#and there are things that are illegal but are morally correct

[anneangel]

Javert is as tragic as the title of the book suggests, a miserable.

He may even be the main antagonist, in the sense of opposing the centric character (Jean Valjean), but he is certainly not a villain.

He is obsessed with fulfilling his duty and in a tireless pursuit of justice. He does not believe in Jean Valjean's redemption and his obsession with persecuting him is related to his rigid worldview based on his personal experience and inflexible principles, related to his past, where he was born into a dysfunctional family. He firmly believes in the idea that a bad person is bad forever. He sees his role as Inspector as a fight against crime and injustice.

He doesn't pursue Jean Valjean because he's a villain, he pursues him because he believes Jean is a criminal, who violated his parole, and therefore deserves to be sent back to the prison system.

He was just a man who believed he was doing the right thing, following the law. He believed that people chose to be miserable and that they got what they deserved for choosing to be "vagabonds." He looked at himself and took pleasure in thinking; I came from a dysfunctional home and I still do what is right, so if others don't do it, it's because they don't want to and will never change.

But then he finds himself at a crossroads after Jean Valjean spares his life: "the law says I must arrest this man. But my conscience says I owe him a life debt."

For the first time he contemplates that "law" and "justice" do not always go together. It would be "legal under the law" to arrest Jean, but it would not be "morally just". It's a conflict between legality versus morality.

So poor Javert still faces the deconstruction of his beliefs: “he thought that good and evil were very different things and that an ex-convict could only be bad while a police officer could only be good”, when he realizes that reality not obeys that extreme and that a prisoner can be good (or that it is possible to change and become good), just as a law enforcement officer can become corrupt.

Faced with so many things that he firmly believed falling apart, showing erroneous beliefs of live, he chooses to kill himself rather than live with such unrest. So, basically he commits suicide because he was saved by Jean Valjean, and he couldn't stand that fact.

It really must have been scary to discover that he has spent his life following beliefs that suddenly deteriorate in front of him. It's sad that in the face of this "scare" he chose to kill himself.

The character promotes a very pertinent reflection, and leads us to reconsider the way we look at people who are typically stigmatized by society. Victor Hugo is never trying to say that bad people are good deep down, nothing like that; After all, there is the character Mr. Thénardier to prove this. What he is saying is that we cannot make it an absolute rule that all people who commit crimes were and will be bad forever. Because by establishing that they are, a stigma is created that can be unfair for those who, like Jean, tried to change their lives.

It is also necessary to remember that at no point does Hugo say that Jean Valjen was right in stealing the bread, but rather that the penalty imposed on him was disproportionate to the crime committed. In the end, we read that Javert kills himself because he cannot bear the idea that Jean, an ex-prisoner, can go from darkness to light. While he, by following the law, committed an injustice.

He thinks that Jean, even though he was a former prisoner, managed to go to a place above him morally, while he, who was such an inflexible agent of the law, saw himself as someone tough who didn't understand the factor of redemption as an element capable of rescue the soul of someone who once made a mistake.

Honestly, I like the character and understand the powerful reflection he brings to us. But at the same time, I'm sad that he killed himself. He could have chosen other paths, but ultimately he was so desolate that he saw no other options.

[1pcii]

reading one piece after being a naruto fan for so long is like finally experiencing love again after being in an abusive relationship

[kercherisacanopener]

Seems a little unfair

[ursie]

Brennan’s statement on Palestine :

[ ID: Statement from Brennan Lee Mulligan, on Instagram. It consists of three black squares with plain white text. The text reads as follows:

"I'm calling on my government officials to immediately demand a ceasefire and de-escalation in Gaza.

I applaud anyone and everyone calling for peace, with the understanding that real peace only exists if it deeply and honestly accounts for and fully ends violence in all its forms. Real peace addresses and corrects wrong-doing in the past and guards against it in the future. It goes hand in hand with justice and requires truth, restoration, reconciliation, reparation.

Peace cannot co-exist with collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement. It cannot co-exist with blockades, embargoes, or with 2.2 million people, half of which are children, trapped with no hope of escape or political recourse. it cannot co-exist with murdered journalists, bombed hospitals, or years of protesters being shot and killed at the border. it cannot co-exist with illegal settlements, segregated roads, and the silent, imperial chill that settles over the gaps in the violence - the unspoken geopolitical consensus that a group of people need to unflinchingly accept permanent subjugation and occupation.

My hear breaks for every Israeli person who lost loved ones during the attacks of October 7th. It breaks for every Ukrainian person who has lost their loved ones. It breaks for every Congolese person who has lost their loved ones. I do not speak on behalf of Palestinians now because some lives are worth more than others. I speak on their behalf because I, and all Americans, have a responsibility to pressure our government because we are responsible for this. Some have said that this situation is complicated. The Unites States government clearly disagrees. It has definitively, categorically, militarily chosen a side, and I do not agree with that decision.

In wiring this, I have been wrestling with what I am sure many people like me wrestle with: There is a powerful narrative surrounding violence in the Middle East that asserts and ever-moving goalpost of self-education and study in order to even be qualified to have an opinion. As someone with a love of research, I have at times in my life fallen into the trap that I am not educated enough clever enough, or aware enough to have a worthwhile perspective, and that three more articles and two more lectures and one more book will do the trick. Unfortunately, democracy doesn't work that way - we, the citizens of any democracy, cannot possibly be experts on every aspect of the policies of our governments, and yet if we do not constantly weigh in an make our voices heard, the entire experiment falls apart. Not only do people constantly doubt themselves and the things they can see with their own two eyes, but old shortcuts for political action can fall apart as well: This specific issue exists along a raw, charged and unique faultline in American Politics. Nobody I grew up with has ever challenged me on my support for abortion rights, LGBT rights, Black Lives Matter, anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, none of it. The people in my country who would despise me for those positions are, for all intents and purposes, strangers to me. But there are people who I've broken bread with and shared honest affection with who will see the words I've written here and incorrectly conclude that I do not wish for the security, dignity and happiness of them and their loved ones, and that breaks my fucking heart. Full-throatedly condemning the actions of the Israeli government while battling rampant anti-semitism at home is an urgent moral necessity, and doing so is made unnecessarily challenging for the average person to navigate by the pointed obfuscations of cynical opportunists, bigots, and demagogues on all sides of the political spectrum who see some advantage in sowing that incredibly dangerous confusion.

