#don't get me wrong I'm still a Marxist

[elparra]

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[brazenautomaton]

I'm going to say this here in response to the Israel thing and the awful responses to such that @mg-dl has been talking about / reblogging about, and that's, like, being antisemitic is still genuinely confusing to me. I get it in abstract, but, like... how have you reached this conclusion?

Hamas opens up a brand new shocking campaign of terror and all of a sudden you see respectable people going "oh the Jews can just use all their second Jew passports and get out" and "the Jews are all this" and "the Jews are all that" and it's, it's baffling to me. aren't you guys supposed to be the ones who say that not only is racism bad, but it's easy to not be racist?

You know how I'm not racist? I don't fucking associate moral information about people with their race. I don't bring it up as a relevant factor. I don't assume that people who have a certain race have a fundamentally different experience of the world. The fact that someone is Jewish is not useful information to me unless I am, like, currently talking about specific religious lore. It doesn't affect me, it doesn't affect my interactions with them, it doesn't change my predictions of their behavior, it's not useful information and should have zero weight put on it. Doing that does seem easy! Ignoring useless information is what you should do anyway! So why is it so fucking hard for everyone to just do that?

And, like, at least when people are racist against blacks or Asians it's based on things they have seen. It's not an accurate picture of the world, it's biased and selective recall of information to fit a self-flattering narrative, but someone who says all black people are violent criminals has in fact seen more than zero black people who are violent criminals. The pure conviction with which leftists and left-likes talk about traits the Jews have is absurd because in addition to being wrong, they're not even things they have observed! You haven't seen Jews be people who all have two passports, you haven't seen any of this supposed rootlessness or disloyalty because it's all fucking third-layer-removed abstractions and assumptions of infinite subtlety that can't be falsified so they can't be observed either.

Aren't you Marxists supposed to be about material conditions? Shouldn't the idea of a demographic as a moral actor be absurd to you because all of their behavior is created by material conditions? The "decolonization" types are just as wrong and are following their own hopelessly broken ideology off of a cliff, but at least they had something pointing in the direction of their wrongness. The only thing you had to do to not be awful in this case was not go out of your way to contradict your own ideas and you couldn't restrain your soul-deep wrongness to even do that much.

In the abstract I know why it exists, but that doesn't make it any less nonsensical on that visceral level. I get hatred against the outgroup and people who are threatening to you, I get stereotyping people with negative interactions, those things are wrong but I understand how they happen. But when I see someone saying about how we "don't need to worry about the Jews" or whatever, like... how can you say that? How can that sentence make any sense to you? The group "Jews" is not a moral category we should worry about or not worry about, the people who are getting killed and the people who are being threatened are what we should worry about! All you have to do is NOT say "it's good when people are murdered" and how have so many of you fucked that up?

I fucking support the people who are getting killed and terrorized in that I don't think it's good to kill or terrorize them, and I don't say that kind of thing because in my experience it's insulting and degrading to be damned with that kind of faint praise, so how in the fuck is this something that people actually need to hear?

[spiderfreedom]

I find radical feminism interesting and enlightening as a philosophy, like of all the branches of feminism I've read, it's the only that touches on topics that have bothered me for a very long time:

Why are women in the west expected to wear clothes that are more form fitting and show more skin than their male counterparts? Noticeable at almost every level of professionalism - even women who wear suits tend to wear scoop neck blouses to show collarbone and upper chest. Or they wear a skirt suit, which shows the legs.

Why is asking this question contentious? I get serious pushback from other women when I wonder about this, as if I were judging them. (I'm not - I'm curious about this gendered clothing system we live in.)

Why is the subjugation of women so common across the world? Why is it so similar across cultures and epochs?

How did the subjugation of women happen? What are the situations that lead to female subjugation?

How have women won back territory? What are the situations that lead to female liberation? How can we organize to take advantage of these opportunities?

To what extent is the female body the source of female oppression? Are we actually doomed by sexual dimorphism, or is this just pessimism? What is and is not true of the female body?

Are there genuine differences between females and males when it comes to psychology? If so, to what extent are these differences useful, or to be encouraged in women?

Radical feminism, of all the branches of feminism I've read about, is the one that comes closest to answering these questions. Liberal feminism is quite incurious about the origin of female oppression, and lacks a global thrust. Cultural feminism takes too much for granted that what we've been told is "feminine" is real and valuable. Ecofeminism often seems to delve straight into woo. Radical and Marxist feminists are the ones who seem to get the most that feminism is, at its core, a movement about female power and male power.

My problem with radical feminism is that while there's a tremendous amount of reading about feminist theory, there's spotty coverage of other issues. Radical feminism has a cautious relationship with science - understandable, since science has a dirty history of being used to justify the superiority of {$insert group using it here}, but sometimes veering into denialism. Like in Germaine Greer's Female Eunuch, she disputes the now accepted claim that women tend to have more fat than men, and says this was made up by sexist scientists. I've seen radical feminists unsceptically quote that Cordelia Fine book where she talks about 'priming' without even mentioning the replication crisis related to priming or trying to tease apart which studies still hold and which ones don't. This may seem like nitpicking, but living in reality matters. If we base our activism on the basis of a false claim ("there is no sexual dimorphism in fat distribution!") or a weak/contentious claim ("priming is a real thing that explains poorer female performance in certain areas"), then we end up following the wrong path and chasing leads that don't matter.

