#This is obviously a bit of a strawman

[avvoltoio]

I’m just gonna come out and say this controversial take: 

The internet funnyman anti-harry potter quips are becoming arguably more cringe than actual Harry Potter adults, especially when it’s towards fans that fully acknowledge that JKR is a bad person. And I feel like most of these people actually used to like Harry Potter, but instead of just being a multi-faceted human being and going “Harry Potter is very nostalgic for me and it’s a shame JKR is a trash human being who had to ruin the franchise for me with her bigotry” they overcompensate and quadruple down and they basically become a smug wojak caricature  “Yeah Harry Potter has ALWAYS been bad actually. Thank God I never liked those dumb baby books and only exclusively read Ursula K LeGuin. Haha, don’t you dare go through my Instagram page and find those photos of me wearing a Slytherin scarf and holding a wand at a midnight movie premiere. You won’t find them anyway because I have never been cringe enough to like an extremely popular franchise. Anyways, if you pay to go to Universal Studios and step foot into Harry Potter World you are a terf and also possibly anti-semetic.”  

[xshimaeraxx]

maybe-hot-take here: cc!cuphead and mugman, or at LEAST cc!mugman, both think themselves to be bad people.

think about it. mugman, in the morality debate w the devil, literally SAYS, OUT LOUD, the scenario of thinking he’s in the right when he’s not that he himself is now stuck in. now, i’m not saying with this that cc!mugman isn’t arrogant and DOESN’T have a god complex of some kind a mile long, because it’s plain by now that he DOES — but being arrogant and thinking yourself better then others doesn’t equal into actually, genuinely thinking that the things you do and the actions you commit are unequivocally, morally good.

Look at the morality debate another time;

(credit, obviously, to brightgoat, former owner of casino cups)

now, we COULD focus on mugman’s reaction & all that, but i want y’all to look at the spades card. what’s its reaction to the devil’s card popping up? defensiveness, crouching down as one would do in a fight, all hallmarks of the fight that while the debate may SEEM civil, going by the (fairly obvious, i’d say) assumption that the cards are connected to devil’s & mugman’s emotions. look at the spade (& clubs) cade when the devil says “nonono, we’re talking about you-”

the spade card is disarmed, frightened. the club’s, on the other hand, is just surprised.

but let’s move on from that small detour for a bit. what does mugman say in the second ss? “A villain does not always need bad intentions, some bad people don’t think of themselves as bad, what makes a villain is their actions.”

and the devil replies with [paraphrasing] “doesn’t that make you the villian?”

and mugman replies with the fancy-people equivalent of “yes, but”. now, we may not ever know just what EXACTLY mugman would’ve said after that “but”, but i wager we can guess at what he might’ve been about to say. “we recognised our actions as wrong but i never said our actions weren’t wrong, i said that we had a morally good REASON, therefore making us NOT the villains in that specific scenario.” now, is there a multitude of OTHER things that mugman could’ve said there ‘fore the devil cut him off? yes, yes there are. but to make my point here, i’m going to go off of the assumption that THAT is what mugman was going to say.

the devil next said, “Villains can still recognise their actions and commit them, Mug.” mugman doesn’t respond to this remark; instead deflects with the fact that the devil’s evolution of the scenario/situation isn’t fair bc it doesn’t consider the context. i’ll get back on that l’il remark later, but the devil’s response is to IMMEDIATELY say [again, paraphrasing] “But it’s your debt we’re talking about here, don’t try and deflect off of the previous conversation.” when mugman says “no, this is about the debtors,” that’s a plain lie, because YES, the convo/debate began by talking about the debtors, but it evolved into a conversation/debate on whether the BROS were being morally good during the events of the game, so it IS about mugman’s debt. mugman & cuphead’s debt, technically, but both the devil & mugman’re ignoring that during that portion of the convo, so we’re ignoring it aswell.

strawmanning. what’s the definition of strawmanning? from goofle: “Straw man occurs when someone argues that a person holds a view that is actually not what the other person believes. Instead, it is a distorted version of what the person believes. So, instead of attacking the person's actual statement or belief, it is the distorted version that is attacked.”

when the devil says that mugman is strawmanning here, he is, as far as i can tell, right. mugman is strawmanning here; he clearly doesn’t entirely believe in what he’s saying, based purely off of how SURPRISED he is when the devil calls him out. i can say, from personal experience, that that isn’t how a person who truly believes in what they’re saying reacts when someone accuses them of lying - if they DO truly believe in what they’re saying/that what they’re saying is true, then getting told you’re lying WHEN YOU’RE NOT is incredibly frustrating. you don’t get caught-off guard, caught-out; you get angry, you get frustrated, and what a person normally does at being accused like this is either double down on their side of the argument, or they just drop the topic altogether because it frustrates one too much to continue interacting with someone who won’t believe them.

mugman does neither of these. what he does do is feebly try to deflect, deny, and move the debate back to the topic the whole thing BEGAN with- the debtors, & the devil accusedly taking advantage of people with his deals- and when that fails and devil turns to dice, the (obviously biased; i’m sorry dice ily but c’mon, you can’t deny he was) judge of the debate, for support and dice gives it, what does mugman do?

he stops trying to argue his point, and while yes, giving in and letting the other person win IS as i said a sign of someone who truly believes in what they’re saying, but here it’s obvious that that’s not the case. mugman, here, is giving in purely because he KNOWS he’s been caught-out, and there’s therefore no point trying to argue for something he doesn’t believe in.

but what exactly in that argument does he not believe in? the fact the debtors were taken advantage of in their deals? he definitely and wholeheartedly believes in that, even if not exactly in the way he presented it as to the devil, purely because if he hadn’t he wouldn’t’ve started that debate IN THE FIRST PLACE. so he believes in that, at least. so is the thing mugman doesn’t believe in - himself? does he not believe in the morality of him and his brother?

does he not think that he, himself, is morally good? if so, does he believe that he is morally BAD, or does mugman simply believe that he isn’t morally good? i wager he believes the former.

let’s take a quick look at Mortal Blues, aka the “Mugsy’s Mental Breakdown” comic strip(s).

here, we see mugman act the most arrogant we have ever seen him act in the entire 'verse of casino cups. he is flaunting his accomplishments in the middle of an honest-to-god mental breakdown and is clearly saying it all more to himself then to quadratus, saying it all aloud as a way to reassure himself that he deserves more, he deserves to know, he deserves to KNOW. so, clearly, he should ALSO be assuring himself of his morality, his goodness—yet he doesn’t mention it once in his list/rant about his 'accomplishments' (or more accurately, traumas).

