love when men cry about body hair bc "it's hygiene" and yet 15% of cis men leave the bathroom without washing their hands at all and an additional 35% only just wet their hands without using soap. that is nearly half of all men. that means statistically you have probably shaken hands with or been in direct contact with one of these people.
love when men say that women "only want money" when it turns out that even in equal-earning homes, women are actually adding caregiver burdens and housework from previous years, whereas men have been expanding leisure time and hobbies. in equal-earning households, men spend an average of 3.5 hours extra in leisure time per week, which is 182 hours per year - a little over a week of paid vacation time that the other partner does not receive. kinda sounds like he wants her money.
love that men have decided women are frail and weak and annoying when we scream in surprise but it turns out it's actually women who are more reliable in an emergency because men need to be convinced to actually take action and respond to the threat. like, actually, for-real: men experience such a strong sense of pride about their pre-supposed abilities that it gets them and their families killed. they are so used to dismissing women that it literally kills them.
love it. told my father this and he said there's lies, damned lies, and statistics. a year ago i tried to get him to evacuate the house during a flash flood. he ignored me and got injured. he has told me, laughing, that he never washes his hands. he has said in the last week that women are just happier when we're cooking or cleaning.
maybe i'm overly nostalgic. but it didn't used to feel so fucking bleak. it used to feel like at least a little shameful to consider women to be sheep. it just feels like the earth is round and we are still having conversations about it being flat - except these conversations are about the most obvious forms of patriarchy. like, we know about this stuff. we've known since well before the 50's.
recently andrew tate tried to justify cheating on his partner as being the "male prerogative." i don't know what the prerogative for the rest of us would be. just sitting at home, watching the slow erosion of our humanity.
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2.1 Penacony Spoilers!
I know the scene after Ratio's "betrayal" can be read a lot of ways but I am shocked I haven't seen more people interpret it as Ratio being so worried about Aventurine that he couldn't stay away even though he was supposed to.
We know:
1) Ratio absolutely knew Aventurine's plan from start to finish, both his gamble to create "death" in the dream and with the three cornerstones. (Wish people would stop underselling Ratio in their analyses; "Three chips are enough" is a direct enough clue that, genius as he is, Ratio would never miss.)
2) In his own words, Ratio was acting according to Aventurine's instructions while in Dewlight Pavilion and with Sunday and felt that he did a good job not giving them away.
I think most people are on the same page up to there, but then I've seen a lot of people interpreting this scene after Aventurine leaves Sunday's mansion as Aventurine being genuinely angry at Ratio (possibly after having gaslit himself into thinking Ratio was actually betraying him).
But this doesn't make much sense to me because:
1) Ratio actually has nothing to gain by selling Aventurine out to Sunday. They're on the same side in this mission. Information about a Stelleron on Penacony wouldn't be news anyone with a brain like Ratio's and why would he need someone else's research on Stellerons when he already has ties to the Genius Society through Screwllum and Herta, as well as the Astral Express where the Trailblazer is actively housing a Stelleron?
2) One of Aventurine's most notable lines of dialogue is how it's perfectly fine and expected for "friends" to use each other and backstab. This is his default understanding of partners--why would he suddenly be mad about something he expected from the start?
3) If the betrayal wasn't already planned and was just a possibility based on Aventurine's understanding of Ratio, why would he ever have revealed there were "three chips" (aka three cornerstones) in play? If even the betrayal over Topaz's stone wasn't planned, just assumed, why would Aventurine reveal the existence of the third stone? He would gain nothing from doing so.
Instead, I think it makes a lot more sense to interpret Aventurine's frustration with Ratio in this later scene as annoyance over Ratio taking an "unnecessary" risk:
1) As far as Sunday knows, Ratio had just very seriously betrayed Aventurine, completely selling him out and essentially sending him to his execution.
2) In the scene afterward, Aventurine is out in public in the middle of Penacony where The Family's eyes are always watching, yet Ratio walks right up to him to check on him. Why would someone who just sold you out come up to you immediately afterward to check on your health?!
3) It's only natural that Aventurine would pump the brakes and go "Wow, didn't think you'd show yourself after you just betrayed me, remember?" Because that's the act they are supposed to be keeping up! They're still being monitored; it's not safe to break character!
But Ratio is a genius, right, so why would he break character here? From the standpoint of the ploy itself, revealing to the Family that he and Aventurine were still on the same side would only jeopardize the plan, not help it.
The logical explanation, then, is that Ratio went to Aventurine here because he felt like he had to.
He had to check in and make sure the situation was still under Aventurine's control.
(In fact, the entire exchange through the middle of this scene is Aventurine and Ratio confirming the rest of their plot in a veiled manner: Ratio brings up the plan and mentions what's concealed in the gift money bag, Aventurine confirms the cornerstone is good to go; Ratio asks what his next step will be; Aventurine says he's going to do the insane thing of handing out cash while looking pathetic [aka fishing for Sparkle]. Ratio essentially asks if he's crazy enough to take the final gamble with his own life, which Aventurine confirms, and then Ratio sets them up for the finale by gifting him the doctor's note.)
Ratio was willing to risk ruining their entire plan--something Aventurine does seem to be frustrated about at first--just to ensure Aventurine still felt all right about the situation.
He needed to deliver his note demanding Aventurine stay alive.
