#and it's SO prominent there

[strangetorpedos]

the first theme of within the wires is love. and the second theme is haunting. and these are often one and the same

[shinelikethunder]

if you're aware of the Vulture article on Neil Gaiman, there's not much i can add; if you aren't and you go looking, my only advice is that if you hit a point where you're wondering if you should bail, do so, because the details of his behavior only get more vile as it goes along.

however, one thing i WILL say is to be on the lookout for smear campaigns against the sources and/or the journalist, Lila Shapiro, in the coming weeks and months. i cannot stress enough how brave this article is. if there's one thing more hazardous to your reputation than blowing up a rich and influential serial predator in the entertainment industry, it's making the church of scientology look bad, and she's managed to do both in one stroke. remember Lila Shapiro's name, and be extremely skeptical if it suddenly turns up later this year as the target of some slimy allegation.

-

(reblogs are enabled again for the time being; please try to behave yourselves. this post is a heads-up, not an open mic night for your tangential hot takes or your personal feelings about gaiman's work. furthermore, tumblr's resident TERF circle-jerk is disrespectfully invited to piss off and take a long walk off a short fucking dock.)

[ryan-sometimes]

TERF shocked to discover that the real world is not an online echo chamber, and that instead the average woman either supports or just doesn’t care about trans people the way they do

[fanaticalthings]

just another night in gotham

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[satsuha]

style inspired by nina matsumoto's new official merch!!

prosecutor and detective dynamics they could never make me hate you...

[forgettable-au]

Started doing character ref sheets! FINALLY!

Should have done these WAY sooner in the process

Gonna finish Sans and Alphys later, but have these for now :D

[butterflyscribbles]

Is Sonic closer to Tom than Maddie because he imprinted on Tom as a bestie first? I've wondered this since seeing the trilogy for the first time...

It’s hard to imagine that he wouldn’t be at least a little closer with Tom than he is Maddie simply because of the events in STH1.

He even described Tom as his favorite person before even meeting him and Tom was the first person he went to when he needed to feel safe.

I know a lot of people sometimes see his outrage when Tom announces he plans to move to San Fransisco as out of character or over the top, but all I see is a kid with separation anxiety hearing the one pillar he had in Green Hills is leaving him behind.

All this is to say that im sure he loves and adores Maddie too. That’s his mama after all💙

[sleepymrshmllow]

obsessed with the cheek squish that got lost in the final animation

[nights-at-crystarium]

✧✦✧ "Fragments" - episode 45 ✧✦✧

…anyway, sandwiches!

New reader? episode list on tumblr | webtoon Read 4 more episodes: patreon | kofi

[ninjasmudge]

I noticed the Lamb was bleeding (I'm assuming blood and not tears) from their eyes in your latest post. Is that just a thing they do in this AU? Did the Fox do something? Or is it 'head maid privileges' bestowed by the Red Crown?

the thing is... in the maid au, lamb is only at the school bc they were desperate for money bc ratau was dying.

they agreed to be a test for an experimental treatment which was really just the red crown messing around with rituals in exchange for the cash to pay for treatments. part of the deal was that they attend the maid school so the crown could keep an eye on them to see what happens. theyre only there bc it keeps them busy.

lamb doesnt remember any of the rituals they underwent (mushrooms), they know somethings wrong but dont know what. the only thing they have to go off is flashes of the same red nightmares every night

they usually wake screaming

[doomdoomofdoom]

With the ongoing investigation into the CEO Killer, it's interesting to see how little people know about police investigations. Which is funny, because most of that stems from Copaganda and is now kinda biting the cops in the ass.

Semi-Educated rambles about copaganda and real procedures below the cut

I say semi-educated because I am writing a thesis paper on copaganda, but much more about the brutality aspects and not the crime solving ones. I did write a much less intense paper on that almost ten years ago, and presumably some things have changed. Take my "expertise" with a grain of salt.

The Copaganda Thing

Copaganda (Cop Propaganda) is basically what the name suggests. Anything that makes police look good. Social media posts about community outreach, the adorable little K-9 units, kneeling next to a protestor that you brutalize after the camera turns off. But the massive elephant in the room here are Cop Shows. There are literally too many for me to name. NCIS, Blue Bloods, True Detective, any of those weird "live" police shows, and yes, Brooklyn 99, too. These shows (often produced in cooperation with the police btw) serve to humanize cops and portray them as good, honest people, who maybe have to cross the line sometimes but it's always for a good reason and they're always right and save the day! The other half of it is vastly misrepresenting how (and if) crimes get solved.