he lists fighting satan himself, dying and coming back over and over and over again, and he rants about the injustice of it, about how he deserves more then this. how he deserves to know. he lists these things, in my eyes, as a way to reassure himself that he DOES deserve it, he’s done more then enough in his life to be deserving enough, to be powerful enough to know, so it’s only logical that he’d list off his moral goodness alongside all those other things: he’s above LUCIFER HIMSELF in his morality even if not in knowledge, he’s steadfast, he doesn’t break in his beliefs whether by actions or words, he is GOOD where so many other people aren’t-

but he doesn’t say anything of the sort, simply because it wouldn’t be true - or at least, deep down, he doesn’t THINK it’s true.

now, i’m not here to argue about whether or not mugman truly IS morally good or not (because in my genuine opinion, cc!mugman’s morality is more neutral then either good OR bad in my pov for reasons ill prolly expand upon in some other post someday); i’m just here to argue that mugman believes himself to be morally bad. and really, when you look at it all pilled up together, well—the evidence’s kinda hard to miss.

tl;dr: CC!Mugman Has Issues & Desperately Needs Therapy, Here’s (One Of) the Reasons Why

[angeldrawsstuffs]

Hi Angel back again to offer her unsolicited meta opinions about Lego themes (specifically Dreamzzz).

So, because of recent leaks, I’ve seen some speculation online Dreamzzz is going to come to an early end, possibly not making it past 2025. Now, before we go any further, let me make something extremely clear:

That is all rumors and speculation based on different rumors/alleged leaks about a canceled large set. To my knowledge, nobody who has actually worked on the theme in any capacity (show or sets) has said anything in relation to either of these. The information about the canceled big set came from leakers and the other speculation derived from that. This is ALL hearsay from the past 24-48 hours. Nothing is official, take it with a pinch of salt.

Ok now that we’re on the same page about the validity (or potentially lack thereof) of the claims/speculation, time to get into a mini rant/ramble I have so Buzzfeed-ishly titled:

Why Dreamzzz Being Cancelled Would NOT be a Good Thing AT ALL For Lego (and why even non-fans should care!)

So, you may ask: “Angel, why would you say this is a negative for Lego as a whole? Themes get canceled early all the time! In the hypothetical-and-currently-unsubstantiated-scenario Dreamzzz is canceled, it wouldn’t have that much of an impact!” well, nonexistent strawman I made up because I suck at making my point, it has to do with the way original Lego IPs are currently set up. Like it or hate it (or in between!), the beginning of Dreamzzz, even a before that, one could argue, was the start of a new era for how Lego handles their IPs. Gone are the days of getting multiple new themes a year, each lasting a planned 2-3 years, before entering a mapped out and anticipated retirement, maybe being cut short or extended a bit depending on sales. From what I’ve observed, it seems the priority is longevity of a theme over quantity of themes. Another factor is this is the ideas from those many themes over the past few decades have been slowly merged into other, larger themes like City, Friends, or even Ninjago. So, back in ye olden days of the 90s to the 2010s, a theme (specifically an original IP) being cut short was no big deal because there were like- 3-4 others running alongside it and several more in the foreseeable future. But, currently, that’s not the case because Dreamzzz is the only new IP to release and be running in the 2020s. Think about Lego’s currently running original IPs, not original themes as a whole (Icons, Creator, Ideas, etc.), but IPs (Ninjago, Power Miners, Atlantis, etc.). As of right now there’s really only four:

City, Friends, Ninjago, and Dreamzzz.

Take Dreamzzz out and you’re left with three. As much as it sucks, Dreamzzz being canceled won’t bring back the old format of IPs, in fact, I personally believe it would push back any return of that format or a similar one even further. Why do I believe this? Well, unfortunate as it may be, we’ve seen this song and dance before with plenty of other brands. New, original thing fails, executive people have to look at the “why”, and the conclusion is that people just don’t want new stuff and we should rehash the same stuff over and over and over again. Obviously that’s the very WRONG conclusion, but look at Disney and Pixar as a prime example of this. Of course I have a LOT (like- a lot a lot) more faith in Lego than I do the mouse, but do we really want to run that risk?

Also, circling back to my point about IPs being cut earlier than planned wasn’t as big a deal back then because there were a bunch of others already out and planned for release that could fill that void quick. But now? With the new formatting for IPs? As far as we know, there’s no new Lego IPs planned for the foreseeable future. Unless Lego’s somehow kept some new IP under such wraps that not a single person outside the company, not even online leakers, have found anything out about it, even its existence, (which very rarely happens to my own knowledge), there’s nothing currently planned. If Dreamzzz goes, there’s nothing to take its place or keep new IPs chugging along.

So then, hypothetically say Dreamzzz is canceled and doesn’t make it to 2026 (which, I am going to say I do not think will happen, I personally believe, if the big set being cancelled is true, it may be to make room for smaller, more affordable sets, since that’s the most consistent criticism of the theme as a whole). What then? Well, if the path most other companies have taken of “nobody wants new things” comes into effect, then that would probably mean not getting another new IP for a while. While Ninjago, City, and Friends all have a lot to offer, it’s clear people want something new. To be clear, it’s not the guaranteed path in this hypothetical-and-currently-unsubstantiated-scenario.

What’s my solution? Well, I’m a teenager on the internet with no business knowledge or expertise in any kind of related field so OBVIOUSLY I’m qualified to talk on this (/lh /s). But, in all seriousness, the best I can say is make criticisms known, but with the stipulation of that the theme should be able to continue and buff out the dents, as I would argue we’ve seen happening. I believe Dreamzzz has potential, a lot of it. But losing that potential to an early cancellation could possibly spell trouble down the road for Lego’s original IPs.

Once again, this is just a sleep deprived Angel spewing her opinions onto the internet. Hope I made my point clear enough and that this isn’t a totally incoherent mess of a post. Also, I’m personally not looking to debate/have to defend my thoughts here, as shallow as that may seem, so if you disagree vehemently with every word: that’s alright! I’m just not interested in an online back and forth about it (especially cuz I’m a terrible debater, lol-). Anyway, thanks for reading this long-ass post if you’re still here, have a wonderful rest of your day/night, and wear your seatbelt! /ref

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

Interesting post about the dispute regarding the successions of Rosby and Stokeworth.

https://www.tumblr.com/mononijikayu/713886501993431040/im-rereading-fb-today-and-found-something?source=share

Hi anon, thanks for sharing that post, it was interesting reading.

