#and there have always and always will be evil people in this country but

[sha-lyuzar]

Loghain Mac Tir is my comfort character. It is not often a pleasant thing to admit, and my reasons are complex, and personal, but fundamentally what makes me so attached to him is how human he is. That kind of depth and complexity is what made me fall in love with Dragon Age in the first place. He’s not just a “noble hero” or an “evil villain,” but a fully realized person who embodies good and evil, and everything inbetween, who is shaped by his past and his deeply personal convictions, his flaws, his fears, his fierce love for Ferelden, and, most importantly his tragic mistakes, that lost him everything, and that is what makes him feel so real to me.

He doesn’t have an easy narrative arc. He’s not driven by simple greed, cruelty, or even by misguided idealism. He’s a survivor with wounds that never fully healed, and those wounds shape the way he sees the world and interprets threats. Every heinous decision and tragic mistake is a direct consequence of his loyalty to Ferelden and Maric, and his willingness to bear the burden of horrific choice. He has been bleeding for his cause since he was a child, and it has turned him into the same kind of cruel and cold tyrant He fought against in the first place, and watching him struggle to hold true to his values, and eventually abandon them, as his path grows darker and more isolating, is this profoundly tragic thing that to me is infinitely more compelling than a classic Hero's Journey.

What Loghain did in the Alienage is deeply disturbing and inexcusable. Using Tevinter slavers to control and exploit the elves is one of the darkest points in his character arc. It’s a choice that reveals just how far he’s willing to go to maintain control and secure his idea of Ferelden’s “independence,” even at the cost of his own morality, so He lets in a foreign power to abduct and subjugate the citizens he claims to be protecting. It unveils the extremes of his desperation and paranoia, because in his mind, he’s protecting Ferelden, but in reality, he’s perpetrating the very kind of oppression he once fought against. It is dark, it is horrific, it is unforgiveable, and that is the whole point.

He has to confront the devastation he’s caused, and he can’t simply brush it aside as a “necessary evil.”. If he joins the Grey Wardens, his path involves acknowledging these grave mistakes, taking responsibility, and finding a way to live with the guilt. There is no reconciliation for his actions, his fear and trauma may explain but never excuse what he did. There is no easy way out. Loghain is stained with the blood he shed forever. He has to live with having failed, with the compounded weight of his actions and regrets, and, if he joins the Wardens, he isn't even granted the mercy of a quick and clean death, and instead is exiled from the country he poured everything he had into.

And doesn't this resonate? Does this not perfectly reflect the difficult reality of being human? How people can be fiercely protective, deeply flawed, and driven by complicated motivations, and that these qualities make them more worthy of understanding, not less? Loghain’s arc speaks to me on such a deep and personal level, especially as someone who has been battling the demons of trauma. His story is a vivid reminder that trauma doesn’t always make us better people, but exacerbates our struggles and can lead us down dark paths. i see parts of my own struggles in Loghain, i understand his pain, his fear, the choices his past self would loathe him for, and the gnawing self-hate, regret and grief.

Trauma twists our intentions like that. Instead of guiding us toward empathy and understanding, it clouds our judgment, and pushes us to make decisions we later regret, and become versions of ourselves we hate. My reality of trauma has not been this character building experience, the way it is often depicted in media, but something harrowing and life-altering, that still poisons me, even years later. But seeing a character lose all tether to himself and get lost in his demons is a tale worth telling, and an experience that still grips me, even 15 years after playing DA:O for the first time. Seeing Loghain live through rock bottom in DA:O, and then, ten years later in DA:I find purpose and whatever semblance of peace is possible in his circumstance, is something that gives me comfort. It is deeply personal, and i keep this unforgiveable and irredeemable, this grief-stricken and regret-filled man, this complicated and multifaceted character deep in my heart.

There are spoilers for datv under the cut. Major spoilers about the end of the game. If you have not played through yet, please don't be tempted to look. i thought i would be fine with spoilers, but i am not. You have been warned.

