#complex simplicity

[tha-wrecka-stow]

[ciegeinc]

Teedra Moses: Tiny Desk Concert

[boricuacherry-blog]

[inmyperfectworld]

Song of the Day:

Teedra Moses - Caution

I've been in love with her music and this entire album since 2005. ❤️

[dinosaurwithablog]

I love this 😊😍 it's a brilliant use of light and shadow and color.

[darkaestheticghost]

everyone is going to have an opinion.

Fact.

But fuck it.

Fuck em.

It doesn't matter

Do you.

stay true

They don't have to get you

Those that want to will prove it to you

those that stay and marinate

those that easily gravitate

the ones who don't try to manipulate

I'm talkin bout those that don't just try to imitate

Nah the ones who readily bring you a plate

Them ones who elevate

Them ones who ain't afraid of offering up to see you eat

Let's hear it for the ones who stand silently with us in the deep

Those who, when next to you, don't worry about what below may creep

Because they know, what's below, could never reach.

[beemovieerotica]

so I guess if you describe a decades-long international crisis involving multiple world powers as "complex" then somebody on tumblr is gonna be like "umm where is the complexity here?" to try and gotcha you?

and then you realize that their idea of simplicity is based solely on declaring who is morally at fault, and having decided that and posting about it online they're relieved the burden of ever conceptualizing an actual outcome to everything going on, because their activism begins and ends with identifying the "good guys" versus "bad guys" and not talking about what the fuck is supposed to happen next, and definitely not addressing any of the actual core political problems or history therein that have enabled this genocide

[crocodilenjoyer]

here’s the thing. about zolu. puts myhand on your shoulder Here’s the thing. luffy? aromantic. zero interest in romance. zoro? gay. very low interest in romance. has two braincells and they’re both devoted to thinking about swords. they are not dating. it is not romantic. it’s not sexual either because luffy, much like his views on romance, could not give less of a shit about sex. maybe if they both feel up to it at the same time, but that’s rare and when it does happen it’s more of a physicality and, to a lesser extent, affection thing than anything else. occasionally it’s a “hey wouldn’t it be weird/funny/fucked up if we [insert some david cronenberg-type shit]” thing and the other one goes “haha yeah do you wanna try.” but i digress.

however. HOWEVER. they Have A Thing. what that Thing entails is a mystery. luffy is both incredibly straightforward and frustratingly cryptic whenever he’s asked about it and zoro just kinda shrugs. they’re just luffyandzoro and zoroandluffy. the king and his lionheart. drift compatible. partners. captain and first mate. the sailor and the north star. sun and moon. they simply Are. what does that entail? well brother. they hang out

[crystallizsch]

stop getting more oc ideas omg im gonna

[chaoticgoodcrow]

kristoph painting ^^ his design is so calming to draw haha ✨ ID in alt!

I put another version with a spoilery joke under the cut, view at your own risk haha

[jokerfic]

@shepards-dead-fish DELIGHTED to talk about this, tyvm

first and foremost, the big dawg himself, Nolanverse Joker

His whole deal can honestly be summed up with:

effectively flipping a code of morality on its head necessitates an intimate understanding of that code of morality first. Ledger's Joker sure does spend an awful lot of his limited screentime preaching nihilism to people, that nothing matters, that saving a busload of puppies and pushing a granny into traffic are both completely morally neutral acts, as is everything else under the sun, because there's nobody up there keeping score.

to me it reads like a crusade. to me, it reads like a smokescreen for rage and disgust. either the Joker isn't human, is instead a figment, a personification of chaos, or he is human, and something happened, something shoved him over the edge, and his actions are a means of punishing a cruel world that he bitterly resents and hates in its totality. you have to understand the concept of cruelty to react to it and lash out like that, though. you have to understand that it's a bad thing-- that bad exists at all. a true nihilist, when confronted with the weight of the world, shrugs-- because what are you going to do? what's the point in trying to change anything when any change is equal to the status quo?-- and moves on with their day. The sheer amount of time and effort the Joker expends on terrorizing Gotham speaks to a belief that Gotham deserves punishment, and punishment as a concept doesn't exist if there's no right or wrong.

confronted with this idea, he would claim that it's just his favorite hobby, his favorite thing to do, and since there's no moral weight attached to the shit he pulls then why not indulge in it? it's important to understand that this is total horse shit. it may well be his favorite hobby, but I think it's his favorite hobby because doing this shit makes him feel superior to everyone, and again, if he was a true believer in what he's peddling, he'd know that there's no true superiority when everything is on totally equal, neutral footing. he's a liar. he's an excellent bad guy because he knows bad exists and is intimately familiar with it. he lives as an inversion of good, tacitly acknowledging that good exists and that he's painfully aware of it.

next up: Jerome Valeska!

