#discussion about who knows more

[oldtvlover]

Hey E! Gang,

now a whole episode Gif set, though not completely as you can see.

The whole discussion about Roy and his guest starring in a TV show with his wife. Aw man, though there are still good questions coming from Johnny. Some scenes were just good.

And in the last one we have Captain ‘Dad’ Stanley at his best again. Concerned about his men. And Roy and Johnny look good muddy. lol

[crossdressingdeath]

You know what the most frustrating thing about DAV criticism is at the moment? It's that I do in fact have criticisms. Quite a few, actually. It's a Bioware game, of course I have criticisms. No one I've spoken to or whose posts I've seen thinks it's perfect or above criticism. But the thing is, I—and I imagine a lot of other firmly positive blogs—know that if I share any of those criticisms, if I make posts discussing them and talk about the game's flaws, I will immediately be inundated by people using those complaints to insist that the whole game is garbage and the writing is bad and Bioware's a terrible studio who can't make good games and DAI (of all fucking games) was so much better and blah blah blah blah. I know that because it's happened every goddamn time I've made a less-than-positive post about DAV. And I don't have the energy to deal with that! The endless stream of bad faith criticism wears me down and having to constantly stop to defend a game I like when I'm trying to discuss its flaws because if I don't (and frankly half the time even if I do) people will use my posts to claim the whole game is garbage is exhausting, and fandom is supposed to be fun. So I can't discuss DAV's flaws on tumblr if I want to avoid that, and it is infuriating. I see people bitching about toxic positivity and people refusing to acknowledge the game's flaws, and I really want those people to take a second to consider: do the game's fans ignore its flaws and refuse to accept that anything about it is bad? Or have you created an environment that is so toxic that no one who likes the game wants to risk getting your attention by mentioning what's bad about it and they respond more aggressively than is warranted to even genuine critique in an attempt to ward you off? Because there will always be assholes who claim that genuine problems are Fine, Actually, Stop Being Such A Baby... but if people can't address the game's flaws in public without immediately getting dragged into five different arguments about how it is in fact ultimately a really solid game, they're not going to do it no matter how much they recognise those flaws.

[turtleblogatlast]

I think a lot about Leo standing up for his brothers in the things that really matter to them.

Like- Leo is the one who immediately pushes Mikey and Donnie into finding Raph the second it’s clear that their oldest brother is missing because he knows Raph can’t handle being separated like that.

Leo is the one who stands up for Mikey when Mikey wants to go on a solo mission, actively vouching for him and being the one to convince Raph into letting Mikey go, because being independent and proving himself just as capable of standing on his own two feet as everyone else means so much to Mikey.

And Leo defends Donnie’s honor in particular when his brothers’ intelligence is insulted because Leo is well aware of how important Donnie’s smarts are to him - and how important having those smarts valued and acknowledged is as well.

All this goes right into just how well Leo knows his brothers. For as much as he’ll tease or fight with them, he knows them, and he loves them.

[stil-lindigo]

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I can't properly put into words the amount of disgust that I feel seeing someone who looks like she could be my cousin fight for a genocidal occupational force like Israel but I will say this.

If you are Chinese, Korean, Japanese or any one of these Asian ethnicities that the West deem "acceptable" and you align yourselves with western-backed racial supremacy, you are making fools of yourselves. You have fallen prey to the myth of the "model minority" and you are suckers for it.

The premise of racial supremacy is based on exclusivity. And here's a dose of reality - the myth of the "model minority" is nothing but a tactic to placate you. To sow divide in the ranks of people of colour. To artificially manufacture another realm of racial supremacy in minorities so that you're distracted from how we all suffer under colonialism.

Did we all forget about the skyrocketing of sinophobia in the wake of the first COVID outbreak? The transformation of Chinese people into fiends with barbaric eating customs, poor hygiene, and mass conspiracy to infect the world with biological weapons?

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What about the hate-crimes? The attacks in the street against anyone visibly asian? The rampant discrimination and ostracisation from society?

In 2020, Donald Trump referred to COVID-19 as "The Chinese Virus", "Kung-flu" at a campaign rally to raucous applause, a chilling echo of the times where fears of the "Yellow Peril" had the western world in a stranglehold.

For all that Chinese people have been lauded as "prodigies" and "well-mannered workers", the moment our existence was incovenient, were were nothing more than another target. And although Chinese suffering then wasn't close to the scale of suffering that Palestinians now endure, we all received a reminder on what it was like to be in the world's crosshairs.