And I think that there are two things going on here. On the one hand, the OP is absolutely correct that the Rosby and Stokeworth inheritances were a catch 22 for Rhaenyra. Now, I think framing it as her "protecting" the Rosby and Stokeworth younger brothers from being murdered by the possibly disloyal Hugh and Ulf is a bit of a stretch, I don't think she cared about Rosby or Stokeworth or their heirs in the slightest (it should go without saying that we're talking about book!Rhaenyra here), and if she'd felt like making the daughters the Ladies of Rosby and Stokeworth and marrying them to Hugh and Ulf was the correct course of action, she would have done just that. I think she simply found Corlys' argument to be the more persuasive one-- if she created a precedent for absolute primogeniture throughout the realm she might lose valuable supporters and she could not afford to lose them at the time. Additionally, it's altogether possible that she did not want to ennoble Hugh and Ulf with their loyalty yet unproven. If they'd turned their cloaks not just with their dragons but with their newly acquired lands and armies, forget about the younger Rosby and Stokeworth sons, that would have been a disaster for Rhaenyra. The point is, there are reasons for Rhaenyra denying the Rosby and Stokeworth daughters the right to inherit ahead of their brothers, good ones even.

The other point the OP makes, that women often have to be just as brutal as men, but are judged more harshly for it is also true. You'll find no argument there. In fact, I've argued on this very blog that historically queens regnant have had to be even more brutal than men-- more punishing towards the smallfolk, quicker to war, harsher in their judgments-- in order to be taken seriously. So again, no argument from me there.

The thing is, there's a bit of a strawman here on OPs part. While I admit that there are fans who use Rosby and Stokeworth or Rhaenyra's ruthlessness as something of a gotcha, the point isn't that Rhaenyra should have given those lands to the Rosby and Stokeworth daughters, or that she was singularly worse than men who had sat the throne (she was worse than some, better than others), or even that she's a hypocrite. Rather, Rosby and Stokeworth specifically serve to counter the idea that Rhaenyra being queen would have meant anything positive for women as a whole. Because fans of Rhaenyra can't have it both ways here. They cannot claim that Rhaenyra is the more progressive, less misogynistic choice, but then make excuses for her regressive decisions and policies. And to be clear, I don't blame Rhaenyra for this. Obviously, individuals attempting to thwart the system without enacting broad changes often end up capitulating to existing power structures. In fact, it would be almost impossible not to within the feudal context. But regardless, either putting a woman on the throne is broadly significant as more than a historical footnote, or it isn't. And if it isn't, if Rhaenyra's policies do not benefit any women besides Rhaenyra in any meaningful capacity, then there's no greater good argument for her going to war.

And this only matters because many of Rhaenyra's fans try to frame the conflict in terms of morality, when you can easily reason that from a harm reduction standpoint, the actual moral choice would be for Rhaenyra not to press her claim. It's unfair, but Aegon got there first, was crowned and anointed first, and hold the city. If she accepts his peace terms, she can keep doing what she's been doing for the last decade, chilling on Dragonstone and tens of thousands of people get to stay alive. Now, I don't actually expect her to act morally here, she's acting in her own self interest rather than in the interest of the greater good, and that's fine, but let's not pretend she has the moral high ground.

[system-of-a-feather]

Man honestly theres a lot of interesting things worth talking about and I do wanna support the migration of tags and development of a more conversational space to talk about stuff on but now that I wanna bring something up I really cant think of much

I do think though something of a thought I did have back with the syscourse survey and what with how shit the syscourse tag, I really find stance labels are kind of honest to god disruptive in having some productive conversation with people.

I find that once you stand with a label, you just kind of become this general strawman of "the enemy" and most good faith discussion is torched before it even starts. Not saying thats everyone obviously, but I think a large difference between online discourse and the "if you actually went out in the world and talked about it" is that irl you dont have all out opinions plastered on your face and you really have to actually talk for a little bit before you get to "oh (insert stance) my enemy"

I dunno, I'm kind of rambling on loose thoughts but like anti-endo pro-endo endo-neutral like, can we just talk and discuss our perspectives before going on the defense and going NOPE YOU DISAGREE WITH ME

Like I genuinely dont have any ill in my heart for anti-endos just on the principle of the stance or label.

I deeply disagree with the common core sentiment, but 1) I am assuming my understanding of the core sentiment is the same as their understanding of the core sentiment and 2) I both understand and can respect how one would end up with the opinion and I can also see how someone who identifies as anti-endo could actually still be a person worth talking to and getting insight from. Its particularly hard to grow and improve when the only people you surround yourself with are people who will always agree and always approve and always support what you say and do. Having that disagreement is a really important and healthy thing for environments, so long as everyone is civil and respectful.

[lord-squiggletits]

For the Salty Asks (forgive us for the avalanche, if it's too many you can pick your top three): 2, 9, 10, 11, 13 (Optimus), 20, 25 (IDW1), 26

uhhh honestly I feel a bit like a hermit who's out of the loop on what's popular/unpopular so some of these might be completely off the mark but here we go

2. Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?

Mmmm I think most of my brotp's aren't shipped as OTPs to start with, so I dunno if I have any that fit this question.

Guess the closest example for me would be OPli/ta. I don't actively platonically ship them but I think platonic is way more interesting than romantic. I don't like the fandom's interpretation of romantic O/Plita at all + I feel like as one of the original "token woman" Autobots, I'd like to see Elita unshackled from Optimus as a love interest, esp because any official interpretation of them is probably gonna be written extremely heteronormatively/token romance between an action hero and The Girl. And the fanon version of them that's Strong Independent Girlboss Elita with whipped simp husbnad Optimus is just as boring and gross.

I just don't like the vibes and would rather them have some sort of friendly or regular relationship together.

9. Most disliked character(s)? Why?

IDW1 Slide, who I've gone into detail about my hatred of in several posts, but the TLDR is that she comes off as some kind of mouthpiece character? Not a mouthpiece as in for the author's beliefs, but it literally feels like she only exists to shit on Optimus and call him a piece of shit. Her dialogue is so cheesily written ("literally fascism" is an actual thing she says) and her bitching/lack of cultural comprehension about Cybertronian history is so prevalent, that for a long time during my IDW1 reading I was genuinely confused as to whether she was supposed to be some sort of parody/strawman/mockery of someone IRL (her character comes off almost EXACTLY like an anti-SJW stereotype of a screeching harpy calling everyone she dislikes a fascist, and it's only Barber's very obviously left-leaning writing in other parts of the story that told me that definitely wasn't the intent). So then I was wondering "okay is she gonna like, randomly become evil and turn against the good guys because she's just that petty? I mean she spends all of her time bitching about how Optimus/the Autobots/Cybertronians in general are the worst ever and she also hates humans too so I mean maybe? Half of this story already doesn't make sense so I can see it happening."

