#deeply held beliefs

[quartergremlin]

Loose Change: When did that happen?

transcript:

I'm disabled. It's been a battle to say that, because its "just" carpal tunnel. But I've been in pain for 2 or 3 years now.

It's significantly better than it used to be. But I still find myself planning around it. And flinching away from the pull before it hurts.

I've never been very strong, and now i'm constantly handling myself with kid gloves. So I was surprised when...

"Is that muscle?"

I realized I'm the buffest I've ever been. Which makes sense. I've been exercising. And working hard, even with my limitations. But I guess I internalized "that stuff" as a kid.

"I know you're worried about being fat and slow and ugly and unlovable. And you're going to get fatter and slower! And you're going to be hot as hell! And very loved. And be... a really strong person.

[poorlittleyaoyao]

I am so unwell forever about the fact that Jin Guangyao never tells a single person besides Su Minshan what was supposed to be in the coffin. He doesn't even try to say "my mother's remains are buried here and I just want to keep them safe," even when they think the worst of him already and he'd have nothing to lose if they didn't believe him, because his most-feared outcome probably isn't that they wouldn't believe him. It's that they would believe him and would at best not care and at worst seek to do Meng Shi harm because of it. And he's not wrong. 🫠

[elissastillstands]

It’s nearly been two years since EXU first came out, but I’m still obligated to draw every meme that comes out of the Barbie movie with my best girl. And who better to be her tired and spiraling counterpart than Orym? 

[lizbethborden]

"Gen Z has a significant hard right swing in the male demographic which you can see from this data--" well ackshually no generation is a cultural monolith and performing analysis is stupid and pointless you idiot liberal and just because some young men on the internet say mean words and hurt your baby feelings doesn't mean that you're allowed to criticize them politically even when they're saying "I love rape" and "your body my choice."

[raspberryjellybrains]

I've been thinking a lot lately about identity, culture, parody, pastiche, and empathy (which I'm aware is a very broad umbrella, but bear with me.) I think a part of the reason why post-modernism doesn't resonate with younger generations as "art" is that its core conceit has become mainstream. There's still the critique of capitalist work as fetish which hasn't been taken up in the mainstream, but the overwhelm of images and ideas both industrial and organic pared down and/or magnified past the point of comprehension then replicated infinitely has become the general stew the internet is mired in. It is, by nature, the very thing depicted as perverse by earlier artists; thus, there's no edge to it anymore, simply another smooth rock wearing away at the boundaries between our selfhood and the world (if ever there was a meaningful delineation to be made.)

Further, I think the lack of self-awareness is deadly. When one takes every element of culture, regarding depth and meaning carefully, and creates something new from it (however scathing it may be towards the source material,) that is one thing; it is something entirely different to do so without care. This... loss of care in the handling of culture is a symptom of the panoptic nature of the internet. To regurgitate everything, it must first be swallowed, and before that? Ripped and shattered on the rocks of the gaze. The only way to avoid the gaze is to hide all noticeable traits until you blend in with the scenery, and to do that, you must erase every emotion, trait, or interest; you turn into a cold mask of a human, mocking your kind and taking the teeth you hardened to avoid into your mouth, becoming a new eye on the mutated tower of our own insatiable curiosity. This is a very roundabout way to refer to irony poisoning.

That poison does exactly what I outlined. It breaks the self whole, and blended with the most pernicious mechanisms of capitalism, sells the most delicate parts to the highest bidder. Pale copies of it are then disseminated as the real thing and turned into a hollow, post-modern collage of one's most sacred parts to cover the vicious nothing underneath. Pale copies of pieces of people destroyed become a collage element alongside hundreds of others for a trendy mask, long discarded in a years time.

Even the reason for this practice has become subsumed in its mimicry, rendering the perversion of post-modernism so two months ago.

[ithilien-writes]

i'm glad so many of us agree that buck totally fucked dudes before but that he just thinks that's completely irrelevant

[mapleandgingeroatmeal]

The thing I want the most from this episode is Caduceus noticing Laudna and being Very Challenged by her.

[transneilyoung]

i think stephen's hair thinning made him extra hot. but that's just me. that's just me

[optiwashere]

I think the hair change only happens if you ask Shadowheart to undress first. (If you need to take screenshot or smth) That said I hope that bug gets fixed in the next patch.

Actually there is just so many Shadowheart stuff that is bugged or otherwise unavailable in the game that if Larian suddenly decided to care about that it would make the rest of the fandom complain about her getting so much content.

Oh, that's interesting, thanks for the heads-up! 💜 I just happened to be playing through that bit on my lunch break. But that's good to know in case I make any characters that wouldn't make her undress first (likelihood: deeply low, I am who I am)

I've heard there's a couple bugs with Shadowheart—complete hearsay that if you play a Selûnite, one unique kiss doesn't trigger?—and the supposedly recently added "Act 2 banter" when romancing her has literally never triggered for me either. Dunno what else is bugged, but it's unfortunate either way. I hope it all eventually gets fixed, though.

Tbh, I think there's other companions that need more/fleshed out stuff (especially Wyll, give the man a fuller sex scene and let him address the PC differently during a romance...) but I take most of the people getting really worked up about other characters getting "more" than their faves with a grain of salt. There's far too often some level of misunderstanding going on, like when people thought that the Valentine's Update was only about kisses.

[seximal]

bitches will say "yeah idk i think being therian is probably fake" then go home and explain all their behaviors with "im kitty"

[87dvhnk]

i am fully aware that dick and future!dick are fundamentally different people from different timelines, but i personally love the idea that dick's quote unquote most authentic, least inhibited self should have every sadosexual piercing imaginable. look at that man. nothing could fix him. except, mayhaps, a jacob's ladder.

