#disrupting the system

[unwelcome-ozian]

[starry-bi-sky]

pouring one out for luo binghe in my disciple SQQ fic, poor guy has taken a backseat here. we're nearly 30k words deep and he hasn't even shown his face once. it'll be much longer before he even actually talks to Shen Qingqiu.

(i say im pouring one out but in reality im sitting in my director's chair chewing on a cigar and wearing a beret as he tearily and unsuccessfully pleads with me for more scenes with Shen Qingqiu)

[fuefanny]

HELLOOOOOO SOLARBALLS SHIPPING NATION hope this is a safe space for Xearth cause ive sorta got a storyline goinh

[maybe-boys-do-love]

A Tale of a Thousand Stars answers the age-old question: What if Hallmark movies were good?

[bekkathyst]

So I may have accidentally taken a double dose of my blood pressure meds so if I pass out in the middle of the show I guess we’ll know why 🥲

[deadpeasantgirls]

I haven’t gone here in years but -

When Arthur says “Morgana was always so kind. What happened to make her so twisted? I could have saved her” he doesn’t realise that her kindness was what made her so twisted. It meant she empathised with her abuser Uther’s victims. Then she got angrier and angrier where Arthur pretty much disassociated. She wanted justice, then she wanted revenge for the Purge - and she wanted to get and hold onto the power she needed to have both.

Morgana turned on Arthur because that was more important than their relationship where Merlin was the opposite. His relationship with Arthur was more important than having any sort of justice in Camelot or even returning magic to Camelot.

[blackoutsys]

help why did i just remember that several headmates just have their own playlists 😭

like a lot of these songs aren't ones i feel strongly about [though there ARE some ones i like a lot. gonna happen when you share a brain lmao]

but like. really random time to remember that was a thing, thanks brain.

[notasapleasure]

Kay, thanks for this link, reading the essay was almost quasi-religious to this lifelong atheist. It's an absurdly optimistic piece and all the more rebellious for it, I think.

I could quote so much more from it, but perhaps this is the most relevant bit right now...

For radicals, fetishizing the guillotine is just like fetishizing the state: it means celebrating an instrument of murder that will always be used chiefly against us.

Those who have been stripped of a positive relationship to their own agency often look around for a surrogate to identify with—a leader whose violence can stand in for the revenge they desire as a consequence of their own powerlessness. In the Trump era, we are all well aware of what this looks like among disenfranchised proponents of far-right politics. But there are also people who feel powerless and angry on the left, people who desire revenge, people who want to see the state that has crushed them turned against their enemies.

Reminding “tankies” of the atrocities and betrayals state socialists perpetrated from 1917 on is like calling Trump racist and sexist. Publicizing the fact that Trump is a serial sexual assaulter only made him more popular with his misogynistic base; likewise, the blood-drenched history of authoritarian party socialism can only make it more appealing to those who are chiefly motivated by the desire to identify with something powerful.

-Anarchists in the Trump Era

Now that the Soviet Union has been defunct for almost 30 years—and owing to the difficulty of receiving firsthand perspectives from the exploited Chinese working class—many people in North America experience authoritarian socialism as an entirely abstract concept, as distant from their lived experience as mass executions by guillotine. Desiring not only revenge but also a deus ex machina to rescue them from both the nightmare of capitalism and the responsibility to create an alternative to it themselves, they imagine the authoritarian state as a champion that could fight on their behalf. Recall what George Orwell said of the comfortable British Stalinist writers of the 1930s in his essay “Inside the Whale”:

“To people of that kind such things as purges, secret police, summary executions, imprisonment without trial etc., etc., are too remote to be terrifying. They can swallow totalitarianism because they have no experience of anything except liberalism.”

