#and they don't deserve bad shit that happens to them

[larathia]

I laugh, genuinely but bitterly, at news of this kind, because it's so predictable. It's the schoolyard bully writ large, with the same dynamics, the same outcome.

Most people, you see, don't want to Cause Trouble. They don't want to Make a Scene. And mostly they hope if they're quiet and polite and Let Things Go, and Be The Bigger Person, that whatever horrible shit is happening to them will get bored and go away.

And the bullies take that as permission. And they grind a little more, and a little more, until Most People are backed into a corner as far as they will go. And the bullies don't see any danger in this because hey, nothing's happened up till now, right? Why would that change?

But see, when people have nothing left to lose, they go in one of two directions. They break, or they go fucking berserk.

Now, statistically, probably 80 percent of people - who have been raised to obey the law, to be polite, to Let Things Slide...they'll break. No judgment, I've been one of the broken and still have the cracks. It's just how a lot of people are. We don't WANT to be the bad guy. And we're raised to think that fighting back "makes us just like they are" and "even a horrible human being doesn't deserve xyz" and we'll break. We'll even choose to break.

But then there's that 20 percent or so that once they're backed right into the corner, once it's clear there's nothing more left to give, nothing left that the bullies can take, they'll snap. They'll fight. They'll kill, too, because you've already taken so much from them that there isn't a punishment left that would actually make their situation worse, so why not? Why not fight?

When you're talking about a schoolyard, that means maybe one or two students. Half a dozen at the outside, that're pushed that hard, that snap violently.

When you're talking about millions of people, however, it astonishes me (in a darkly amused way) that these corporate bullies think the solution is to press down harder. It's like swatting a snowflake onto a budding avalanche that just needed a teeny tiny push.

I have to laugh that they think adding terrorism charges will deter people who've lost their families, lost their savings, lost their entire livelihood and reason for having one. It may delay immediate copycats. People inspired, but who still have something to lose. But it won't stop the flood.

...I wonder how long it'll be, before we have enough datapoints on this graph to compare it to the rise in school shootings since the 90s?

[fellow-fandom-fruitifier]

AU where Edwin knows he's gay from the start would be fire me thinks.

Imagine if he thinks he deserved Hell but still wants to escape and feel so wrong and selfish for it. So he never tells Charles what actually happened between 1916-1989, Charles only knows whatever happened was very bad no good. Edwin would be horribly, painfully aware that he was falling for Charles. But that's wrong, isn't it? Boys can't like boys.

So he tries so hard to ignore it, tamp it down. He can't let Charles know. If he knows then he'll know why he's avoiding the afterlife, that he deserves to go to Hell.

Charles knows Edwin is scared of Death and the afterlife, he assumes that something happened from 1916-1989 that convinced Edwin he was damned but there's just no damn way someone as good as Edwin deserves Hell. But, selfishly, he never tries to convince Edwin to go. To leave for his beautiful afterlife.

Then Port Townsend happens.

Crystal is no idiot, she can tell Edwin's jealous from the start. She can tell Charles thinks it's because they're best friends, she can tell it's because Edwin's in love. That doesn't stop her though, she deserves one good thing after everything, doesn't she?

(I think Cat King would go very similar to canon, but it's less of "I'm not gay" and more of "I know what I am but these urges aren't okay".)

Niko loves love, she can tell Edwin loves Charles. She can tell Edwin doesn't know it's okay. Niko helps him through it, becomes his confidant, the first person he confesses everything to. I think they would have a huge conversation that ends in them both crying -- Edwin bemoaning his unrequited love, Niko mourning for him -- and cuddled up watching Scooby-Doo. (The sprites get teary eyed too but still mock them, Niko calls them out and they deny it. "It's dusty as shit in this old ass glass!" "Yeah, we're getting fucking pick eye in here!" "When's the last time you even washed this shit-ass jar?")

It all comes to a head with the Night Nurse. We all know her spiel, "I'm taking Edwin back to Hell and Charles to get processed." But Charles doesn't know Edwin's been processed. Charles doesn't know Edwin's assigned to Hell.

Niko is empathetic, not forcing Edwin to explain but not once thinking he did anything to deserve it. Crystal is up in arms, demanding to know what he did to deserve Hell, demanding to know why he hid it from Charles. Charles is confused, conflicted. Edwin's his best mate! There's no way he deserves Hell! But... but why didn't he tell Charles? Edwin is overwhelmed and panicked and no, no, no! Charles was never supposed to know!

Now, listen. Niko isn't one for confrontation, she doesn't like to fight. But hearing Crystal rip into an unresponsive Edwin while Charles lingers unsure on the back has her heart breaking, has her head hurting. So she steps in, shouts at them to stop, that they'll talk tomorrow when they've cooled off. And drags Edwin off to her room for the night. She doesn't demand answers and he doesn't give them.