So, I'm calling my representatives. I'm having hard conversations with friends and family. I'm here, talking to you. I should have done it sooner. If you're Israeli and hurt by this statement, know that I want freedom, dignity, security and peace for you, and that every ounce of my political awareness believes whole-heartedly that the actions of your government are not only destroying innocent lives, but doing so to the detriment of you and your loved ones' safety. If you're American and feel lost and confused - I understand and empathize. This, the whole country, only works when we get involved. I am constantly haunted by the specter that maybe I missed some crucial piece of information on this, or any, important world event. I'll just have to make my peace with that self-doubt and trust my gut by going with Jewish Voice for Peace, Amnesty International, the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations, etc. And if you're Palestinian and reading this: I unreservedly support your right to life, to freedom, to happiness and human flourishing, to full enfranchisement and equal rights, to opportunity, prosperity and abundance, to the restoration of stolen property and land, and to a Free Palestine." End ID ]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Surveillance pricing

THIS WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Correction, 7 June 2024: The initial version of this article erroneously described Jeffrey Roper as the founder of ATPCO. He benefited from ATPCO, but did not co-found it. The initial version of this article called ATPCO "an illegal airline price-fixing service"; while ATPCO provides information that the airlines use to set prices, it does not set prices itself, and while the DOJ investigated the company, they did not pursue a judgment declaring the service to be illegal. I regret the error.

Noted anti-capitalist agitator Adam Smith had it right: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

Despite being a raving commie loon, Smith's observation was so undeniably true that regulators, policymakers, and economists couldn't help but acknowledge that it was true. The trustbusting era was defined by this idea: if we let the number of companies in a sector get too small, or if we let one or a few companies get too big, they'll eventually start to rig prices.

What's more, once an industry contracts corporate gigantism, it will become too big to jail, able to outspend and overpower the regulators charged with reining in its cheating. Anyone who believes Smith's self-evident maxim had to accept its conclusion: that companies had to be kept smaller than the state that regulated them. This wasn't about "punishing bigness" – it was the necessary precondition for a functioning market economy.

We kept companies small for the same reason that we limited the height of skyscrapers: not because we opposed height, or failed to appreciate the value of a really good penthouse view – rather, to keep the building from falling over and wrecking all the adjacent buildings and the lives of the people inside them.

Starting in the neoliberal era – Carter, then Reagan – we changed our tune. We liked big business. A business that got big was doing something right. It was perverse to shut down our best companies. Instead, we'd simply ban big companies from rigging prices. This was called the "consumer welfare" theory of antitrust. It was a total failure.

40 years later, nearly every industry is dominated by a handful of companies, and these companies price-gouge us with abandon. Worse, they use their gigantic ripoff winnings to fill war-chests that fund the corruption of democracy, capturing regulators so that they can rip us off even more, while ignoring labor, privacy and environmental law and ducking taxes.

It turns out that keeping gigantic, opaque, complex corporations honest is really hard. They have so many ways to shuffle money around that it's nearly impossible to figure out what they're doing. Digitalization makes things a million times worse, because computers allow businesses to alter their processes so they operate differently for every customer, and even for every interaction.

This is Dieselgate times a billion: VW rigged its cars to detect when they were undergoing emissions testing and switch to a less polluting, more compliant mode. But when they were on the open road, they spewed lethal quantities of toxic gas, killing people by the thousands. Computers don't make corporate leaders more evil, but they let evil corporate leaders execute far more complex and nefarious plans. Digitalization is a corporate moral hazard, making it just too easy and tempting to rig the game.

That's why Toyota, the largest car-maker in the world, just did Dieselgate again, more than a decade later. Digitalization is a temptation no giant company can resist:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wwj1p2wdyo

For forty years, pro-monopoly cheerleaders insisted that we could allow companies to grow to unimaginable scale and still prevent cheating. They passed rules banning companies from explicitly forming agreements to rig prices. About ten seconds later, new middlemen popped up offering "information brokerages" that helped companies rig prices without talking to one another.

Take Agri Stats: the country's hyperconcentrated meatpacking industry pays Agri Stats to "consult on prices." They provide Agri Stats with a list of their prices, and then Agri Stats suggests changes based on its analysis. What does that analysis consist of? Comparing the company's prices to its competitors, who are also Agri Stats customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

In other words, Agri Stats finds the highest price for each product in the sector, then "advises" all the companies with lower prices to raise their prices to the "competitive" level, creating a one-way ratchet that sends the price of food higher and higher.

More and more sectors have an Agri Stats, and digitalization has made this price-gouging system faster, more efficient, and accessible to sectors with less concentration. Landlords, for example, have tapped into Realpage, a "data broker" that the same thing to your rent that Agri Stats does to meat prices. Realpage requires the landlords who sign up for its service to accept its "recommendations" on minimum rents, ensuring that prices only go up:

https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating

Writing for The American Prospect, Luke Goldstein lays out the many ways in which these digital intermediaries have supercharged the business of price-rigging:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-05-three-algorithms-in-a-room/

Goldstein identifies a kind of patient zero for this ripoff epidemic: Jeffrey Roper, a former Alaska Air exec who benefited from a service that helps airlines set prices. ATPCO was investigated by the DOJ in the 1990s, but the enforcers lost their nerve and settled with the company, which agreed to apply some ornamental fig-leafs to its collusion-machine. Even those cosmetic changes were seemingly a bridge too far Roper, who left the US.

But he came back to serve as Realpage's "principal scientist" – the architect of a nationwide scheme to make rental housing vastly more expensive. For Roper, the barrier to low rents was empathy: landlords felt stirrings of shame when they made shelter unaffordable to working people. Roper called these people "idiots" who sentimentality "costs the whole system."

Sticking a rent-gouging computer between landlords and the people whose lives they ruin is a classic "accountability sink," as described in Dan Davies' new book "The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions – and How The World Lost its Mind":

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

It's a form of "empiricism washing": if computers are working in the abstract realm of pure numbers, they're just moving the objective facts of the quantitative realm into the squishy, imperfect qualitative world. Davies' interview on Trashfuture is excellent:

https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/fire-sale-at-the-accountability-store-feat-dan-davies/

To rig prices, an industry has to solve three problems: the problem of coming to an agreement to fix prices (economists call this "the collective action problem"); the problem of coming up with a price; and the problem of actually changing prices from moment to moment. This is the ripoff triangle, and like a triangle, it has many stable configurations.