Reality

Ripping this band-aid off first: Police are dogshit at solving crimes. There are aspects technically outside their control, like that only about half of all crimes (excluding murder) actually get reported to the police. (Based on comparing the 'Uniform Crime Reports' and the 'National Criminal Victimization Survey') But this also means that the Police Clearance rates are only half of what they calculate. Numbers get further skewed by not accounting for a lot of online crimes because the system hasn't caught up with like, the 90s. Anyway, for reported crimes, investigations will lead to an arrest in about 20-25% of cases. Three out of Four cases die without ever apprehending a suspect. (While there are ways to deal with a case without an arrest, ask yourself if you think that's likely in a system that measures success by arrest numbers) Conviction rates (which vary massively depending on crime) even out to about 4%, or 2% of total known crimes. (x) Worth noting: Generally, violent crimes have higher clearance and conviction rates. For murder, the conviction rate is around 60% while larceny-theft can dip below 1% of reported crimes. (It's generally assumed that the number of known and reported murders is the same, as the NCVS doesn't track it. Because murder victims are bad at filling out surveys.) To recap: Police solve about 4% of crimes reported to them. Meanwhile in your average cop show, you've got a success rate of about 100%. That's a stark difference, even if you take only murder rates of 60%. If you're an average citizen who's the victim of a crime, the most helpful thing the cops will do is file a report you can submit to your insurance.

Forensics & Procedures

I've seen these float around a bit and it's mildly ridiculous. Supposedly they've found a bottle and a protein bar of our killer and will be testing fingerprints and DNA. If those worked flawlessly, they still would only bring up results if the killer has been detained before. Databases of random civilian fingerprints/DNA samples are not kept by law enforcement. These analyses only work by having a point of comparison (and even then fingerprint analysis remains subjective), so they won't actually help finding the culprit, but they would be relevant to confirm the identity of an apprehended suspect and as evidence in an eventual trial. (There is also something called familial DNA which would work if they had a couple of relatives in the system, but that's both a flawed and incredibly time intensive approach. We're talking months of drawing family trees.) Also your average DNA test takes like 24 hours and fingerprint analysis is algorithmically supported now, but still mostly done manually. And both require a clear sample, so good luck with that. Fingerprint might as well be the clerk who sold the bottle. There's an infamous case of a serial killer whose DNA kept being found on crime scenes all Central Europe with no connection to each other. Turned out the Swabs were contaminated during production. There was no serial killer. Quickfire round of unrelated notes: 1) Lie detectors don't detect lies, they detect stress, anyone can trick one with some practice. the guy who popularized their use thought they could detect stress in plants too and that the plants could read his mind. 2) We're not actually sure if all fingerprints are completely unique. 3) Bite mark analysis is a pseudoscience that needs to be removed from criminal and legal proceedings asap. 4) Any algorithmic detections inherit the flaws of their human predecessors. Those are their training data. (That's also how they keep turning up racist)

And as a final note, it's common for the police to not share details on their ongoing investigations. That's just common sense. The only details that get released to the public are ones that could lead to direct hints or vague ones if there's a lot of public attention, to assure everyone there is progress. For similar reasons, while everyone and their grandma has put together the motive from the bullet casings, cops can't actually go out and confirm that. It's like how Bulbapedia has to say Flamigo appears to be based on a flamingo. Contrary to the cops, Bulbapedia does not have to carefully watch what data they release that might elicit more sympathy for Flamigo.

Why tho

So after literal decades of copaganda brainwashing, the public perception of crime and punishment is heavily skewed. We've been told over and over that cops can catch any criminal in a matter of a 60 minute episode, max. And that's by design. Aside from the image polishing, copaganda is a deterrent. If you're convinced you'll be caught after committing a crime, you wouldn't commit it, right? You don't wanna go to jail. And the bad guys always get what they deserve on TV, no matter how smart they are. You're not gonna risk that, are you?

That's why we keep using lie detectors, that's why the news are full of arrests being made constantly, that's why cop shows get so much support from the police. That's also why we keep pouring money into policing. Part of it, at least. We've built a police force that isn't about solving crimes. If that was priority, we'd invest more into forensics and labs to keep up with the demand of samples that need to be analyzed. Instead, we built a police force that gets new tech gadgets and military gear. It's an arms race against the general public that isn't even running. We take cops and we give them paranoia, weapons, justifications for violence, and targets to brutalize. I don't have to remind you of the riot gear and responses to peaceful protests. The police isn't your friend and helper. You must fear them. Fear their superior intellect, fear their crime solving abilities, fear the high tech arsenal at their disposal. Fear them so much, you won't even think of doing a crime unless you're rotten to the core. And if someone's rotten to the core, then surely the violence is justified.