That being said, nobody else has done a better job, in my opinion, of dealing with the issues that go to the core of female subjugation, and the weak points can still be improved. Moreover, nobody else argues the urgency of female liberation with as much breadth as radical feminists have. Reading Dworkin and Firestone felt like someone had ripped open my diary, found the questions I had, and answered them with electrifying clarity.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Ngl the second amendment is one of the few reasons I kinda would like to move to the US. Don't get me wrong - I'm a patriot, love my country dearly in all aspects, and I'm proud of my home, but damn if the right to self defense isn't fucked here.

Don't let the Marxists trash take your rights away, America. Don't let them disarm you like they did to us.

Being disarmed is the first step to being enslaved. I wish you could come here OP, though, even here, you can be punished for exercising your 2nd amendment rights depending on which state you live in. Thankfully we have a supreme court that mostly upholds the rights of gun owners, but it's still pretty bad in places like New York and California.

[makapatag]

ruminating on the leftism that guides much of my thinking. i'm avoiding the very common pitfall of simply applying theory (written by people benefiting from colonialism a few hundred years ago) to living conditions here in the neocolony of america and looking for ways to actually apply historical dialectic into here--it takes a lot of self awareness because as with all things the majority left position in the philippines is based off of joma sison's MLM-ness and the struggle for a national democracy, which has now kind of devolved into a ultranationalist jerk off between colonial intelligentsia and constant protesting and rallying. whenever they are challenged by the state, the main response is that "everything they've been doing is completely legal" and that nothing they've done is wrong. of course, paradoxically, as Mark Fisher writes in capitalist realism, much of this ends up just reifying capitalist reals and borders, and neatly squares away activism into yet another portion of capitalist life. activism (now also commonly romanticized by so many of those in the middle class to the petty bourgeois) is now subsumed into capitalism.

of course, from my point of view, doing something is better than doing nothing. i've participated in the movements of the national democratic mass organizations of the PH (anakbayan, etc.) (and still do, though my capacity has become limited and i'm focusing on supporting the communities closest to me for the time being) but they're increasingly becoming a sort of ideological stepping stone and for the most part i believe they have been completely subsumed into capitalist ideology.

i think the philippines is largely mostly just capitalist now, even with some modes of tenancy in the countryside seeming feudal, it operates entirely within a capitalist mode of view and application.

i don't subscribe to the sort of unilinear evolution of societies espoused by some soviet theorists (the classless -> slave -> feudal -> capitalist -> communist thing)--a lot of classical leftist and marxist theories can be pretty easily seen as sort of eurocentric. that's no bash, that's just the work of limited perspective. future marxists like fanon expand the marxist perspective greatly, though they seem to be largely ignored by the white bourgeois in my experience

i think ph leftism should be a lot more aware of local ideas on society, and use that to sort of influence and shape their leftism. a lot of leftists sort of scoff at "precolonial studies" as sort of cute at best and absolutely ethnocentric backwardism at worst (many ph leftists know jack shit about precolonial ph and/or seasia in general due to the education system of the philippines and the america-centric culture of the metropoles)

if we apply historical materialist dialectic all the way back to pre-hispanic times we get a treasure trove of societies to contrast and synthesize upon. a shared culture and binding connections with the rest of asia. the ideal state is of course international consciousnesses and solidarity--one that doesn't fall into the trap of capitalist reification through nationalism and the enforcement of the cacophony of signifiers that only serves to reinforce capitalist structures (jingles, voting, art that just regurgitates old socialist aesthetic, revolutionary art that doesn't really say anything because these artists lack proper class consciousness and/or perspective [many ph left artists come from the metropoles after all and/or have been subsumed into nationalist agenda through education systems and the need to belong in communities, art ph being one particularly egregious example that reinforces nationalist signifiers while becoming ignorant of the signified).

all in all the philippine left is completely defeated, as a movement. many leftists adopt anarchist tendencies, joyful militancies, try to live outside of the confines of communism through communes or living in the mountains. if we are to have any chance of challenging capitalism the ph left must interrogate its own biases, interrogate nationalism, review its literature, and then look inward, look to fellow tribes and societies, avoid the interventionist failures of soviet societies, and actually fight for a world that won't just degrade into more wage-labor slavery

"that's idealistic!" if you're shooting for the moon you land on the stars. the direction of the movement is more important than the speed. i fully believe ideological recourse is needed in the ph left--some might even say if there is a ph left still. i wouldn't mind abolishing the idea altogether--the left is still a eurocentric categorization after all. perhaps its time for a new revolution that interrogates current structures, even within so-called progressive organizations, with violent indignation, and finds a way to upend capitalism through a firm grasp in pre-capitalist structures and international ties

[jingerpi]

its kind of annoying how there's basically no way to cut off liberal sources and academia without isolating yourself to anti intellectualism. like don't get me wrong there's a lot you can cut off and a lot of genuine intellectual study from workers and marxists but there's simply not enough marxists with resources (for obvious reasons) to rely on solely for principled understandings of the world. it really bothers me that if I want to stay informed about science or math I have to follow universities and popsci YouTubers and just do my best to filter out the liberal nonsense, otherwise I'm intentionally depriving myself of information and learning that I likely wouldn't find elsewhere. sometimes it's worth doing, sometimes it's worth switching from one liberal to a slightly less-liberal, but it's still a frustrating reality to deal with

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

Recently saw that annoying anarchist in my reblogs again. Still refuses to admit he hates jews. Still says he's just "Anti Zionist". While claiming I am one because I criticize Islam.

I'm sorry sir but just because you refuse to admit the wrongs committed by Islamists and the broader Arab world, does not make your hate of Jews any more justified. And going to bat for countries like Iran? WOW you must have a boner for that faith. And why go straight for the "Boner" comment?