The next day, everyone's off. The tension is high and only building. Crystal keeps sending Edwin pointed comments and Edwin is actively ignoring her existence. Charles is conflicted, caught between Crystal and Edwin; taking both their sides without taking either. And Niko doesn't know how to soothe any of it, so she sticks close to Edwin.

Eventually the four are leaving the graveyard, Crystal and Charles arguing when she rounds on Edwin. "And you! Don't think I forgot about you!" Niko tries to step in and stop it like she did last time but Edwin's tired, he's had enough, he breaks. "I was sacrificed! I was sacrificed and spent seventy-three gruelling years fighting to escape! There, happy? Might we please move on now?"

He storms past them all and for the first time since this dispute started, Niko is angry. She tells Crystal that wasn't okay, that it was cruel. And takes off after Edwin, leaving Charles and Crystal standing uselessly.

"I didn't know..." Neither remember who said that.

[velvetvexations]

it’s driving me up the wall that the statement “trans women, notably those in the public eye, are frequently the target of transphobic harassment campaigns, so perhaps take a moment to check the source before you spread any callouts or accusations to make sure you’re not falling for TERF or kiwifarms misinformation” is now being misused by some to mean “if you ever see a trans woman with a big platform say something loaded/bigoted/openly hateful of her own free volition to her whole audience with her full chest, you’re not ever allowed to confront her about this or you’re personally responsible for every hate comment or harassment she receives ever” like it’s SO insidious to tell marginalised people they should shut up and take it. full offence, that musician is a grown woman who willingly puts her opinions on a public blog with her name attached, nobody was holding a gun to her head demanding she made those dumbass comments, and acting like she’s too frail to take accountability for what she does or shouldn’t be expected to learn that actions have consequences is laughable. yes people are now taking it too far but this happens every time, bc some people are just as immature AND bc bad faith parties love taking advantage of situations like this to instigate even more shit. again, insisting marginalised groups should let some big name individual be bigoted to them to protect her from harassment or else be blamed for it is so unbelievably entitled. the same thing goes for that “people just use accusations of racism against trans women to be transmisogynistic” post, these people need a reality check and realise they’re not the only victims in existence.

none of the following anger is directed at you, anons

I wanna be clear that I have no idea what's going on with Patricia Taxxon. She blocked me awhile ago and aside from seeing her post about transandrophobia and knowing someone made a parody comic about her that I didn't like primarily for the phrase "born female,"* I don't really know about the situation around her as it stands because I don't keep track of random radfems.

As this first anon said, a popular musician using their platform to be horrible to another marginalized group should get sprayed with water like a cat and the fact that she's a bigot be on the record. Weaponizing old nudes or dragging up old accusations of things, however, is bad and should not be done. It's just not a thing you should be doing to someone, no matter how much you think they deserve it.

There are a lot of White women saying things like "trans women get accused of racism to deflect accusations of transmisogyny." It's annoying that people acting in bad faith are giving fuel to the fire that any criticism of trans women is inherently transmisogyny. She's never going to connect the dots between "people are upset with the things I said" and "I said extremely harmful and hurtful things" if her victim complex is being validated. It's also going to encourage them to continue harassing and spreading shit about me, and possibly escalate to digging up past stuff to call me out on, because I guarantee you eventually one of them is going to say something like "so karmic of this to happen to Velvet after she reblogged all those posts accusing Emily Programmersocks of sacrificing children to Satan" as though that's a thing that's ever happened.

Stop harassing her, if that is indeed what's happening, because, again, I do not keep track of the latest events in TRF World.

*yes, in spite of me personally calling myself male, I still think that's a bad thing! wow!

[angelshizuka]

I like Stolas. I’m not a ride or die fan, but I like him. He’s an entertaining and likable to watch character, even though he’s a royal he is capable of breaking the classist conditioning ingrained in him from birth and has made some pretty good strides in doing so. He’s a good dad. He has made mistakes, every parent does. One of which was getting so caught up in his fight and break up with Stella and the mixture of stress, fear, and freedom that comes with finally leaving your abuser to forget about the comet storm that Octavia always wanted to see with him. It’s a completely understandable mistake but it was one none the less. He made up for it immediately, went out of his way to do so, so he could still have and share that moment with his daughter. We have seen him comfort Octavia when Stella stayed in bed, we have repeatedly seen him talk about how much he loves his daughter and we have repeatedly seen him show that love to Octavia. He’s a good dad and anyone who says otherwise is watching a completely different show. I’m not saying that he does but I don’t care if Stolas is a bad husband to Stella, I don’t care if he makes Stella look bad, I don’t care about any criticism anyone has about Stolas’ treatment of Stella. She is canonically his abuser, he don’t owe her shit. No one owes their abuser love, loyalty, or to “make them look good” Stolas didn’t deserve the abuse Stella put him through and he doesn’t owe her protection of her public image.