Now, in 2023, Biden dismisses death tolls as unreliable and remains proudly Zionist even after Netanyahu described the genocide Israel is inflicting upon Palestine as the "struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle." At the same time, Palestinians are being compared to fleeing rats in a gesture of dehumanisation that mirrors how the Nazis portrayed Jews during the Holocaust.

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And let's not think Abigail's Jewishness will save her, not when it's been proven that Israel has administered contraceptives to Ethiopian Jewish immigrants without their consent. Racial supremacy is an exclusive club that never stops getting smaller, and there is nothing that you, as a minority, will ever be able to do to fit in. One day, you too will be a target and there'll be nothing you can do but blame yourself. After all - it's already happened.

So shame on Abigail. Truly. With the memory of knowing what it's like to be targeted for factors out of your control fresh in her mind, she happily fights to do the same to others. And that says more about her than I ever will be able to.

[the-crooked-library]

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Ellen’s sex scene with Thomas is weird, unsexy, frantic, fully clothed and disturbing, while Ellen’s sex scene with Orlok, literal corpse, is slow, detailed, sensual, and they are both naked. The juxtaposition.

exaaactlyyyy!! it's about the INTIMACY

regardless of how desperate both Ellen and Thomas may be to conform to their socially acceptable marriage (they're both distinctly queercoded, Ellen wants passion, Thomas cannot give it, both of them see each other as a duty), they still do not and cannot understand each other. Ellen, who comes from a wealthy but abusive home, cannot imagine prioritizing material success over love and connection; Thomas, who self-deprecatingly refers to himself as a "pauper," cannot imagine ostracizing himself so completely from the society that very easily jeopardizes the livelihood of anyone non-conforming. There is a distinct lack of intimacy between them, only partially breached by anger and confrontation; which is, indeed, illustrated by their fully clothed, aggressive scene. It is more of an argument than sex.

Ellen's death-wedding with Orlok is entirely different - as you said, slow, sensual, reverent; it centers their closeness above all. They cling to one another, both overcome with emotion (self-professed inability to love be damned), perfect living skin against rotting flesh; the visual implication here is that there is, quite literally, nothing between them. They know each other entirely, the flaws, the beauty, and that understanding is more important than their own life or death.

One is a sex scene that is actually a fight, the other is a lovemaking disguised as murder, and I am obsessed

[bread-wizards]

I actually think Dorian and Orym should fight more.

Remember when their slowly building tension over and entire episode (full of passive aggressive remarks and blame throwing) led to threats? And how after, Orym thanked Dorian for handing over the crown sadly because he knew Dorian would be mad at him? And Dorian couldn't even look at him because he was legitimately hurt, thinking Orym was disappointed in him for doing what he thought was right? That was peak.

The fact they went from that to their current closeness and trust is the best part of their entire dynamic. Their relationship was hard fought and still will be. They will fight for it because they respect and care for one another deeply, and their disagreements don't change that, only improve it.

[critter-wizard]

ep 43 had me tearing up in a fucking shopping centre ‼️‼️

b+w alt version that I truly couldn't decide if I liked it more . Also I included a lot of thoughts in the tags but they're somewhat incoherent<3

[swordscleric]

I can't stop thinking about the post from a few days ago about how Critical Role has been great at doing personal faith but didn't put the necessary work in to discuss the religious/god angle of c3 in-depth. Like the fact that Cardinal Respa was linked to both the Dawnfather and the Chained Oblivion is, on a personal level, very interesting (fallen/corrupted priest goes hard) but like does that mean that there's a Papacy somewhere in Exandria dedicated to the Dawnfather? If so, are there more cardinals who ordain the bishops of the Dawnfather? Are there Conclave-level intrigues going on in the Dawnfather's Sistine Chapel? Why is the Dawnfather so Christianity-coded in vibes alone if there's no actual outline of his religious organisations? With Downfall the Dawnchild/Dawnfather thing makes the allusions to Christ as Son of God co-existing with the Father textual - was there a Dawnfather Schism around whether the Dawnchild was a separate mortal? Was there a Reformation about how the Dawnfather's Pope kept selling indulgences? Is that why the priest of the Dawnfather Grog & Pike offer a drink to doesn't partake because of a cultural shift between Protestant-Temperance-League-coded and Catholic-coded Dawnfather congregations? Why do I have so many questions about the religious organisation of one of the most important Prime Deities in Exandria and to Critical Role's 3 campaigns? How on earth were the cast (and us as the viewers!) meant to care about the gods if all they had were "really tall kings" instead of interrogating how religious organisations provide both a place of healing and community to a wide range of people and also a place of horrific harm and abuse for a wide range of people?