Because nothing else gets across your obsession with defending and dismissing wrongs committed by middle eastern countries.

And since I HAVE TO SAY IT, this is not an implication of all Arab people, or ALL of Islam. However Arab nations have had a particularly violent history. And part of their own faith doctrine calls for the killing of all jews. As in "The end of days and the muslim promised land will come when all of the jews have been killed".

But sure. Harp on about every anti semitic stereotype. And have fun making out with Milo Yiannopoulos while you are at it because he believes in jewish space lasers and thinks the whole of all jews are "the issue" with the globe. Basically calling them all gay marxists. Which I'm sure you ascribe to.

Really. Just fucking stop. Your ignoring of the atrocities of one side is VERY transparent. No nation is perfect and many of them often do wrongs. Israel screws up just like every other nation. But kindly inform me one thing. Why did the Jews have to flee from all the Arab nations? Oh must be because of some bullshit Hamas fed to you to say. Since you believe every fucking word of that terrorist cell.

Frankly? I hate covering this topic because honestly? I could give two shits about that conflict. Sure maybe it makes me seem heartless but it's their fight. A fight that you Hamas worshipers seem dead set on kissing the feet of. Because I can promise, even IF Israel was gone tomorrow, you'd still be blaming all the world's problems on "Zionists". And you'd still defend all the atrocities committed by the Arab world. Fuck you and your worship of those cultures. Try being normal and just going, "Oh these things about X culture are kinda neat". And stop licking their fucking toes. I love how I get called a Zionist because I don't think a tiny ass country in bum fuck nowhere is controlling the world. But oh fucking well I guess.

[edwad]

i think there’s a secret third option you’re not considering where i actually agree with your critique of marx but don’t think the point of marx is to establish a self consistent general economic theory. so actually the opposite reading of what you said, viz., “he was just an economist”, but instead “he was mainly a political thinker/philosopher” and the main value of reading him is actually to see the dialectical materialist method of analysis applied in realtime (cont.)

(cont.) even if the results of that analysis are shaky/incomplete/inconsistent. if things started and ended with marx i’d agree with you that your critique poses a serious problem, and regardless i still think it’s worth wrestling with, but fortunately we have over a century of thinkers from countless stripes building on marx, each taking different things from their reading to build out new theories of capitalism/strategies of resisting it. we don’t actually need marx as much as some make out

well i think you've misunderstood my position a bit.

i am not saying we ought to read marx as an economist, i am saying that reading him as an economist is the bad reading we should be trying to avoid. but also, if the result of his efforts are in fact reducible to a very ambitious project which ultimately just generates a new economics, then that is one of his failures. i'm not saying this is a good thing or how i want to read him, it's just that this might be as far as his project got him. our job should be to go beyond that.

if anything, i get this from reading him basically as a "political thinker/philosopher" that is trying to make sense of the theoretical field of economics in a way which makes the system comprehensible. i don't know what the "dialectical materialist method of analysis" means to you, or how it could be "applied it in realtime" but im sure we'd disagree on the nature of his project from that alone without ever having to wonder whether i'm reading him as an economist or not. that entire string of words strikes me as wrong.

as for marx being the final word, i of course don't believe this. this is basically my entire point, and i obviously see myself as someone that belongs to this post-marx grouping of people. but that doesn't stop the marxist baggage from silently lingering, uncriticized. it also doesn't mean that these contributions are necessarily good, which is why every 20 seconds there is another call for a "return to marx". i'm focusing my efforts there because a few years ago i would've been one of those people.

[hms-no-fun]

Sarah, Do you hate Rose Lalonde? Not in like the heavy malicious way people associate with Andrew and his relationship with hussie but like, as a fan of godfeels for probably the wrong reasons (my autistic ass really likes the way you approach the character and also me when someone writes Dirk and doesn’t make him a irredeemable piece of shit and a active creep) something that’s stuck out to me reading your tumblr and thinking back on the story is that rose is, to me at least, one of the most unluckiest characters in godfeels, both from a writing and in character perspective,m.

she’s the first to display the kid’s transphobia and thereby the first to get reality checked by June (which, to be fair to both June as a character and your reason for that scene in your godfeels video, she deserved) and therefor the first forced to learn the lesson of “you can move on and continue being friends with people but still not forgive them for the shit they put you through” (which I will admit I might be wrong on) and I’m pretty sure the first one to die when June does the whole kill everyone (or at least everyone that’s considered gods) on earth c thing, and besides that, unless I’ve misremembered something, besides the first chapter of divergence syndrome, she doesn’t really do much until she gives her final message to kanaya and well, the shit all goes down.

I’m not a big big fan of rose Lalonde, but it just feels like there’s something like, there, like there’s something about rose that you’ve never agreed with, and thinking back on it I don’t hate it, but it feels like sometimes rose is a means to a end, which is what all characters are but I mean like, a means means to a end, “how do Segway into the beta kids transphobia of June” through Rose’s constant biased Psychoanalysis failing her in the worse way possible, “How to keep epigone in after Dirk’s absolute asskicking” possessing her corpse, “how to finally get Gerald’s halo out of the story” get her dead, “how do I pronounce death to all endgame ships” kill the lesser used part of the pair, it just, feels like there’s something there, not something outright malicious, but something just, there, like the reverse of the hussie Vriska stuff, creator’s Chew toy stuff.