But that's also why this guy in particular is so dangerous. They've built up this image of being near infallible (to anyone who never actually interacted with police proceedings, at least) and being able to stop any threat, catch any criminal. And yet, this guy shot someone in broad daylight, in the juristiction of the country's largest police department, and he's currently getting away with it.

[onenicebugperday]

White-dotted prominent, Nadata gibbosa, Notodontidae

Found in North America

Photo 1 by Judy Gallagher and 2 by royaltyler

[clown-creep]

I went down a very interesting rabbit hole because of @bestosunglass lol! But big props to them, it’s basically their version of the character just with a few personal tweaks. So credit to them!

[aroace-ed]

i don't think the people i know understand just how much i love people. humanity, i fear, will always forever be in my mind. i tell myself that i was made to be on the aroace spectrum, so that i could love the world. but it always seems to circle back to humanity, to people. life's best and cruelest gift to me. born to love, but not always in the right way.

[tatsugiriroll]

I keep seeing posts abt how “the evils of capitalism” is “missing the point” of mouthwashing . you guys Know a game can have more than one theme/message right? You Know the setting was specifically chosen by the devs for the purpose of the story right? Like it’s not just set dressing?

Do you think there would still be a busted vent for someone to get killed in if the company wasn’t maximizing profit over employees? And locks on the cabin doors? Do you think Anya would have had no one else but curly to turn to if the ship wasn’t being run on a skeleton crew, and there were more people onboard? Would Swansea have been able to keep utility off limits as long as he did? Do you think Anya would have reacted the same to her termination news if she had been fairly compensated and did have savings? would Daisuke have been stuck with a mentor who hated his guts if there was more than one engineer on the job? would the psych evaluations have gone over the same if they’d been conducted by a different doctor so Anya could have gotten hers done too? Do you think the injured curly would have been left alone and defenseless in the medical ward if there were more staff? Would he still be laying in his own bloody unchanged bandages? Do you think jimmy would have gotten away with half the shit he did if there was some semblance of employee rights, and no fear of termination or backlash from accusing him?

like guys this is all just off the top of my head. YES the message of “men will cover for their abuser friends until it’s too late for anyone” is prevalent, timely, and important, but the setting is INTEGRAL to what motivates characters and how they react to the story’s events!!! you cannot separate the two!!!!! can anyone hear me !

[everwalldigan]

My first somewhat controversial post but if you refer to Damian as “feral/rabid kitten” “stabby assassin child” or GOD FORBID you say that Jon TAMED HIM (I cannot even begin to describe how nasty that is.) your opinion on him is immediately invalid.

As an Arab who has been subjected to many microaggressions such as the ones above (eg: Arab people are uncivilised, uncultured and violent, dirty, animals), those kind of posts, even if they were meant in a lighthearted way are still really harmful. Just be mindful about how you talk about an Arab character who has been both subject to micro aggressions from other characters in universe and the victim of his identity being erased more and more with every new appearance.

Damian is not a fucking animal for the white angel Jon to “tame”. He is a child who has suffered immense amounts of trauma, negligence, physical and emotional abuse and is relearning how to interact with people, especially ones his age. Of course it helped that he had someone who understood his situation and with whom he could be himself with without compromising his identity. Jon was his friend but it was Damian who had the courage to put in the work to change his behaviour and rethink the ideals he’s been taught all his life. You could give him 100 Jon Kents but if he wasn’t brave enough to be willing to change, he wouldn’t have.

I also find it weird how people (and in fics) still insist on portraying Damian the way he behaved when he first left his abusive situation (the league of assassins) and are still acting like he’s the traumatised and violent child he used to be when now he is doing so much better and is acting more like people his age. Damian worked hard to be where he is today, he still has an immense amount of trauma because that just doesn’t go away no matter how loving his current environment is. He still struggles with morals and unlearning what has been hammered into him since he was a baby.

One more thing, if you portray Talia as a two dimensional abuser who doesn’t care about Damian (cough Tom king cough) then you’re doing both her and Damian a disservice because abuse is rarely a black and white thing and, especially with Talia, is incredibly complex. Talia has also suffered trauma and abuse her entire life. Her father literally runs a fucking cult. Talia is the victim of her generational curse, the cycle of violence that is now on Damian’s shoulders to stop.