All of this is rendered moot by the ending of datv. By a throwaway line. i have been spoilered by this online, and have not reached this point in the game myself, yet, but it leaves me feeling a lot of ways, and it hits me hard. It feels like everything i found relatable in his struggle, everything that made him so human, is suddenly taken away. If his actions weren’t truly his own, and he was being puppeteered by old gods magic, then what does that mean for the weight of his choices? It feels like a betrayal of everything that made up his character, a character who has grappled with his trauma and made terrible choices, yes, but ones that were driven by his own will and conviction, always.

The complexity of his journey, the depth of his remorse, and the struggle for a new purpose, all become overshadowed by this new twist. It threatens to erase the beautiful, painful, and human truth of what it means to confront one’s demons and seek understanding in the aftermath of suffering, what it means to reassess and take accountability for your actions and do the hard, dirty, and thankless work of bettering the irredeemable, bit by bit, piece by piece, so that one day you may draw a breath and feel just a bit of that weight eased.

But no, he was just a victim all along. He has no agency, his self-actualisation is lost on him, he was never responsible for himself. It feels like one of Dragon Age's most complex characters has been flattened down into cardboard.

[farshootergotme]

https://www.tumblr.com/ruestheday/765956792656265216/one-of-the-biggest-lies-the-fandom-will-tell-you

Opinions on this post?

I'd say that I agree with what this person is saying. As much as I give Bruce shit for his parental skills (which are flawed and shouldn't be overlooked, don't get me wrong), we can say Alfred is partially one of the main reasons why Bruce is the way he is.

I won't say anything about "Alfred should've/could've taken Bruce to therapy" because then we gotta consider a lot of things about the decade when Alfred was introduced and his age in-universe, as Alfred might've not lived in a period in which therapy was widely accepted and even recommended. But I won't dwell too much on that.

Now, I don't think Alfred is necessarily an evil person, but he can be quite selfish and a coward when it comes to facing consequences (which he rarely gets, if ever).

When shit hits the fan, he's the first one to back out. Why should he be responsible? He's only a mere butler (until he goes and calls Bruce "his son").

He's always detached just enough from the situation that nobody will look at him when looking for someone to blame for a problem that Alfred was most likely involved in.

Bruce might be the Batman, but it's Alfred who works from the shadows and leaves the responsibility of his decisions to the rest.

Does he do this on purpose?

Hard to say. I think he's in a way aware of his cowardice and harmful tendencies, but he doesn't have an active intention of hurting others. However, lack of intention does not mean lack of action, and despite whatever he might feel or believe, he does many things that end up in someone's hurt and even death.

And don't many consider it, but to me it doesn't come as a surprise that Bruce is so emotionally constipated and an unavailable father when he never had someone to learn from about proper parental skills.

Bruce never knew where he stood with Alfred, and Alfred didn't help to make it clear. At first, Bruce was just his master. A responsibility left behind by his parents, but still with the authority to order around the person who's supposed to be his caretaker. And Alfred? We know how much of an enabler he is, but also how inconsistent he can be when it comes to letting Bruce get away with things. And how confusing that must've been for a child? To never have clear boundaries to respect, rules to follow and his behavior corrected.

Kids learn from habit and patterns, and I don't believe he'd see much of that with Alfred, who jumps from his role as a father to his position as a butler way too often for a young mind to fully comprehend. Add to that the fact Bruce already had a position as a rich kid, which would've led to even more people forgetting to set boundaries with him due to his influence.

Now it's not so weird to see him getting away with his toxic behavior towards his children instead of confronting his mistakes like a parent should, right? But I digress.

So, moving onto the next point: child soldiers.

The post you sent mentions Alfred's involvement in the later creation of Robins. But how can he normalize sending kids out there to fight a war that isn't theirs? Well, that's when you remember Alfred joined the army at quite a young age, and there he must've seen even younger kids working as soldiers. What are the chances he has a messed up view on what children should and shouldn't (have to) do?