Jerome is honestly kind of a doll compared to the others. He's on the simpler side of Jokers when it comes to his motivations and morality, because he sort of of wears his heart on his sleeve (and he never shuts up, so you don't really have to wonder what he's truly thinking). Jerome is doing what he does because he sees it as punishing a world that failed him, and he's open about it. He kicks off his criminal career by murdering his abusive mother, he's unrepentant about it, and from that point on, everything he does is with an attitude of "why should I care if anyone lives or dies if nobody ever did the same for me?"

There's no doubt that, like Ledger's Joker, Jerome really does get a kick out of violence (his family members who've known him since he was a kid repeatedly call him out for being a difficult, bad kid who frequently acted out and scared them-- and it's not as if regular abuse can have that effect on a child, right? he was definitely just "born bad," as his brother Jeremiah puts it. /s). I would argue that he gets a lot more actual joy and fulfillment out of murder and mayhem than any other Joker. He really just likes to kill, terrorize, and destroy! It makes him feel powerful and engaged with the world. It's his main social outlet (he's an extrovert).

He knows it's wrong-- he never tries to argue otherwise, or get out of it by acting like right and wrong don't even exist-- but in Jerome's morality, he's justified in doing it, because the way he was treated was wronger. All he's doing, in his mind, is seeking revenge, and revenge is one of Jerome's biggest motivators. I would argue that the pursuit of it is something he thinks is always morally correct in any case. There's a sense of fairness there, and by extension unfairness. He understands that it's an unfair world, and he thinks it's every person's right to fight for what they believe they're owed, even if that means stepping on other people to get it. "Every man for himself" is Jerome's morality, and given his background, how could it not be? If nobody ever reaches a hand out to you, you never learn to reach out a hand to others.

(By the time he meets people who do reach out their hands to him-- Lee Thompkins, Bruce Wayne-- his point of view is firmly cemented, and instead of opening up to the possibility that the pursuit of goodness might be worthwhile, he laughs at them for being freaks of nature, acting against their own self-interest.)

And finally, Arthur:

Arthur, who of the three is easily the most sympathetic and more of an anti-hero than an outright villain.

Arthur, like Jerome, is also lashing out against a world that has repeatedly hurt him, but in contrast to the other Jokers, whose destruction spreads out over the whole city, he's very deliberate about who he attacks. He goes after people he specifically feels mistreated by. He goes after bullies and thugs and the elites who he blames for the state of Gotham, as well as for his own low personal state. His victims are specifically targeted-- he's not out to just hurt anyone he can get his hands on. He doesn't seem to find any pleasure in the idea of hurting people just to hurt them. He wants to punish bad people (and, at worst, he's neutral about innocents, though I'd say he leans more towards sympathizing with them than not caring about them at all).

That's what I mean when I say his moral code is unusually explicit for a Joker-- it is! Far from being the city's personal tormentor, he's basically hailed as a vigilante and a sort of champion at the end! That's very odd for a Joker. Far from denying they even exist, he very clearly knows the difference between right and wrong, and moreover, he cares about trying to do the right thing (which is why he never even seemed to entertain the idea of killing Gary, even though Gary had just witnessed Arthur committing a serious crime-- Gary hadn't done anything wrong, Gary didn't deserve to be killed). Unlike TDK Joker and Jerome, he doesn't seem to have a natural inclination towards and sense of pleasure in violence-- it seems painful for him, like a last resort, something that takes him over and that he surrenders to rather than something that's always been a temptation in the back of his mind.

But I don't think he thinks of himself as a bad guy. I think he thinks of himself as desperate, maybe broken. I think he cares about being good, I think he's tried to be good-- I think he feels like he's tried everything. But in Arthur's mind, violence is now the only way, the only thing that will make the bad guys sit up and take note. I think that he thinks that the exercise of violence against bad guys is no longer an evil, and I think the distinction matters to him because, again-- he wants to be good. In his view, it's the world that's stopping him from being good, nothing inherent to his own nature.

so yeah. all three of them have a personal sense of morality that informs their lives and decisions, and that they use to justify the things they do. it's super interesting to see where they differ and where they overlap.

[ciegeinc]

Teedra Moses x City Winery STL OCT 2024

[philosophybitmaps]

[ratfc]

Just went to see a fabulous rendition of Twelfth Night with a bunch of straight friends and none of them got it ...