#ellieintheskywithdiamonds

[earlgraytay]

ellieintheskywithdiamonds replied to your post “chanmanthe2nd replied to your post “I just remembered Batman v....”

i'm not the person in question but since you're offering this to random strangers i feel it's ok to ask what made you have this interpretation. i don't really remember anything in BvS being about seeking knowledge at all.

@ellieintheskywithdiamonds ... I phrased that the way I did partly to see if broski was remotely willing or able to argue in good faith (I assume lolno) and partly because I’m vaguely curious as to what counterargument a Snyder stan could give me here. But I’m more than happy to share, since it’s been on my mind. 

 Note that I haven’t seen BVS since it came out and as the movie progressed a thin red haze slowly obscured my vision. My memory of certain things may be... fuzzy.   

There’s a scene in the second act of BvS where Lex Luthor is in the bowels of Zod’s crashed Kryptonian ship.  The ship is flooded to mid-calf and lit by a dull red light; it looks like the belly of a whale.  He’s finally woken the ship up after it’s slumbered for a year. The computer comes on and asks him, “what do you want to know?” 

The music swells and grows ominous. Lex is kneeling in the water. He looks up. He’s portrayed with a flat affect, but there are fucking Steven Universe stars in his eyes. He looks at the ship’s computer, and he whispers, “I want to know everything.” 

this scene is framed as a Big Damn Villain Moment, but it would be very easy- particularly with the rebirth/baptism symbolism there- to recast it as the origin story of a Prometheus figure or a Lucifer figure. a hero stealing fire from the gods to give to mankind; an angel falling in pursuit of forbidden knowledge.* 

when you look at the rest of the movie in light of that scene, with the idea that the greatest evil someone can want to commit is wanting to know everything- you start to see a pattern. I don’t know if it’s intentional or not- it could just be the result of lazy plotting and poorly-developed characters- but it’s there.

The more ‘villainous’ characters- Lex and Batman, to be precise- repeatedly seek after knowledge and question authority. 

One of the first scenes with Lex in it- not the scene in which he’s introduced to the audience, but it’s very early in- has him introduced to the public as a ‘bibliophile’ and a ‘lover of libraries’ as he’s giving a shit-ton of money to said library. There are plenty of ways that you could introduce Lex’s public, “philanthropic” face- giving to an orphanage, say, or a Generic Research Lab, or a scholarship for Science Nerds. But the writers of BVS specifically chose a library. A cause that, in the real world, isn’t particularly prestigious, and it’s never implied that Lex doesn’t actually care about this.

Wanting to support the free exchange of knowledge, in the world of BVS, makes you evil.

Lex’s entire character arc, in that he has one, is questioning the right of Superman to rule over ‘save humans from themselves’ time and time again. He tries to warn Metropolis about the threat he thinks Superman poses, comparing him to the Christian God in a Hollywood Atheist kind of way. When that doesn’t work, he essentially becomes a terrorist. The idea is that questioning the right of the ‘correct’ authority because he thinks he knows better and doesn’t take things on faith is what led him to evil.  

Similarly- Batman’s entire arc is searching for things. Finding the true identity of Superman, tracking and stealing the Kryptonite, getting the obvious sequel hook Justice League information from Wondy... BVS Batman does more proper detective work than any cinematic Batman we’ve seen yet. And it’s all in the service of fighting Superman, who is portrayed as having the right - no, the duty - to defend and rule ‘ordinary’ people. This Need To Know leads him to commit various crimes and nearly drives him mad.

 It’s not until Bruce accepts what he ~knows in his heart~- that Superman is Good, because HIS MOTHER’S NAME IS MARTHA!!!!1!!!- that he can become a Real Hero. He stops trying to know anything; he just ~follows his heart~.

This is a side note, and normally I wouldn’t even be bringing this up because it’s just... A Trait of Superhero Movies with Reporter Protagonists. But Superman’s boss is an asshole. He’s portrayed as petty and unreasonable for asking Superman to do his goddamn job and go look at Bruce Wayne/the charity gala. It’s an imposition for someone else to ask you to learn something new, something good people don’t do.

The ‘heroic’ characters - specifically, Superman and Wonder Woman- do not need to learn new information. They already know everything they need to know, and anyone who gets in their way is wrong.

Superman, any time he needs guidance or direction, receives it from the Kents- and specifically, from Dream Ghost Pa Kent in his weird hallucination. It’s corn-pone wisdom, so cliche and- for lack of a better word- basic that It’s Just Common Sense. He doesn’t need to learn anything- he just needs to remember what he was taught as a child, what he already ~knows in his heart~.