Thankfully that didn't happen, but like. Slide is so goddamn annoying and ignorant and gets way too much page time dedicated to her angry monologuing (in Unicron aka the finale of IDW1 there's literally a whole half page panel of her bitching about how Optimus is an evil tyrant while Trypticon is dying behind her and it comes off as a poorly timed, bad taste joke). The narrative treats her like she's some important individual whose feelings are important and valid, but she's fucking annoying. Any sympathy she was meant to garner is canceled out by badly written dialogue and the fact that she's a Literal Nobody of a character who seemingly only exists to bash the decades old, beloved legacy characters. For the sake of, idk, talking about how fucked up Cybertronians are that they just shrug and move on when people die? Bc apparently it's some sort of sin to be numb after 4 million years of war (and war that's literally still ongoing while Slide is bitching) and just soldier on trying to get through it? God forbid that a military hierarchy fighting to keep neo-Decepticons and various other alien threats from colonizing Earth be run like a military in which orders have to be followed, people die, but you still have to keep fighting anyways? Idefk man I just hate Slide so much she's basically the embodiment of all of the bad aspects of Barber's writing personified.

10. Most disliked arc? Why?

Mutineers arc in MTMTE/LL. I feel like (whether due to early cancellation and/or JRO wasting time on too many side plots to give it its full depth), I dislike how the mutineers were basically boiled down to pure evil morons who are the most disgusting, despicable evil ever and the only reason the mutiny had Good Guys (TM) in it was because they were horribly misled and not because, you know, the mutiny was 100% a valid thing to have happened as retaliation against Rodimus and Megatron's captaincy.

Like, I'm not opposed to the idea of Getaway and his cronies being assholes (I personally thought Getaway was a GREAT slow-burn, puppet master villain/anti-hero), I just dislike how the quality of their writing degraded from MTMTE to LL. Felt like they (Getaway in particular) got passed the Idiot Ball and then the actual reasons behind the mutiny were never addressed, it was kind of just "oh Getaway died horribly so we're all friends now and we forgive each other and Rodimus/Megatron will just go back to being captains now."

11. Is there an unpopular character you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

You mean besides IDW Optimus because anyone who's been on my blog for like 5 seconds knows he's my biggest problematic fave skldfjskd

Uhhh I guess in the spirit of the previous question, Getaway. I feel like the fandom's hatred for him is overblown mainly bc it's a combination of Tailgate/Cyga/te fans going "HE GOT IN THE WAY OF C/YGA/TE AND ALMOST KILLED THAT PRECIOUS CINNAMON ROLL" and Rodimus or Megatron stans going "Getaway hates my fave?? But my fave is a good captain and deserves the world HE'S EVIL MY FAVORITE IS BEYOND CRITICISM OR REPROACH GETAWAY IS THE EMBODIMENT OF EVIL."

Like to me it seems as if the hate for Getaway isn't normal dislike or even people hating him because he's a well written villain. It feels weirdly like ppl really take Getaway's actions personally and hate him with the kind of passion you normally see reserved for actual real life horrible people. Or they like, see Getaway as an obstacle to [favorite character]'s happiness and not as an individual who, before the quality of his writing tanked, was actually an interesting character who maybe even had good points? It just feels like people mainly hate Getaway because he's the antagonist to more popular characters/ships and so they project their defense of their faves into virulently hating him.

13. Unpopular opinion about (Optimus)?

Honestly 90% or more of the fan content I see for Optimus is really boring/uncompelling to me, or really just comes off as out of character. It's either Optimus being reduced to an accessory to be shipped with someone (usually turned into some sort of moe cutesy uke type) or him being turned into.... idk some permutation of "feral irresponsible gremlin" or "One Of The Good Ones (TM)" or "anxiety-ridden damsel who needs to be rescued by his lover" or, in some circles, "character I project my issues with authority onto and try to frame as evil for things that aren't even evil."

Idk how to specifically describe it, it's just... a vibe? Most of the Optimus content I see doesn't actually feel like him at all. It feels like it's Optimus/Orion in name only, who got so separated from canon and distorted by fanon/flanderization/shipping/porn stereotypes that he now only vaguely resembles the character he's supposed to be.

20. What is the purest ship in the fandom?

Ahahaha I don't really go into the realm of pure ships honestly, plus this is the war criminal fandom where pretty much every character has killed people or committed crimes or is just generally scarred by war so uhhh

Idk I think Thundercracker/Melissa is a pretty hinged ship? They get along and cope surprisingly well with all the shit that happens. There's no angst or betrayals or misunderstandings or enemies, they're just very respectfully together. Sdfklsajfksd

25. How would you end (IDW1)/Would you change the ending of (IDW1)?

Honestly, I'm pretty satisfied with the ending of IDW1 on both sides of the story. On Barber's side I would've preferred if every single planet including Cybertron didn't get fucking eaten leaving them all stuck on Earth together, and I would've also kept Trypticon alive while... minimizing Slide's role, to say the least. I don't have a problem with Optimus' ending bc I actually think that Optimus' arc in Unicron is like, one of the few 1000% good things Barber wrote for him it's just. It's pure Optimus in his best form.

On JRO's side I would've cut out the last panel with the alternate Lost Light and left it ambiguous as to whether the quantum jump successfully copied the ship or not. I dislike the vibes of the canon ending that implied that everyone moving on with their lives (almost universally to new and exciting and happier places) was the "sad" ending and going on a permanent road trip is the "true, happy" ending. In the author's notes I think JRO said that he wanted to give the readers an ending that would allow them to imagine their faves continuing to go on adventures, but I think compromising a good ending to a story to appease fans is fucking stupid + fandom has never needed permission or approval from the author to write alternate, happy endings. So why ruin a poignant, melancholy ending about how endings come with new beginnings and sadness/nostalgia can be mixed with hope and happiness by going "sike lol they're all living happily ever after on their space cruise."

Also I wouldn't have randomly killed off Ratchet for no reason because like. What was that even supposed to accomplish. I'm no stranger to writing major character deaths but like. He just fucking died of disease off-screen and that was that??? Why, like what was the narrative/symbolic purpose of that besides just making the ending more sad? Maybe to emphasize how going back to Cybertron was the "bad ending" and the quantum Lost Light is the "good ending" since on the LL Ratchet is still alive? But see the paragraph above for why I don't like that.

