page Jason had bookmarked for him, planning on continuing from there. 

“I invite you all to join me in prayer”, Steve said, hands coming together as he bowed his head. 

He considered for only a split second that he was making himself vulnerable to these men and he didn’t even know what their crimes were. But there was a guard in the corner and surely they wouldn’t try anything with a clergyman.

Steve read the scriptures as he’d been taught and didn’t falter when the men’s eyes glazed over with what could only be boredom. In an effort to bring up the energy a little for both them and himself, he grabbed the book and walked from behind the podium, pacing back and forth. When he looked up from the pages to meet their gazes, he noticed most of them did seem more engaged. But their eyes were a little lower than he expected. Almost as if they were watching his-

“Ahem”, he cleared his throat while snapping the bible closed. “Let us end today’s service with the Lord’s prayer.” 

He checked the clock discretely and was relieved to find that his time was nearly up anyway. He led them in the closing prayer and then nodded to each of them. All seven. Not a grand congregation, but it was seven potential souls saved. Just as Steve was preparing to leave, he jumped and yelped. 

Someone had just smacked his ass.

“Jackson!”, the guard yelled, coming over.

“Worth it”, he grinned at Steve.

Steve took in the man who had touched him, looking so self-satisfied while Steve was red in the face. A few of the other men looked on appreciatively or with what could only be called jealousy.

“How’d it feel?”

“You could bounce a quarter off it.”

“Shit, I’d wear that ass out.”

“The slacks were a great choice, Father.”

Steve was escorted out before the remarks could turn more vulgar but the damage had been done. Had they ever done anything like that to Jason? If so, why had he never said-Well it was obvious why he’d never say anything. 

Once in his car, he deflated like a balloon. His butt still tingled. It didn’t hurt it was just…different. Steve very vividly remembered the last time he’d been spanked. He had been six. He couldn’t remember what he’d done, just that the lesson had stuck. Do bad things and you get the belt. Even now, as an adult, when he worried about making the right choice, his behind felt the phantom of his parent’s punishments.

This hadn’t felt quite like that. He certainly didn’t enjoy it, no of course not. But it was the principle. Who went around slapping people on the behind and then bragging about it to his buddies?

Steve shook himself as he went to his next stop. A mother of their church had asked for some help in guiding her son back to the path of light. It was an intervention of sorts and Steve had done these a couple times before. It didn’t always end nicely, but it was the effort that counted.

She welcomed him into her home, serving coffee in the living room while calling her son down. The Klines had moved to Hawkins just a few years ago and while Mr. and Mrs. Kline had become regulars quickly, Steve had only seen their son in passing while in town.

He looked just about a couple years younger than Steve, but there was an unease about him as he sat down on the couch next to his mother. Steve had the armchair.

“Where’s your whole…”, Kline Jr gestured to Steve’s body. “The costume?”

“My vestments are saved for church services or other special moments”, Steve explained. “But let’s talk about you. Your mother has expressed some concerns.”

“Devil worship”, Mrs. Kline said suddenly. “He and his friends participate in it and I’ve been telling him to give it up.”

“It’s not devil worship! It’s just a game!”

“Games can start innocent but end dangerously”, Steve said, hands clasped in his lap. He imagined the young man and some of his friends standing around a fire, or perhaps a pentagram made from rocks and calling upon Satan. Something that might seem silly to those who weren’t devout.

“No, it’s literally a game. It’s like, pretend. But with math and you get to make your own character. And mine doesn’t even believe in god, any god! Which means he doesn’t believe in the devil either.”

“They call that atheism and it’s a slippery slope”, Mrs. Kline said. “My sister told me all about it and you’re going to end up just like your cousin if you’re not careful…”

Mrs. Kline ended up taking over the conversation and Steve was left to simply nod and say ‘mhm’ whenever she deigned to turn to him. After about ten minutes, it began to grate on him. He did come to share the Lord’s perspective after all, not just sit and cosign whatever she had probably already told her son.

Then the son had an outburst that brought Steve back to the present. “You’re not even listening to me! That’s the problem! You don’t listen! You don’t even care. I’m not the way you want me to be.”

Mrs. Kline got silent. “...What do you mean?”

Her question was simple and yet the atmosphere shifted. The son looked to be going over the options in his mind before deciding to just stand up and walk off. “Nevermind. Forget it.”

He walked out of the house and seconds later they heard a car drive off and Steve figured that was the end of the visit. He thanked Mrs. Kline for inviting him into her abode and offered his prayers for her family.

When Steve got home that evening, he removed his suit jacket and then checked himself over in the mirror by the door. Normally he did this before leaving just in case there was something that kept him from being presentable. But now, he stood with his back to the mirror and twisted around. In his black slacks, his behind sat rather prominent. He was aware of his body. And he could somewhat understand that if this feature of his was found on a woman, he might be enticed by it.

What he didn’t understand was a man finding it attractive on another man. Hard time changed people he supposed. He was able to catch the news story of the evening. And it turned out that the danger threatening children was the same game Mrs. Kline was worried about. At the time, Steve couldn’t make neither heads nor tails of it. But in the hands of a professional journalist, he was able to learn more about Dungeons and Dragons. 

It did seem ghoulish as he listened to them explain how kids playing the game quickly lost touch with reality. Steve worried as he heard that this was happening across the country. But all he could do for now was take care of his town.

The last part of his bedtime ritual was prayers of course. And most days he was able to fall right to sleep. Tonight though, sleep alluded him. He tried to figure out why, today didn’t feel incredibly eventful besides that slap.

The slap.

To have one guy call him ‘not-as-pretty’ only for another to basically proposition him anyway. Could they make up their minds? Clearly they were all interested anyway. Steve saw the way they watched his behind. But such feelings were immoral. Man should not find pleasure with another man, even when women are unavailable.

And bodily pleasures like that were the devils’ wicked ways in the first place. Steve had been told so years ago, when his own father had caught him with his pants down. Steve hadn’t touched himself since, saving his seed for the woman who would one day bear his fruit. He hadn’t met her yet. But God would present her to him soon. 

Steve’s hopes usually led to sweet dreams, but tonight was different. He was at the podium again. The one in the prison. Except instead of sitting in front of him, the men were on all sides. Words from the day echoed in his head but he couldn’t remember the voice, asking him about his vestments. He needed to change into them. 

He had an audience, but there was nothing wrong with changing in front of men. He’d played on teams in school and spent plenty of time in locker rooms. His tie melted off and he undid the buttons on his shirt. The eyes on him felt hungry. What happened to him happened when he had been fully clothed. What would they do to him if he was naked?

Everything else faded from his body like mist and he was bare for the world. He didn’t want them to just look anymore he wanted them to..to…

Steve was on his back, surrounded by darkness. There was something there, above him, something with hungry red eyes.

He was on his front, rutting desperately into his mattress as the dream slipped away from him and his eyes blinked in the morning light. He froze when he realized what he was doing, still panting on his pillow as he came down from it. He moved his hips a little trying to remember what had happened to get him so worked up but couldn’t recall any details. Only a shadow. A dark phantom that had overwhelmed him and-

He stopped that train of thought when he noticed the wet stickiness inside his underwear. Lord, help him.

Part 2

Taglist

[utilitycaster]

In the end, it is misogyny but in the form of that Imogen (and most of the female cast, if we are being fair) gets reduced to just being a woman to the point that criticizing any real flaw, wrong doing, or "hey i personally maybe perhaps don't like that she did this" is turned into an attack on her because she is a woman, because after all, all women are perfect and so so dainty they must be protected (sarcasm)

Without mentioning the attacking real women in the name of the fictional one

It really is the "God forbid a woman do anything" but in it's worst form

Sorry for venting, been having thoughts about the fandom for the past 5 years

YUP. I do recommend Unlikeable Female Characters by Anna Bogutskaya which I devoured in like, one sitting over my winter break and posted a bunch of excerpts from but this discourse is extremely not limited to the CR fandom. I mean, think about all of the endlessly churning nonsense about the women of Gone Girl and Midsommar. I am going to see Love Lies Bleeding tomorrow and have steered well clear of really any discussion because I simply would like to see buff lesbians in a crime drama but apparently the discourse is rancid.