It's nice to hear this from a more neutral fan and I totally agree!

What I love about Stolas is how realistic he is as a father. I mean, those "perfect" parent figures in fiction can be enjoyable, but let's be real, no real life parent is actually like that. Every parent has their flaws, every parent has done or said the wrong thing, every parent has forgotten something that's important to their child, every parent has made a (in their eyes) small mistake that scarred their child for life. You get the point.

What matters is how the parent deals with it once they realize the bad affect it's had on their kid and THAT is why I will die on the hill Stolas is technically a good dad (not perfect, but I'm sick and tired of people acting like a parent can only be good when they're perfect, because perfect parents literally don't exist).

Literally every single time Stolas realized his actions hurt Octavia, he's gone out of his way to fix it. I've seen some haters say "he never learns because he did it again" and I'm just like... no? His mistake in Loo Loo Land and his mistake in Seeing Stars are not the same thing (inappropriately flirting in front of his daughter vs being too caught up in the divorce to pay proper attention to her), so how could he have learned from it already!?

Flawed parents are literally my fave, they remind me of my own and I learned first hand how those mistakes say nothing about how much they love me and how much they're willing to fight for me. And not to end on a sad personal note, but seeing my dying mother cry about mistakes she still regrets (including things that happened almost two decades ago) puts A LOT into perspective.

[thefirstknife]

New article with more details (from Jason Schreier who first broke the story). If you can't see it, I'll copy the whole text under read more.

About 100 employees were laid off in total (8%) and one of the main reasons listed is "underperformance," "sharp drop in popularity" and "poor reception of Lightfall."

So you know when for the last year and a half content creators have been shitting and pissing on the game as a full-time job and the amount of negativity and ragebait content became the only thing to make content about for them? Well they certainly won't take the blame, but I will let it be known. These people either don't understand the influence they have or they do and they're doing it on purpose, and I don't know which of these two options is worse, but I am 100% confident that their campaign of rage and hate contributed to this.

You don't base your entire community around constantly hating everything about the only game you play (despite clearly not enjoying it anymore) and somehow avoid galvanising thousands and thousands of people into perceiving the game negatively. Imagine being employees who have barely worked there for 2 years and the only community reception they've seen is 24/7 hate train for their work and then they get fired because of "poor reception" and "drop in popularity." How can they not take that personally? I am absolutely devastated for these people who delievered a banger product and who were met with an unrelenting barrage of toxic gamer children which ended up having more sway over their boss than them.

Which brings me to the next bit and that's FUCK THE CEO. He is now my mortal enemy #1. I am projecting psychic blasts directly into his brain. What an absolute spineless coward who is more willing to bow down to fucking gamers than to protect his own employees. This is absolutely rage inducing because this has happened before. From the article from 2021 about the toxic culture at Bungie:

Reading this shit from the new article absolutely fucking sent me into blind rage because I immediately remembered this. Another instance of employees suffering because of comments on reddit. And because of toxic players. And proof that leadership is not protecting employees and is instead siding with players.

Match made in heaven. Asshole gamer content creators and asshole CEOs, all of whom sit at home on piles of money made from someone else's labour. I hope they all explode. None of the people that worked on this game deserve this.

Another article with an infuriating comment from the CEO:

In an internal town hall meeting addressing a Monday round of layoffs that impacted multiple departments, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons allegedly told remaining employees that the company had kept “the right people” to continue work on Destiny 2.

"Kept the right people." Really. Veteran composers weren't the right people? Die!

Bloomberg article in full:

Bungie’s decision to cut an estimated 100 jobs from its staff of about 1,200 followed dire management warnings earlier this month of a sharp drop in the popularity of its flagship video game Destiny 2. Just two weeks ago, executives at the Sony-owned game developer told employees that revenue was running 45% below projections for the year, according to people who attended the meeting. Chief Executive Officer Pete Parsons pinned the big miss on weak player retention for Destiny 2, which has faced a poor reception since the release of its latest expansion, Lightfall. The next expansion, The Final Shape, was getting good — not great feedback — and management told those present that they planned to push back the release to June 2024 from February, according the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The additional time would give developers a chance to improve the product. In the meantime, Parsons told staff Bungie would be cutting costs, such as for travel, as well as implementing salary and hiring freezes, the people said. Everyone would have to work together to weather the storm, he said, leaving employees feeling determined to do whatever was needed to get revenue back up. But on Monday morning the news got worse: Dozens of staffers woke up to mysterious 15-minute meetings that had been placed on their calendars, which they soon learned were part of a mass layoff. Bungie laid off around 8% of its employees, according to documentation reviewed by Bloomberg. Bungie didn’t respond to requests for comment. Employees who were let go will receive at least three months of severance and three months of Bungie-paid COBRA health insurance, although other benefits, such as expense reimbursements, ended Monday, sending some staff racing to submit their receipts. Laid-off staffers will also receive prorated bonuses, although those who were on a vesting schedule following Sony Group Corp.’s acquisition of Bungie in January 2022 will lose any shares that weren’t vested as of next month. The layoffs are part of a larger money-saving initiative at Sony’s PlayStation unit, which has also cut employees at studios such as Naughty Dog, Media Molecule and its San Mateo office. TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz wrote in a report Monday that “events over the last few days lead us to believe that PlayStation is undergoing a restructuring.” PlayStation president Jim Ryan announced last month that he plans to resign. Many of the layoffs at Bungie affected the company’s support departments, such as community management and publishing. Remaining Bungie staff were informed that some of those areas will be outsourced moving forward.