He needed to tell Aventurine to come to him if the situation got too painful to bear.
In short, Ratio was worried enough that he could not stay away even though, for the sake of their plot, it would have made significantly more sense for him not to appear. The gain of breaking character was worth more to him than the risk of being caught.
You honestly don't even have to take this in a shipping context. The real point here is that Ratio is an incredibly good person who wasn't okay with Aventurine's self-sacrificial plan and who felt morally compelled to check on a person in pain. He's a healer through and through, and ignoring Aventurine in this condition--ignoring someone who was taking so much risk on themselves--simply wasn't possible for him, no matter the danger it posed to the plan.
But for those who do ship Ratio and Aventurine... I hope more people will come to see this scene as another example of Ratio's genuine concern for his mission partner! He did not have to appear here at all; it would have made much more sense for him to leave Aventurine to his own devices to uphold the illusion of their "betrayal." He showed up in this scene--very likely against Aventurine's expectations--because he was concerned for Aventurine's situation and wanted to ensure Aventurine knew he could fall back on Ratio's support at any time if the plan went awry.
tl;dr: I wish people would stop interpreting this scene as the aftermath of a betrayal. Aventurine wasn't ticked off with Ratio in this scene because he felt like he'd genuinely been backstabbed; he was ticked off because Ratio was literally breaking their pre-established "betrayer" character just to be fussy over Aventurine's safety and well-being. (Okay, and to double check on the plan, but let's be real, the first part was definitely more important. 👌)
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so, old news obvious news blah blah, but i keep seeing people not getting this about my girl gideon nav so have to say:
i think at first blush, people get the impression that Harrow’s got all the convolutions and layers and hidden vulnerability whereas gideon wears her heart on her sleeve and is just brazenly herself (a loveable rowdy himbo) & that’s the contrast.
and yes, that’s there, but that’s not all. that dynamic itself is a part of their mutual (codependent) front, and like everything else in this book, it gets peeled back.
i think the real contrast is that they’ve both got masks, and those masks are complimentary. they’re both kids who never got a childhood. they grew up tortured in the same place from very different angles with no one but each other to butt heads against. they both had to play-act grown up versions of themselves with few models for what a well-adjusted adult even looked like. so it’s cartoonish. gideon is the plucky hero of her own adventure story that will totally have a happy ending some day, far far away from her nemesis whom she’s totally not in love with. harrow meanwhile (to grossly oversimplify) has to imagine herself as someone cruel and cold enough to cope with being alive at the price of 200 other people. these two things fit very well together. gideon can play the hero to harrow’s villain, and harrow can enact cruelty toward gideon to make herself feel strong and mean (and generally just to vent anguish). the way they hate one another is a kind of mutual protection - it re-enforces the self-image that each of them needs to get through the day. but that’s the coping mechanism. harrow the ruthless bones overlord. gideon the hapless swords idiot, who thinks of nothing but tiddies & sweet sweet vengence (harrow’s corpse in various states of disgrace ) all day. and behind that they’re both tearing apart at the seems beneath caricatures of themselves that are deeply unsustainable and neither of them feels safe letting on the extent to which that’s the case. their hearts are a goddamned mess. neither of them is wearing that shit on their sleeve.
so yeah, there’s a lot more to gideon than being a swords himbo but that’s not the wild thing. the wild thing is she’s so convincing that she somehow manages to sell people on her no braincells act while being the pov character of entire first novel.
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self-proclaimed radical leftists: in the communist utopia that exists only in my head, everyone will work, by which i mean a full-time job in the post-industrial revolution sense. this is because work is obviously the only way one can contribute to society, and everyone who doesn't work is a parasite that will be eradicated in my Communist Utopia™. i don't even care about the products or purpose of people's labour because, as everyone knows, employment equals morality and so having a job is inherently virtuous and not having a job makes you a lazy leech who doesn't deserve to live. trust me, this is a very communist idea. i'm practically an expert because i read 1.5 tweets about marx.
what? omg why are you making this about disability, i was obviously talking about normal people 🙄 if you're disabled, you have an excuse to be a useless waste of resources who can't contribute anything 😊 in my ✨ Communist Utopia ✨, you don't have to work if you're not able to. don't worry, we'll have rigorous and dehumanising tests to determine if you're disabled enough or if you're just a lazy faker! this process is infallible and has no drawbacks whatsoever for disabled people. have you considered that maybe you're the real ableist for criticising me? 🤔 anyway, have i mentioned how much i love employment and also the taste of boot leather
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So we're playing Rose here - or at least, that's how things are starting out. Considering her current state of mind, I wouldn't be too surprised if she pulled a Kris, and broke free from our control.
Rose isn't capable of acknowledging what she's seeing. If she wasn't tunnel-visioning on Jack right now, she'd be curled up on the floor - but she's not allowed to grieve until she's made him pay.
Jack's really just messing around here, isn't he? Instead of simply nuking the castle, he's strolling around, disemboweling the scattered remnants of the Prospitian army. It seems he actually listened to DD, and is keeping the collateral damage to a minimum.
Were these soldiers allied with WV, or loyal to the Sovereign Slayer?
I have no idea - and in all likelihood, neither did Jack.
Harness the Breeze, and liberate LOWAS.
Weave a universe from the frogcicles of LOFAF.
Restore life to the barren oceans of LOLAR.
Dave likes rap.
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