Of course there are people who assume ill of female characters while excusing men. That is absolutely a big problem. But again, we can barely talk about that. I recently made a post about how Laura is not a particularly chaotic player, and indeed is one of the most cautious players in actual play, and again I think there is a serious and important conversation to be had about how there's probably a reason why, say, Travis and Taliesin are more likely to make extremely bold moves, because they didn't get raked over the coals during C1 for stealing a cool broom from a guest character! I actually think Marisha has managed to hang on to some of her boldness and it makes her a stronger player but I would not have been surprised if she retreated after the hate she got from Keyleth. But yeah, in actual play, bold moves are pretty important. We can't even talk about how real-world misogyny holds back the actual actors without some moronic wretch being like "FIGURES THAT A MISOGYNIST CUNT LIKE YOU LIKES A MALE ACTOR."

When a character who is a man - or in some cases, characters who are not men but are played by men - does something people don't like we can say "wow, I didn't like this, but it was an interesting choice by the actor!" but we aren't allowed to either talk about the reasons why a real world woman might hesitate to play a character who does ugly things - because of the misogynistic backlash that will land specifically on her as a real person - nor can we compliment her for going for it and playing a complex flawed character, because how DARE you say a woman is anything less than some kind of Divine Feminine ideal. At best you're allowed a two-dimensional caricature of She's So Sweet And Good But Sometimes Gets Angry (this also happened to my friend Keyleth).

And this might reveal my own biases but like. I as a woman don't love being called self-centered, but that, personally, would probably lead me to some reflection. If you call me a girlfailure, even jokingly, I am going to break your nose. It's really telling that like...one of the absolute no-brainer "hey stop calling grown women girls" feminist tenets has gone by the wayside particularly with the set of people who think that meta that fails to put women on so high a pedestal they are untouchable is misogynist. They are awful towards women, fictional and real.

A line that always stuck with me from, bizarrely, a book about wordplay, was that Victorian men would treat women of their same classes as their superiors, but never their equals - they would coddle them and protect them but they wouldn't actually engage with their thoughts and foibles. (This happened to my friend Jester).

Anyway my personal solution is to keep going. On some level, as my previous post indicates, while I don't want the harassment it also only underscores my point, that a lot of these people are way more invested in being a dick to women on the internet than writing meta about the pretend women they think they like. I have to imagine they're doing this because either think they're entitled to meta they like from people who can actually fucking write it because god knows most of the people making this complaint have the most "if you can't dazzle them with brillance, blind them with the most purple-prose bullshit you can muster" attitude; or because they literally are just champing at the bit to attack women online with the ostensible veneer of "but it's FEMINIST to call THESE women cunts because they said my blorbo wasn't saintly and flawless." However, again, I know that I'm pretty bullheaded and forcibly unlearned the uh, patriarchal idea that women should not be confrontational. I do not blame people who look at this whole situation and say "I'm going to keep my thoughts to myself because this is so unpleasant."

[justice-flonne]

Twitter and the death of Media Literacy

As the original post now has reblogs turned off before this post came out of the queue, looks like I have to make my own

Lemme tackle picture number 2 first. Number one, what the HELL do you mean "normal mentally ill [woman]"?? There's no such thing. There's not even such a thing as normal non-mentally ill. Everyone is different and has different reactions and symptoms. and number two: where the fuck do you get off calling the author a sex pest for the "crime" of exploring her options in brothels (well, i guess maybe it is a crime, i forget how japan's laws are, but still. i better not hear you demanding more rights for sex workers while indirectly demeaning their jobs, ya nitwit)? Being gay (or even just non-conforming, and that's not even just about gender) in Japan, while not as bad as say, the Middle East, is not exactly a walk in the park. She probably at the time of writing didn't have many options, and everybody explores their sexuality in different ways. It's really messed up that you're calling the author a sex pest for describing her life, especially since she did nothing wrong (as in, her encounters were all consensual. again, don't fully know the laws regarding brothels there. i think it's a "we'll pretend we didn't see that" scenario)

This also kinda ties into the downright dangerous idea that an lgbt+ person, lesbians especially, can only be an innocent pure being. that kind of thinking can and HAS gotten people into horrible abuse scenarios

As for the "incest"... whoo boy, this is gonna be long:

Now, I have actually read this manga, and I can cite the pages with the supposed "incest" mentioned in the first pic. I'd elaborate, but I'm admittedly quite bad at that, so I'll let the comic speak for itself:

(forgive me if there's any errors in the alt text. it's late 😭)

As you can see, the author does not LITERALLY want to fuck her mother. She has childhood issues from not enough affection (elaborated elsewhere in the book, but I'm tired. read it yourself. i got these pages from a definitely legal website, so can you), and wants to be held and coddled. She even straight up says what she feels is abnormal and yearns for a woman NOT RELATED TO HER to do things with. She KNOWS what she feels is strange and wants to (and eventually DOES) grow from this. I could post more images, but i'm probably pushing my luck as is

Point is, you "adults" really, REALLY need to learn that depiction is not the same as endorsement. Not everything is as cut and dry as the Marquis de Sade. This is, as the damn title says, the author's experience with loneliness as a result of growing up with an emotionally distant mother in a society that is markedly different than America

please, PLEASE, learn to think critically, and i mean "critical" in a "english class analysis" kind of way (for lack of a better term), not a "this thing you like is bad and it offends me" "critical." It's alright to be uncomfortable with things and even to not like things, hell I myself am a HUGE hater, but please, don't throw a tantrum because a real person wasn't a smol bean like you hoped

holy shit i need to go to bed

[tanadrin]

[epistemic status: a bunch of semi-related thoughts I am trying to work out aloud] It has been noted countless times that reactionary politics rely on a feeling of threat: our enemies are strong and we are weak (but we are virtuous and they are not, which is why they’re our enemies!); we must defend ourselves, we must not be afraid of doing what needs to be done; we must not shie away from power generally, and violence specifically.

And there are lots of contexts--like when talking about the appeal of reactionary politics in the US before and at the beginning of Trump’s rise to prominence, or when talking about hard-on-crime policies that are a springboard to police militarization, or (the central example of all this in the 21st century) the post 9/11 PATRIOT-act terrorism paranoia that was a boon to authoritarians everywhere, and spurred a massive expansion of both control and surveillance in everyday life--where critics of reactionary rhetoric are chastised for their failure to appeal to the other side, because they come off as callous towards their concerns and their real fears and anxieties.

And while this might not be strategically correct, frankly, I think there’s a sense in which it is justified to be callous towards those concerns. Because those concerns are lies. They may be lies borne out of a seed of real experience (9/11 did happen, of course), but the way that seed is cultivated by focused paranoia, by contempt toward cultivating any sense of proportionality or any honest comparison of risk, the way it is dragooned into the service of completely orthogonal political goals (”the CIA/NSA/FBI must be able to monitor all private communications everywhere in the world, just in case it might prevent another 9/11″) chokes off any possible sympathy I might otherwise feel. American paranoia about another couple thousand lives being lost in a 9/11 like event resulted in a number of deaths literally multiple orders of magnitude larger in Iraq and Afghanistan. During the former, some years Iraq was suffering the equivalent of six or seven 9/11s a year.

So, any fear-driven policy must not (for example) say “to prevent disaster X happening again, we’re going to make it happen 270 times over to someone else.” That’s not reasonable. And “fear is a bad basis for crafting policy” is not exactly a revolutionary observation. There’s that probably-apocryphal story of a Chinese professor responding to Blackstone’s Ratio--you know, “better that ten guilty persons go free than one innocent person suffer”--with “better for whom?” Which is supposed to be this trenchant and penetrating question that makes you reexamine your assumptions. But it’s always struck me as idiotic. Better for society! For everyone! Because the law only functions well if it is seen as a source of order and justice, not as an authoritarian cudgel; because a society in which anxiety drives policymaking and legal responses to social ills is one that is in the process of actively devouring itself; because flooding the public discourse with language that dehumanizes criminals and makes it easy to separate the individual from universal principles like civil rights is an acid that destroys the social fabric.