[mxtxfanatic]

Fandom Gripe #23: I know that fandom is in some deep denial about its treatment of female characters that are canonically involved with fan favorite m/m ships, but do y’all realize that when you disappear female characters from the narrative wholesale to push the idea that your canonically straight fav was “secretly gay all along!” you’re making several bad implications? That 1) bi men don’t exist, 2) bi men do exist, but those who have genuinely loved a woman before cannot genuinely love a man after that (therefore bi men don’t exist in practice), 3) women cannot inspire genuine love and devotion in men, therefore any relationship with a woman is “lesser” than the one they later have a man (see previous parenthesis), or 4) to acknowledge the existence of a lovable woman who isn’t a terrible person, where if a relationship previously existed, it did not end because of “incompatibility,” is enough to destabilize the present relationship between two queer men?

Because why is the tgcf fandom allergic to acknowledging that He Xuan had a whole ass fiancée that he loved? Why does no one ever seem to remember that the kidnappings and murders of He Xuan’s sister and fiancée were the final straws that sent him on his rampage, and he still keeps a shrine to them in the present-day of the story? Why is her entire existence and significance to He Xuan as a man, character, and to his character arc disappeared in favor of pushing Shi Qingxuan—the brother of the man responsible for his fiancée’s death—into that same role, as if to say that her impact on He Xuan is significant... just not when it's from her? Why does He Xuan’s life in fandom essentially begin not just after her death but because of it?

[starleska]

can we talk about the brilliant execution of Dot and Bubble's big reveal!!!

i am still absolutely gobsmacked by what a well-written episode Dot and Bubble is. startling, disarming, confrontational, and tremendously impactful. and holy shit i really really want to talk about how excellent the 'twist' (which really should've been obvious in retrospect 😭 was done):

as a white person it took me about ten minutes to clock that Lindy's friend group were a nightmare Aryan Tupperware Party collective: all white, all blue-eyed, and even Gothic Paul was dressed in blues and whites, with no black at all. but you know how i responded to that? mentally i went 'oh i'm sure it's nothing!' and shoved it aside. and i think it is exactly that insidious tendency to ignore, normalise, and validate overt and covert racism that the episode does such a tremendous job of tackling! everything in the episode gives us the lore we need to understand Lindy and the people of Finetime are white supremacists. Lindy's disgusted face and immediate blocking of The Doctor versus the amount of time she spends with Ruby. Lindy's shock at the Doctor and Ruby occupying the same room implying segregation on the Homeworld. Lindy calling the Doctor and Ruby 'criminals' not for being in the Bubble, but for breaking segregation. Lindy using Ricky September, a white influencer, to calm herself down not just from the monsters, but from interacting with a Black person. the tradwife aesthetic of the Finetime residents making a comeback in real-life right-wing racist circles. ugh, there's so much and it was all right in our faces!! yet many of us who aren't POC had the privilege of going through the episode baffled and uncomfortable, without being able to put a finger on why until the final bit of the episode. doesn't that tell us how quickly and easily we've all taken to ignoring both micro and macroaggressions? that we needed talk of being 'contaminated', improper use of the word 'voodoo', and Lindy straight up telling the Doctor that face-to-face contact was unacceptable, to understand they're white supremacists? oh my God 😭😭 what a genius play, to make Lindy so detestable from the start. she's an arrogant, vain, self-absorbed, moronic, uncompromising, traitorous bitch...and by layering that abhorrent personality and then giving us the reveal of her white supremacy, there is no argument even the most wishy-washy of people could have re: their awful views. Lindy and her friends are revolting racists who are so wrapped up in their own echo-chamber 'bubble' that they would genuinely rather be devoured alive than challenge their own narrow, bigoted views. i'm still blown away by the power of Ncuti's final scene. the disbelief, the frustration, the sadness and the fury...and yet the Doctor still tries to save them against all odds. i think the most common response to this episode was 'The Doctor should have gone all Time Lord Victorious on them', and you're right - he should have! but doing that would've affirmed the beliefs of the real-life racists viewers. the Doctor responding not with violence or righteous vengeance is a very deliberate writing choice: we are supposed to come away feeling revolted that he needed to behave that way, to almost be supplicant to the white supremacists. because that is the real-life view of so many people who don't even view themselves as racist: Black people need to 'perform' to a higher standard, than white people just to be considered worthy of respect. the more i watch it, the more i'm convinced this is the best episode of the whole season, and one of the best Doctor Who episodes we've ever had. we were taken off-guard by having an episode overtly about racism set in the future rather than the past, because our tendency is to assume equality is a natural consequence of becoming technologically advanced. this clearly isn't the case, and Dot and Bubble is a masterclass in confronting racism head-on rather than dancing around it for the comfort of white viewers. just. aaargh!!!! absolutely amazing 🔥🔥🔥