26. Most shippable character?

The most shippable character to me is whichever character I think is the sexiest, because if I think they're sexy it makes me want to ship them with everyone. "Guards, fuck that man for me" etc etc. Lmao

[irkendogma]

i know they're pretty lacking in tak aside from some ship segments, but do you have any favorite issues of the invader zim comics? call me basic but i adore the zimvoid arc especially

man i feel bad about like every anon i've gotten recently because i'm certain i keep coming off as an absolute hater (which may not even be inaccurate but i DO have love in my heart as well) but i honestly don't like the comics that much. i feel like both my grievances and my favorite issues/moments can be summed up by things from a conversation i had a little while back

like, obviously this is not exclusive to the comics - the show itself very much leans on the nonsense comedy angle because it is, in fact, a comedy aired on nickelodeon aimed at children. i'm not about to complain that a 2001 kids cartoon doesn't take itself seriously because i would be insane to expect it to. the problem is, when the comics were released, florpus hadn't even come out yet - the primary audience for them was no longer the "kids" element of the original demographic but the "watched in 2001" element

these comics EXIST to be fanservice - what fuckin 8-year-old is going to a comic shop or browsing online to buy the marketed revival of a show they don't recognize? - but they're written more like meaningless, substanceless comedy than even the original show ever was. there was a fucking wealth of material the original show never got to touch on prior to cancellation, and barely any of it is ever adapted, to say nothing of the entire original cast besides zim and dib playing bit parts to unrelated nonsensical comics characters IF they even appear at all - the fact that many fan favorites, my own included, receive a cameo at the end of a single special issue and nothing else across the comics' like fucking 50-issue run continues to bother me

and rest assured, the comics themselves are at least a little cognizant of this, because they will take every fucking opportunity they have to lampoon and create strawmen out of fans asking for more or even just...making fan content in general. remember mopiness of doom? chammy wamboo is here to make sure you feel stupid about interpreting anything that happened in that script as zim and dib having any form of fondness for each other, and she's going to spend an entire fucking issue doing it (with a very halfhearted attempt by the narrative to go "maybe she has a point about friendship?" that ends up undermined by other instances of the comic doing the exact same thing as this issue). think that the comics themselves aren't as good as the original show? virooz is a fat, sweaty, conventionally ugly manchild of a stereotypical strawman here to puppet around zim's body in dramatic poses that never fail to be drawn as stupid and unfitting in his belief that zim "fell off" from his earlier days. sure, occasionally there are grains of truth or genuinely funny things from them, but overall the whole thing feels incredibly meanspirited and more interested in bashing fans for being invested than rewarding that investment of time, energy, and sentiment into the material

even zimvoid...i WANT to like zimvoid. conceptually, i really like zimvoid. but the comics are deathly fucking allergic to allowing any stakes or sincerity to persist across the plot and it makes a lot of fascinating elements with a painfully compelling antagonist hit like a wet piece of tissue paper slapping on a brick wall, any impact stuff like zib's confession that he lied and winning over zim ultimately didn't earn him anything is soundly undermined by the fact that zim fixes the problem instantaneously with a spontaneous time travel loophole that even the story itself repeatedly lampshades makes no fucking sense whatsoever

maybe i'm just not the target audience for the comics, honestly, but in a fanbase that for nearly 20 years has consisted mainly of adults suspending their disbelief to more seriously adapt the story and melodramatic teenagers doing the same with less self-awareness, i don't know who is the target audience

[triviallytrue]

That conversation got annoying quickly, I don’t know why people felt such a need to defend the mental health benefits of war, but it seems everyone conflated very different fields? Obviously, “I am depressed because of immutable characteristics of society” isn’t a useful observation, it’s just one of the basic symptoms of depression. But “analyzing the relationship between societal impacts and psychology is useless because it offers no help for the individual” is just as pointless, as if general relativity is useless because it doesn’t teach you to pilot a plane.

Collecting data regarding an entire population is just incomparable to an individual’s psychoanalysis. The latter may be more immediately useful, but it’s also not realistic treating it as a science until a better working model of the human brain is achieved. Until then, comparing various populations’ emotional and psychological reactions along sociological variables is the best system of data collection in this field.

This is a good ask and provides a convenient opportunity for me to summarize my views and then stop talking about it.

it seems everyone conflated very different fields? Obviously, “I am depressed because of immutable characteristics of society” isn’t a useful observation, it’s just one of the basic symptoms of depression.

A number of people said some version of this, that obviously this observation is useless and trite, but to pull out the tweet that prompted this, I don't think I am misrepresenting it:

And I guess this is on me for making my own post instead of just responding to the prior one, but I felt like a lot of people were more or less implying I was strawmanning instead of talking about a very real type of guy.

But “analyzing the relationship between societal impacts and psychology is useless because it offers no help for the individual” is just as pointless, as if general relativity is useless because it doesn’t teach you to pilot a plane.

Again, I'm going to quote myself here:

i guess i don't really understand the utility of the whole "cultural values and class relations" model of mental illness.

I am not saying here that it's useless to analyze the relationship between societal impacts and psychology. I don't believe that. But I also don't believe that's what the "cultural values and class relations" model is doing. I think it's vaguely gesturing at society using leftist-coded terminology with very little actual analysis.

I take it as a given that these aren't serious analytical models in the same way I take it as a given with trads who talk about the decline of marriage as a major negative impact - there's a kernel of truth here (we have research showing that married adults are happier than unmarried adults) but the selective focus on the speaker's political bugbears reveals that as its primary object, not the widespread improvement of people's mental health.

And in particular, both of these are frequently directed at people who talk about being individually mentally ill, which is why I think it's fair to grade them on their individual utility, even though people will often argue that "they aren't meant for that."

Collecting data regarding an entire population is just incomparable to an individual’s psychoanalysis. The latter may be more immediately useful, but it’s also not realistic treating it as a science until a better working model of the human brain is achieved. Until then, comparing various populations’ emotional and psychological reactions along sociological variables is the best system of data collection in this field.

I think you are overstating your argument a bit here. I think dissing psychology/psychiatry in comparison to sociology is missing the mark - it's not like sociology is some shining standard of scientific investigation. We also can and do perform good studies on psychiatric interventions, and indeed, many of these studies have informed my skepticism of clinical psychiatry.

[diminished-responsibility-owos]