Subconsciously, he must've internalized this idea of children fighting for their country, and when he saw Robin for the first time, it might've brought back that idea and so he allowed this child to fight for a city that was not even his yet. And then came Jason, then Tim, then Steph, Cass, Damian, Duke... They just kept coming, and Alfred kept pushing this idea.

Jason died? That's a shame, but war is unrelenting, and soldiers are expected to die. It doesn't mean the rest should stop fighting, right?

"Jason Todd, a good soldier".

On top of all that, Robin is good for Batman. Robin is the light Batman needs. Robin can help Bruce, his boy. His son. And who's Alfred if not a messed up man? He'll put the children at risk if it means helping the boy he failed to help before. And when he gets attached to said children, it'll be too late to try pull them out, and then they'll be just another repetition of what Batman came to be when he allowed Bruce to leave.

As for Julia Pennyworth, Alfred was separated from Marie—his then partner—due to war, and found out about Julia's existence only two years after she was born. Their relationship had been distant since then. Julia didn't know about Alfred, but he requested a friend to take care of her and kept sending money all the years to come after making his friend promise not to tell Julia about him, his real father. Why didn't he ever go to see her? That's because, according to Alfred, he was afraid to disrupt her life. But if I'm being honest, I think he also didn't feel ready for the responsibility. And when he became Bruce's guardian, he still was not ready, but Martha and Thomas were his friends, so there must've been a sense of responsibility and guilt influencing his decision.

To summarize, Alfred Pennyworth is an extremely flawed individual and he should not be absolved from any of his mistakes.

[darlingfreddie]

Trump potentially losing doesn’t change the fact that like half the country is openly, loudly, and PROUDLY fascist now

[andarthas-web]

It is entirely unsurprising that you feel comfortable saying that, sadly. Also, you're putting up a strawman here. First of all, there's plenty of Jews, especially in the diaspora, who have nothing to do with Israel's crimes and who aren't responsible. Heck, there's even Jews standing up against Israel's crimes, both outside of Israel and inside of it. And a lot of them are either Holocaust survivours or children of Holocaust survivours: Gabor Maté, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Michael Barenboim, Emilia Roig, the late Esther Bejarano, Haim Bresheeth, Aryeh Neier....to name just a few. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0j1rk0c Second, committing genocide is an evil ACT, but it's also a profoundly human one, sadly. Humans have murdered each other since the beginning of time, often in large numbers, and Israel is neither the first country to commit genocide, nor will it be the last. The two thing that stand out about the genocide that Israel is committing is that a) part of Israel's population is either descended from people who were victims of a genocide or the victims themselves (which, btw, often get treated abysmally by the israeli government), and some of them were ethnically cleansed from neighbouring countries (as a reaction to the move of founding Israel) b) Israel was intensely involved in teaching other countries of the horrors of genocide and how we should do everything to prevent another one These two things add an element of immense hypocrisy and deceit to Israel's actions that people will find very hard to forgive. Third, civillians should always off limits, and nobody who deliberately includes civillians in an attack can call themselves a freedom fighter (or a defender of their country, for that matter). They are a terrorist, period. So even though resisting Israel's oppression, brutal and injust occupation and apartheid is a legitimate cause, even when done violently, any attack on civilians, like on the people in the kibbuzim or at the Nova Festival, was criminal and needs to be legally prosecuted. And the hostages (on both sides. Because anybody held in israeli "administrative detention"? Is a hostage too.) COULD have been freed a long time ago, but Netanyahu's government has zero interest in making a deal and has torpedoed several ones that negotiators deemed reasonable....because those hostages? Are more useful as a propaganda tool to zionists like Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir than they are alive. Fourth and last, Israel is the home of the Israelis living there, by cultural heritage (in some cases a bit less than that of the local people we now call Palestinians, but still) and often by birth. But you can't build a country on the oppression and the killing of others, at least not a sustainable one. You also can't maintain your own mental health or sincerely practice your faith under such circumstances, because what Israel's been doing? Chillul Hashem. So in order for Israeli / Jewish people to thrive in the region, the oppression, the torture and the killing of Palestinians will have to end and Israelis will have to be held accountable for their crimes and make amends. Which, to a more or less satisfactory extent, other countries guilty of similar crimes have done before them. And yes, it is a hard and painful thing to do, but teshuva /repentance and kippurim / atonement are also a profoundly jewish concepts, so there's hope.