I apologize for the rudeness this ask may give off, I do truely love godfeels and read up to date anything about it that gets released, this just has been negging the back of my mind for so long.

spoilers for godfeels 3 here but i guess that ship's kinda sailed if you read the question lmao

i don't hate Rose at all! i mean i think freudians are all cranks and it really bugs me how much mid-century and contemporary marxist theory is couched in freudian/jungian/lacanian bullshit, but that's not really got anything to do with Rose lmao. i can't say that i hate any of the characters in godfeels the way andrew seemed to hate, say, Jake English (though there *are* homestuck characters i dislike and wouldn't enjoy writing, which is why they're not in the fic). i'm of the mind that every character sucks in their own unique ways and that's precisely what makes fiction fun to read. that Rose doesn't have a ton of direct agency in the narrative just comes down to, in part, this being a story focused primarily on June. that i didn't really understand how to write Rose in gf1-2 certainly doesn't help. but it's also related to how i interpret her role as a Seer of Light.

her role in gf3 onwards is defined by the Epilogues, where she either needed to transfer her consciousness to a robot body that could contain her ultimate self before her physical body died, or otherwise exist in a universe untethered from canon where connection to her ultimate self is irrelevant. she's had visions of, presumably, a great deal of the events of chapter 8, and i think understood that VV's whole gambit (whether or not she knew it was VV specifically playing this game) was to split the difference between Candy and Meat by disconnecting from Homestuck canon while still maintaining existential relevance in the shadow of some other story.

a lot of the best narrative premonitions/prophecies, especially in Homestuck, use them for dramatic irony-- that is, by trying to avoid a projected future, you only end up creating it. classic macbeth shit. if there's anyone in this story who viscerally understands that vicious narratological cycle, it's Rose Lalonde. so rather than pushing back, warning her friends, trying to rally the troops, she instead accepts that her universe's survival requires sacrifice, namely Major Character Death.

in this way, her so-called suicide wind is an echo of Dirk's own suicide in Candy, albeit towards existentially opposite purposes. and in that sense it's an equally selfish act, because who knows! maybe they *could* have done something substantial to prepare for Epigone's coming if Rose had bothered to warn anyone! but such is the passive nihilism of our beloved Seer, whose death could never be anything less than a dramatic tragedy. this was, in fact, an exercise in absolute agency-- Rose chose to accept her fate rather than fight back against it, perhaps even vibed with how poetic it was to be decapitated by her own beloved wife.

all of this is very relevant to the future of godfeels-- i didn't put her at the center of a load-bearing polycule just to have her death be meaningless. :)

[greypetrel]

Sera and Solas for the opinions meme? c:<

Ooooooh you asked me to spill the tea!

Thank you for asking about the elves, I'm glad they can rest together hating on each other in this ask. uwu

Sera:

First impression: *starts singing Anarchy in the UK* Beside that, I didn't like her all that much at first. I liked her points of view, but playing as a Lavellan... At first it was a "Yeah but why you're so hostile". She grew on me like moss.

Impression now: I love her your honour, she's such a nuanced and complex characters, and with Dorian one of the most caring people around Inquisition, if you spend the time to build a good relationship with her. Her point of views on politics are genuinely good and much more rooted in reality than Solas' (for obvious reasons)

Favorite moment: Her whole set of reactions in Trespasser. The way she notices Inky is feeling all but well but still does her best to cheer them up and remind them that there is an after that they can shape how they want, she's there to help. The way she's genuinely worried sick for you and is there to help... It was the moment she became a ride or die for me. Also all her banters with Dorian. All of it.

Idea for a story: Anything expanding what we see of her character, really. Anything. Little things, her learning to cope and interact with an Inquisitor who is a mage and/or a Dalish, she spending time with the Chargers and finding the family she always lacked. Cookies experiments. Flirting with Dagna. Anything. Some expansion over her War Table mission and having Cullen saying "Do you know what, I'll do it. I'll send soldiers to hold drills as loud as possible under that noble's windows. Yes.".

Unpopular opinion: She's one of the most emotionally intelligent characters around. She is closed and abrasive, sure, but show her you care and are sincerely interested in having some kind of relationship with her and BOOM. Don't know how unpopular it is tho, LOL. And: she and Solas could actually get along and have more similar opinions that they would admit. It's just that Solas is not a people person (he's 24/7 screaming internally, there's no mental space for much else) and approaches her in the wrong way.

Favorite relationship: I'll say three. She and Dorian gives me life, you see the prince and the pauper going on and learning to live together and finding points in commons and enjoying each other's company. She and Cullen. I am sure Cullen is the one who has the most fun in the Red Jenny missions (not that he will admit it), and they are both commoners and simple people at heart. She sees right through the hard shell of pretending he's a serious knight of course no no he's the expert here, uh-uh. He's totally at level with the other advisors. She is there to take him down a notch. Also. She and Solas. Listen. They share quite some opinions. Sera is more rooted in the actual reality of things, while Solas just has theoretical knowledge. They say the same things and have a lot of things in common (both are solidly against the establishment, both renounced to position of richness to just go and play hobo, both are artists and imaginative. He's a marxist, she's an anarchist, but as above: she's rooted in reality, he isn't). Solas just chose the wrong way to approach her and doesn't know how to fix it, and she's not making a step towards him either.

Favorite headcanon: She's the little girl that got the painted box from the Warden in Denerim.

Solas:

First impression: I was heavily influenced by @karmicblackhole, who is the friend that brought me into the saga and my number one Solas authority. So I got to know him in theory before and came knowing who he is exactly. I was curious when I first play to see him finally in game.