[murderballadeer]

i do not trust men with no female friends

[lavendermanna]

unstructured thoughts about the concept of gendered power dynamics as a spectrum rather than binary or ternary system

(ive been thinking about a couple really good transfeminist articles i read recently about the idea of third genders: #1 https://substack.com/@taliabhatt/p-148363142 | #2 https://thesizhensystem.substack.com/p/faggotization-and-the-extant-gender and i was trying to conceptualize a way of thinking about it that made all the pieces fit together, and then this fell out of my brain)

"gender is a spectrum" is a basic, surface level aesthetic observation of the structure of the social construct that we participate in every day, in every social interaction. the concept of a "gender binary" isnt even an observation of the system, its a surface level misunderstanding of what you are looking at. sorting gender into distinct categories with rigid boundaries is in and of itself an illusion created by patriarchy: it doesnt accurately represent the real lived gendered experience of people, and it fails to capture the power structure that is enforced on gendered bodies by society. "men have power over women, and both have power over faggots" is never going to be a complex and nuanced enough analysis to capture the reality of patriarchal oppression. much has been said about men as both sufferers and enforcers of patriarchal violence, but it should be obvious to the observer that some men wield gendered privilege over other men; ie they receive social benefit from other due to their perceived success and fulfilling the role of manliness, while others who are perceived as less manly face more obstacles by comparison (see, for instance, how short men tend to be treated worse than tall men; tallness being a classic signifier of masculinity in our culture).

the fact is that gender is a many layered hierarchy of micro signifiers and power dynamics between individuals. at the top of the spectrum is the ultimate, perfect, masculine ideal. people whose masculinity is unassailable, archetypes of concept of gender, people whose actions and choices define what masculinity even means. this could mean, for instance, rippling rock hard muscles and chest hair, but it is equally marked by social structure and personal choices, such as wielding power with entitlement, drinking certain types of alcohol, treating people in a certain way, etc. this matter is also complicated by the fact that each individual has their own personal opinion of what this archetypal paragon of masculinity looks like, but of course not everyone's opinion is weighted equally in the enforcement of gender roles. the point of the concept of the ultimate man is that under patriarchy, it is the bar against which all of human gender expression is judged, and therefore anyone who falls short is essentially "lesser" or "deficient", a failed man, or even more generally a failed human, a failed person. this category includes all women and faggots, but i would contend also a lot of men, who still, by the nature of the structure of the hierarchy, do have privilege over a lot of people, are considered deficient enough to be denied certain privileges of masculinity.

there is even a word for this process: emasculation, and it is a real material threat to some people, whose masculinity is so strictly policed by their peers that having their gender threatened, ie losing power in the social hierarchy of gender, that they will face serious negative consequences. these men are not necessarily "women" or "faggots" but they are nevertheless victims of patriarchal violence. essentially, the threat of emasculation/feminization/faggotization does not happen all at once: it is a process by which a person is stripped of privilege, and depending on how far the process is taken, it can move them any amount of distance down the spectrum and into a more marginalized, oppressed position. squinting at it from a distance, we can divide this system into two or three or however many categories of oppressor and oppressed who wield privilege against one another, but all of these delineations are generalizations of the fine structure of interpersonal power dynamics that comprise the power spectrum. in any individual case, it may be easy or difficult to determine who is above whom n the hierarchy, if the distance between their positions is great enough to be obvious, but determining who has privilege over whom when the individuals in question occupy nearly the same spot on the spectrum can be much more difficult.

but more to the point, i think that one of the real benefits of thinking about it this way is that when interacting with other marginalized people, rather than asking, "is this person a member of the oppressor class or the victim class", it may be more fruitful to frame it simply as "is this person above me on the gender-power spectrum?" power is not abstract. power is about the material conditions that affect the daily lives of real people. a person who has gendered privilege over you is a person who has the power to materially affect your life due to the fact that their gender is viewed as more legitimate and worthy of respect and trust than yours by the people around you. gendered privilege determines who will be rewarded for adherence to social expectation, and who will be punished for deviance. it describes your relationship to authority and public perception. all of these things are relative to how an individual is viewed compared to their peers; the standard for what is considered sufficiently masculine to avoid punishment or disrespect depends on who is in the room with you.

[mihotose]

the hasu anime shouldnt be 103 or 104 or even 102 or 101 it should be 93 and be about the beginning of the club but whatever

[theydjarin]

Ugh it’s not even that I Want Din to lead Mandalore or anything like that, it’s that I want him to continue his journey that was set up in the first seasons and figure out what he wants instead of going through the motions. I want him pushed into a leadership role he doesn’t want, I want him to deconstruct his religious beliefs and reconcile his choices. Maybe we will still get some of that. I don’t know. But it feels like they set him up for a long character arc but dropped it before it came to fruition and simply substituted Bo Katan in. it’s really really weird character development.

[positivelyapunovexponent-good]

I am visiting extended family and experiencing a spectrum of shrimp emotions both positive and negative. Positive because I love them and love spending time with them. Negative for reasons I feel so self conscious about I can’t bring myself to explain them outside of the tags even in my anonymous personal blog. I can’t sleep even though I’m exhausted. every night I’m pacing from anxiety as I try to figure out which parts of me to be honest about and which to conceal for the sake of not? Deeply hurting the people I care about? Even though I haven’t done anything wrong so if they are hurt that’s not on me.