Fear as a germ of reactionary politics manifests itself in lots of ways outside of both historical examples, like fascism, or more recent examples, like US foreign policy during the war on terror. Fear and its link to purity-attitudes, with a low level of scientific literacy in general, drives stuff like the organized anti-vaccine movement. In the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram of political tendencies, I’d argue it’s a big factor in the wellness-to-Qanon track. It’s a big part of tough-on-crime rhetoric, which in the American instance in particular also draws on an especially racialized form (cf. the “Willie Horton” ad). Fear and purity and anti-contamination anxieties are even big in opposition to nuclear power, because most of the public just has a really bad sense of what the comparative dangers of nuclear vs fossil fuel are; and because the former has been culturally salient since 1945 in a way the latter hasn’t, nuclear contamination feels much more threatening than fossil fuel waste, despite by any measurable harm the latter causing far worse problems, even before you factor in any risks from climate change.

I would like to argue in particular that true crime as an entertainment genre, and wellness culture, and fears about child abuse all contribute to reactionary politics--they are in themselves major reactionary political currents--in a way that cuts across the political spectrum because they are not strongly marked for political factionalism. A lot of the rhetoric both from and around true crime entertainment promotes the idea that violent crime exists, or at least can flourish, because of an insufficiently punitive attitude toward crime; one that can only be fixed by centering victims’ desire (or putative desire) for retribution in the legal process, by eroding the civil rights of the accused, and by giving the police and prosecutors more power. Obviously, this is just 80s and 90s tough on crime rhetoric repackaged for millennials; it centers individual experience a bit more and deemphasizes the racial component that made the “Willie Horton” ad so successful, but it posits that there is only one cause for crime, a spontaneous choice by criminals that has no causal relationship with the rest of the world, and only one solution, which is authoritarianism.

Wellness culture leverages purity concerns and scientific illiteracy in ways which are so grifty and so transparently stupid that it’s by far the least interesting thing on this list to me; its most direct harm is in giving an environment for the anti-vaccine movement to flourish, and I’m always incredibly annoyed when people talk about how the medical establishment needs to do more to reassure the public about vaccines’ safety and efficacy. Again, strategically, this may be correct; people dying of preventable disease is really bad. But doctors as a body didn’t promote Andrew Wakefield’s nonsense; doctors as a body didn’t run breathless article after breathless article about vaccines maybe causing autism; doctors as a body didn’t scare the bejezus out of folks in the 90s and then act all surprised when preventable childhood diseases started breaking out all over the place.

Although outside the whole anti-vax thing, I think there are lots of other harms that wellness culture creates. It tends to be fairly antiscientific; in order to sell people nonsense (because as a subculture it exists almost exclusively to sell people things) it has to discredit anything that might point out that it is selling nonsense. Whether the anti-intellectualism that flourishes in these quarters is a result of intentional deceit or just a kind of natural rhetorical evolution probably varies. But it is an important component of wellness culture to be able to play a shell game between “big pharma doesn’t have your best interests at heart,” “you don’t need your anti-depressants,” and “laetrile cures cancer.”

The way in which fears of child abuse are turned into a reactionary political cudgel probably actually annoys me the most; whether it’s Wayfair conspiracy theories, conservatives trying to turn “groomer” into an anti-queer slur, or just antis on tumblr, the portrayal of sadistic sexual threat aimed at children from an outside malevolent force is compelling only because the vast majority of child abuse and CSA comes from within families and within culturally privileged structures of authority like churches, and this fact makes everyone really uncomfortable, and no one wants to talk about it. I remember getting really annoyed during the Obama years when the White House wanted to talk about bullying and anti-LGBT bullying in particular, while studiously avoiding blaming parents and teachers in any way for it, despite the fact that all the coming out horror stories I know are from people’s parents turning on them.

Now, very conservative politics have always opposed dilution of a kind of privilege for the family structure; they envision a family structure which is patriarchal, and so dilution of this privilege is dilution of the status of patriarch. Very insular communities which cannot survive their members having many options or alternative viewpoints available to them, including controlling religions but also just abusive parents who want to retain control over their kids, also bristle at the idea of any kind of general society-wide capacity for people to notice how parents treat their children. But beyond that, I think our society still treats parents as having a right of possession over their children and their children’s identities, especially when they’re young, and bolsters that idea with an idea that the purity of children is constantly under threat from the outside world, and it is the parents’ job to safeguard that purity. The result is the nuclear family as a kind of sacred structure which the rest of society has no right to observe or pry open; and this is a massive engine of enabling the abuse of children. To no other relationship in our society do we apply this idea, that it should be free from “interference” (read: basic accountability) from the rest of society.

Moreover, the idea of childhood as a time of purity and innocence, which not only must be protected from but during which children must be actively lied to about major aspects of how the world works, is one of the last ways remaining to an increasingly secular culture to justify censorious and puritanical Victorian morality. It is hard to advocate for censorship to protect the Morals of the Christian Public, when nobody believes in the Morals of the Christian Public anymore; but “think of the children!” still works as a rallying cry, because of this nagging sense we have that age-appropriate conversations with children about adult topics will cause them to melt or explode.

In many ways, these anxieties on behalf of theoretical children are the ones I am most contemptuous of. Not because child abuse isn’t a serious problem--it is--but because the vector imagined for it is almost entirely opposite the one it actually tends to occur along. People who pretend that the primary danger to children is from strangers are usually woefully misinformed; people who pretend it is from media are either idiots or liars seeking a cover for their craving for censorship.

In conclusion: while it’s not possible to exorcise all our neuroses from our politics, anymore than we will ever exercise all our neuroses from our aesthetics, there are some we should be especially on guard against. A sense of threat, and anxieties which tie into concerns about purity and fears of contamination, are two big ones. These produce policies that are not only badly correlated with the outcomes they ostensibly want, but actually and severely destructive to them, in the same way that invading Iraq was actively destructive to any notion of preventing terrorism, saving American or Iraqi lives, or promoting political stability in the Middle East. And we should hold in healthy suspicion anybody whose politics seem to be driven by similar neuroses. Some merely believe very harmful things. Some are actually actively deceptive. None will achieve any of the higher aims they claim as justification for their beliefs.

[zeronetxt]

examples from this post below

Aro/Aces

Jason Todd. I'm fr heavy on this one because i'm gatekeeping him cough cough but to me (idc that its canon that he is not, if i ignore canon its not real) he seems like the type not to really gaf. and honestly, NOT EVERY SUPERHERO NEEDS TO HAVE A ROMANTIC ARC 🙄🙄 take notes from me, dc. i have an demi-aspec oc who is feral af and would totally smother jason with affection and he is thriving (he really isn't, hes a traumatised demon)

Chuuya Nakahara because NOWHERE IS IT MENTIONED (that i could find, at least) THAT HE HAS AN INTEREST IN WOMEN OR MEN. The only one i can think of that he would be interested in is dazai and i see that as a "pikachu! i choose you!" moment instead of a "i hate you, i want to be yours" type of thing. i'm not sure how to explain it, but like a forced crush since they have after all known each other for 7 years and literally dazai can anticipate his movements. (im talking about that one scene in the guild arc i think it was. "WHY YOU!")

Percy Jackson. I'm putting him as demi (still somewhat on the aspec tho yk?) because of his relationship with annabeth. idc, THEY ARE EACH OTHERS ENDGAMES. id say pretty much the same for annabeth, i mean, they knew each other for a while before they fell in love and started dating, but tbf, i have NOT even read the pjo series in a ehile sad face

Jouno Saigiku because i feel like his only interest is justice. i dunno how to expand on him, but yeah. i love jouno so much and if he really do be dead before i get a suegiku reunion, im firing everyone

Tetchou Suehiro. he's an (adorable) oddity in itself, but still serious. I don't think he'd be looking for a relationship, especially in his line of work. he is quite literally an overworker. MY BOY IS TRAINING EVEN DURING MEETINGS. however my one exception to 'bro has no feelings' is jouno. why? learn in the bi section of this (its quite obvious tho)

Ranpo Edogawa. Mostly because have you seen him? i'd say his only interests are solving crimes and his snacks (and obviously the ada). obviously he has more, but those are the main ones that come to mind. other than the (probably) one sided rivalry of ranpoe where i swear poe is the only one that says theyre rivals, i dont think that he's the type to make relationships with others outside of the ada. maybe the hunting dogs/pm if he really had to, but i kin him, and i say he is

Trans people (mostly just trans men, im sorry to my girlies 🥺)

just a not i want to put, i think i only put trans guy hcs bc i myself am transmasc lewl

Junichirou Tanizaki. Sorry, i feel stereotypical for saying this, but his body, my dude. also his style, in the manga, he wears a black top underneath his white vneck(?) whichh to me feels like its a binder. also i love that ranga and naomis relationship w him kinda makes me sad, but ill post my theory on that another time. and also his hair (beautiful and gorgeous btw) just makes me so happy w the little clips and stuff. baggy shirt my guy, great style.