Impression now: I like his character A LOT. Wouldn't romance him, I recognise the fascination but personally there's a "You're not like other girls" theme that is really not my cup of tea. Again, if you're not here from 5 minutes you all know I love him as a platonical friend figure, I love his character and I'm firmly convinced he may be your local trickster and obscure character... But a villain? Evil? No. Not at all. Man is going on of pure inertia screaming internally. And also he's the worst liar around Skyhold. Worst of them all. I sniffed there was something weird with Blackwall, but at least Blackwall doesn't let slip things about his past that don't add up with the story he told you and disapproves when you call him out.

Favorite moment: The last cutscene pre final battle when he's there panicking and asking you advices about how to deal with horrible mistakes. The façade cracks a little and he's just... A scared person not knowing how to fix his mess. Also the way he treats you in Trespasser if you had a positive relationship with him during the game. He's a cuor di panna, he's very tender, he's just so horribly bad at people.

Idea for a story: I am pondering from months on a short ficlet about him going back to watch the Inquisitor as time goes by. Because yes he may be resolved... But he's bad at plans. Also DadWolf, but I'm drawing/writing it. Basically, anything that lets him find something he may use to stop running in circles in guilt and self-commiseration and learn that hey, it went how it went that's ok.

Unpopular opinion: He's not a villain and he's not evil. I can see why people think of that and he's in that grey zone that's grey enough that he can easily fall in both parts... But in my opinion he's not. He's just panicking HARD and starved for human contact. Again, I can see why people treat him as a villain... But I think we saw him only up to the middle of his narrative arc. It would be like judging Cullen stopping at DA2 before the final battle and the mutiny. You can but we're all missing the second half of it. I may be wrong in my opinions and I read some great fics that has him as the villain. He could double, again, I just like to think that people are fundamentally good.

Favorite relationship: As above. Him and Sera. Him and Varric co-parenting Cole gives me life. I recently brought him on a mission with Blackwall and they had the funniest banter ever, BOTH sweating profusely and lying. x°D

Favorite headcanon: He's a huge softie and hugely touch starved and it will take very little to bring him back to the good side. Also, I'd love to see him... Doing something to the Veil and actually making elves mages. Also, he's a terrible hugger, but will appreciate being hugged greatly.

[arthurmorganwateringhole]

I'm genuinely curious but why do you care if people headcanon that Arthur is himbo? I'm not trying to start a fight, sincerely. I'm coming from the perspective that we should let people have their headcanons, y'know?

Yeah, I get that! I guess, to answer this question, I have to talk about my philosophy (if you can call it that) when it comes to media consumption and my critical takes on fandom culture writ large. So if you have time, buckle up!

I should point out that I both don't care and care very much about people's hc's when it comes to my favorite characters. I don't care, in that I'm not going to get upset or get my panties in a wad if you headcanon something that is easily proven to be inaccurate wrt the canon. Like, if you want to headcanon Arthur is bad at reading, go for it. Lol, I'm not going to be upset or go out of my way to stop you.

However, I care enough to point out when this is inaccurate, especially when it enters into my sphere of fandom interactions. Now, this is where I get into trouble? A lot of people feel when I point out something is wrong or inaccurate, that I'm invalidating them or censoring them? Lol, like it's okay to be wrong/inaccurate. It's not the end of the world! If you choose to adjust your headcanons so that it's more canon compliant/accurate, then good for you. If you choose not to, also good for you! I promise, Lia isn't going to come after you :)

That said, in general, people need to be more open-minded if they're 'corrected.' Like I said, it's not the end of the world. Take the note and move on with your life.

Now, let's get to the larger, heftier part of this question. This need fandom has to transform their favorite man into a himbo (when he isn't) is a projection issue to me? Like, the unspoken assumption here is that it's safe and unproblematic to like himbos. Force this character into the himbo mold, and you can stan unproblematically! A couple of issues here:

As a Marxist, I should point out that there is no such thing as ethical consumption. It's fool's gold, and you're better off abandoning this all-or-nothing way of thinking and accept that life has its compromises WHILE still trying to work on yourself and your habits

Flanderization often leads to more problematic representation, as it erases the nuance that went into the writing of Arthur. He is a very complex dude. A lot of his sense of humor is subtle and off-the-cuff. Many people mistake it for genuine stupidity, and that's just... unfair? Like my boy did not just whip out witty repartee that belittles the presumptuous upper class of America for you to dismiss it as stupidity.

Now, as for himboism itself...

Okay, I love himbos. Kronk from Emperor's New Groove is a great and lovable example of a himbo? Big beefy dude with a big beefy heart but of very little brain UNLESS it involves his favorite pastime: home-making and cooking. Himbos aren't necessarily dumb, btw, they're just not considered conventionally intelligent (the way Yzma is). The charm of the himbo is that their kindness overpowers our traditional valuations of intelligence, and it reminds us that emotional intelligence (which, stereotypically is not recognized in cis men) is worth appreciating.

The problem here is that Arthur Morgan is both emotionally and intellectually intelligent. To overemphasize the former at the expense of the latter makes you miss a lot of his more complicated and unsavory personality traits?

For instance, one of the MAIN character traits (recognizable anywhere) of a himbo is that a himbo would never say a nasty word to ALL women. Now, don't get me wrong, Arthur is indeed a feminist who respects women, but a himbo would not be caught dead saying this line (credit to @papaue00 for reminding me it exists):

It's worth listening to how Roger Clark deliver those lines. Arthur speaks with malice here :)

Now, the point isn't, "Arthur is sexist! Cancel him!" Because that is NOT true. He's not sexist. Rather, he has moments where he gives in to petty malice? And he goes out of his way to demean her by bringing up sex work (i.e. she isn't a lady so she doesn't deserve his respect) to get back at the embarrassment and irritation he feels given the situation.