The more concentrated an industry is, the easier it is to decide to rig prices. But if the industry has the benefit of digitalization, it can swap the flexibility and speed of computers for the low collective action costs from concentration. For example, grocers that switch to e-ink shelf tags can make instantaneous price-changes, meaning that every price change is less consequential – if sales fall off after a price-hike, the company can lower them again at the press of a button. That means they can collude less explicitly but still raise prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

My name for this digital flexibility is "twiddling." Businesses with digital back-ends can alter their "business logic" from second to second, and present different prices, payouts, rankings and other key parts of the deal to every supplier or customer they interact with:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Not only does twiddling make it easier to rip off suppliers, workers and customers, it also makes these crimes harder to detect. Twiddling made Dieselgate possible, and it also underpinned "Greyball," Uber's secret strategy of refusing to send cars to pick up transportation regulators who would then be able to see firsthand how many laws the company was violating:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-program-evade-authorities.html

Twiddling is so easy that it has brought price-fixing to smaller companies and less concentrated sectors, though the biggest companies still commit crimes on a scale that put these bit-players to shame. In The Prospect, David Dayen investigates the "personalized pricing" ripoff that has turned every transaction into a potential crime-scene:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-06-04-one-person-one-price/

"Personalized pricing" is the idea that everything you buy should be priced based on analysis of commercial surveillance data that predicts the maximum amount you are willing to pay.

Proponents of this idea – like Harvard's Pricing Lab with its "Billion Prices Project" – insist that this isn't a way to rip you off. Instead, it lets companies lower prices for people who have less ability to pay:

https://thebillionpricesproject.com/

This kind of weaponized credulity is totally on-brand for the pro-monopoly revolution. It's the same wishful thinking that led regulators to encourage monopolies while insisting that it would be possible to prevent "bad" monopolies from raising prices. And, as with monopolies, "personalized pricing" leads to an overall increase in prices. In econspeak, it is a "transfer of wealth from consumer to the seller."

"Personalized pricing" is one of those cuddly euphemisms that should make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. A more apt name for this practice is surveillance pricing, because the "personalization" depends on the vast underground empire of nonconsensual data-harvesting, a gnarly hairball of ad-tech companies, data-brokers, and digital devices with built-in surveillance, from smart speakers to cars:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/12/market-failure/#car-wars

Much of this surveillance would be impractical, because no one wants their car, printer, speaker, watch, phone, or insulin-pump to spy on them. The flexibility of digital computers means that users always have the technical ability to change how these gadgets work, so they no longer spy on their users. But an explosion of IP law has made this kind of modification illegal:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

This is why apps are ground zero for surveillance pricing. The web is an open platform, and web-browsers are legal to modify. The majority of web users have installed ad-blockers that interfere with the surveillance that makes surveillance pricing possible:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But apps are a closed platform, and reverse-engineering and modifying an app is a literal felony – several felonies, in fact. An app is just a web-page skinned with enough IP to make it a felony to modify it to protect your consumer, privacy or labor rights:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

(Google is leading a charge to turn the web into the kind of enshittifier's paradise that apps represent, blocking the use of privacy plugins and proposing changes to browser architecture that would allow them to felonize modifying a browser without permission:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

Apps are a twiddler's playground. Not only can they "customize" every interaction you have with them, but they can block you (or researchers seeking to help you) from recording and analyzing the app's activities. Worse: digital transactions are intimate, contained to the palm of your hand. The grocer whose e-ink shelf-tags flicker and reprice their offerings every few seconds can be collectively observed by people who are in the same place and can start a conversation about, say, whether to come back that night a throw a brick through the store's window to express their displeasure. A digital transaction is a lonely thing, atomized and intrinsically shielded from a public response.

That shielding is hugely important. The public hates surveillance pricing. Time and again, through all of American history, there have been massive and consequential revolts against the idea that every price should be different for every buyer. The Interstate Commerce Commission was founded after Grangers rose up against the rail companies' use of "personalized pricing" to gouge farmers.

Companies know this, which is why surveillance pricing happens in secret. Over and over, every day, you are being gouged through surveillance pricing. The sellers you interact with won't tell you about it, so to root out this practice, we have to look at the B2B sales-pitches from the companies that sell twiddling tools.

One of these companies is Plexure, partly owned by McDonald's, which provides the surveillance-pricing back-ends for McD's, Ikea, 7-Eleven, White Castle and others – basically, any time a company gives you a hard-sell to order via its apps rather than its storefronts or its website, you should assume you're getting twiddled, hard.

These companies use the enshittification playbook to trap you into using their apps. First, they offer discounts to customers who order through their apps – then, once the customers are fully committed to shopping via app, they introduce surveillance pricing and start to jack up the prices.

For example, Plexure boasts that it can predict what day a given customer is getting paid on and use that information to raise prices on all the goods the customer shops for on that day, on the assumption that you're willing to pay more when you've got a healthy bank balance.

The surveillance pricing industry represents another reason for everything you use to spy on you – any data your "smart" TV or Nest thermostat or Ring doorbell can steal from you can be readily monetized – just sell it to a surveillance pricing company, which will use it to figure out how to charge you more for everything you buy, from rent to Happy Meals.

But the vast market for surveillance data is also a potential weakness for the industry. Put frankly: the commercial surveillance industry has a lot of enemies. The only thing it has going for it is that so many of these enemies don't know that what's they're really upset about is surveillance.

Some people are upset because they think Facebook made Grampy into a Qanon. Others, because they think Insta gave their kid anorexia. Some think Tiktok is brainwashing millennials into quoting Osama bin Laden. Some are upset because the cops use Google location data to round up Black Lives Matter protesters, or Jan 6 insurrectionists. Some are angry about deepfake porn. Some are angry because Black people are targeted with ads for overpriced loans or colleges:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/04/meta_ad_algorithm_discrimination/

And some people are angry because surveillance feeds surveillance pricing. The thing is, whatever else all these people are angry about, they're all angry about surveillance. Are you angry that ad-tech is stealing a 51% share of news revenue? You're actually angry about surveillance. Are you angry that "AI" is being used to automatically reject resumes on racial, age or gender grounds? You're actually angry about surveillance.

There's a very useful analogy here to the history of the ecology movement. As James Boyle has long said, before the term "ecology" came along, there were people who cared about a lot of issues that seemed unconnected. You care about owls, I care about the ozone layer. What's the connection between charismatic nocturnal avians and the gaseous composition of the upper atmosphere? The term ecology took a thousand issues and welded them together into one movement.

