#have you heard of normative ethics

[demo-ness]

saw a post that was like "people who say they're an adult with a job are actually default proship" or something along those lines.

and as someone who has one foot in and one foot out of fandom, i NEED you all to understand: from an outside perspective, THERE IS NO DEBATE HAPPENING HERE. you are two groups circlejerking and occasionally sneering at each other, and you could ostensibly be "debating" about anything, for as much actually seems to be discussed.

nobody is defaulting to having their dick out with either stance. when we notice you we avert our gaze and try to walk faster. do not try to force us to associate with either of you, please

[twopoppies]

hey love, i hope this arrives in one piece and nothing is cut off, as i am not sure anymore how much i can write in a tumblr ask. just to be sure, my message ends with a ":)"

i'm a larrie since 2013, but went on a work-related tumblr break in 2018 (i work in the music industry). i returned to tumblr last week, amidst deep shared grief 💔 to find solace in community. as i tried to cheer myself up by going through my favorite blogs (like yours, it's so wonderful) and trying to catch up -especially about Harry&Louis things that i missed in the last years-, i found the posts really feel like little nuggets of joy and i'm so grateful for that. so i decided i finally want to add to it, now that my industry commitments have downsized significantly. i haven't shared this in almost a decade (never online anyway) and it's not big news or anything, but whenever i remember it, it just makes my heart glow. so, one of my closest work-friends in the industry back in the days (and i'll use neutral pronouns to protect them) did two tours with them in 🦘 in 2013 and 2015. our shared work ethics and also contracts obviously forbade us both from sharing almost all of what was seen or heard (concerning the artists' personal business), but my friend knew i firmly believed Harry and Louis to be together, just closeted (and we both knew this sadly was very common in music or the film industry; meaning mgmt iron-closeting non-straight male artists was completely and automatically still considered The Norm back then, especially with male artists doing these kinds of numbers and having that large of a young fanbase). i never indulged in my reasons or theories, because i felt like i had a professional reputation to uphold and also with me being queer and in the closet as well, it felt too personal to discuss, back then. during the first tour in 2013, we didn't text much, they just said the band was all very friendly and crew was professional, they seemed "like family". the schedule was "brutal". and security constantly needed to be "tightened", due to invasive people trying to steal or replicate tour passes. i didn't ask my friend about Harry and Louis specifically --but admittedly we also weren't that close of friends at that point. during the second tour in 2015, we were though, and only a few days in, they out of the blue texted something that made me smile so wide, i honestly think my cheeks are hurting to this day. :D i quote: "hey so those two louis and h. can't tell you more but you weren't wrong!!!" i replied with ":DDDDDDD" (honestly felt like sending a million heart emojis instead) and about an hour later they sent "every here knows too!!!" and a correction: "everyone" and to this day, almost 10 years later, I keep these imessages saved, because it made me so happy. and i hope that sharing my time-capsuled precious memory will make someone else happy, too. their love is truly something so special. oh, and one of the two was really unlucky at the pokies (slot machines) and quite a sore loser, haha. I always guessed it was Louis, but I don't know. :)

🥹 Oh, we really needed some happiness around here. Bless you for sharing this.

Also, I tend to agree with you that it was Louis on the slot machines. LMAO!

[anghraine]

There's this weird genre of post I've periodically seen that's like "It bothers me that autistic people come onto this site and vent about the pressure to accommodate mainstream social norms that seem unnatural to them, and these people just don't seem to get that mainstream social norms serve a function that makes them right and good, so 'help' consisting of pressuring autistic people into unnatural 24/7 performance is actually great. Really, autistic people need to meet the allistics halfway and accommodate us as well!"

Obviously, these posts aren't phrased this way—the style is usually more patronizingly helpful with a hint of chiding autistic strangers for venting on their own blogs about one of the most basic diagnostic criteria of autism. But the thing that always strikes me about these "helpful" explanations is how incredibly sheltered they seem.

I can't speak for all autistic people. But a lot of treatment for autism has historically been rooted in teaching autistic people to mimic "normal" behavior as much as possible. Success has often been understood less in terms of the strain of this mimicry on autistic people or how viscerally unpleasant it is for an autistic person to perform this way, and more in terms of the comfort of people around us. The less perceptible our symptoms are to other people, the greater the perception of success in most cases, although research increasingly suggests that "social camouflaging" is actively harmful to autistic people no matter how good we seem at it.

Yes, there's a reason for social norms. I know. Many of us know. We have been incessantly told this our entire lives and live under extreme pressure to adapt to the allistic world. We are under vastly more pressure to accommodate the social norms of our communities than most allistic people seem to even remotely grasp. All this "don't label yourself, it's all just a social construction" and "you're high-functioning, though, so-" and "WELL ACTUALLY it is morally incumbent on you to imitate our social norms" only makes this absolute abyss of ignorance seem all the deeper. It feels rather like Protestant proselytizers in the USA who walk up and are like "have you heard about Jesus?!" as if it is remotely possible to live in this country without hearing about Jesus.