[no-passaran]

"We need more weird art" you can't even handle musicals because the story is told through music and dance

[wormeats]

some stuff i want to say, bc it seems a lot of the time mostly only Jewish people speak up about antisemitism

it is antisemitic to claim zionism is across the board evil and fucked up and to wish violence on zionists. Israel exists and people live there and there has been a devastating war that has caused humanitarian crises in Gaza, but Israel is not evil, it has a right to exist and didnt just steal a bunch of land and start wars out of nowhere, the history is actually more complicated than "colonization", and while war is fucked up and horrifying, truly horrific, it is not the same as genocide. genocide is the systematic eradication of a group of people, and while civilian casualities have been horrific, that is why war is so fucking terrible and traumatizing.

Hamas also has contributed a lot to civilian casualties in the way they operated. celebrating and supporting Hamas is fucking horrendous. there can be reasons young people become so radicalized and violent, but that is Not something to cheer on as some sort of resistance movement when it causes so much devastation for people in Gaza and wishes for the destruction of Israel and Jewish people.

Wishing harm on hostages taken on October 7th or celebrating October 7th in any way is also fucking horrendous. These are human beings, random civilians, real people. they have families and loved ones and communities who are terrified for them and grieving them and it is beyond insensitive to cheer on the suffering from your place of immense privilege in this situation and shows a big lack of humanity/seeing people as human beings. i can't believe i see that shit sometimes (but i also can bc the state of things is dire). I can't know how it feels to see people mocking my loved ones who have been tortured for a year and could be killed at any moment or already dead, that must feel so awful, and to know that even if you dont have a connection to the hostages, it could be you or your family as someone who is Jewish or has loved ones in Israel. living in Israel is not a crime or moral failing, living in any country is not a moral failing what the hell. if you can understand people are not their governments for many other countries, why is Israel so hard to see that way for so many people? (antisemitism)

I'm really glad for this ceasefire and wish the best for Gaza/Palestine and its people and have a lot of hope for them to rebuild and recover from all this devastation (scared of shit trump has been saying though, what the fuck. thats a whole other thing tho, i am grieving the election still and scared and trying my best)

it has been so horrible to see antisemitism grow from this and to see such concentrated hatred for anyone who associates with Jewishness in the "wrong" way. the way antizionism has grown so much and into a "fuck all zionism" mentality is horrible. zionism has been warped to mean genocide supporter, and that is fucking horrible bc Judaism has references to it and intercommunity discussions around it, it is in some ways an inextricable part of Jewish culture to some and many people just see it as Israel is doing genocide and shouldn't exist

idk i just dont want anyone to be hurt, war is always horrible and the crisis in Gaza is horrifying, and ive also seen a huge rise in antisemitism in different forms and i hate it and wanted to say some stuff to make my positions clear so that's what im doing now

you can criticize the Israeli government and its actions without being antisemitic ofc, but this is referring to all the hamas support and wishing violence on Israel and thinking all zionists want genocide.

anyone feel free to talk to me about this if it is concerning or upsetting to you somehow, but if you arent a friend or mutual or follower and some random person who disagrees, i can also talk to you but im not a voice with any kind of authority on this stuff, i just have been kinda horrified when i see hamas support or people celebrating Israeli deaths and thinking the hostages deserve the horrible traumas that have happened or should die etc etc etc. horrible. why are you dehumanizing an entire country. (antisemitism is why.) horrible horrible horrible.