That's what's on the horizon for privacy. The US hasn't had a new federal consumer privacy law since 1988, when Congress acted to ban video-store clerks from telling the newspapers what VHS cassettes you were renting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

We are desperately overdue for a new consumer privacy law, but every time this comes up, the pro-surveillance coalition defeats the effort. but as people who care about conspiratorialism, kids' mental health, spying by foreign adversaries, phishing and fraud, and surveillance pricing all come together, they will be an unbeatable coalition:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Meanwhile, the US government is actually starting to take on these ripoff artists. The FTC is working to shut down data-brokers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

The FBI is raiding landlords to build a case against Frontpage and other rent price-fixers:

https://popular.info/p/feds-raid-corporate-landlord-escalating

Agri Stats is facing a DoJ lawsuit:

https://www.nationalhogfarmer.com/market-news/agri-stats-loses-motions-to-transfer-dismiss-in-doj-antitrust-case

Not every federal agency has gotten the message, though. Trump's Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell – whom Biden kept on the job – has been hiking interest rates in a bid to reduce our purchasing power by making millions of Americans poorer and/or unemployed. He's doing this to fight inflation, on the theory that inflation is being cause by us being too well-off, and therefore trying to buy more goods than are for sale.

But of course, interest rates are inflationary: when interest rates go up, it gets more expensive to pay your credit card bills, lease your car, and pay a mortgage. And where we see the price of goods shooting up, there's abundant evidence that this is the result of greedflation – companies jacking up their prices and blaming inflation. Interest rate hawks say that greedflation is impossible: if one company raises its prices, its competitors will swoop in and steal their customers with lower prices.

Maybe they would do that – if they didn't have a toolbox full of algorithmic twiddling options and a deep trove of surveillance data that let them all raise prices together:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-06-05-time-for-fed-to-meet-ftc/

Someone needs to read some Adam Smith to Chairman Powell: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/05/your-price-named/#privacy-first-again

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[leostarred]

icky emoji combos to look out for :(

-🌈🍖 (proship)

-🍓🍰 (proship)

↑Someone who supports/likes romantic relationships in media that is considered "problematic" as well as supporting fanworks about said pairings.

-🌸🌙 (comship)

-🕊️🍋 (comship)

↑Similar to Proship, someone who indulges in complicated ships, things that are socially/morally unacceptable in reality, they do not endorse these things irl, but still triggering.

-🍋🌈 (profic)

↑These people don't really care what others ship- which is fine, they basically just stay out of the way of others, and don't really argue over their ships being correct, or others being incorrect (while this is probably one of the least bad ones, that still means they are okay with icky/illegal ships)

-🐰🎀 (l0licon)

↑A type of media fixated on younger looking women in a sexual or erotic sense, probably the people who say "but she's a god!!!!" when she looks like 5.

-🍯🧸 (sh0tacon)

↑Someone who is attracted to fictional characters under the age of 16... so fictional p3dos. Icky.

-🕊️⚰️ (deaddove)

↑Enjoyer of darker media, things that are violent or vile in general.. sometimes being things like necr0ph!l!a.

-🥀☁️ (n0n-c0n)

↑Enjoys fictional tropes with lack of consent; like r@pe.

-📚☕️ (agegap)

↑Pretty self explanatory, they usually enjoy ships with a biiiig age gap, the reason this is problematic is because usually one of the people in the pairing is super young.

-🌸💫 (gr00ming)

↑Someone who enjoys grooming in media, essentially, grooming is preparing someone younger for sexual purposes, or abuse.

.

.

.

These emoji combos are associated with things like pro shippers or dark media lovers, if you don't want to interact with these icky people, look out for these !

Here are some ANTI emoji combos 2 use!

-🍡💫

-🧋🎀

-🥛💎

-🌹👻

-🔥🍄

-🥩🧸

-🦴🫙

-👽🍦

-🫧🪷

-🧼🍰

-🍫⛓️

-🍤💣

-🧁🦠

-🌈🫘

-🍭🪓

-🧇🎈

-💊🌱

-🍬🚬

-🍪🪦

-🪄🍩

-🥞💫

also reminder that "🌈♾️" means autism.. please do not block autistic ppl in mistake for proshippers. 😭

[kittenintheden]

y'all are making my blood pressure spike during my fun time so I am gonna do this one time and one time only. some notes.

a "safe space" is a space that is set aside for a community to be amongst like-minded peers with shared experiences and have discussions about the things that affect them away from another group who might harm them. it is not and cannot be a public forum that invites public discussion. that's not what a safe space is.

being a dick on anon only makes you a dick. that's it. there's no other explanation or reasoning. that is across. the. board.

the size of a person's following does not make them more or less of a person than you and it absolutely does not ever make you morally correct for being a complete asshole to them.

you don't know who 95% of people are behind the screen. you don't know their work, their experience, their emotional space, their relationships, whatever. you are seeing the tiniest slice of their life. you don't get to make broad assumptions based on that small slice.

if someone would like to charge money for absolutely anything they want to charge money for, so long as it is not illegal or objectively shitty, it's not your business unless you would like to partake in the thing. that is really all there is to it.

I like to think the content of my character and my actions speak for me, but you can make up whatever narrative you like. I guess. I am really only here to have a good time and be as silly as I feel like. this is my fun time. I plan to keep it that way. I am not here for the whatever vs whatever fan wars and mostly I like to pretend they don't exist. I am not interested.

that's all. there's nothing more to it than that.

[13eyond13]

As much as it's easy to hate Light for killing L and gloating about it... idk what else choice he had really except to try to get rid of him permanently (in HIS OWN MIND, MIND YOU - not saying he had no choice but to do what he does as Kira, but in his own mind he couldn't go back on his decision after he began). Like, considering how ruthlessly L was investigating him / not ever even attempting to be nice or fair about it (like yeah, L WAS correct about Light being Kira and wanted to get concrete evidence for it, but L didn't KNOW that he was for sure yet) - and L's methods of investigation like the confinement and fake execution would probably be pretty traumatic ones to experience for Light, realistically. Heck, even the implications of things like Light knowing that L had got his dad to agree to putting zillions of illegal hidden cameras around their house would be disturbing ones to contemplate - not just because of the invasion of privacy, but because it would also prove to Light that his dad was bending his own morals to work with L, and that his dad really DID have some doubt about his innocence as well. I think Light's buried guilt and shame about actually being Kira, and his fear of deeply examining his own darker emotions, plus genuinely finding L's relentless antagonism flattering and entertaining to experience, held him back from really digging into any of that stuff onscreen a whole lot. But thinking about it does keep me from hating him for killing L as much as I might otherwise - like I don't 100% know what else he could've done to wriggle out from under L's thumb, and I also think that under all the mind-games and dark jokes they were playing on each other Light wasn't wrong to fear that L was trying to destroy his life in a very serious way. Light defines L inwardly to himself as someone who "doesn't know when to stop" or something at a certain point in the story, and I feel that's true... I think he mostly LIKES that aspect of L and often thinks it's interesting and fun, but also that he didn't really see any other way that things could end between them both.