Secondly, the idea that the weight of accommodating these different experiences should rest equally on allistic and autistic people is actually pretty grotesque—yes, even if you're talking about autistic people without specifically intellectual disabilities. Where is all this endless understanding and patience for the allistic world we're expected to develop when it comes to accommodating us? Usually completely absent, and even when we do receive some degree of empathy, it still seems incredibly unequal to the demand on us.

But even if that were not the case, the idea that ethically, the people with, you know, autism are under some moral onus to equally accommodate allistic people (especially allistic people who do not have any similar disabilities themselves, which is most of them!) is absurd. Most allistic people are more able to adapt to changing circumstances than autistic people and experience less strain from doing it, they are better and faster at correctly interpreting social situations and emotional cues, and social performance is easier and more natural for them, and they overwhelmingly outnumber autistic people. The logic here just seems absurd.

And thirdly this scary danger of "high functioning" autistic people not trying to accommodate the norms and comfort of allistic people on some broad scale is not happening. Here's one fairly clear discussion that isn't paywalled:

In fact, high-functioning ASD individuals were reported to be more aware of their communication difficulties and were more likely make considerable efforts to adjust their behavior to conventional rules of non-autistic individuals, learning to imitate other non-ASD individuals. Moreover, females reported a higher frequency of camouflaging strategies, suggesting a role of camouflaging in the gender gap of the ASD diagnosis. Although camouflaging strategies can sometimes grant a better level of adjustment, even resulting in a hyper-adaptive behavior, they are also often correlated with negative mental health consequences due to the long-term stress associated with continuous attempts to adapt in day-to-day life.

Seriously, the world being just too easy on autistic people and letting them actually show signs of being autistic (God forbid) without sufficient chiding is not a thing. It's not real in any significant large-scale way; the exact reverse is vastly more common. Annoying autistic people on Tumblr dot com are not a social problem.

[hyperlexichypatia]

do you have any thoughts on "antitheism"/"religion abolition"? some leftists in a server im in were talking abt it and as a religious person who otherwise agrees w the vast majority of their ideals it rubbed me the wrong way

Yeah, I have a lot of problems with “antitheism”/“religion abolition.”

I mean, at the most basic level, I support cognitive liberty, which includes absolute freedom of thought, which includes absolute freedom of belief, which includes religious belief. At the fundamental philosophical level, I’m never going to be okay with restricting or controlling what people are allowed to believe. 

But in addition to that… 

What is the method of implementing or enforcing this that isn’t horrifyingly authoritarian? Are you going to ban books? Search houses? Arrest people? I know that people who advocate religious abolition but think of themselves as anti-authoritarian think it’s as simple as “If we just Educate People about The Truth, they will logically give up their False Beliefs!” but, well, what happens when that doesn’t work? What happens when someone has heard your “education” and still disagrees? What do you do with them? 

Religious uniformity in a population isn’t something that occurs naturally. In any religious group, there’s splintering, factioning, dissent, splitoffs. When a population seems religiously homogeneous, that’s a pretty big red flag. It’s very, very unlikely that every single human just happens to agree – on religion or anything else. So where are the dissidents? The most optimistic explanation is that they’re keeping their thoughts to themselves to avoid making waves. The more pessimistic explanations are… worse. 

Even if you accepted the premise (which I don’t!) that religion abolition is an ethical goal, what’s the ethical mechanism to accomplish it? 

Furthermore, many people experience religious identity as central to their culture, community, family, and sense of self. Even if it were possible and ethical (it is neither) to make someone give up whatever religious beliefs you don’t think they should hold, and whatever religious practices you don’t think they should do, you would be forcing them to sacrifice their identity. This is literally a form of cultural genocide. 

Finally… while it is theoretically possible to be an antitheist or religion abolitionist without also being neurobigoted… overwhelmingly, antitheist arguments rely on the concept of religious believers as “mentally ill” or “delusional” or “traumatized” or “brainwashed.” That religious people are somehow not competent to make their own choices, or that they need to be “rescued” or “healed” from their own choices. Even if you reject this overtly neurobigoted rhetoric, the dividing line between “religious experience,” “spiritual experience,” and “neurodivergent experience” is inherently a vague one. Like, a common antitheist argument is “If someone claims they hear God talking to them through a toaster, we consider them crazy and lock them up, so why is it okay if they claim they hear God talking to them without the toaster?” and my answer is “Exactly! Both should be equally accepted! No one should be ‘considered crazy’ or locked up!” (there’s also a lot of erasure of minority/polytheistic religions in monotheist-normative/Christian-normative antitheism, like “Since someone would be considered crazy for believing that Zeus and Hera are real, they should also be considered crazy for believing that Jesus is real!” – first of all, once again, no one should be “considered crazy,” but second,  in real life, there actually are Hellenic polytheists who believe in Zeus and Hera; that’s not a weird hypothetical). 

Now, if someone is an antitheist and just wants to make their case and try to persuade people, that’s fine. If religious people have the right (as they absolutely should) to make and distribute little pamphlets encouraging people to join their religions, then likewise, antitheists should also have the right to make and distribute little pamphlets that say “Actually Gods aren’t real.” That’s fine. That’s your choice. But when you cross over from persuasion to coercion or discrimination or pathologization… that’s a problem. 