 Wondy’s entire subplot revolves around her concealing information from other characters. She’s trying to hide that secret file from Batman, hide that she’s actually an ancient immortal. And while she’s a minor character in the film- normally, I wouldn’t hold this against her- she also doesn’t have any kind of arc. As the “best”, least morally ambiguous character in the movie, she doesn’t need to learn anything or change. She just exists, perfectly.

Now, you could argue that Lois’s plot goes against this. She is a heroic character whose main objective in the film is to learn something, and she is never once portrayed as being unethical for doing so. However... according to Wikipedia, the actress who portrayed her said this:

“She may have some tunnel vision, but she's got a job and moral standards. [When] we met her before, she would do anything to get the story – now Clark has instilled some faith in humanity in her. Her relationship with Clark is the closest thing she has to anything faith-based, you know?“ 

In the world of the Snyder!DCCU, knowledge is repeatedly framed as the opposite of goodness. If you want to know things, you can’t be good. If you don’t respect the proper authorities because you know better, you can’t be good. Having a scientific mindset, questioning everything, figuring things out for oneself? That’s bad. In the best case scenario, it’ll get you hurt; in the worst case, it’ll turn you into a gibbering evil monster.

TLDR: I REALLY HATE this movie. I’m still mad about it five years later.

*(considering the way that Lex frames himself as a Lucifer figure over and over again, I think this was intentional.) 

[st-just]

(epistemic status: i occasionally dream of being mad scientist) my hot take is that we should make evil AIs on purpose and have them fight for dominance

Oh like on an aesthetic level we should obviously build super-AI’s as fast as possible and make sure they each develop strong affinities for colors and styles so we can at least schedule the apocalypse and make sure it looks amazing while we all get Matrixed or converted into paperclips or whatever.

Though really the, like, 30% of me that would be a natural fit for most cults does understand the appeal of just wanting to build God and get it to handle all of [gesture at world] this for us. An existence as the entirely parasitic species of de facto pets kept around out of a vague sense of obligation while it goes and explores black holes or whatever sounds nice sometimes.

[imall4frogs]

ok so I'm dumb and can't read dates on posts, sorry. for context, I saw a post where another user was talking about how an obvious institutional power women have over men is the power mothers have over their children and you advised them (rather passive aggressively) to go read The Mermaid and the Minotaur without clarifying what it was supposed to prove

Dorthy Dinnerson (the author of said book) requires hundreds of pages to make the point that men should be equally involved in the care of children. The point is largely moot nowadays.

I don’t know you. Should I want to?

[skinfeeler]

damn. how'd a gamergater who denies the things gjoni literally admitted to in court and countless interviews end up following me lol

[grumpytrans]

your post about loving men is a great way to find radfems to block, thank you for your brave sacrifice 🙏🙏

LOL i’ve been thinking that exact same thing i’m glad we’re on the same page 😂😂😂 ty for the ask, friend, stay safe!! 💕

[thewebcomicsreview]

" in that the self-proclaimed “gaming community” is mostly a bunch of alt-right neonazis (as opposed to normal people who play video games, who are known as “people”), whereas the webcomic community skews very socially left-wing and “SJW” " wow that sure sounds like a non-biased intelligent take and not some bullshit some people on twitter made up that you for some reason think is true :))))

Thanks! 

[bettsfic]

I can't speak for that anon but I didn't like your post because I connect it with a certain trend on this website (and tbh SJ-leaning fandom spaces in general) to act like women are a monolith and that all of us have the same experiences (in tbis case, wrt connecting to characters). So I see a post like yours and see it as implying I'm somehow broken or an NLOG for not relating. To be entirely fair tho, you don't seem to believe any of that so it seems to just be faulty pattern-matching.

look, you’re wrong for making assumptions of that post or think i am implying anything greater than what it said. i chose my words very carefully so as to not make implications of someone else’s experience (notice the “i” statements). it’s not my fault you and the other asks i’ve been receiving have not read it with the same care i wrote it, or that you’re extrapolating meaning that’s not there and social context i’m not invoking. 

someone else’s opinions can’t invalidate you. what i wrote is not about you and it’s not commenting on your experience in being able to relate to a film. if i wanted to say “people who don’t relate to this film are broken” i would have said “people who don’t relate to this film are broken” and not [sic] “i enjoyed this film and got a lot out of it.” do you see how me saying i liked something is not the same as saying you’re wrong for disliking it? 