Jason Todd SOMETIMES. i think i just want to relate to him a lil, because im a lil silly like that.

chuuya nakahara on occasion but i think its just because were the same height 🧍

ryuunosuke akutagawa because honestly a trans aku would be interesting but not that relevant. idk, i like the idea of it

Bisexuals/Pansexuals

ATSUSHI NAKAJIMA!!! I MEAN THINK ABOUT IT. lucy??? akutagawa??? BROS HAD HEAVY MOMENTS WITH BOTH OF THEM. i can not see him as anything but a disaster bisexual honestly.

Jason Todd (again HA). Seeing as people can be pan/bi as well as aro/ace, i see him fitting into that, maybe demi-bi or something. he doesnt really strike me as the type to fall in love quickly, but he doesnt really care what he falls for, he cares for whom he does. i am a jason todd hc kinnie

Michizou Tachihara. my goody, i dont ship it but tachigin is just right there. and the scene during the corruption arc w tanizaki (i am not romanticising this but i feel like i am, DEAD). i love the content w him, and also i noticed he and juni pretty much have the same shirt 💀 but also, bro has piercings and dyes his hair, does he just know he is gorgeous???

percy jackson, i'm not even gonna expand

Tetchou Suehiro because BRO AND JOUNO FR. not even gonna lie, if a man (tecchou) says that he would put me above justice for FIVE MINUTES, I WOULD FOLD. thats the main one for me. the other would be the pushups during a meeting. their moments are just cute, sue me

lol im too lazy to come up with i cant think of any more

[kesleyjo]

I'm having some finale wine and I think I've got it. My final resolute head canon of Riverdale.

Keep in mind I have not watched the end of season 5 through the end and have absolutely no intention to, but I've seen and heard enough about *gestures vaguely* all of that to still stand by this.

Disclaimer: I do not believe this is what the writers intended whatsoever. This is all my imagination. I do however believe in this canon whole heartedly and its as true to me as whatever RAS's vision is to him. You choose who to trust.

Okay so first and foremost the entire series is written by Jughead. It's all his writings that are probably all sitting in a google docs draft folder.

I justify this due to the following:

He is the narrator

The entire series is obsessed with Betty Cooper for good or ill (I'll get to it)

Its all kind of sort of been alluded to that its all Jughead's writings anyway. At least in S1, again. I'll get to the why of that in a second.

He started writing season 1 in his junior year (so a year after the events of the S1). He read In Cold Blood (on his own, not for class, very important to him that you all know this) and was like "Hey my town had a murder and I have some trauma around it, so I should totes do this." And thus S1 is born.

This is why that season is (relatively) more grounded and far more realistic than the rest of the series because its based on a real true thing that happened and the real feelings and emotions of people involved. It has the least amount of exaggeration (but enough, because Jughead) and has the most coherent plot, which would make sense since Jughead isn't making anything up, he is recalling events.

This is also the only season that directly ties Jughead's narration and the plot to the book Jughead is writing on page, and thus tying them both together. Because again, its a thing that really happened.

So the characterizations, motivations, and actions of everyone in season 1 is the model of how and how these characters actually are and are a base for further exaggeration.

Seasons 2-4 are also based on true events but are exaggerations/interpretations of things that really happened, but are altered to make them more interesting to Jughead's readers (heh).

I don't want this post to be a novel so here is a brief listing of that I am thinking here for some of the main plots (but if you have a plot you want me to fit into this canon let me know):

The Black Hood: When Jughead showed Betty his first manuscript (S1) the positive constructive criticism she gave was that, "True crime is really popular right now, so this fits in with the zeitgeist." And Jughead ran with it. Fred also had his first heart attack at this time...we all know where I'm going with that so I'll just leave that there. RIP.

Making Hal the Black Hood: Hal leaves the family after the Polly debacle and finding some racy pics on Betty's computer (she sent them to Jug, she wasn't a camgirl) and decides to start his life over with a woman who is far more moral (and probably like 2 years older than Polly)

The Serpents/Class War with Hiram: Not a gang, just those under the boot of the rich that Hiram tries to eradicate through good ol fashioned gentrification. Archie and Veronica also start spending more time doing rich people shit and that drives a divide between the two main couples of the core four. But less about political plots and more about teenagers growing apart because of different interests

Season 3: Putting this all together because Jughead was having a hard time finding a plot here. So he focused on Alice's new weird young boyfriend who actually ended up taking off with Polly (leaving her twins), his newfound obsession with DnD (Betty was exhaustedly supportive of this) and Kevin's endless talk about the new megachurch he just joined. He and Betty also started watching a lot of horror films and Hitchcock at the time which leads us to...

Season 4: He and Betty go off to different schools but its because of college, not because Jug is the chosen one (again see why he is writing all of this himself). He meets a lot of pretentious people that challenge his relationship with Betty and he turns it into a mystery.

So now we have made it to 4.17. Ugh.

Okay so Jughead has written all of this, and reading everything back feels that Archie and Betty (who go to the same college now and are friends again after growing apart after he dated Veronica) have grown too close and Jug self destructs.

He self sabotages so hard and makes a story up in his head that Betty would be much happier with Archie who is doing perfectly mediocre at college while Jughead flunked out.

So he and Betty break up after a lot of frustrated fighting.

And he begins to write Betty differently. Wildly differently.

(You can't tell me this doesn't make more sense than whatever the hell happened in the show.)

Jughead dejected from his failure at school and his breakup Writes on and off for the next few years. His next main attempt is S5. His attempt at more realistic writing.

(Its also after Betty enters his life again, because at her core Betty is his muse)

He works through his fictional frustrations of Betty and Archie as a possible couple (They never dated. Archie is actually a aromantic pansexual who does not do commitment) and realized that he made it all up and they have nothing in common.

Jughead and Betty get back together at the end of "Season 5" but Betty tells him that writing about their real life is what tore them apart, so he needs to not use their relationship in his writing anymore.

So Jughead decided to get weird and wildly experimental with his writing. And because Jughead is not a particularly good writer S6 and S7 are born.

Betty, absolutely running out of positive things to say about his last few writing attempts tells him that maybe these exaggerated versions of their lives that bear no resemblance to the real world have run their course, and he should try something new.

So Jughead wraps up this now unrecognizable series of writings and moves onto something new.

With Betty diligently serving as his editor. She got distracted with her new job and left him unattended for those last few seasons and look what happened.

Also I realize that Archie/Veronica/Cheryl/Toni are absent in this so briefly

Archie: He always was in awe of Archie and slightly jealous of what he perceived he had over Jughead...this is why he is the quasi-hero and also why he tortures Arch and treats him like an idiot.

Veronica: I cannot stress this enough. He and Veronica have no relationship. She is his friend's girlfriend and his girlfriend's best friend. The only thing he really knows about her is she is rich and hot. So he makes that her core personality and slaps on whatever traits fit her best for whatever plot he is writing at the time.

(This is also why almost all the women Veronica, Tabitha, Jessica, and Toni all are at some time his love interest. Self instert fan fic Jug. We see you.)

Cheryl/Toni: He and Toni are friends and Cheryl is her girlfriend who endlessly terrifies him. That is the core of her characterization.

I already regret the fact that I am sharing this long-winded mess with the world...but I can't take it back now.

Enjoy. And if you don't that is fine. It's my head canon not yours. Go make your own.

Have fun on finale night folks.

[thatfragilecapricorn30]

I like The X-Files, should I watch Fringe?

I decided to watch Fringe because it was frequently recommended as a show for fans of TXF. I was really curious how similar it would be and would I actually enjoy it? I'm only on S2 E5, so this post will be my impressions of the first season. I'll probably write another post after watching more of the show. I'll also try to make this as spoiler free as possible so anyone can read it!