[thewritetofreespeech]

Ello!! Is it alright if I request a vamp! Fem or gender neutral reader with Vanitas?? I have a small prompt. The two bicker alot, but what happens when the reader gets injured and refuses to drink blood to help themselves, and Vanitas is genuinely worried about them?? Sorry if this is too long. Have a wonderful day/night!!

They had barely made it out with their heads still on. [Y/N] barricading the door while Vanitas looked for something to make it more secure. “There. That should hold it.” He announced, with a slight pant, after he had shoved a bookcase, two end tables, and any other junk he could find in this abandoned shack of a villa to keep the Curse Bearer at bay.

“I’ve never seen one act so violently.” [Y/N] replied. Their eyes still bright red from the fight. As crimson as the blood staining their shirt where they had sliced them with their great, sharp spines.

“Yeah. I don’t think we’ll be able to save this one.” Vanitas commented solemnly. “We’ll have to get its name back to stop it, but the chances of them coming out seem pretty low.”

[Y/N] sighed, afraid of that but aware of the outcome, then swayed a little as they took a step to sit down. “You ok?”

“Yes. Just a little light headed.” They replied.

“You’re still bleeding, hn?” Vanitas commented. Following behind them as they sat down. “I thought you would have healed up by now.”

“So did I. The fight and flight must have taken a lot out of me.” Vampire were incredibly resilient, but had their limitations. Fatigue, hunger, overexertion, could lead to a decline in the healing process, like any living thing. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem for [Y/N], and they would take the slow path to getting better. However, the situation they were in was not one best suited for ‘the slow path’. Their enemy could find them at any minute. It wouldn’t take much to break down their barricade and slaughter them if they wanted. They would need to get out of here, quickly, if they wanted to survive.

“Do you want me to help you?” Vanitas asked. To which [Y/N] scoffed.

“I didn’t know you knew first aid.”

“No I mean….”

He began to gesture awkwardly. It took [Y/N] a minute to realize what he was ‘saying’ and when they realized they were shocked. “I’m not drinking your blood Vanitas.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?!” They repeated. Shocked further that they would even ask such a question. “Because aside from it being illegal, it’s also incredibly inappropriate and….intimate.”

“It’s only illegal if I say no.” Vanitas corrected them. “And I’m offering it to you. Look, do you want to get out of here or not?”

“I think we can get out of here without me resorting to barbarism.” [Y/N] retorted. Voices getting raised.

“Yeah, cause you did a fine job of getting us out of here earlier.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!”

“It means you couldn’t get us out of here when you were at top percent at the start. Now you’re injured! And you think you’re just magically going to help get us out of here with your positive attitude and morals!”

“You were in my way! I didn’t see you helping any back there!”

“That’s why I’m helping now!” Vantias hand smacked against the wall behind their head. His usually slim frame suddenly towered over [Y/N] in an intimidating way, as he pulled back his bow tie & shirt to expose his neck. “Take my blood!”

[Y/N] sat there in surprise. Their face flush at the situation, but also with the hammering sound of their heartbeat in their ears. It had been years since they had had fresh blood. They really did mean it when they said they thought it was barbarism. But there was a part of them, deep down, that always would crave it. A base instinct that lingered under the surface. A dark whisper, almost like Naenia’s, that beckoned them to take his blood.

Slowly, shyly, they leaned forward towards Vanitas’s neck. To his credit, he did not move. In fact he only flinched a little bit when their fangs pierced his skin. The warm, rich flow of blood trickled down their tongue and down their throat. Making them feel like they had never been warm in their life until this moment.

They suddenly realized why some rouge vampires became addicted to this. They suddenly realized what all the fuss was about.

“T-That’s enough [Y/N]…” Vanitas called out to them and pushed [Y/N] back. His turn to swoon a little bit now. “It won’t do us any good if I can’t walk out of here now.”

“Oh…I guess you’re right….” They suddenly felt embarrassed that they had lost themselves in the moment. Then they looked down and realized that all their injuries were healed. “I think I’m all right now. Better even. Better than new.”

“That’s nice.” Vanitas replied, before he slumped down beside them. “I just need to sit for a bit. Then we can try to make a break for it.”

“I’m sorry. Did I….-“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Vanitas butt in. “I just need to sit for a minute.”

They sat in silence. Listening to the stone flinch around them in their cubby hole. It was the quietest moment they had never had together. They never spoke of what happened again.

[thatshirleylee]

brennan's statement on instagram

I'm calling on my government officials to immediately demand a ceasefire and de-escalation in Gaza.

I applaud anyone and everyone calling for peace, with the understanding that real peace only exists if it deeply and honestly accounts for and fully ends violence in all its forms. Real peace addresses and corrects wrong-doing in the past and guards against it in the future. It goes hand in hand with justice and requires truth, restoration, reconciliation, reparation.

Peace cannot co-exist with collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement. It cannot co-exist with blockades, embargoes, or with 2.2 million people, half of which are children, trapped with no hope of escape or political recourse. It cannot co-exist with murdered journalists, bombed hospitals, or years of protesters being shot and killed at the border. It cannot co-exist with illegal settlements segregated roads, and the silent, imperial chill that settles over the gaps in the yiolence - the unspoken geopolitical consensus that a group of people need to unflinchingly accept permanent subjugation and occupation.

My heart breaks for every Israeli person who lost loved ones during the attacks of October 7th. It breaks for every Ukrainian person who has lost their loved ones. It breaks for every Congolese person who has lost their loved ones. I do not speak on behalf of Palestinians now because some lives are worth more than others. I speak on their behalf because, as an American, my government is actively championing and financially funding their mass slaughter and forced displacement.I speak on their behalf because l, and all Americans, have a responsibility to pressure our government because we are responsible for this. Some have said that this situation is complicated. The United States government clearly disagrees. It has definitively, categorically, militarily chosen a side, and I do not agree with that decision.