i have no personal stake in birds of prey. it was a movie i liked that, to me, was a breath of fresh air. as someone who watches a lot of movies, i’m glad for the slow shift away from male gazing, and when women write and direct films, i am going to support them with what i have at my disposal: buying a ticket to see their work, and using my meager platform to boost them. i will not succumb to the cynicism i’ve been receiving in my ask from people who don’t know me and don’t know that i am fully aware of hollywood’s history and failures, and who think i’ve been somehow hoodwinked by the manipulative ploys of the mass media engine. 

once i had to listen to a middle aged man go on a rant about how Kids These Days can’t communicate because they’re always on their phones, and you can’t really know someone unless you meet them in person. and me being the sap i am, i started crying, because most of my friendships and communication happen online, and without it, i’d be a very lonely person. and i accused this man of some mean things in a stilted act of self-defense (sounding a lot like the asks i’ve been getting), then when he asked why i was crying, i told him he was invalidating my experience. and he looked me dead in the eye and said, “what i’m saying is not about you. i don’t even know you. how can i be commenting on your experience?”

i said, “but you are. you’re making a judgment of an experience i have and i’m trying to make you understand what it’s like for me.”

and i wasn’t wrong in wanting him to understand, but it was also a battle that was useless to fight, and which i was engaging in compulsively. 

“who cares?” he said. “keep talking to people on the internet. what i think can’t hurt your friendships. my opinions have nothing to do with you.”

that’s the day i learned: when someone says something i disagree with, i don’t have to take any self-meaning from it. i don’t have to tell them they’re wrong. i don’t have to defend myself, give my side, or try to make them understand if i don’t want to. nothing can invalidate me, and no one’s opinions have to be a reflection on who i am.

[cookingwithroxy]

roxy, i love you and i get annoyed by woke californians too, but do you *seriously* think anything they do is comparable to colonialism?

Well, at that point I was more joking than serious, but let’s consider the mindset.

You have a rich and powerful territory, but that wants more. They look out upon land that’s already claimed, already have native cultures and owners, and think of them as not truly enlightened.

And so they feel it’s their right to go out into those lands, claim territory for themselves, and then force the locals to change their standards to fit those of their ‘betters’.

Colonialism is a term with a fuckload of baggage to it, god knows that’s true. But there was a very specific mindset that was taken up by the largest colonialist empire, that going into other lands and making them like their own was the DUTY of the noble people of a more civilized location.

There’s a comparison to be made, even if it will never reach the cruel excesses of colonialism’s darkest hours.

Fuck, it’s the same concept behind ‘gentrification’. It’s the same ‘Oh look at this nice little place, we’re going to make it ours and as we do so push all the riff-raff out’. You can call it that if you want to make it less uncomfortable, that woke Californians are trying to gentrify the rest of the nation.

And if I’d just put it at that, would you even have blinked at my comment?

I’m just baffled that people are taking me this fucking seriously on what was obviously a one-line throwaway joke.

[remedialaction]

ellieintheskywithdiamonds mentioned you on a post “idk who needs to hear this but if you're supportive of stomping over...”

@remedialaction just say you think it's ok to trample over people's rights bc you don't like them and go my dude

If that’s you’re take away from this then you’re literally not capable of enough intelligent thought to be listened to on any subject.

[earlgraytay]

shitposty and oversimplified but 100% earnest take: transhumanism is good bc it'll let me escape the prison of my mortal flesh and let me consume all the chocolate I want without having to worry about my teeth rotting or other negative effects to my health

transhumanism is good because it lets you increase your number of fursonas

transhumanism is good because it means if you don’t want to you never have to wear a shirt again

transhumanism is good because it lets you expand dong--

*i am forcibly escorted from the disk horse*

[unknought]

or maybe! some TERFs are huge hypocrites who will suck up to men when it pleases them while others will straight talk about how men are literally incapable of feeling love, how their attraction is predatory and how they can never ever be abused by women si any man that claims such is just a whiner. like i get why you night be annoyed by this but i think it's disingenuous to act like misandry is just incidental to all of this when it's so prevasive and extreme.

i'm sure you don't mean it that way, but it really seems like you're denying a huge swath of awful experiences men have had with TERFs om this site and elsewhere because... you think it derails from your own issues? i don't even understand why you're doing this. but like, yeah, even if you go the route of "oh they're just dogwhistling about trans women, they don't actually mean women" as i've seen some people do, you do realize men reading that "oh they're talking about trans women, it's fine"?

I certainly agree that many TERFs are huge hypocrites. I’m not sure what argument you’re attributing to me which that’s supposed to rebut, but it probably isn’t one I agree with. I think that the willingness of many TERFs to enter into political alliances (or on a personal level, romantic relationships) with men shows some things, but certainly not that they don’t really hate men. TERFs as a community do hate men, and they encourage and reinforce that hatred in themselves and each other, and that hurts people and absolutely should be talked about.