In 50 years, we'll have people in classrooms going "If I were at those colleges, I would've opposed the encampments" and then in 52 years we'll have those same people saying it's justified to kill certain Jews.

[rolandkaros]

i've been ruminating a lot on it because i think i'm bad at putting my thoughts into words but i need y'all to understand that while there are absolutely a lot of Not Good Things about the finals being held in saudi arabia for three years...the way people seem to treat is as morally black and white is shortsighted and unhelpful.

realistically the players traveling there will be protected. it may be uncomfortable, it's certainly not ideal, but they will travel there for a few weeks, play their tennis, then leave. there are a lot of women, a lot of queer people who actually live in saudi arabia who cannot just leave, who are actually subjected to laws and social climates...and to me it just seems very disrespectful to that actual lived experience, for everybody to sort of turn their noses up and get on their high horses. of course, if the players wish to opt out, that is their choice, but that is their choice to make. that's their judgement. not ours.

and then, what about a tournament like miami? florida is literally experiencing one of the worst active regressions that i've seen in the us (granted i'm young). things like critical race theory and lgbtq+ ed are being removed from curriculums, rights for trans youth, trans healthcare, etc. are going backwards. abortion rights? gun violence? and yes i know that the laws and climate in saudi arabia are different gravy, i understand that, but my point is, no one would ever DREAM of arguing against hosting a tournament in miami despite all of these issues. and we can extend this to a lot of other tournaments! i mean, all the outrage about fifa hosting a world cup in qatar, but we don't have any of these sentiments about doha? i've seen other people bring up that the finals were hosted in singapore when gay marriage was still illegal there. we've already talked about italy's fascist prime minister. and i could go on and on and on about the war crimes of countries like the us or the uk - is the us not participating actively in genocide right now? where is the standard? if you argue against hosting the finals in saudi arabia for the reason of human rights, to me it seems you have to uphold that standard for the location you do land on. and i can guarantee, you will not find a single country in the world with clean hands.

i want to be clear i am not arguing that hosting the finals in saudi arabia is a good thing, especially for three years, especially because it's definitely going there because of money, and not for any of the "good" reasons i think some people want us to believe about "improving the region" (which is very weirdly white savior-esque anyway). i don't really have an official "conclusion" to this discussion.

what i am arguing is that i think a lot of the protests against saudi arabiahosting the finals are more an example of implicit anti-arab bias and islamophobia, rather than genuine discussion. key word implicit: i don't think most people are purposefully trying to be anti-arab/islamophobic. or at least, i'd like to believe nobody is. but i also think, particularly in the west, there is already so much of this xenophobic sentiment ingrained. and this is why i think it's really really REALLY important to check ourselves when we talk about it instead of just jumping straight to the human rights conversation without a second thought.

i'll say it plainly: i don't think the finals should be held in saudi arabia. but for me, it has more to do with sportswashing, with the dangers of the way money is thrown around in sports, and because i think it's more evidence that the wta doesn't care about player welfare but rather about making a profit (what else is new). human rights are absolutely a concern of mine, but how is it fair to hold saudi arabia to a standard that we don't seem to care about for literally anybody else?

literally look at the us's ugly ugly history, past and present, and tell me why we deserve to host a tennis tournament.

[thirdmagic]

everytime i look at how people compare the way russian citizens are treated in light of the russian invasion of ukraine and the way israeli people and jews are treated after oct 7th and it just.... you know, as a person who belongs to all of these cultures, it always feels extremely disingenuous to me and very untruthful

[incorrect-lord-of-the-rings]

To add onto this, I want to say that the fact that we want to choose good, we want to help each other, that is good. That is what we are meant to do. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, we were meant to think and observe and know that we must change and we must do good for those around us. Some of us always thought this way, others may have changed our ways and have started on a path towards good. But no matter what brought us to this path, we were meant to be here. We mustn't give up or lose hope. It's a dangerous, dark road, but who will walk it if not us? It may take a toll on us, scare us, last a long and daunting time, but like Frodo and Sam, we can do this together.