In writing this, I have been wrestling with what I am sure many people like me wrestle with: There is a powerful narrative surrounding violence in the Middle East that asserts an ever-moving goalpost of self-education and study in order to even be qualified to have an opinion. As someone with a love of research, I have at times in my life fallen into the trap that I am not educated enough, clever enough or aware enough to have a worthwhile perspective, and that three more articles and two more lectures and one more book will do the trick. Unfortunately, democracy doesn't work that way - we, the citizens of any democracy, cannot possibly be experts on every aspect of the policies of our governments, and yet if we do not weigh in and make our voices heard, the entire experiment falls apart. Not only do people constantly doubt themselves and the things they can see with their own two eyes, but old shortcuts for political action can fall apart as well: This specific issue exists along a raw, charged and unique faultline in American politics. Nobody I grew up with has ever challenged me on my support for abortion rights, LGBT rights, Black Lives Matter, anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, none of it. The people in my country who would despise me for those positions are, for all intents and purposes, strangers to me. But there are people who l've broken bread with and shared honest affection with who will see the words l've written here and incorrectly conclude that I do not wish for the security, dignity and happiness of them and their loved ones, and that breaks my fucking heart. Full-throatedly condemning the actions of the Israeli government while battling rampant anti-semitism at home is an urgent moral necessity, and doing so is made unnecessarily challenging for the average person to navigate by the pointed obfuscations of cynical opportunists, bigots, and demagogues on all sides of the political spectrum who see some advantage in sowing that incredibly dangerous confusion.

So, I'm calling my representatives. I'm having hard conversations with friends and family. I'm here, talking to you. I should have done it sooner. If you're Israeli and hurt by this statement, know that I want freedom, dignity, security and peace for you, and that every ounce of my political awareness believes whole-heartedly that the actions of your government are not only destroying innocent lives, but doing so to the detriment of you and your loved ones' safety. If you're American and feel lost and confused - I understand and empathize. This, the whole country, only works when we get involved. I am constantly haunted by the specter that maybe I have missed some crucial piece of information on this, or any, important world event: I'Il just have to make my peace with that self-doubt and trust my gut by going with Jewish Voice for Peace, Amnesty International, the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations, etc. And if you're Palestinian and reading this: I unreservedly support your right to life, to freedom, to happiness and human flourishing, to full enfranchisement and equal rights, to opportunity, prosperity and abundance, to the restoration of stolen property and land, and to a Free Palestine.

[dextivestudios]

I got myself into a bit of a controversy on Threads when I made a pro-piracy response to a thread that said don't shame people for how they acquire their books.

It's lowkey funny how butthurt people are getting over the thought of piracy not being inherently bad. (Note: it's not inherently good, either. It's a complex concept that can both benefit and harm the IPs pirates distribute and download illegal copies of. Almost like the real world isn't a children's book where everything is either good or bad...weird.) Because it's like: babes! Not shaming how people acquire books include piracy, too! Do you want people to stop pirating? Bitching and moaning about it on social media is not going to help. My approach is going to be making my stories freely available once the initial first few months of release pass. Either it be on The Internet Archive, or some other resource. But that is one approach out of many to combat piracy.

Many industries will be a lot smaller or straight-up dead if everyone behaved and didn't pirate. (IE: The western anime community, Spotify, streaming in general...) That's not even mentioning how much media would be lost media.

We're all struggling in a cost of living crisis and art is in a weird limbo where it's both a luxury and necessity. Where you don't deserve it if you dare to be poor or had the audacity to be born in a country where the majority of media is region locked from you. But at the same time, illiteracy rates are a major concern that need to be addressed/fixed and losing libraries and art museums are considered a sign of a dying community.

So, if you have the means to, acquire media legitimately, especially if it's indie. If you can't, see if the creator has a way to donate to them or have merchandise available that you can acquire. If you can't give them money, talking about the piece of media you like and giving positive reviews are both global and free. If you are a creator:

Know that not everyone is born with silver spoons or come from a country such as Japan, the USA, or any other country that plays a major part in the import and/or export of media. Provide value to your stories, encourage people to donate their copies to thrift stores/secondhand shops (and to engage with your story and giving it reviews), provide ways of letting people give you a minimum of $1 either through something such as Ko-fi or Patreon or through merch that is $25 and below, include some bonus things such as two pages dedicated to worldbuilding, host free-to-enter raffles/giveaways, get your stuff to as many libraries as possible ASAP... Even those aren't the only ways to compete with pirates. Figure out what works best for you. But the most important rule of thumb to have is: don't be a Nintendo. Operating like Nintendo is basically "acquiring pirates 101." And don't whine and complain about pirates on social media, either. That's not even achieving anything.

But yeah, I just find the hypocrisy of it all pretty funny. Apparently not shaming people for how they acquire books to read had an invisible asterisk to it. And acquiring books from Amazon/Kindle, thus, giving one of the worst people currently alive money, is more morally correct than pirating. Which, y'know...what the fuck? There are no Wikipedia pages dedicated to deaths attributed to modern digital piracy. (There is probably one for the classic swashbuckling and plundering type of piracy, though) There is such a page for Amazon. And nothing I create is worth somebody's life.

[godbirdart]

in what universe is someone going to see a DNI that applies to them and think "this person is definitely someone im going to enjoy following and get along with". do you go on twitter and see nazis saying they hate trans people and decide to follow them out of spite? of course not, and literally nobody else does that either, even on the other side. hell forget DNIs, I get less conservatives in my notifs than I used to just by having they/them pronouns in my bio because they see it and go "ew, I'm not following them". people dont typically follow people theyre clearly not going to feel welcome around, a DNI is just another way to communicate that.

1 - you don't have to Get Along with someone to follow them. people can and will hate-follow or follow to annoy you, block evade, etc out of spite. some people will interact with you just because you told them, or people like them, not to.

2 - your experiences are not universal. nazis, terfs, bigots in general, they can and will follow and harass people they don't like online. this is spoken from my own experience as someone who has seen his transfem friends be followed and harassed by alt-right nut jobs online.

3 - "forget DNIs, I get less conservatives in my notifs than I used to just by having they/them pronouns in my bio" ← you're right. this is effective because the vast majority of people regardless of political stance or belief will only ever read your bio. not many people are going to jump through hyperlinks to read your DNI. if they don't like what they read in your bio, they'll just leave [or possibly harass you, if they're particularly malicious]. ergo, making a DNI is largely just for yourself and not at all a real, useful barrier people must pass through in order to follow / engage with your posts.

no one is stopping you from making a DNI. you can write a terms-of-service length novel of a Do Not Interact list, put it on its own Carrd and make it aesthetic and pretty with flair. you're completely free to do so and tell people to read it. a few will, sure.

however. the post you're referencing is specifically addressing the glaring reality that most people, regardless if they fit your DNI criteria or not, are simply not going to go out of their way to find and read it. abusive people aren't going to see "DNI abusive assholes" and be deterred because they themselves don't consider themselves abusive. this post, particularly what OP wrote, is saying how it's much more proactive to curate your own space through utilizing the block button and tag filters when you see things and people you don't want to engage with instead of trying to impose your personal boundaries on strangers online.