If you insist on him being a himbo and read him as only himbo, you miss out on his flaws. His flaws are key to understanding why he is the way he is; why he is perfectly capable of making his own choices and making the wrong ones. An unintended bias people have of Arthur as himbo (and therefore wholesome and unproblematic) is that they end up blaming other characters for his decisions. A famous example is Mary's missions. The fandom writ large tends to blame her for stringing Arthur alone, solely because he uses the phrase, 'play me like a fiddle' in his journal. Rather than reading that phrase as self-deprecatory (he's poking fun at himself while also expressing a vulnerable side of him that still loves her), they take that to mean she's manipulating poor helpless Arthur who is totally unaware of what she's doing to him.

Another example, someone wrongly attributed Arthur's pedantic interests to Dutch in one of my reblogs. Dutch and Hosea may have taught the boys how to read, but Dutch has no interest in botany. A quick conversation overhead between him and Lenny shows that his intellectual pursuits are actually just grandstanding and peacocking. He doesn't know and understand wtf he's talking about. Not once does Dutch even talk about botany. Arthur, though? Loves drawing plants. Can identify them. And he has a book of it by his bedside. Like, reading him as 'an idiot' sincerely (and not with a hint of irony, as Arthur does) misattributes his strengths and weaknesses to others, and that's just... unfair to the writers who WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY TO WRITE THOSE LINES OF EMULATED 19TH-CENTURY SCIENTIFIC PROSE!!! Like, people worked hard to characterize him environmentally. Don't let their efforts be in vain!

Do you see why I care a little bit if people mischaracterize him? It's like, I care in the sense of: okay have a good life. But I also care enough to point out an inaccuracy if I see one. I know it's more polite to not say anything, but it's also condescending of me to treat you like you're a child and just give a bemused smile from behind my screen. I think it's more helpful??? when I point out things you might have missed in game or are deliberately erasing when you choose to ignore the game.

I don't really care about being polite. I care about having good, healthy discussions and endless obsessions over my faves. So yeah there's your answer.

[volixia669]

I'm sorry, but I have too few spoons for people who use the word "proletariat" and nitpick about union vs. guild in non-legal contexts.

Just please, understand not everyone is:

Fond of Marx. In fact using Marxist language makes me wary until I know for certain you're not a fan of the genocidal imperial power that was the USSR.

Speaking legal. Pleeeeeeaaase, I'm trying to get across ideas and sometimes imprecise language works better.

Has the energy for "here's why you're wrong".

Like. I get it. I was raised by someone who nitpicked my accent (no regional accent for me) let alone my use of the English language.

But I've had to learn that what's more important is, are the right ideas understood? Do the specifics matter? Will getting into the specifics just irritate people?

If the answers are yes, no, and yes, then don't. This is something I'm still learning myself, I won't lie, and it does irritate me when I see it.

It's also quite possible that the person on the other end does understand the difference, they just chose different language to fit their purpose.

[runekeepershymnal]

Witcher season 3 thoughts (spoilers for all episodes of S3 below the cut

Maybe I'm projecting, but it just did not seem like Henry Cavill was having a good time this season. Like in previous seasons, even when Geralt was miserable, I got the vibe that Cavill was having the time of his life.

The bit when Yen says to Geralt "Promise me this won't be the last time I see you" broke my heart a bit. I think my favorite bit of the whole season, though, was Jaskier bringing the dryads to tears singing the song in Elder.

I haven't read that far in the books yet, and I haven't played the games, so I can't really comment on deviation from the books compared to the show.

I also don't think it's necessarily fair to call out a fantasy universe for anachronism, but I did find the Valdo Marx and the Marxists bits to be... tonally jarring? It just seemed extremely modern compared to the vibe of the show thus far. The biggest record-scratch moment there for me, however, was the Melange, where Yen and Geralt have a sudden tango in the middle of this other dance and it all flows just fine around them. I get that it was (probably?) intended to be representative of how they had their own mission while there were complex machinations all around them, but... enh?

I'm not sure, but I feel like they switched Yen's contacts, especially in the longer shots, and I wish they'd kept it more subtle. There were some Spirit of Halloween moments there, and Anya deserves better. I could be completely wrong, maybe it was a change in the lighting, but I remember them being this deep, rich, wine purple, and season three they were kinda lavender? I dunno.

I loved Jaskier as the big brother or uncle figure (or mommy and daddy's special friend, we don't know what goes on between scenes) who acts as intermediary between Ciri and Geralt. Compared to Geralt and Yen, Jaskier was Ciri's age much more recently, so it makes sense.

Tissaia dying ripped my heart out. I kind of expected her to turn herself into an eel to jumpstart Aretuza's power again, and I don't love the notion that, to pass on leadership to Yen, she had to die. But then, it may have just been her broken heart and the grief at the fallout from her being betrayed. Still, she was my favorite, and I have such an enormous crush on her, and when her hair went white, she was just incredibly hot in a different way. I will miss looking at her, listening to her beautiful voice, and watching her annihilate idiots with a sharp look.

I didn't mind Radovid and Jaskier, it was an interesting dynamic and I'm glad the show went there, especially since it seemed to show how much Jaskier has dispensed, by necessity, with some of the more shallow things that used to be incredibly important to him.

I really enjoyed Philippa and Dijkstra, how committed they are to one another, their shared and individual internal conflicts and desperation.