You know what, fuck it naw I am gonna talk a little bit more about this, I thought Hazbin Hotel was just really fucking boring and uninteresting, and to be honest the fact that it's got an idiot plot and the random details that don't make any sense aren't the main reason why. Nothing the vees do makes an ounce of sense etc. etc. the main reason I don't like it is that it doesn't take its premise seriously at all. When you're writing about Christianity one thing you have to accept is that there is no aspect of Christianity you're going to be able to think of that hasn't already been written about to death, and obviously Hazbin is no exception. The question of how it can be fair for a finite crime to be corrected by an infinite punishment has been going on for a long long time, with like two minutes of googling I was able to find Kant's response to this exact argument, and that's what I want to comment on, there are responses to this criticism. There are so so so many responses to this criticism, none that I personally agree with, mind, but there are genuine good faith attempts to respond to this argument or to communicate why it's fair that "hell is forever". The show however is either incapable or unwilling to communicate these justifications to us, none of the antagonists have anything to say for themselves. Now to stress I agree with the show, having already been familiar with the justifications of an infinite punishment I was genuinely excited to hear that a cartoon that took the question of redeeming those in hell seriously was in the works, but then to see the show get made and the two primary angelic antagonists (Sera and Adam) be either completely incapable or totally uninterested in offering any defense for their actions, any justifications or rationale why what they do is right is bad writing not just because it makes them seem like two dimensional characters that exist solely to portray heaven as weak and evil but also because it denies the protagonist character as well. Charlie doesn't have anything to say because no one ever demands an explanation of her. "If hell is forever then heaven must be a lie", is that not good enough for you? Eat shit, Sera and Adam are both present for this line, and neither say anything substantial in response. To be clear I'm not even saying you should avoid strawmanning the opposition, by all means have Adam offer Kant's defense (which, very simply put, is that some people are born bad and just deserve to suffer for eternity) it would be really funny to watch the weasel squirm having to defend that point against Charlie, who could happily point out that in that case some of those "inherently evil people" are both of his first two wives. Sera could offer that any repentance inside of hell is inherently suspect because people could just be trying to escape hell, Charlie could point out (probably not in these words) that that's a brutal catch 22 that leads to eternal suffering etc. etc. and so on and so forth. A dialogue between these ideas would be interesting and cathartic, as it stands given how everyone perceives Charlie's idea as stupid, and that at the end of the show it's revealed that those who redeem themselves just automatically go to heaven it seems to me that Adam is basically being portrayed as correct, like if anyone was deserving of not suffering in hell they would have been saved, and he's in heaven so...

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Suppose you are undertaking a study of planar Euclidean geometry and butt up against the classic problem: the parallel postulate lacks the “self evident” quality of the other axioms, on the one hand; on the other, there is no apparent way to derive it from the rest, even as rejecting it begets monsters. Lines with no parallels. Lines with infinite parallels. Triangles of bizarre and eldritch proportions. How are these to be reconciled?

The sad answer would be that there is no reconciling them. Tidy up the language of euclids geometry and it turns out there’s nothing inconsistent about rejecting the PP at all, and completeness results make this equivalent to the existence of models for the other axioms where the PP fails. It would be nice if one could avoid this proliferation of consistent horrors, to show that these are downstream of some error at the beginning, and a possibility naturally presents itself: perhaps the fault lies in the aforementioned tidying up of the geometric language. Perhaps there is some more suitable precisification of Euclids way of talking, in which these untoward results are not forthcoming

And so after some trying months of research and head-banging, you emerge triumphant with this holy grail: the “inflected” theory of absolute geometry (euclids axioms minus the PP), formulated in an appropriately “inflected” language. Inflection in a formal language is a subtle matter, beyond the scope of this summary, but suffice it to say it is more than just tossing in new primitives to the old formalized vocabulary. It reimagines the grammar to extend that language in striking, unanticipated directions. And it meets the earlier desideratum: the inflected theory of absolute geometry validates the PP, not as an axiom on its own but as the fruit of the others independently

Notice that we did not just say that it proves the PP as a theorem from the others. Bc unfortunately it does not; in fact there is no way of formulating the new theory as an axiomatic system of the traditional variety at all. No, the principles validated by the theory are those true in all models of the theory, of which there is (mirabile dictu) exactly one, up to isomorphism. What are the models of the inflected theory? It takes a bit of care to formulate them in such a way as to capture the novel grammatical elements of the inflected language, but shorn of these additions they are a familiar class of mathematical object: the models of absolute geometry of zero curvature

I protest that this is supremely unimpressive. It is not news that the Euclidean plane as a model validates the PP; that is precisely what sets it apart. What I had hoped for, and what you had promised, was that you had some means of deriving the PP anew from more fundamental and “obvious” claims about the plane. But, you protest in return, that is exactly what you have done! Define the notion of an inflected model, define truth-in-an-inflected-model (and these definitions are really very natural and obvious, you could give general definitions that don’t get this result but those are much more perverse) and out it pops: any model where the other axioms obtain, so does the PP. It has been put for the first time on really solid foundations

But the parenthetical is where the rub lies, I suspect. What do you mean by “natural” here? Well, these models have some very intuitive properties. Triangles are all shaped as we expect, and if you impose a metric it’s the one we are used to…

And so that really was the rub. The very goods you wished to produce with the theory you have inserted instead from the outset. “The method of ‘postulating’ what we want,” Russell famously wrote, “has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.” What you have done is to package an instance of this brand of theft with an unusually transparent laundering scheme

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The second person in this story is obviously and unfairly a buffoon and a strawman. “Your” claims are clearly so much artlessly concealed sophistry. What is surprising is that many otherwise intelligent ppl say things almost exactly in this vein about second order Peano arithmetic

It is claimed as a virtue of SOPA, as over and against its first order counterpart, that it uniquely pins down a “model” ruling out aberrations like nonstandard integers and failures of ω-consistency. But how does it accomplish this? Some sophisticated trickery of the axioms and derivation rules? No, that is provably and fundamentally impossible (barring the unthinkable). It is by constraining the notion of a second order model from the outset with extremely strong conditions, conditions strong enough to provide the desired conclusions by construction. The definition of a first order model lacks these constraints, which are what prevent PA from attaining these same virtues, which are the cost of the interesting basic connections between syntax and semantics. And ofc SO classical logic can itself lay claim to these connections with a suitably generalised notion of a model—at this exact same cost

Those stronger constraints are, of course, in a certain sense “natural” and “intuitive”: they exclude precisely the counterintuitive unnaturalities forced on us by the incompleteness theorems, exhibited by the shunned non-categoricity of PA proper. The desiderata are present bc they have been written in by hand.

None of this is really substantive in any mathematical sense. If yk enough to follow along, you will know all the (very basic) facts I’ve been gesturing at. But arranging them thus is I think helpful in deflating certain illusory depths present in some of the relevant mathematical objects but not in others

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary295

7/10/24

wednesday

did a bit of writing today.

and the j-card is done. metadata undone, that changes 2morrow for sure...

all it takes to write is heat exhaustion and slightly fried nerves and dysphoria. so i guess mega fried nerves. and matcha.

here is da j-card:

i like how unreadable it is to beeeeeeeeeeeeeee honest. it's like it just makes you stare at the thing and the text just kind of melts into a mess. especially the big chunk there which is just every song title listed unspaced.

there's some stupid discourse out on the internet today, obviously i shouldn't look but there's some insanity about all the stuff going on re: sexual politics atm. the way people are throwing around 'sex positivity' which can really mean 30 different things, some of which were pretty minimal and like, don't judge people who have lots of sex because sex can be a thing that happens for all kinds of reasons, we ought to have conversations about sex outside of the regular assumptions re: desire and what it leads to, an aversion to moralism, or rather directionless 'having sex is liberating*' (* meaning: if you want to have sex), there is more here too.