[wonder-worker]

"It is too easy to dismiss [Leonor of Navarre] as an overambitious schemer who would do anything to obtain a crown, shedding the blood of her own siblings and her subjects in order to attain the throne. However, a deeper investigation of her long lieutenancy and ephemeral reign shows a woman who fought tenaciously to preserve her place but also worked tirelessly to administer a realm which was crippled by internal conflict and the center of the political schemes of France, Aragon, and Castile. She tried to broker peace, fight off those who opposed her, repair the wounds caused by conflict, protect the sovereignty of the realm, and keep the wheels of governance turning. Leonor was not always successful in achieving all of these aims but given the background of conflict and the lack of cooperation she received from all of her family members, bar her loyal husband, it is a huge achievement that she survived to wear the crown at all. Many writers have argued that Leonor deserved the troubled lieutenancy, personal tragedies, an ephemeral reign, and a blackened reputation, basing their assumption that she committed a crime that cannot be [conclusively] proven. However, a more fitting description of her would be that of a resolute ruler who successfully overcame a multitude of challenges in order to survive in a difficult political landscape and gain a hard-fought throne.”

— Elena Woodacre, "Leonor of Navarre: The Price of Ambition", Queenship, Gender and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600 (Edited by Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz)

[ikiprian]

haha yeah outcast child! you should definitely center your sense of identity on aspirations of heroism! the elite ruling class will definitely accept you if you demonstrate guts, grit, and embody the values of your society to great personal detriment! this is the way of upward mobility, for sure! you can totally succeed, you are so special and unlike those you grew up with. disavow them! dress like us! speak like us! fight for us! in no way will you either become a recuperated symbol to support the system that scorned you, or fall into disillusionment when inevitably rejected for your authentic self. no way would that happen ahahaha

[engagemy-others]

"hextech is the problem" girl. no. it was the capitalism. it was literally the capitalistic culture of piltover. how did you miss that.

[mueritos]

I find it funny you post things about the wrong people becoming therapists yet you want to be a social worker and actively defend rapists and abusers 💀

CW: mentions of SA/cycles of abuse.

you must think you're really clever. the therapy industry has a huge amount of problems (like any other industry built on service to other humans, like the medical industry), and i think even the people who want to work within the therapy field (whether as a psychiatrist, a counselor, a therapist, a social worker, a sex therapist, etc) can still critique the many issues within it, mainly the racism, eurocentrinism, and the individualistic values that much of talk therapy promotes. I don't know where you got the second part of your statement, because not only is it widely inaccurate of what I was thinking of doing in social work, it also is just not a great idea to hold about people who work with people who do harm.

there are therapists/social workers who work exclusively with cops/law enforcement, and ethically those people CANNOT work with people who are victims of law enforcement or people who "break the law" (incarcerated folks). It just doesn't work, because if you work with both, it can create a conflict of interest. this is the same with people who work with victims of assault (SA or not). these therapists/etc who work with victims of assault/abuse CANNOT work with abusers. The same is vice versa, as in people who work with those who do serious harm cannot work with their victims.

I think your self righteousness is misplaced. You clearly have a lot of work to do in regards to removing your own feelings and judgement from the work that many therapists and social workers do. I don't know if you know this, but everyone (yes, even people who do serious harm) are deserving of basic human necessities, like oh i don't know. Housing, healthcare, or therapy. It is not my job as a future social worker to judge people, that is wickedly different from holding someone accountable. Judging is like sending someone to prison for 25 years, further removing them from the communities and resources that could generate accountability. Further, no one can hold anyone accountable unless said person consents to being held accountable. There are different procedures for whether they do or not. My job, as a future social worker, is to help people, because I believe all people deserve to ask for help and receive the help that they need.

Not sure if you know, but I'm against incarceration/punishment. I believe we hold punishment as the way to "teach people a lesson", but if you do not work with people and actively step in and disrupt cycles of trauma (housing crisis, hunger, substance abuse, interpersonal abuse, racism, ableism, etc), you will only find that people re-offend unless they are given the resources they need to be better. Yes, there are people who genuinely want to do harm, but harm does not exist in a vacuum, and if you are unwilling to acknowledge that, then I genuinely wish compassion to anyone who slips up around you and shows you that anyone is capable of any level of harm.