We have our internet communities, if nothing else. We have each other. Maybe we're not a Frodo. Maybe we feel more like a Sam, or a Boromir, or maybe even Merry and Pippin, trying to be carefree in the midst of all this hate, and then eventually being able to take a stand and do what we can to fight in whatever way we can for what we believe in. I know I feel like a Frodo right now, trying to make my way through extremists in my family and community where I live, unsure how I will make it through these times, but determined to try. I know my family is full of Denethors; poisoned by lies and hatred, taken over by paranoia and fear, taking anger out on their children for not being what they want, knowingly or unknowingly destroying peace in their lives. We can hope for change in our states or families, like when Gandalf helped Theoden when he was under the influence of Saruman and Grima Wormtongue.

Ultimately, what I'm trying to say is that we all are in this together, except it isn't the Fellowship in Middle-earth, it's us against evil and hatred and violence. The words of Faramir come to mind. “I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” I do not love what my country has done. I do not love its system of election or its structure of government. I do not love its military force or its imperialist history. I do not love the deep corruption or the violence it has brought upon innocents for hundreds of years. I love only the people who live under such trying times who desperately need help and support. We can all get through this. We ourselves are the light needed for this. We together can stand strong and live on for the day where we can fight as we can for good to win. For love to win. This is what we are meant to do.

An important message for us as we navigate the following years. Remember that some great deeds of good can be carried out by the smallest of people, the least powerful. Even in dark times, we have light together. Stay safe, friends.

[voskhozhdeniye]

[phoenixcatch7]

If there's one thing I like more than time travel it's crossover reincarnation, so.

Botk link reincarnated as Damian Wayne.

An incredible weapon master of all types, but especially prodigious with a sword - he was beating knights at the age of 4 and with his memories as intact as they get for him I can see that goalpost moving even further (probably with traps and tricks, a 3yo doesn't exactly have great bodily control).

He's an excellent survivalist, agile, strong, durable, cunning and creative. He can move like a feather in the breeze, strike from behind with ease. His first kill, an animal, did not stir him as it did the other children. With his poise, grace, skills, obedience, he ought to be ra'as' finest assassin in the making, a jewel in the crown of the league.

Except he never speaks a word. Half his targets escape unscathed. He skates by true punishment on the merit of his skills and achievements in other missions. Testing has shown it is not a physical deformity that prevents his speech, but not even talia has been able to coaxe a word from him past his second birthday.

It is a defect ra'as is growing more and more frustrated by, as each attempt to fix these two final flaws ends in resounding failure. Less extreme solutions are running dry.

Talia fears those solutions. Her child does too, she knows. For them, there is a possible solution, more extreme than anything ra'as would tolerate.

She sends him out of the league. To his father.

To Gotham.

[martyrbat]

blocking so many people tonight because how the hell do you post this without an ounce of self shame? 'there are people out there who are just as scared as you are' are you including the people your candidate has funded a genocide against? are you including the people Israel targets and opresses with the US regularly funding its crimes against humanity? the people who cant just go have a snack and talk to their friends because they watch their friends be murdered and theyre facing starvation? are you including the people you called the genocide of as a necessary sacrifice and something thats a 'lesser evil'? do you take into account their fear and trauma for a year of nonstop bombings, drones, missiles, shootings, invasions, etc?

'the world is going to be tense' its already fucking tense, you people just dont give a shit about anyone that isnt white or cant play into your ultimate victim complex to excuse your eager participation in genocide. you cant call for people to just 'survive' when you helped put a heavy asterisk next to who exactly expected to stay living if your war criminal wins.