really the baffling part for me, outside of the moralism, or i guess i should not say baffling, but it's generally how each generation seems to have bought more and more into the distinct generational character thing, creating insane stereotypes as if they're super real and just proceeding with a huge chunk of earth being those things and never really thinking about or interacting with, those people, or when they do, what they see are the assumptions/signs that they are what they imagine, and nothing else. and as this goes on, it strengthens each prior generation's notion that it is a thing unto itself, it solidifies against the stereotype as if that defends itself, or taking these features as points of pride rather than spectacular invention. this results in the kinds of millennial you see getting mad about eminem getting cancelled or this discourse about how millennials didn't know what boundaries were.

one thing lost in all this is the fact that the mid 00s were a horrific time to be feminine, thinking abt a lot of the ed stuff, the american apparel ads and so on (i recognize the irony in me saying this after posting that image i made where i am wearing american apparel thigh highs + the general uhm sexual nature of the cover and stuff but i'm messed up okay i don't want to get into it but i guess i have and i am crazy and whatever and i at least want to use that in a way that isn't me doing things that hurt myself okayyyyyyyyyyy), this wasn't liberating but it's also not because of 'sex positive feminism' that these images came to be, it's because of patriarchal exploitation and the pornographic gaze which is deeply bound to advertising already, a lot of these things remain the same, we have our current day forms of this. it's an issue that does not need to be so complicated and obfuscated by generational fingerpointing, but i think it feels good to do this, and this is the essential drive mobilized by posting inside the computer, the feeling good and right, and the invention of things to be right about, creation of logics which enable the rightness, and the ability to litigate truth with these methods, at their root they are not very complex usually, it's just about being able to 'see' a demographic and point at it. it goes beyond strawmanning to the point of really seeing people in a distorted way, not inventing them, but seeing them speaking, and not being able to understand because you know what they are already. it's wholly spectacular and strange.

anyhow, this is a pointless thing to look at. interesting to note i guess though. or useful for me. it does wig me out though, everytime you see surges of radical leaning or, idk, i don't think this is radical at all really, but this "radical" appearing way of thinking, you see terfs pop up, young ones too, that always wigs me out, they're funny though, not like in a good way, they're just, funny, as a notion i suppose.

anyway i need to sleep, i hope nobody finds my blog somehow over this and hits me with a t.i.m. moment, they love 2 hit that shit like the griddy.

oh one other thing, there was this british kid in the store today, he put a box of triscuits in his shopping cart, his mom asked what they were for as her and her friends were looking around for crisps, and he said "smores", and i felt so bad and i wanted to say something, as i stood there waiting for my girlfriend, like how he needs graham crackers for his smores and not triscuits but i didn't say anything but he put them away anyways. i am glad there was no tragedy but i feel bad that i might have enabled a minor tragedy in some way, that's kind of a stupid way to think but it's true . as in true that i felt that. or even feel it.

anyway

byebye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[methinmycoffee]

I don’t love when people try and use the “He’s just a little kid” argument for Cartman. Like, okay, sure he’s ten, but it’s still not excusable and also he has committed homicide. That is definitely not regular ten year old behavior.

Like, if he was just spitting on people and taking lunch money then there could be so arguments to be made for how children grow out of that behavior/blaming his enabling mother. But after a certain amount of felonies you have to consider that maybe he is a fictional character who is meant to be satirically irredeemable.

I wouldn’t mind so much except the people who make this argument are usually defending especially antisemitism, but also homophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, ableism and everything else. Like why are you dying on the hill that Eric Cartman is just a kid? Makes you sound a little bit like you agree with him, even if you swear that you don’t.

And ending your post with “none of the other kids are perfect either.” Does not help your point. Nobody was saying that. You’re fighting a strawman. But just because nobody else is perfect doesn’t mean that Cartman is justified or better in anyway. This is using two common tactics in shitty debates, straw manning and using “what-about-ism” to point to the other side’s flaws to deflect from their own.

And I don’t dislike Cartman in the show. He is obviously the one of the most important characters, he defines most of the dynamics. I just think it’s so silly that people are like “stop calling Cartman bad, he’s just a little kid.” He is supposed to be satirically awful and defending him makes you look like you defend antisemitism and everything else. Again, even if you swear that you don’t.

[studentofetherium]

i think, the problem with trying to frame moral progressive attitudes through the supposed objective text of religion is that it tries to rely on a subject meaning when that subjectivity is very much up for debate

"i support queer people because that's what the bible says, and people who think otherwise don't understand what it really means"

what this is doing is taking a moral stance (queer people good) and giving it in a basis in the bible (the bible says queer people are good). but if Jesus came back tomorrow and said "actually, the bible says that you're supposed to beat gay people to death with sticks", that would ruin this moral framework. for a religious liberal, in a scenario where their moral ideal is disproven, would that then mean that they go back on their previous ideals? if it was proven that the objective meaning of the bible is "beat gay people to death with sticks", would those religious liberals then turn around and start doing that?

if yes, then it's a sign that they don't really hold to progressive ideals, and if no, then it's a sign that tying their progressivism to religion was always just a justification without need for justification

obviously this is a bit of strawmanning but the point is that for religious liberals, it's better to justify progressive beliefs for the sake of progressive beliefs rather than tying them to a text which is vague and debated

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

While I am fully on-record as supporting the right and privilege of every artist to write whatever weird shit they want to write, because 1) art is a completely legitimate way to explore the outer reaches of human experience in a safely contained way and B) You Can Do Whatever You Want Forever, don't let a bunch of wannabe brain cops issue you an endless stream of moral citations -- I will say it's a tiny bit embarrassing when my team gets stuck on the argument "obviously people know right from wrong, reading a book isn't going to make a good person do bad things."

Because, like, yes, sure. Movies don't create psychos, Sydney, they just make psychos more creative. You're correct, but you're embarrassing because "Hannibal might make people think cannibals are sexy" is the lowest of low-hanging fruit, the definition of a strawman argument.

The problem is you're staking it all on the notion that there are Good People who will always know how to do good things and be sufficiently motivated to do so. Therefore, if someone does bad things, well shit, their Good Person Gauge was obviously broken, nothing we can do about that. Too bad about Bad People.

And that's. Just self-evidently incorrect, right? I mean, I think there's a good argument that in general, a predisposition toward prosocial behavior is part of the standard human software, something that we recognize as a "moral instinct" toward things like keeping your word and playing fair and making friends. But beyond that, you can't possibly look at all of human history and not realize that people contextually develop their sense of what's morally acceptable and unacceptable. Obviously! Obviously a person who wants to be a Good Person is going to be receiving and processing information all their lives from the people around them, learning how to separate normal from abnormal, admirable from disreputable, virtue from vice.