addendum // i don't really care if teens are making DNIs and being aggressively annoying about em. i remember the era of setting weird arbitrary rules in my developing years while i was forming Who I Was as a person. they're figuring out who they are and what their comfort levels are. i get it. it's the grownass adults that are hyper-virulent about DNIs that i worry about - and i'm not talking about when they're trying to establish an adults-only space with a stern "minors DNI".

note: what i'm talking about below, i am Not referring to literally illegal and harmful activities / content. just want to be clear.

now, i'm not saying you have to welcome and embrace the content you don't like, but it's important to challenge yourself and toe your comfort boundaries. if you over-prune yourself trying to be the bestest morally correct person, at some point you're going to start boxing yourself into this narrowed teeny tiny worldview. you may turn into the person you claim to have loathed, imposing personal beliefs and morals on others, and brandishing your DNI like it's a certificate of righteousness; not unlike how conservatives wave around religious scripture while pruning away LGBTQ+ rights because it goes against their morality. a few examples of this are topics such as: kink at pride, and the language discrepancies between the younger and older generations of the LGBTQ+ community - particularly in regards to self-identifying with words such as Queer and Dyke and Transsexual.

i probably derailed a bit here, i'm answering this before my caffeine's fully kicked in. if i vaguely worded something or yall want more elaboration on something, don't hesitate to ask

[thelovelymachinery]

Small stupid facts about my Kingdoms!

Thank @the-letterbox-archives for this and Comfy, I hear you so no more calling these unimportant!

I will be trying to go in alphabetical order just remember I'm slightly stupid.

Aberline

The kingdom of Aryds, Cyclops, and Goblins

Previously at war with Draetig, currently at war with Ceridis

There are no showers and buildings outside of the capital city. (treehouses don't count)

Araivial

Home to the Gods of Vampires and weapons

Kingdom of Araivial Vampires, a subspecies of vampire

They have guns, cars, and motorcycles unlike my other kingdoms

Archernar (original)

Home to the witches

No laws, just vibes (some laws)

They do ban people, so far Morgan is the big one to be banned

Archernar (copy)

Home to the Archernar Vampires, a subspecies of Vampires

Too many laws

No women above the age of twenty-five

Arkane

Home to the dragons

One side, the North, is incredibly war hungry and violent while the other side, the South, is incredibly peaceful and anti-war.

The longest civil war happened in Arkane

Athylin

Home to the elves

Now known as Pilon due to the amount of kingdoms wanting it

Started as a paradise and is now a war caused waste land, the middle of the island is still a paradise

Breazi

Home to the Evōns

Closest with Ceridis

Has never started their own war

Brenfire

Home to the Pheonix's

Ninety percent of the people work in the medical field

Closely works with Aberline

Creahearth

Home to the Anadis and Kahmia

Under water for half of the year

One of the least modest and most positive kingdoms

Ceridis

Home to the Oracle Fae, Ravenear Fae, and many other sub species of Fae, as well as the Ceridis Humans, a sub species of human

The least known about kingdom in the entirety of Eozuspea

Sleepovers are a kingdom wide event, they throw the best ones

Draetig

Home to the beautiful Illusionists as well as a few other subspecies of Fae

Just came out of the war with Aberline (we love marriages)

They are home to the Fae gold, the most precious gold outside of sunstone.

Dyntia

Home to the Wind Elves

A very peaceful kingdom that has always been anti elf and fae mistreatment

Probably the most morally correct kingdom

Etawon

Home to the Ekstraness

Lawless

They have some of the best fashion designers and chefs which allows them to be very close with Ceridis

Erisine

Home to the shiny Atfal A'lard

The wealthiest kingdom

Fears the Witches, those hungry witches be eating them

Erinesa

Home to humans

The or one of the smartest kingdoms

Involved in no wars and never took part in Fae and Elf slavery aside from when they started Fae slavery

Friður

The original name of Archernar (copy)

The most joyful and colourful kingdom

Very impoverished

Ilemo

Home to a now extinct species (Thanks Serthorne, Ceridis)

A kingdom of almost only men

Full of savages and cruelty but the most intelligent ever

Kaladar

Home to the Kaladar Vampires

Strawberries are very illegal

Their noses and clothing are incredible, the jewelry is perfection

Limirik

Home to the wolves

Fuck schools, homeschooling for everyone

Marriage is not a thing here

Parælas

The kingdom of Fairies

They are terrified of Limirik because they have been swatted out of the sky and chased around

They are very close with Draetig

Reino de la Eternidad

Home to many subspecies of fae

They are sleeping like seventy percent of the time

The kingdom has more hotels and bed stores than any other building

Serthorn

Home to the Serthorne Vampires

The current blue eyed vampire and white haired one are from here

They are fairly modest, they dislike the queen for not being modest and being uneducated

Wolna Kraina

Home to the Wolna Kraina Vampires and Wolves

A dictatorship disguised as a democracy, the only one in my world

The only 'safe' place to elves outside of the Fae kingdoms

Tagging the list!

@an-indecisive-nerd @wyked-ao3 @thecomfywriter @the-letterbox-archives @mysticstarlightduck

@bookwormclover @illarian-rambling @leahnardo-da-veggie @bio-blegh

Interact here to be added to the list.

Interact to Interact! (aka be cool, love me)

[descendant-of-truth]

I've been wondering if I should make this post for a while, but I'm just gonna come out and say it: the Sonic movies are not pro-military just because Tom is a police officer. I'd argue that the movies are pretty anti-military, actually.

So, let's talk about Tom first, since he's kind of the elephant in the room with this discussion. Tom is the sheriff to a small town where he rarely has to deal with any real crimes; he usually deals with more trivial problems like people's cars breaking down, and we see him help a family of ducks cross the street.

He's an officer partly out of a sense of obligation (reportedly his family has held this position in some way for over 50 years), and partly because he wants to be in a position where he can protect people in serious situations. His goal at the start of the first movie is to start working in a bigger city where he can be more helpful.

I won't say that Tom isn't something of an idealized vision of a cop, and that in the wrong hands, he could easily be used as a form of military promotion. But I think Tom is like this for a different, more specific reason: to be used as a sharp contrast to literally every other government official we see.

Question: who exactly is the villain in the first Sonic movie? Robotnik, yes, but who is he? What does he represent?

Well, he's pretty much the face of the military.

Robotnik is under direct orders from the government to look into the power outage incident, and that turns into a mission to capture (and experiment on) Sonic - and regardless if Robotnik was authorized to use lethal force, he does so anyway.