[danishphoner]

one thing that really fascinates me about alex is his devotion to art – and more specifically, how he chooses to get some inspiration from scientific works of what he aims to implement in his art. every time one gets to examine some of his lyrics, or even how he explains these lyrics in an interview, they can be greeted by some bits of actual scientific information. an example is how he named his taquería on the moon with the term “information-action ratio”, coined by the critic neil postman, and referenced it in the song four out of five, something that might also indicate an interesting articulation with postman's concept. the line “cute new places keep on popping up”, for example, can express his well-known sardonic discontent regarding the flood of information being generated and transmitted over and over and, as much as it seems visually appealing and does give the idea of benefiting from advanced technologies, it doesn't really add anything substantial to the receiver's critical thinking – and worse, it distances the information receiver from the sender in a communication channel, according to postman.

what i'm saying with this interpretation is, it's known that alex is enamoured with the idea of gathering a bunch of references and condensing them into a mixture of metaphors in his writing, but it's so thrilling how, at times, we can find some bits of science inside of it – and it's even more exciting, just like playing a puzzle game, to find these references and analyse them by doing a similar research to what he did to create his works.

[teyrnacousland]

When we find out that the elves were spirits there's a whole debate about whether or not we should tell people. Why don't we do that when we find out that some of the core beliefs of Andrastianism are a lie?

[mostlyvoid-partiallyflowers]

The most recent episode of Interview with a Vampire let's us see Lestat's side of the story and see how it compares to Louis' accounting of their relationship. As a result, it reaffirms just how unreliable of a narrator Louis is, but it also further illuminates elements of his character that the director and writers have been playing with since the beginning of the show.

There's this part in the episode where Lestat turns to Louis and apologizes and it's framed with Lestat turned to Louis on one side and Claudia on his other side. They're the angel and devil on Louis' shoulders, but who is the angel and who is the devil? And as my friend said, Armand and Daniel are placed into that same dynamic with Louis later on. We are being asked to decide who to trust, who's telling the truth, who's the good guy, but the fact of unreliability robs us of that decision.

This whole story is about Louis, he's the protagonist, though not the narrator, and he is constantly being pulled in two directions, no matter when or where he is in his story. He's a mind split in two, divided by nature and circumstance. He's vampire and human, owner and owned, father and child, angel and devil. He's both telling the story and being told the story. His history is a story he tells himself, and as we've seen, sometimes that story is not whole.

Louis is the angel who saved Claudia from the fire but he's also the devil who sentenced her to an life of endless torment, the adult trapped in the body of a child. He's the angel who rescued Lestat from his grief and also the devil who abandoned him, who couldn't love him, could only kill and leave him.

He's pulled in two directions, internally and externally at all times and so it's no wonder that he feels the need to confess, first to the priest, then Daniel, and then Daniel again.

He's desperate to be heard, a Black man with power in Jim Crow America who's controlled by his position as someone with a seat at the table but one who will never be considered equal. He doesn't belong to the Black community or the white community, he can't. He acts as a go-between, a bridge, one who is pushed and pulled until he can't take it anymore. He's a fledgling child to an undead father, he's a young queer man discovering his sexual identity with an infinitely experienced partner. He's confessing because he wants to be absolved, that human part of him that was raised Catholic, that child who believed, he wants to be saved. He wants to be seen.

Louis wants to attain a forever life that is morally pure, but he can't. He's been soiled by sin, by "the devil," as he calls Lestat, and he can never be clean again. Deep down, I think he knows this, but he can't stop trying to repent. He tries to self-flagellate by staying with Lestat and then tries to repent by killing him, but can't actually follow through. He follows Claudia to Europe to try and assuage his guilt. He sets himself on fire, attempts to burn himself at the stake, to purify his body, rid himself of the dark gift.

Louis is a man endlessly trying to account for the pain he has caused and he ultimately fails, over and over again, because he can't get rid of what he is. A monster. He's an endlessly hungry monster. He's hungry for love, for respect, for power, for forgiveness, for death. He's a hole that can never be filled. He can never truly acquire any of those things because he will always be punishing himself for wanting and needing them in the first place. He will never truly believe he deserves them and as a result, can't accept them if they are ever offered. He can never be absolved for he has damned himself by accepting the dark gift and thus has tainted himself past the point of saving.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

I'm not ready to shut up about Aveline and Carver--so, when you go see Aveline in Act 1, you can catch up with her a little bit and that's where this conversation can happen:

Aveline: "It's just one more change, though. The real end for me was Ostagar. What about you, Carver? You were there. Do you feel something similar?" Carver: No. Aveline: All right, then. Bit of a tit, your brother.

I wanted to see what she would say if Carver isn't in the party. Instead, she says this:

Aveline: Carver was there. I imagine he feels something similar. If he allows it.

......well, at least she didn't call him a tit?