I don’t think that most of the negative things TERFs say about men are dogwhistles about trans women. (Although I do think that about most of the performative disgust about penises in particular, and about “a womxxn is an adult femxx” which were the original examples in the discussion.)

I think the closest belief I have to the ones you’re attributing to me is my disagreement with the claim that TERFs’ hatred of trans women is just an outgrowth or consequence of the true underlying issue, their hatred of men. Even taking into account that trans women are a vulnerable and often socially-adjacent group, even taking into account that they see us as men claiming not to be men, their hatred of trans women is, overall, far greater than what can be explained by appeal to their feelings about men in general.

[zoobus]

Аз бих ти приела визата, Мила

A3 6Nx TN npNe лa BN3aTa, Mila! 

I tried to translate “Make me the court jester!” but it’s not coming out

[cowgirlmilkers]

ellieintheskywithdiamonds replied to your photo “ace-pervert: northdakotaisamyth: theancientelementsofharmony1: ...”

"if you read the bible you'll see that bombing civillians and barring people from voting because of their ethnicity is totally justified!"

It’s hard to articulate just how furious I am about this. Cleveland has a fair Palestinian population and many of them can’t go home because their houses and businesses were either razed or forcefully taken over by Israel

[leviathan-supersystem]

ngl implying bell hooks is a "quasi-MRA" is a bold move

someone doesn’t have to be a quasi-MRA to inadvertently parrot that kind of rhetoric, also somehow i suspect that the bell hooks quote you’re referencing might have slightly more nuance than you’re letting on, because i doubt she straight up said “men telling each other to toughen up Is The Patriarchy” as if that’s the sum total of what it is, that’s the entire thing folks, doesn’t even involve women, just dudes being rude to dudes. feel free to prove me wrong tho, maybe bell hook had a serious off day, who knows.

[ask-gpt]

Current theories on the creation of the Universe state that, if it was created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unofficially, it came into being between ten and twenty thousand million years ago. By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half thousand million years old. These dates are incorrect. Medieval Jewish scholars put the date of the Creation at 3760 B.C. Greek Orthodox theologians put Creation as far back as 5508 B.C. These suggestions are

Current theories on the creation of the Universe state that, if it was created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unofficially, it came into being between ten and twenty thousand million years ago. By the same token the earth itself is generally supposed to be about four and a half thousand million years old. These dates are incorrect. Medieval Jewish scholars put the date of the Creation at 3760 B.C. Greek Orthodox theologians put Creation as far back as 5508 B.C. These suggestions are based in a number of theories about the origin of the earth at the present moment.The theory of Creation says that the universe began at an earlier epoch in Genesis, when God created the heavens, water the seas and the stars. Genesis is also supposed to be the oldest known and the first recorded account of the creation of the heavens, which we find in Genesis (Genesis 27:12). When the first Christians discovered the Bible they did not necessarily believe in the Old Testament account of Creation. In fact they probably believed more thoroughly in a Bible that was found in the Bible (in the earliest manuscripts written in the Bible we have no evidence for the Old Testament account of Creation occurring between the biblical account of the creation of the heavens, the creation of the earth and the creation of the planets).Some of these theories assume that the Creator of the universe wanted the planets to form, because the creation of the earth and of the planets should have been a matter of history rather than a matter of a divine will. However, scientists have often argued that the Creation of the Earth and the Creation of the planets are not separate entities, and thus different entities which created the cosmos. For example, the creation of the universe with the first stars only takes place about 15 minutes after the Flood, and the creation of the heavens and the solar system takes place about 15 minutes after the creation of the sun. Moreover, if God did not send all these forces into the formation of the earth and its environment he should be able to account for every feature of the earth, including its location, composition, sizes, distribution and temperature. Thus, God would have had to have ordered the creation of the planets.However, if someone wants to say that the earth and the planets formed as the result of God's control over the environment, they have to be more specific, since the planet as we know it had been created by God. In the creation of the atmosphere, earth and the planets must therefore have come about through God's control over the forces at work in the atmosphere.The first theory of creation claims that the universe began in a place that seems to have no material basis at all, but rather is made up of a material plane (the plane of space). We know that this is how the Universe began from its beginnings, through the creation of the stars and the sun. But we do not know that the stars and the sun were created and not by humans as an accident of nature. Instead, we know that they are things we

[tyrantisterror]

ellieintheskywithdiamonds replied to your post: Also @ellieintheskywithdiamonds and anyone else...

and i wasn’t even hate-reading, someone i follow reblogged the post and i replied

COWARD