What is Fringe about? The main character is FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham. We meet her when she's assigned to a case in which everyone on board a plane dies from a mysterious illness. The plane lands successfully at Boston Logan (due to some auto-landing feature - not sure if this is even real) and this is where we find out that Boston (aka Vancouver) is our setting for the show. Dunham traces the mysterious illness back to the research of a former Harvard professor (Dr. Walter Bishop), who is currently in a psychiatric institution, and she needs his son (Peter Bishop) to get him out. By the end of the episode, the three of them form the core of the Fringe division, a cohort of agents and consultants working on unexplained cases (sound familiar??).

How are Fringe and TXF similar?

Both shows center on a special division within the FBI that involve unexplained phenonomen.

Both are filmed in Vancouver.

Both feature monster of the week and mythology episodes.

Both have a strong female lead.

Both have the potential for romance between the two leads (Olivia and Peter).

How are the two shows different?

Fringe features an ensemble cast, whereas TXF was really only Mulder and Scully. I enjoy the relationships between the characters (like Peter and his father, and Walter and Astrid), but the show hasn't done a great job of fleshing out characters aside from the core three. Poor Astrid has pretty much no personality aside from performing lab work with Walter.

The show does not have the same atmosphere as TXF seasons 1-5, even though they're both filmed in the same locale. It might be because of film vs. digital, but the cinematography on Fringe is lacking compared to the beautiful forests we're used to seeing on TXF.

Fringe does a great job of tying a majority of their monster of the week episodes back to the main mythology. The problem with this is that it's hard to watch these episodes independently as they don't have a truly self-contained story.

The mythology storyline is well-developed and I heard that there's actually a plan for the plot (unlike TXF).

Fringe is sci-fi. There are no paranormal, supernatural, or horror elements.

Other impressions:

It took me about halfway through season 1 to start getting into the show, and it seems like that might be some others' experience (and why they may have stopped).

I find it hard to follow the cases sometimes, because they involve technology that is extremely advanced or currently doesn't exist at all, and it seems like the writers don't really understand it either.

I have a feeling we'll be seeing a romantic relationship between Olivia and Peter at some point and I think the show is doing a good job of slowly developing their bond. I've also heard that Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson did not get along on set (sound familiar??) but they have decent chemistry - not as good as David and Gillian but as we all know, there's not a fair comparison.

There's random things that rub me the wrong way, like Walter performing autopsies (someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think he's an MD, just has several PhDs), how every single case relates back to Walter's research (this man is like 10 Einsteins because he was conducting experiments in every field and all of it beyond the realm of known science), Walter touching dead bodies at crime scenes without gloves (I know this happens in TXF but it's so egregious in Fringe). Despite all this, I do like Walter's character and I think John Noble gives an excellent performance.

Olivia Dunham is a well-rounded character and Anna Torv is great. I really enjoy the relationship she has with her sister and niece.

So far, I enjoy the mythology episodes more than the monster of the week, which is the opposite of my opinion for TXF.

It's funny that there are 15 years between the premiere of TXF (1993) and Fringe (2008) and about another 15 years to present day (2024). But Fringe seems so modern compared to TXF. You can barely tell it's 15 years old, except for the lack of iPhones and I'm sure even that will change in the next few seasons.

Should I watch it??

If you really enjoy sci-fi, I would say definitely check it out. If you're on the fence, or don't like sci-fi at all, I would skip this one.

It probably sounds like I don't enjoy Fringe based on my above points. I think part of it is that I am comparing it to TXF, even while watching, and TXF is definitely better (imo). I also enjoy horror more than sci fi. But, Fringe is holding my interest for now and I've heard that it improves throughout the seasons, so I'm going to keep watching.

I'll definitely write an update post at some point - if I finish the show or stop watching it.

I'm so curious to hear the thoughts of others who have watched Fringe! Do you agree with my assessments so far? What are your opinions and how does it compare to The X-Files for you?

[thepleasuregoblin]

When I work in the lab one of my coworkers listens to true crime podcasts sometimes so here's my reviews of the ones I've heard

Unsealed: The Tylenol Murders - this one is actually pretty good. Interesting case investigated by real journalists, subject matter is treated with respect and with relative impartiality. Will probably listen to the rest of this on my own

Morbid: you know that post that's like "heyyy crimekids we got an oooey gooey icky murder here but first a word from our sponsors"? This podcast is literally that. To the point where I'm pretty sure that post is specifically targeting it. Glad I only heard like one episode

Sword and scale: abysmal. Host is an annoying dickhead, subject matter is treated completely flippantly, it's distressingly pro-cop, and pretty disrespectful towards the mentally ill and poor people despite some lip service about the mentally ill being victims of violence more often than perpetrators of it. Everyone involved in the making of this this podcast should die

[papirouge]

How can you stand going into nazi discussions and reading all the crap they're writing? I hate them so much lol

I don't understand women who entertain those kind of men, I know some of them are men pretending to be women but some of them are the real deal... like they'll never respect and accept them as one of them except to be a white babies factory, yet these womens racism is bigger than their self respect and self esteem.

But what I understand even less is non-whites entertaining neo nazi ideology. I'm aware that just like with women some are just white people pretending to be PoCs, but I've known actual poc thta agree with nazism and some even post pics of themselves. It's so ugly lol but I've noticed that they always seem to be non-black PoC or if black they're light skin, they just seem to have the mentality of "at least i'm not a n*gger 🤪" thus why they think they can mingle with the whiteys and be accepted by them. Like many of them are usually pale-skinned latinos or east asians from what I've noticed. And neo nazis sometimes entertain them because they realize they're good for creating division between non-whites but they never really accept them as one of them - they're just their fighting dogs. These idiots need to realize many nazis and white supremacists barely accept white people with black hair and brown eyes as their own (sometimes they'll accept them but consider them less pure and beautiful than their blue/green eyes blond haired counterparts). That's why you'll see blond, blue-eyed neo nazi men constantly dunk on white women and brown-eyed dark haired people - even though they could be his allies he still needs to feel superior to them because he probably has nothing going for him except for his race and sex (which he has convinced himself makes him superior). He doesn't have to work for it or earn it he simply is born superior and everyone else should understand that too and treat him as such. When you think about it, it's really pathetic and stupid.

Last thing is I'll always laugh at neo nazis talking about black or brown people marrying white to "bleach/lighten their genes". Not because it's not true; many brown and black people do wish they could have light skin or white kids, hopefully with light eyes and hair too (mentol illness), but because dark skin, dark hair and brown eyes are DOMINANT genes!!! So are "black features". This is why they'll never make me feel bad about my features, God made them dominant and theirs recessive lol perhaps for a reason (this is why christians white supremacists are even more stupid to me).

I think women drawn to Nazi/misogynist see in it a form a "strong masculinity" they don't find in more liberal men. They're too dumb to realize those moids only talk smack from their socials but will shit themselves if confronted IRL with any of the demographics they shit on the regular. I mean, for so called strong men they, White nationalists are actually pretty meek when it come to display outward sign of their opinion in the real world. That's why they only do so in rallies. Standing alone they are scaredy cats that will play victim #antiwhitegenocide. You can bet that the person who made the tweet saying she went out of her way to say she was racist to that foreign bus driver whose only crime was being friendly, that if the bus driver would've reacted aggressively she would act like she was the victim. Because nazi & racists love playing the victim card whenever they initiate antagonization.¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

And yeah you're totally right about racist/Nazi non White rallying around the "at least I'm not Black" thing. It's very true for Hispanics (like Stonetoss) or Indians. No one tells them white Nazi will always consider them like inferior pawns they'll toss away the moment they're not useful. Same goes for women they'll shit on they do a step aside. Lauren Southern and Candace Owens are case study. I think dunking on other race help them cope with their otherwise shitty life : they're unemployed, broke, lonely...but at least they're not Black 🤪

And what's so funny with the so called superior aryan race is how hellbent they are to show they're superior. When you're truly secure in your superiority, you don't waste time trying to prove it. Lions don't run with dogs. I mean, I always found crazy they so much into the bio essentialist bs about IQ but yet oblivious to the fact that their own gene are recessive. Shouldn't nature favor high IQ Aryan gene instead? 🤔 Like- it never clicked to me how they flip flop around biological essentialism lol

[bohemian-nights]

i saw a rhaenyra stan post where someone asked them how can they love rhaenyra knowing that she's racist

and this person really said - 1. everyone is racist in F&B (no they aren't, nettles was respected by literally all of TB except your crazy fav) 2. she thinks that rhaenyra calling nettles a "low creature" is not racist she was just being paranoid. (mmm ok sure) 3. ugh no one is perfect your favs prob did something bad too (accidently exposing that they know their fav is racist and just don't care)

like are you for real?!!! so you think rhaenyra is not racist or you just don't care that she is?!!?! rhaenyra stans are the worst fandom i have ever seen

Every character in F&B is a racist yet somehow Missy Anne calling Nettles a low creature without a drop of dragon’s blood who has to use spells to bind her dragon to her and to seduce her husband (because there is no way her pure Valaryan husband would willingly sleep, impregnate, and fall in love with a Black woman) isn’t racially motivated? Okay.