We may be cancelling Neflix in my household because of the most recent price hike, but I hope that the show continues to be good.

Anyway, unsolicited opinions and general musings conclude.

[observerpix]

The Best Worst Movie Ever

Hi! I don't know if I'm going to spend much time here, but I thought I would announce my time by sharing with you a review I wrote WAY back in 2008 about a movie that is still so wonderfully terrible, that I try to get everyone to watch it. Flashback Review! Southland Tales

There are many levels of bad movie. There are good bad movies that you love watching because you enjoy making fun of them. There are bad bad movies that you are so mad you wasted your time and money seeing that you are offended by the thought of them. Then there’s Southland Tales. It’s the kind of bad movie that you want every single one of your friends to see so that you can all discuss the atrocity to which you’ve just subjected yourselves.

I believe the only way to truly enjoy Southland Tales is to be tripping on some pretty good acid. Even then, though, I think you might get bored after about thirty minutes and resort to watching static on television.

It’s truly not a boring movie; that’s definitely not what’s wrong with the film. It’s got nuclear war, Big Brother, political corruption, crazy drugs, time travel, and little people in SWAT gear. What bored me is that I didn’t care what the hell anyone did or didn’t do.

In 2005, a nuclear bomb was dropped on Texas. This, of course, led to World War Three. Now, three years later, the government has reinstated the draft, issued nationwide identification cards, and controls the Internet. The Republican Party has a good chance of winning the election, and there’s an extremist Marxist group that doesn’t want that to happen.

Dwayne Johnson is Boxer Santeros, an action star who’s married to Madeline Frost (Mandy Moore), the daughter of Senator Bobby Frost (Holmes Osborne) who happens to be on the Republican ticket. Senator Frost’s wife is Nana Mae Frost (Miranda Richardson) who is not only the head of the NSA (I think), but she also runs the USIdent office, a Big Brother operation that controls the Internet and every other thing going on in America.

Still with me? I’m not done yet.

So Boxer gets kidnapped and taken into the desert. Somehow, he gets back into California with a case of amnesia and has been shacking up with porn star Krista Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar). He and Krista write a screenplay that oddly emulates what’s going on in the world, and they get wrapped up in what I believe to be a conspiracy that involves the Marxist movement, a German who’s created a power station operated by ocean water (played by the hilarious Wallace Shawn), and some strange time-space continuum whatnot. Oh, and a drugged-up war veteran played by Justin Timberlake narrates.

The movie plays as if too many ideas crawled onto the page, and Richard Kelly didn’t want to let any of them go. There are scenes that actually had my attention. I thought, finally, this movie is going somewhere and getting interesting, but no. As soon as some semblance of a storyline would show itself, the film would stumble and fall right back into an immature statement about American politics and war.

Richard Kelly definitely has ideas buried in the muck that is Southland Tales. Peppering the film with news footage that looks like it was plucked directly from C-SPAN is perfect. He’s poking fun at our country’s need for sensory overload in every sense of the word. Having one of your main characters be a porn star who is trying her hand at singing, television, and her own energy drink is spectacular. But either he concentrated too much on jamming every concept in, or he didn’t let the actors in on the joke.

Mandy Moore is surprisingly interesting as the whiny senator’s daughter, but I know for a fact she can do better work. Christopher Lambert, Miranda Richardson, and hell, even John Laroquette should be ashamed of themselves. I wouldn’t think it was so sad to see them play such horrible characters if it didn’t look like they were trying so hard.

Dwayne Johnson is the only one who gives a convincing performance. And it’s really only because he’s playing a confused, half-wit of a man who can’t quite figure out what his purpose might be. He does know one thing, though. He’s a pimp, and pimps don’t commit suicide.

Yeah, I don’t know what it means either, but it was the funniest damn line in the entire movie.

[luke-the-fish]

This response is frustrating to me, but I'm going to be niceys on the internet and do my best to respond to this in good faith. Firstly, I never said not to vote in my post, voting is fine. However, this type of response in which you seem to preemptively scold people for thinking about abstaining is:

1. Annoying to read. Maybe you don't realize it, but your tone comes off incredibly condescending and that is not a good starting point for a dialogue. This isn't an insult, I'm just letting you know that the refusal to engage with the actual text of my argument, plus phrases like "GUESS WHAT?" and "LITERALLY FREE" make you come across as a holier-than-thou liberal who thinks the person they're talking to is an idiot.

2. Inneffective as a political strategy. Yelling at commies to vote on a small blogging website is, yet again, an incredibly individualized action. If you truly believe in electoralism as a political strategy then canvassing and campaigning to moderates on a large scale is going to be much more productive to your cause. This also indicates to me that your approach to politics has a lot more to do with ideals of what is right and wrong, than with actual material analysis and political effectiveness.

Communists are not against engaging with electoralist politics as a rule, an organized communist party may seek to influence national politics in order to benefit their cause, what my post intended to criticize was the elevation of liberal "vote blue no matter who" rhetoric to the absolute peak of political action, when it is really the bare minimum and often just legitimizes the bourgeois political system.

No matter what happens in this election, the United States is still an Imperialist Capitalist nation. Voting for the liberals won't change that. It also won't meaningfully challenge the shift towards fascism in both the conservative and liberal factions. The only thing that has any chance of achieving meaningful change and putting up a fight is a revolutionary communist party (again, your mention of unspecific "high-level political organizations" shows a refusal to engage with the text of my argument). No political movement in the United States can truly be effective at fighting fascism without marxist principals and a revolutionary attitude. Anything else, no matter the intention, just serves to pacify the fascistic tendencies of this country and preserve the dictatorship of capital under a progressive banner.