People who do serious harm are victims of the same cycle abuse as everyone else. You white knuckling your self righteous black and white morality is the reason why you cannot understand that even the worst kinds of people deserve the same access to care as victims of harm. You think that people who work with individuals who do harm as them defending them, when the reality is many of us with the brains built to do this kind of work want to stop this harm and correct abusive behavior. Unfortunately for you, people are capable of change. No one is asking you to like anyone or their actions (because I don't have to like the people I work with either, freak), but what people like me are asking you is to accept the fact that all people do harm, and when people are given the community and resources to, they can change for the better and recognize the serious harm they have caused.

Not everyone who goes into this work wants to aim their energy into the "socially acceptable" work. I think social justice morality and the sanitization of revolutionary politics has rotted our brains into believing that we must do and be the most "woke" person ever, channeling our energy into victims of harm. But what we fail to recognize through that is that some people would rather divest their energy into de-radicalization of fascists, or others want to put their energy into theory, others want to learn how to connect with the land and be sustainable, and others want to learn how to help others. And just like them, there are people who are willing enough to use their skills and compassion for conflict/resolution, accountability practices, and to help those who have harmed. Because, unfortunate for you, activists should NOT be juggling being the theorist, farmer, therapist, spiritualist, leader, mediator, protestor, rioter, etc and etc. Some people are simply built to put their energy into what they are good at. This doesn't mean that the farmer does not encourage the theorist to continue thinking and writing their theory. And I am sure the theorist, one who cannot farm and till, is grateful for the skills the farmer brings once dinner comes around.

it's funny really because I still am not sure about what I want my focus to be in social work, and for you to assume that I am "defending" abusers/rapists by thinking about working in extremely hostile, tense, and exhausting environments in the attempt to disrupt cycles of violence is me "defending" these individuals...it just reveals more about you than myself, anon. Many people already work with abusers/rapists (many of those therapists being victims of abuse/SA as well), so you may as well call the ones who are actually doing the work rn "defenders" of abuse. see how that bodes for you.

that's all I have to say.

[greenandhazy]

My current roommate is like… fine… but it’s almost frustrating the extent to which she apparently wants to pretend we are like. Each living in our own separate apartments, that just happen to be the same one?

Like, we have less counter space because she bought her own kettle instead of asking to use mine. We moved in with separate dish soaps, and she just bought a refill of her own so I guess I have to continue moving two of them around when I clean the sink. She never puts stuff in the dishwasher—I don’t know why not—but basically the only things we do share are forks/spoons/knives, so when I put those in the dishwasher, sometimes she will put them back in the drawer but leave my measuring spoons in the dishwasher. She’s going out of town for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and she hired someone from Rover to feed her cat on days that I will be here so I had to ask for the contact information so a stranger isn’t barging into the apartment without giving notice.

And like all of this is very minor stuff and ultimately doesn’t matter but also. I literally almost went to the police two months ago because she went to stay with her boyfriend (didn’t know she had one) for several days and didn’t tell me, so eventually I was left thinking “I haven’t heard my roommate in the apartment for almost a week, I think that can of wet food has been in the fridge for four days, she hasn’t picked up her mail in three days or answered my text in two days, is this enough to file a missing person’s report?” Even since then, she basically spends all of her time in her bedroom and will speedwalk between there and the door, ignoring me unless I greet her first.

Idk. The whole dynamic is really weird—it makes me feel like I’m being ignored/disliked or that I’m overstepping when I do things in our shared space? Which is probably my own shit to deal with, but also I don’t trust that she would speak up about anything that bothers her, and that also makes it feel kind of fraught to bring up genuine concerns.

[thecutestlittlebunbunfairy]

Okay but listen

HEAR ME OUT!!!!!!!!!!!

[sentientsky]

can't believe i just said aloud, in complete seriousness "i need to break into the québec national archives"

cause what the FUCK is this shit

(super rough translation: u can only access this from a secure computer in the physical archives themselves and also u can't take any photos or printouts of the document)

[salemoleander]

See, Cleo would normally be first in line to make a black market, except they drew S Tier Books as their main permit which is like. Winning at permits

Instead I assume the black market will originate with Beef & Skizz undercutting Doc's attempted wood monopoly, if Etho doesn't get there first with a secret glass-based black market piggybacking on the mail system infrastructure