By their logic, isn’t Missy Anne a part of that everyone being a racist? Aren’t her actions therefore gasp, racially motivated?

Silly me I forgot, it’s not racially motivated because Missy Anne loved Visenya who is white and Visenya used magic too. She had bastards (who were white) with dark hair. They didn't look Valyrian.

She has no problem with white people who are/look non-Valyrian or white people who use magic therefore she must love Nettles and only tried to kill her cause she had a teensy tiny breakdown. I mean who doesn’t try to murder someone in cold blood every once in a while? Calling her a low creature was maester propaganda spread by the evil greens 🥦 She’s innocent I tell you! They are the real racists cause they made note that Nettles had brown skin🫢

These people are straight-up nuts. I mean yeah, everyone probably does hold prejudices. I don’t disagree with that.

See how Corlys calls Nettles dirty and ill-favored even when he actively trying to save her life. Or how Miss Maegor's own grandmother thought a Black person was a demon because he had dark skin.

However, only one person tried murdering a Black woman(who was possibly pregnant) in her sleep and used racism to justify it.

Everyone might be unconsciously biased(just like in real life), but they aren’t out there trying to commit hate crimes. What Missy Anne does is straight up KKKaren behavior.

Once again her stanbase knows she’s a racist psycho. I mean they admitted to it when they contradicted themselves and tried to justify her behavior by claiming everyone is racist.

They don’t really care about the issue, but they do care about appearing racist since being a racist isn’t really in right now.

By them trying to justify her bad behavior they actually end up looking like racists themselves when all they had to do was admit that Miss Maegor is a racist.

It’s fine to like problematic characters. That’s not a reflection on your character, but you’re going off the deep end when you start trying to make excuses for their actions.

Don’t justify it because the actions aren’t justifiable. In Miss Maegor’s case, no amount of stress turns you into a murderous racist. And stop getting mad at people for not liking her. She's awful. Just admit that and move on.

[darchildre]

Gentlemen and Players

(Got distracted and so didn't get to part 1 before part 2 arrived, so I am posting about both parts at once.)

Hey everybody, get excited - it's cricket time! Everything I know about cricket, I learned from E W Hornung and Dorothy Sayers. Here is the sum total of my cricket knowledge: Raffles and Lord Peter are Good At It. That's it; that's all I've got.

Thing 1:

"Cricket," said Raffles, "like everything else, is good enough sport until you discover a better. As a source of excitement it isn't in it with other things you wot of, Bunny, and the involuntary comparison becomes a bore. What's the satisfaction of taking a man's wicket when you want his spoons?

The line about the spoons is so funny to me. I realize that fancy flatware is worth stealing and fencing or whatever but it's still so funny.

Being a gentleman thief who steals jewelry: daring, classy, dare I say, 'sexy'.

Being a gentleman thief who steals spoons: just the silliest thing.

Also very funny is Raffles pouting in his terrible straw hat about the cricket not going his way not five paragraphs after saying he doesn't care at all about it. Thank god someone properly illustrated this ridiculous moment.

Thing 2: "A young gentleman of the exquisite type," huh, Bunny? Bunny my Bunny, no matter how hard you try, you are not good at pretending to be straight.

Thing 3: Oh, poor Bunny, who is now more worried about being humiliated on the cricket field than he is about committing a crime. Let's be real - I too would much rather rob someone than be watched while miserably (and inevitably) failing at a sporting event. Bunny's a better man than I, because I would probably have faked a dire illness or an overseas trip or something to get out of playing sports in front of people, no matter how in love with Raffles I was.

Thing 4: Raffles' weird moral/ethical code is so fascinating. It would be the height of rudeness to rob one's host. But if you're invited somewhere solely because you're good at cricket, then you're practically being treated as an employee which a) is an insult and b) makes you not really a guest. And therefore it's not only acceptable (if still a bit tacky) but almost compulsory to rob said host, as revenge for the insult he's given you.

Thing 5: Aww, Bunny has decided this time not to get cranky that Raffles isn't telling him things, after Raffles rescued him last time! Very cute - let's see how long that resolution lasts.

Also extremely cute is Raffles' little training regimen of fishing and impromptu games of catch. One hopes they alleviate Bunny's anxiety about sports at least a little.

Thing 6:

...we found an enormous house-party assembled, including more persons of pomp, majesty, and dominion than I had ever encountered in one room before. I confess I felt overpowered. Our errand and my own presences combined to rob me of an address upon which I have sometimes plumed myself...

Because we only ever see Bunny with Raffles and therefore almost always at some point in the commission of a crime, we always see Bunny rattled and anxious, rather than in his element. It's interesting to imagine Bunny at his ease, who is apparently charming, personable and fun at parties. Probably, were he not worried about the police, he and Miss Melhuish might have ended up having a lot of fun gossiping about everyone else at the party. Miss Melhuish is clearly having a lot of fun imagining burglars with him and thinking about whose jewelry she would steal if she had the chance.

Also, the hilarious fear-inspired arrogance of thinking that he and Raffles are "two well-known London thieves" the presence of whom the police might have been alerted to! You have pulled at most three* whole jobs together, Bunny, and haven't run into the police on any of them. You are, as yet, the opposite of "well-known thieves". Literally no one knows about you.

Thing 7: Raffles taking his shoes off so that he can pace properly without bothering other people in the house and worrying (if only a little) if smoking inside is allowed is very cute. I love how excited he gets at the idea of both observing some 'professional' criminals and also beating both them and the police.

Also very cute is Bunny replying to his "My dear Bunny" with his own "My dear A.J.", the very first time we've seen Bunny call him that.

Thing 8:

I had still enough of the honest man in me to welcome the postponement of our actual felonies, to dread their performance, to deplore their necessity: which is merely another way of stating the too patent fact that I was an incomparably weaker man than Raffles, while every whit as wicked. I had, however, one rather strong point. I possessed the gift of dismissing unpleasant considerations, not intimately connected with the passing moment, entirely from my mind. Through the exercise of this faculty I had lately been living my frivolous life in town with as much ignoble enjoyment as I had derived from it the year before; and similarly, here at Milchester, in the long-dreaded cricket-week, I had after all a quite excellent time.

A) The idea that it would be a better and almost more noble thing to actually fully commit to being a criminal rather than the wishy-washy state that Bunny currently finds himself in is going to come up more prominently in later stories, but it's interesting that Bunny is already thinking about it, at least a little.

B) Except that we are talking about Bunny 'my greatest strength is not thinking about stuff I find unpleasant until I absolutely have to' Manders, so no conclusions will be reached at this time.

Thing 9: Awww, Bunny actually does all right at cricket! Good for him. I like that he and Miss Melhuish are continuing to be house-party friends as well and that she "said pretty things to [him]" about the cricket. (Sorry, miss, he's very cute but also very taken.)

Thing 10: Awww part 2, Bunny hearing Mackenzie grabbing someone in the hallway in the middle of the night, clearly thinking it's Raffles who's been caught, and flinging the door open to valiantly rush to the rescue! I mean, it isn't Raffles needing rescuing at all, but by god, he tried. Don't worry, Bunny - someday you will actually manage to heroically come to Raffles' rescue, I promise.

And also we get our first example of Bunny being surprisingly effective at unarmed melee combat but only when he's startled/panicking.