You can view voting as "harm reduction", engaging in bourgeois elections to preserve the standards of living in the Imperial Core, but if you don't also engage in revolutionary politics, then you're telling on yourself that you care more about preserving your privileged standing as a citizen of the United States than you do about achieving meaningful change, especially for those in the periphery. And you also have to understand that for some people who are directly affected by the imperialism of the United States, under Joe Biden, this makes you come across as callous and ignorant at best, and a political enemy at worst.

Like my original post even said, vote if you want, participate in campaign movements if you think it's important, but learning marxist principles and building a party of the working class are 1000x more important and more productive than votescolding online. Get some perspective.

Maybe I misread your post, and we're really on the same page, and if that's the case I apologize. But the fact you felt the need to make this addition in the first place tells me that's likely not the case, and that you have little actual engagement with revolutionary politics.

My DMs are open if you'd like to continue this discussion further.

[cryptometaphor]

(Sarah arguing with a KKKomunist)

Him: You're a retard

Me: SHE'S the retard?! Sarah is the second smartest person in the world! Next to myself of course...

Sarah: Of course lol

Me: You're being very undialectical right now, and dare I say... revisionist.

Him: How am I... Are you just using words?

Me: You're the one doing an ad-hominem because you were utterly destroyed by her arguments. Annihilated. You can never recover. It's ogre for Trotskycels.

Sarah: LOL

Him: I'm not a Trot. What even IS your argument? Like how was I wrong? Were you even paying attention to what was said?

Me: As much as I needed too. Sarah said something poinent, factual, and with grace and in her sultry voice. You said (makes fart noises)

Sarah: LOL omg baby I can't breathe stooopppp

Him: You're not even making sense. Like I get it. Sarah is your woman, you...

Axel: HIS woman??? OWNERSHIP???

Me: Typical Trot behavior. Didn't even get rid of the capitalisms.

Him: What?! If you all are just gonna bully me with these grade school tactics. I'm outta here.

Me: "I'm leaving because I was proven wrong by a WOMAN! Owned by a MAN whose better than me and every way!"

Him: Not what I said... Bye...

Me: Oh come on, I agree with you okay? Men should own women. Inshallah (he hangs up)

Me: Crybaby

Sarah: You did just resort to bullying Jim. Didn't even refute his central point.

Me: Ah, a win is a win. Point is he was making fun of you. Nobody makes fun of you. Maybe me but even than only under strict regulations by the vanguard

Havoc: Is that us? Me: Yeth

Sarah: LOL baaaabbbyyyy...

Me: Yes my darling?

Sarah: YOU ARE A REACTIONARY AS FUCK LIBERAL NITWIT but I love you anyway and thank you for defending me.

Me: I love you too Sarah. Like the revolution is just looking into those eyes, all day long.

Sarah: Ok that's very sweet, but if you keep saying shit imma actually argue with you because one of us has to take politics seriously lol

Havoc: Jim will provide cheaper goods at the grocery store taking a box of little Debbie's and yelling "these prices are undialectical!"

Me: Populist leftism. The people long for a Marxist-Leninist-Karenism. We are all the manager now.

Sarah: Ok I'm actually getting pissed off and stop making me both angry, horny, shy, and laughing all at the same time lol

Havoc: How do you do that Jim? You do have a way with putting people through a roller coaster of emotions. You don't do it to be manipulative.

Me: Honestly Havoc it's hard for me to feel some emotions. So I compensate. I learn how people tic and use myself as a measuring stick. Like I know it's gonna sound BETA but I wanna cry, right now.

Sarah: Awwww honey, why???

Me: I just love you so much. Life's meaning is you. Just why do anything if not?

Sarah: Baby you're gonna make me cry.

Havoc: So do you hide it to appear masculine or...

Me: Nigga crying all day isn't very dialectical. It's exhausting.

Havoc: Fair enough.

Axel: Jim. You have manic-depressive episodes. Key word being manic.

Me: You're being very revisionist right now.

Sarah: STOP MISUSING MARXIST TERMS lol

Me: I mean he's literally revising my feelings inserting his own interpretation

Sarah: Ok that's slightly better use but still...

Axel: Objectively Jim you do suffer immense and complete depression I'm not fucking with you. Like if I felt the way you did, I'd be pissed I could only kill myself once.

Me: That's pretty close to how I feel all the time.

Sarah: Babe...

Me: I'm not saying that to disparage you honey. You are my everything.

Sarah: You bitch, I know that. I'm just sad FOR YOU empathy.

Me: Very undialectical...

Sarah: If you don't stop...

Axel: What you gonna leave him?

Sarah: I would never. He knows that too. I'll do something worse. Something actually dialectical that uses reason and material conditions to actually illustrate my point.

Havoc: Oh?

Me: I am both mortified but also curious... Perhaps a little aroused.

Axel: That's a Johnny Bravo meme I'm sure

Havoc: Jim is Johnny Bravo lol

Sarah: You don't want me to say it in front of the boys do you???

Havoc: OH?

Axel: Just fucking say it

Me: Stand down soldier... lol

Sarah: See? He's smart when he wants to be.

Havoc: Jim's embarrassed lol

Me: Well no shit I'm familiar with shame and regret lol

Sarah: Oh I don't think shame and regret is quite what...

Me: OK YOU MADE YOUR POINT, YOU WIN I CONCEDE

Havoc: (whip noises)

Axel: I was mistaken, Sarah owns Jim

(Sarah posts that breaking bad meme "you're God damn right...")