[lady-hibiscus]

the election results are basically confirmed and tensions are running high right now, but condemning people for wanting to exterminate entire groups then turning around and saying they should all slit their throats is... not something we want to be doing.

also, trolls are looking for rage bait or engagement. it's easier to report and block their comments, or delete them if it's your post.

[astralleywright]

Marisha's comment about how Relvin is one of those parents who ended up with a child they didn't know what to do with really gets to the heart of it, i think, and is such a good way to tie the fantasy element of Imogen's powers into things more tangible. because there are really a lot of parents like Relvin in real life, who have a child with the person they're happily married to and never expect to be left alone with the kid. or who expect a ""normal"" (read: cisgender and heterosexual, able-bodied, relatively neurotypical and obedient, etc.) child and end up with one who's ""difficult"", who demands more or different of them than what they believe they signed up for. and that's not entirely entitlement on a parent's part- many cultures' common frameworks of parenthood and child-rearing do not include space for these children. it makes sense that Relvin was unprepared. raising any child is difficult, and raising a child whose needs you were never taught how to accommodate, who the world is so cruel to, is even more challenging.

and yet. and yet, the person who bears the brunt of the harm in these situations will always be the child. they're the ones who have to live every moment of how the world treats them, without the support that their parent is supposed to provide them. and when asked to care for his child even when she turned out to be ""difficult"", Relvin couldn't. for entirely sympathetic reasons, of course. he tried, in his own way. i don't think he's a bad guy. but he's let his own broken heart bleed onto his daughter. he hasn't been able to give her much else.

[100-gar]

Controversial take but i watched all of jjk, in subbed, so it had my full attention 100% of the time, and i am of the opinion that it just fucking sucks.

So me and my wife were talking about it, and we were trying to figure out why people like it and we've come up short. I do not understand what's so appealing about this show for so many people. Can someone PLEASE tell me.

[spectascopes]

draw ONE short and fat character from a piece of media as a skinny miss thing and I'm side eyeing. do it to TWO and I know you're just a bitch

[my-thirteenth-reason]

kicking my feet and giggling (<- just got apologised to)

[borealing]

hm

[thecherrygod]

/

[bandzboy]

i don’t know if you’re an army but yoongi did not write snooze for his “fans” to go and shit on the very juniors he was trying to comfort with the lyrics

i am not exactly an army i'm more of a casual listener but i know the song and it's a very nice song really but also this brings up these discussions i've been seeing on twt about how some armys don't even read their lyrics or even care much about their music as much as they say they do and it's sad

[pa-pa-plasma]

the thing people rarely talk about is being unable to tell if you're sick or not because you already have these symptoms chronically. like yes i still have a cough, but all the other symptoms of long covid are basically normal for me

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i keep having Thoughts about how in so many ways LL has so much potential to be a really hard-hitting, messy, no-punches-pulled exploration of what i call moral agency: not the agency to act on your beliefs, but the agency to have those beliefs at all. like, if you're being abused into internalizing a set of beliefs, or indoctrinated in such a way as to make you resistant to outside perspective, or having relevant information withheld from you even if you would be looking for it... you don't have nearly as much choice in the matter of what you believe as someone who isn't stuck in that position.

and like. the central antagonists alone are literally a massive, horrifically abusive cult that spans generations. and i really wish they had actually followed through on that, and done so with compassion for victims who might need to be held accountable, instead of treating them with hatred and dehumanization.

(and also, y'know. hadn't treated some characters who did bad things as if they had much, MUCH more agency, moral or otherwise, than they did at literally any point. COUGH FIVE COUGH COUGH COUGH)

there's just. so so so much interesting stuff to be dug into there, in a way that's deeply fundamental to the narrative where even a lot of stories about moral agency aren't, and i really wish i could scrape enough brain cells together to talk about it properly

[daeluin]

you understand everything about me when you learn my first "celebrity crush" was mike shinoda