Thing 11: And then, our first properly happy ending, where everyone gets what they wanted: Bunny gets to feel a little heroic and like he's done something good, and Raffles gets to feel clever and to walk off with the best of the shiny things, and they both presumably get enough money to continue not having real jobs. Applause all round!

Thing 12: Raffles did not in any way need Bunny for this job. He does nothing to facilitate the robbery and any help he provides in distracting or hindering the professional criminals is purely coincidental and could have been expected of any of the other members of the house party. Bunny is not useful and it is, in fact, more work to get him to the house: Raffles has to lie to his host about Bunny's cricket skills and then scurry off to clandestinely play catch with him to get him even close to faking it.

Raffles just prefers having Bunny around, is the thing. If there's a chance of something fun/exciting happening, Bunny should be around for it. And if the party turns out to be boring and there's no opportunity for crime, at least Bunny will be there to hang out with.

It's easier to tell that Bunny is smitten, because he tells us all the time, but Raffles is totally head over heels for his rabbit as well. He's just slightly subtler about it because he's not the narrator.

Both Raffles movies from the 1930s are based loosely on this story (and its sequel, "The Return Match"). I cannot in fairness recommend either of them as good adaptations - they are both so straight that they feel they have to give Raffles a girlfriend - but the 1930 version is at least kinda fun, and Bunny gets to tackle a dude in his pajamas.** The 1939 version is a remake starring David Niven and Olivia de Havilland and I love both of them but it has been hit super hard by the Hays Code - barely has a Bunny at all, and Raffles has to turn himself in at the end, because the Code didn't allow people to be shown profiting from a crime. It's a bit depressing, really.

They're not terrible movies and are a bit worth seeing as curiosities if nothing else, but maybe just watch the 1970s tv show instead.

*Depending on where you think "Out of Paradise" fits in the chronology.

**How the dude got into Bunny's pajamas, I'll never know. /Groucho Marx impression

[coveredinmetaldust]

You ever notice how there seems to be a rather large overlap between the crowd that evangelizes "AI", and the crowd of corporate bootlickers who will wag their finger at you and go "a company has to protect its IP!" whenever a multi-billion dollar corporation responds to a perceived copyright infringement with a grossly disproportionate level of duress?

There is just a certain kind of cognitive dissonance, naked hypocrisy, and performative hand-wringing that seems to be part and parcel for the vocal group of core believers of this technology on places like Reddit and Twitter.

These people will shout "It's the law! Don't do the crime if you can't do the time!" but then immediately turn around and berate any artist who makes the mistake of suggesting that these laws should apply to everyone.

This particular phylum of AI cheerleader loves to tell artists to "get a real job", while at the same time shaming them for having the audacity to charge money for their labor. Because in their mind, everything artists create and post on the internet should be free and is "fair game", but anything corporations post is protected within our current legal framework.

They see no problem with the fact that corporations are using petabytes of artwork for profit with impunity, yet the moment you use even 1 microsecond of a piece of media these same corporations own in a video that you post online, their copyright bots will hunt it down and expunge it--or a legal team will send you a DMCA takedown and potentially nuke your account.

They will be more than happy to lecture you about how capitalism is the best system ever, and explain in great detail all of its benefits and how it works--but the moment an artist finds monetary success by engaging with that system, suddenly that's not ok. No, when artists engage in capitalism they aren't "contributing" anything to society based on an arbitrary framework that only applies to artists.

Yet, many of these same people will worship the ground that businessmen like Jack Welsh and billionaires like Elon Musk walk on, because they figured out how to make an ungodly amount of money by exploiting this system--even though they did this in ways that make everyone's lives objectively worse. No, for some reason it's immoral to charge money for your art, but it's both morally sound and smart to leverage our legal system to shake people down, parasitically suck the life out of small and large businesses alike, treat wall street like a casino, tank the economy, and then cry to your government sugardaddy to bail you out when your gambling debts come due. (All so you can do it again.)

Ok, so maybe artists just need to be more proactive and protect their work so this doesn't happen. Well, apparently that's not ok either! Because when artists tried fighting fire with fire by employing Nightshade, the conversation suddenly shifted to how artists are immoral for "creating malware."

I'm sure most of you probably know about Nightshade at this point--but for those unaware, you can kinda think of it as a filter that artists can apply to images before they post them online. To vastly oversimplify what this accomplishes: when an image that has the Nightshade "filter" is scraped by someone and fed into their generative AI program, this image will ruin the dataset that the program spits out.

What's important to know is that this does not affect the host computer in any way, shape, or form beyond a non-essential, third-party program, that the user willingly installed on their system and fed data they gathered from the internet into, outputting a file that the user finds sub-optimal compared to what is normally generated. If the nightshaded image is omitted from the training data, there is no ill effect on the model or host computer--regardless of whether or not the nightshade affected image exists on the internet or somewhere in their hard drive.

How effective this process actually is in the real world has been debated, with many in the AI scene boasting that it's completely ineffectual--but that doesn't matter as far as the narrative is concerned. Many have chosen to interpret this act as artists "creating malware", because the Nightshade'd image that the AI practitioner willingly scraped and fed into a program negatively affected a function on their computer--which is about the same logic as robbing a bank, then getting mad that the bank ruined your clothing because a dye-pack hidden within the bundle of cash you stole exploded and got blue dye everywhere. (Or maybe a more accurate analogy would be posting an AMV you spent a long time editing together to YouTube only to have it immediately deleted by a copyright bot because it's sadly not 2006 anymore. idk.)

Regardless, I find this hilarious coming from a crowd that usually has such a massive hard-on for "personal responsibility." I mean, these are the kinds of people who would see a topic on Reddit where someone is complaining that got injured because a burrito they bought was filled with caltrops, and their immediate reaction would be to reply with something like "this is your own fault, everyone knows you're supposed to eat around the jagged shards of metal."

But no. Instead the lengths some of these people have gone to twist themselves into knots to demonize nightshade could only be viewed as satire in a sane world. But we live in the hell world, so I cannot tell you how many of these losers I've seen unironically clutch at pearls while wailing "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?" because there is a chance their AI model could get corrupted after they scraped 1tb of porn from Deviantart without checking what they actually fed into their system.

Or worse: they will turn the onus back on the artist and say they are the one causing environmental damage--because the person stealing their art now has to remake their model and expend electricity.

Well, more electricity than they are already consuming on AI models. Which, by their own admission, is enough to make their energy bills skyrocket.

This is is like Dupont saying "All of you people protesting in front of our factory ruined productivity for today. You actually caused more environmental damage than us, because we had our machines running all day but no one was able to work. The world is more polluted now because you don't want us to further damage the environment. We may dump literal tons of chemicals into the water supply on an hourly basis, but the markers you used to make those signs you're holding were created using technology that pollutes as well--so I guess that makes you all huge hypocrites hmmmmm?."

But wait, it gets worse! If you read the two screenshot directly above carefully, you may have noticed that some of these people go so far as to believe that they are entitled to everything you create, and anything short of your full consent is tantamount to stealing THEIR property.

Because that's really what this is all about: when you strip away all their moralizing and semantics, you're left with people who view artists as nothing more than an annoying barrier between what they think should rightfully belong to them.

I'm just going to say the quiet part out loud:

These people absolutely fucking hate that there are people out there who are good at art. They are mad that there are people who put the time and effort into improving a skill-set, and got good at it as a result. That's not me putting words in their mouths, they have explicitly said as much time and time again--to the point where it has become a core part of their belief system and mythology.

(This wasn't directed at me, but I know their theory is bullshit because I do know how to weld, and I can't draw for shit. Also, knowing how to weld has never stopped me from being insufferable on the internet.)

They try to make themselves the victims by setting up this narrative that artists have a "monopoly on creativity." They make a big deal about how unfair it is that someone can be technically competent at formal compositions through years of hard work. (Which, is funny, because some of these same people were railing against Le SJWs for being so-called "Professional Victims" in the mid to late 2010s.)

It's not hard to understand why they need to dress this up like it is some kind of righteous crusade that flattens an oppressive hierarchy, because their objective reality is a lot more pathetic.