I can give you an easy, television-related example (the best kind of example!) When I was in college, I like most people I hung out with watched Friends, and we all framed Ross in our minds as a Good Boyfriend. We liked that he was loyal and devoted, that he knew Rachel well and seemed to care about her specifically; we saw him as the antithesis of the kind of sleazy, dishonest users and takers that we were always anxious to identify and avoid. And yes, many plotlines revolved around Rachel's objections to Ross' excessive jealousy and his resentment of her career, but in the context of the show, she always forgives him because she -- and the audience! -- interprets this as a stressful by-product of how intensely he adores her and his omnipresent anxiety that she's too good for him. It's not that we thought he was right -- the episodes themselves don't even frame his behavior as correct! But we thought. Well. That's the normal tradeoff. Relationships are hard, right? Someone was going to love us too much or not enough, and in the end, wasn't too much better? Women always have to manage male emotions, but this particular kind of admiration/neediness/insecurity was the Good Boyfriend set of emotions to have to manage.

And I'm not arguing that the reason women put up with sad-sack dudes flattering them into curtailing their lives so they don't outgrow unsupportive relationships is that Friends was a big hit. Movies don't, Sydney, etc. But I do think that in a culture where Media is kind of everyone's common language, people really, genuinely do consume media in a way that fundamentally forms their sense of what's normal and who's likeable and which stressful invasions against our boundaries and dignity are forgivable.

Anyway, write whatever you want! It's just one example of the way that I've personally witnessed real human beings adjust their sense of right and wrong around the media that's served to us as aspirational. So I know that does happen, and it has nothing to do with "adults know right from wrong;" I don't think that's a statement that's especially germane to real conditions in the real world.

[bowtiesarecool123]

yk what guys time to refute all of the hate all quiet has been getting bc i have nothing better to do

ok so i am having a very hard time understanding how a film score without lyrics can be offensive. does it make fun of something that requires nuance? no??? this score is not satirical in any way nor does it appropriate cultural music so where the fuck did offensive come from??? also what is so bad about the score being anachronistic? in fact i think this is one of the best aspects of it, if a film score has to be strictly within whatever period the film is set in not only does it lead to one dimensional uninnovative film scores, it just doesnt make sense in some scenarios. does a prehistoric film have to feature sticks as its only instrument?? ok even if we take all of that at their best, i feel like we're being too severe a couch critic, like cmon, they won for a reason, we don't have to be this rude about it, just say it's mid and call it a day...

yay lets generalize a very diverse fanbase bc it makes it easier to strawman and push my argument!! ok anyways i think a rlly big thing with sucessful adaptations is that ur gonna have to change some stuff. what works on paper might not necessarily work on the big screen. i get that a huge point of contention is the ending change and the cutting out of the returning home section. so about the ending first, i actually liked the changes bc while i get the poetic ending of the book, i think the movie ending does rlly well for character development and rlly goes all in to show the psychological changes paul experiences during the war. if we did keep what they were doing in the book, we might run into a lot of issues bc we're able to know what paul is feeling however that might be difficult to translate on film. also, we get interesting interpolation and final emphasis on the theme of how war is essentially just a puppet game. without the changes of the 11am armistice or the final orders from the evil general dude, we lose the new themes that the film brought in which would feel less complete than status quo. ok so the returning home argument, the novel is obviously more complex than the film but that doesn't make it better or worse. our film at hand already has a huge run time, if we tried to shoehorn in another whole theme, that might be too ambitious and we lose the focus the film has right now. i would definitely choose a world where they focus on one theme and do it really well, which is what's happening rn, over a line by line adaption that could feel messy and end up being too ambitious. again, a line by line adaptation has already been done and i wouldn't fault anyone for thinking the 1930 version is better, it just means it would be even worse and completely redundant to make another line by line adaptation rn. also again, these are completely all my opinions and its def valid to disagree on all of them but the real root of the issue i have with op's comment is how they chalk it all up to ppl not reading the books. it just comes off as rlly elitist and just not representative of what ppls actual opinions rlly are. also it's better to attack the media itself rather than ppl who enjoy the media 💀

braindead bird app time, here we have the classic case of someone thinking it's cool to shit on the film that all their twt mutuals are shitting on rn without ever having seen it. sorry if this is a bit left field but next time maybe watch the film b4 commenting on it?????????

this is honestly one of the least problematic opinions out of the all quiet haters so far but i am still responding to this bc the only category all quiet beat banshees in was original score (why is it always this) and the score doesn't have much to do with whether or not this film is a war film or if soldiers appeal to u or how many times this has been remade. and like i agree, banshees score, phenomenal, but if all quiet lost it still would go to babylon so i feel like the anger here is rlly misdirected.

all quiet haters cannot seem to comprehend that this film is not a remake holy shit. and even if it is inferior, it would only be inferior storywise bc u cannot fucking argue the point that 1930s vfx and cinematography are better than the 2022 version. and the only sweeps all quiet got were technical category sweeps so the inferior remake point is entirely irrelevant. and i am willing to bet 5 bucks this person didnt watch the movie bc then they would understand that technical aspects and story aspects are different bc what it sounds like rn is they're repeating whatever they've heard without properly applying the criticism to its accurate category.

.

.

ok im done now very slay if you've read all of this im sleep deprived bc of babylon dickriders so ignore my gramatical mistakes ty.

[sarbesaline]

Hogwarts Legacy discourse is more just annoying than anything else imo. That goes for both sides of the argument.

First of all, like yeah, it shouldn't be that big of an ask to avoid supporting transphobes and anti-semitic alt-righters buy not buying a luxury product. No, the fact there's no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism, but that's a completely mokt point because again it's a luxury product, not a necessity. And if being told to not buy a videogame, and people being mad when you try to ignore all the actual arguments against it to argue against stupid strawman arguments instead, makes you upset, then that says more about how much of a bigot you have always been then it does about anyone else.

But also, holy fucking shit can we calm the fuck down a bit please? Like seriously it's still just a game at the end. JKR is not going to suddenly be broke and silent if nobody bought the game. And all this time and energy people have for online discourse could be spent on like, actually meaningful subjects instead. Like how the US is literally trying to put forward legislation that would make it illegal for transpeople to exist in public, or all the general rise in fascism throughout the world. Or just educating people about trans issues and advocating for better trans healthcare. These are all much more meaningful ways to be spending your internet discourse time than arguing about a mediocre game and the shitty people behind it.

Like, I'm saying you should go buy it, obviously boycotting it is good, and you should tell others to do the same. But if someone makes a big deal about it, just fucking ignore them? Honestly at this point I'm starting to suspect if maybe this game is being used by the right as like a decoy topic, redirecting our attention away from actually meaningful issues so they can do their real agenda of making a fascist empire with less scrutiny.

Please, next time, just ask yourself, could I be using the time and energy to be contributing to a conversation that might bring about actual meaningful change?