[GO DONATE TO DOCTOR MOATH]

[vertigo-express]

It's intensely depressing having to see all these gofundmes and pleas for help from Palestinian families who have to raise these exorbitant amounts of money just to escape to a safer place. It really speaks a lot to how disgusting the world can be.

[constantvariations]

It's kinda funny to me that so many people are up in arms about Neo's actions in C8 when it's easy for me to dismiss simply because that ain't Neo, yknow?

Like, Neo has never pussyfoot around murder. If she wants you dead, you gonna get dead. From Neo about to stab Yang while the latter is unconscious to Neo and Ruby falling through the void while Neo uses the visuals of Ruby's loved ones to try and weaken her enough for Neo to strangle her to death, Neo has always been fairly direct in her methods

So, it's difficult to reconcile that version of Neo with the one who would passively let her target take themselves out

Not to mention the semblance shift. Neo's semblance, Overactive Imagination, is illusions manifested via semblance glass. They shatter upon contact. Because they're illusions

That's the biggest deal breaker for me. Crwby changed her semblance so much she might as well be a whole ass other person. Fuck, it could've been an Afteran. It's not like Neo was needed here, especially with how easily she was discarded

Instead of illusions, Neo's new abilities seem to be... animorphing people/creatures she may or may not have met via semblance clones and allowing them sentience

Mcfucking what???

The point of illusions is they're not physical. It's not an actual transformation, but rather the aesthetic of one. This could have worked if they kept the semblance evolution to multiple illusions at once OR allowing physical transformation, either of which would have been super cool to see, but they pushed too far. There's too many upgrades that deviate so much from the original ability that it's a whole ass new power

So, immediately on her introduction, the og Jabber is killed(?) and in its place is... multiple Neo-Jabbers. Who can eat other creatures alive. And apparently desire to do so

McFUCJING WHAT

This implies that all her semblance clones of others have their own sentience. Which would never make sense when she never interacted with anyone in that torture scene besides Roman. Seriously why the fuck is Lionheart here? Give us nothing, king

Now, given that we are shown the stream of souls, what could have happened is the illusions were possessed by folks who needed to get a last word in, but that's not. what. happened.

Instead, we have the writers disregarding a character's inability to speak so they can brutalize a teenager in the stupidest way possible, and throwing away all logic of a fairly easy to understand power because it suits their plot needs

Riveting

[pumpkinland]

one thing ive always found really funny is that white Queers™ and white liberals think they're the good white people and better and less racist than all other white people on the planet, (especially white people from anywhere other than the american south, which they believe uncritically is the defining racist culture) but in reality the white people ive met who treat me with the most respect and understanding are poor southern white people in big cities, yes including the rednecks, yes, rednecks are less racist than white queers at northern liberal arts universities. its because they grew up with us and you think that reading theory is the same thing

[littleberrybat]

I'm sorry they WHAT

From the BBC:

Jeffrey Piccolo filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Disney and the owners of a restaurant after his wife died in 2023 from a severe allergic reaction after eating at the theme park...the restaurant did not take enough care over his wife's severe allergies to dairy and nuts, despite being repeatedly told about them.

Disney wants the case in the courts to be halted, and for the dispute to be resolved out of court, in a process called arbitration.

The entertainment company argues it cannot be taken to court because, in its terms of use, it says users agree to settle any disputes with the company via arbitration.

It says Mr Piccolo agreed to these terms of use when he signed up to a one month free trial of its streaming service, Disney+, in 2019.

[cookinguptales]

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

[zooophagous]

I'm not going to wax poetic about the underdog and miracles and pulling together to save the country. Smarter people than me do that already. I just need you to think of something. Remember how good the memes were right after Trump lost last time? How funny it was? How for a brief moment in time we felt we had defeated true evil and could laugh at it right in its stupid face? We can do that again. Remember him making a pathetic little speech in that stupid parking lot, so perfect it could have been an Always Sunny bit?

The embarrassment of it a second time could kill the guy. We need it to happen. Please help me make it happen.