They know this, so they will gleefully tell artists they can't wait for AI-art to "replace" them in however many years. They will smugly tell artists, right to their face, that nothing they have ever created has any value--all while feeding that artist's work into an engine so they can copy their style.

They will spew all kinds of inflammatory, hateful bile like this at creatives, spit in their face by scraping their work after explicitly being asked not to, and then have the fucking nerve to act like they have the moral high-ground when there is any pushback from artists.

Because to them, creatives are just malcontents who don't know their place.

Many of these people like to present themselves as an austere nonpartisan with a rigid code of ethics; someone who will solve problems through objective logic and rational debate. But when you look past their attempts at self-mythologizing it becomes very clear that these people don't want to have a "civil debate"--they want to maintain a farcical moral high-ground while they stab you in the throat and then twist the knife. (Then complain about how you got blood all over their nice shirt.)

Now, I'm fluent in both "pretentious art-speak" as well as "toxic terminally online forum user", so let me speak to these AI art bros directly in a language they will understand:

This is copium so potent that it's considered a controlled substance in most states. How about you fucking casuals try getting gud instead of getting buttmad and running to social media so you can bawww about needing an easy-mode?

FFS this isn't complicated, but you drooling idiots will just sit there and stare at your monitors with the wide-eyed bewilderment of a dog that just saw a magic trick any time someone suggests you pick up a pencil.

Don't worry though, I hear Kotaku is hiring. You should ask ChatGPT to write you a resume and email it to them, because you suck at art just about as much as their writers suck at video games.

Now go back to your subreddit hugbox and circlejerk about how logical and civil you are compared to those mean artists who hurt your feelings. I'm sure all those heckin updooterinos and wholesome affirmations will make you feel like you didn't just waste thousands of dollars on a new computer for the express purpose of generating anime waifus who look like they tried to high-five a disc sander.

tl;dr:

[azumasoroshi]

minidura chapter 1 react

hey guys started reading minidura i think im in love

just imagining izaya going like "yahoo!! X3" man. i know mikado is the real protagonist and not being able to see through izaya's eyes adds to his charm and intrigue but like mannn itd be so fun to just watch him fuck shit up like in that one episode. he must be hilarious to people watch with

god they're so fucking cute i love this chibi style

IT'S HIMMM IT'S MY BABYGIRL

"he's the one who most fails to live up to his name"? is that like a kanji name joke goddammit

i really shouldnt just like. post the entire pages but it's such a pain to keep taking screenshots :sob: you guys have no idea the pain my wrists were in after that drr ten react

haha dramatic irony but i just realized i have no idea what exactly izaya takes responsibility for and what stuff he blames on human nature/self-interest/naïvite and now i have to find out ugh

durarara illustrators draw simon normally challenge :sob: im so sorry they do this to you king if i ever get around to drawing you ill do you justice

also tiny shizuo <3333

obsessed with walker's cat face he and erika are so platonic(?) soulmates besties cringefail weeb team rocket ass duo

i was 100% ready for erika to start grilling mikado on his supposed raging homosexual unrequited love(?) 300k slow burn romance but oh well. it happened in my head so it must be canon

i dont care enough about the raira trio to ship mikakida or whatever their ship name is (isnt the celty head girl named mika too. oops) but i do think it's funny that their ship name could be kidado because that sounds like cuidado. watch out

ok i know they're trying to make him look cool but he does not look cool in the chibi art style lmfAOo

itd be really funny if they switched the styles to the normal manga style during serious moments like i think the bsd wan manga/anime did lmfao

LMFAO??? i like how we only see the top of izaya's head pff-

celty my bbygirl i love your shadow puppets dont listen to them

yk what it's actually a crime this didnt happen in canon

AND HERE HE ISSS!!!!! cringefail pathetic loser my beloved

god i hope he narrates the entire minidura (he probably wont)

ok he's really cute though....catboy irl fr

CAUGHT MID MONOLOGUE

cant believe they're both on a rooftop together whoa prime spot for confessions amirite (<- delusional)

im posting the tiny floored izaya on his own later because that's adorable. he's so cute when he's half dead

itd be really funny if all the events from minidura were all in izaya's concussed ass head from this moment as explanation for being noncanon

the "doctors hate him" meme but it's convenience store workers and shizuo heiwajima

actually construction workers probably hate shizuo too. and urban planners and anything that has to do with city work and also doctors because shizuo evades their healthcare insurance because he doesnt need it (i looked up japan's healthcare costs for this joke and concluded that i dont have enough time to pit the sources that say it's expensive and the sources that say it's reasonable against each other) and also vending machine companies

the "doctors hate him" meme but it's all of ikebukuro and shizuo (and also izaya)

i love how izaya just. stops bleeding. his platelets working mad crazy

(it's pretty easy to find translations online but here's the site im reading on anyway)

[buff-electra-truther]

Stex Appreciation Month: Electra

Fav actor: Koffi Missah is the best overall.  I think the MJ/Prince train angle is the most effective characterization for Electra and he looks, acts, and sounds perfect for that approach.  It’s fun and recognizable in the cheap seats in a language you don’t know.  But it also has a lot of potential for depth, there’s a double entendre to be made about the government/big companies conspiring against electric trains for being too successful and certain tropes about electrical powers. 

Mykal Rand is basically impossible to beat aesthetically for me.  I cannot look away from the absurdity of how smooth and girly his face is combined with how cartoonishly ripped he is.  Even footage of him on tiny tour stages in beat up ill-fitting costumes is captivating. He’s just so extreme and maximalist yet alien looking.  

I’m surprisingly unpicky on Electra actors as long as they aren’t boring.  That’s the only real crime.  But I tend to prefer ones who have/could pull off Greaseball because I prefer a bolder, louder Electra (and basically require it post 2018 so I don’t forget he even exists with that borderline camoflouge costume)

Fav songs/scenes: Dinah’s Disco because I love watching him get shoved, a nice more intense version of AC/DC, anything involving No Comeback or its leitmotif.  Once again, What Time Is It? is a terrible song but purely redeemed because Mykal is hilarious in it.

Fav costumes: Broadway/Bochum toothpaste is a classic, but I’m also weirdly fond of Late London because I love the cartoony look (especially on Chris Copeland since he went all in on the makeup style to match)

Ships/Friendships: already went over how I view him and Greaseball the other day.

I like to look at pictures from the JPN/AUS tours out of context and think Electra looks cold and lonely and in need of a buddy and Caboose coaxes him into fun bad ideas

Headcanons: 

-I habitually call Electra “he” because it’s what canon does 90% of the time, but view the character as neutral (all of them really).  Electra and the Components are about the only ones smart enough to realize these forms are an illusion and there’s no reason to play by human paradigms, it would be equally stupid if they subscribed to blood type personalities too.  They are VERY smug about this but slowly the message is spreading.  

-I vary in what exact basis I’ll give him but see him as either irl, alternate timeline, or outright sci-fi Amtrak’s choice of successor to the GG1.  He isn’t weak or terribly delicate if the infrastructure works (unless you keep him as 40101 lol), he follows in their tracks of being a huge effortless machine that’ll run away with basically anything you stick on it.  If he actually played it clean, he’d probably dominate going uphill vs Greaseball and especially Rusty, he just doesn’t flaunt strength much in canon because it’s not relevant to the race.

-Electra is a  Fully Automated Bi Space Communist who wants to run catenaries across the Rocky Mountains and Siberia

-If you turn the dials and knobs Electra will morph like a game’s character slider just like how it’s simple to regear electric locos for passenger/freight use.  

Unpopular opinions:  lmao I think all my Electra preferences are moderately to very fandom unpopular.  I’m a contrarian who likes the character for fundamentally different reasons than most.  I’ve vaguely known of the character for years but didn’t really fall in love with him until recently when I saw those 2013 tour videos people either love or hate. Yeah they have the worst staging and costumes but I went “oh hell yeah finally a less problematic alternative to my blorbos Ganondorf and Velvet von Ragnar”.  I think those two names alone make it pretty clear why I like a bulkier, hotter natured, more affectionate and competent Electra than most.  I crave novelty and get bored by oversaturated things so I’m naturally drawn to androgynous characters that aren’t twinks or prettyboys so seeing Mykal vs the more typical tall skinny Electras really made me more interested in the character, even if I think there’s more interesting characterizations than his.