And the thing is, all of the higher-ups know he's unhinged and dangerous, but he keeps his job because he gets results regardless of his methods. Heck, the first thing we see him do is lie to Tom about who he is and what he's there for so he can get inside his house to search it. Not exactly the most flattering portrayal of military investigations.

(He even gets punched by Tom after forcing his way into the house anyway)

Tom then proceeds to spend the rest of the movie on the run from the government, going out of his way to protect Sonic (who is quite literally an illegal alien) at the risk of his own livelihood. Clearly, adhering to his job description is not something the movie views as morally correct here.

Second question: who's the villain of the second movie? Still Robotnik, but he's not employed by the government anymore, so he can't really represent them anymore, right?

No, but considering Sonic's adopted family was actively manipulated by a government spy, who was meant to marry his new aunt in order to target him, and Sonic proceeds to get tased and thrown into a cage along with Tails by the other military personnel present at the fake wedding... I think it's safe to say that they are, once again, a central antagonistic force in this series.

(Yeah they do a funny where the spy turns out to have fallen in love for real, but I think we can all agree that was done for the sake of keeping a whimsical tone and not to endorse what was actually happening with the government there)

Which brings us to the third movie, which is still unreleased at the time of writing this. And one final question: how exactly do you think they're planning to write an adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2?

They've already set GUN up as the villains. That alone is central to Shadow's backstory, and the writers have clearly done their homework on Sonic lore. And even if they've somehow wildly missed the messaging of the franchise they've made two successful movies off of, the fact of the matter is that there is no adapting SA2 without anti-military sentiments. Like, they would have to work pretty hard and completely butcher both the game and their own movies up to this point for that to come out being pro-military.

This part's more in speculation territory, but here's a thought: what do you think Tom is going to do when he finds out what happened to Shadow?

Remember, Tom is an idealized small town sheriff who has this job out of obligation. He hasn't had to deal with the darker side of all this stuff until he started protecting Sonic, which - just as a reminder - has led to his house being searched, his car being cut in half, Sonic almost getting killed at least twice, his sister-in-law being manipulated, Sonic and Tails getting locked in cages... I'm probably even missing a few things.

Once everything that happened 50 years ago comes to light (especially if the theorists are right about Tom's family having been involved in it), I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he just. quit being a police officer. or got into activism. or both.

But even if we limit the analysis to just the two movies that are out right now, I struggle to see how "Tom shirks his duties to protect an alien child from being experimented on by the government" is in any way a pro-military sentiment.

In conclusion: basically every problem in the Sonic movies is the fault of the government in some way, so can we please stop talking about the series as if Tom is singlehandedly making them pro-military, now. Thanks

[frequentderealizationcore]

I find it very funny that for other characters it's okay to argue they were written in an ooc way but not for jason. Every single thing jason has done is canon, no don't look at my fav doing something ooc they were written by someone who doesn't understand their character.

That is wild. Jason fans don't have the right to claim that for some reason. For any other character you can claim they're ooc/someone doesn't understand their values but not jason he's just a shitty character who's a villain.

And don't get me started about the cop argument (again). How do you hate a fictional character so much that you insist they're a cop because they kill people and you ignore the other vigilantes that are oh so morally righteous that are doing cop shit, but oh it's fine they don't kill anyone. Vigilantism is illegal irl, batman works with cops, batman and the others beat criminals up and throw them in jail. Your morally correct favs are working outside the law but it's fine because they kinda work with cops it's chill. Excessive force may lead to death but if you don't see it in a panel it doesn't exist.

It's not jason that drives people out of "his" city if they don't agree with his methods. It's not jason that works with cops regularly yet people somehow never argue that he's copaganda.

Nah jason is just a shitty character and obviously a villain guys don't worry.

[deluxewhump]

This isn’t about any one thing specifically, but in my 4+ years here and 3 million years in fanfiction circles it’s something I’ve thought about more than once regarding dark topics in fiction and harassment (and if you're sick to death of the subject, i feel you, skip the read more, it’s just my opinions)

I try to imagine what I would think if I was someone who anonymously (or not anonymously) harasses and tries to censor writers on the internet. I assume I would feel pretty righteous. And if you’ve ever felt righteous you’ll likely agree, it feels really good. I wouldn’t do something like that if I didn’t think that I was clearly in the right. This would probably come from the idea that the content in question is harmful. Harm itself is a large, ambiguous concept. If I believed that writing certain things was inherently harmful (not just to certain individuals who don’t want to see it, which is their right, but in general), I would certainly feel vindicated in my behavior.

Personally I think harm is more complex than that, and I think a majority of people here believe censorship is more harmful to society than any illegal, immoral, or disturbing thing someone can depict in fiction. The issue with crying “harm” is that it is so subjective when it comes to fiction. I’m not saying fiction exists in a vacuum, but it is not the same thing as real world harm, which unfortunately can also be leveraged in bad faith to distort arguments with hyperbole and diversion.

If I was in the business of trying to censor writers on the internet, and I was a stickler for nuance, I might say that the *way* someone depicted something was not correct, responsible, or heavy handed enough in the moral messaging of “X is bad.” This might be a mental compromise I would make in order to justify to myself the fact that I’m advocating for censorship. Criticizing someone’s handling of something is fine by the way, it’s the harassment and trying to get them to stop writing it bit that I’m taking issue with. I would probably feel really good about harassing and criticizing people I thought were wrong for depicting serious things in a way that didn’t sit well with me. I would probably secretly feel (because to admit it plainly would be embarrassing) like a bit of a vigilante. It might come from a deeply personal and complicated place, or just a place of general beliefs I’d picked up. I’d bet money that I would consider myself left leaning on most things, maybe even strongly so. I wouldn’t like to consider that my goals are ultimately conservative, because that would cause me mental discomfort. But “conservatism and liberalism” in the sense we’re usually talking about them is not a binary. It’s more of a circle, and you can find yourself batting for another teams tactics real quick if you’re not methodical and honest in your thinking.

These conversations often devolve into and circle back to “for the love of god just please tag everything” which I agree with. But that is not the reason why people continually harass other people. It’s more that they think the content should not exist at all, which is what I just don’t fundamentally agree with. I also think human beings tend to enjoy feeling like they have intimidated someone they’ve decided is wrong or bad. I try not to be too dug in on absolutely everything I think. If I’ve put personal biases into my little profiling opinion feel free to suggest where I’ve gone wrong lol. One other thing— there’s all kinds of things in books these people would have to say, to be true to their own logic, should not be in print. What do you say then, should we pull it? I wonder if they’d say that with their chest or if it’s relegated to the internet for them.