[phoenixyfriend]

This was on a reblog of a fic concept someone added one of my posts but I decided it was risking backlash against the person, and also it ended up half vent post, so just tucking it into its own little post here instead.

I'm glad you're enjoying this, but... Okay, actually, I'm really sorry but this goes against what I was thinking with this post in a lot of ways. I know you didn't intend any malice, but I just. I cannot not talk about this right now. I need people to know to just... not do this to my posts. Because it keeps happening.

I do know which "the younger person should be the sugar daddy, like they made an app or something" post you're thinking about, and i'ts a good post, but that is 100% an Obikin plot. Cody is not a guy to make a super successful app. That is an Anakin thing. In that respect, this is an Obikin fic in Cod*Wan clothing. I mean, I've talked about wanting people to do more Obikin plots in Cod*Wan, but that's about exploring the age difference and power dynamics, not Cody Is A Tech Whiz.

A billion is too much. The only, only ethical ways to get to billionaire status are 'lottery' and 'relative I never heard of just died and left me everything.' In both cases, the only ethical way to proceed is to invest enough to live off of comfortably, and donate the rest. If an app makes that much money? The app is screwing someone over.

I also cannot imagine Obi-Wan in the financial industries sector unless he absolutely loathes his job or is an auditor who delights in making Rich People's Lives Miserable. Better option would be that Obi-Wan is the president of a charity that Cody partners with, like the CEO of a Free Housing For The Homeless initiative or a big name lawyer in an activist lobby for environmentalism or something. This might just be my "I am a business major who hates the business major norms" and look at financial services industry types with uhhhh distaste. If he's a financial advisor, it is for a nonprofit. At most, he is part of a company that specializes in helping rich people funnel their money into charitable ventures.

This also just doesn't fight my envisioning of either Obi-Wan or Cody.

I do need to throw in that my first thought reading this was my Codakin version where Cody wins the lottery and Anakin is the sugar baby. It's not that similar, but the vibes were there (for me).

Finally, it's just... the point of this post is that I find it frustrating when people make Cody the same age because I find it disingenuous to flatten the power dynamic. Some people do it fine, are multi-shippers who are as honest about Cod*Wan as they are with something like Obikin. If they have one fic where Cod*Wan are the same age with no power diff, and another where the power dynamic is flipped, and a third where the power dynamic is as in canon and just explored as necessary, that's fine.

But with the number of Cod*wan (and Barr*ssoka, which is full on NOTP for me as a direct result of this behavior, despite having a canon age diff of 4yrs) folk that have talked shit to and about me and mine for doing something similar with ships like Rexsoka or Obikin... The amount of shit I've had to deal with for shipping Rexsoka for adjusting ages in a modern AU, coming from people who do the same thing with Cod*Wan, is the driving force of this post. It's basically this: If I don't get to change the ages a bit to make things palatable, then neither does anyone else.

This is not just about the age difference. It's about looking at canon and going 'if you guys are going to give me shit for my ship, then play it straight on your end. What does it look like when you're honest about the power dynamic?

There is a reason my first suggestion is Cody having a crush on his boss.

The intent was always that Obi-Wan is the sugar daddy, because Obi-Wan is the General. Because Obi-Wan is the one with power. Because Obi-Wan is the one with control.

Because this post was about "if I don't get to change my ships to make them less problematic, then neither does anyone else."

Also because I just find a lot of Cod*Wan fics to be OOC, and not in the fun way.

[garden-variety-jumo]

Someone asked me about it but they were a TERF so I had to block them. But I wanna ramble about it anyway so voila my post:

Alien Cultural Differences I Love (in Doctor Who, anyway)* :

Disclaimer: forgive my knowledge of Doctor Who being a little spotty, a lot of it I learned purely through the fandom

(Skipping over regeneration because that is a huge one)

NAMES: I cannot emphasise enough how much I adore their naming conventions/them not revealing their "real" names. Like, naturally, there's the inherent trans-ness of choosing your own name, but I also love the idea of choosing it after what you want to emulate. (And if I may mention, the outright insanity that the Master, who HATES humans, used a human term. Which. Hmm. Yeah. The implications. (To me))

There are also academy names, which I think are Super interesting, because from what I can see, they still aren't their real names, but they're never mentioned supposedly after their academy days. So, they have an element of the superstition that their real names have, But they are still like,, placeholder names.

I think I once read a fic where there was a superstition/fairytale about speaking your real name out loud and being stolen by toclofane because of it- which I think is Brilliant!!

Language: First of all. We must applaud whoever designed Gallifreyan writing because it Fucks Severely. What an absolutely beautiful form of writing. Additionally, I don't Believe we've ever heard it in the show, which means it's fully up to interpretation. Something that makes me deeply sad to think about is, at least in RTD's initial era, how the Doctor is the only one left to speak a dead language. I like the headcannons that it's very difficult for other species to learn (while they would never be able to properly re-create it, that doesn't mean they can't learn a form or version to it  though!!) This could be due to vocal differences or even, potentially, psychic elements to it- which leads onto my next point:

Psychic Abilities: I'm going insane what do you MEAN Gallifreyans are a psychic race I'm going to loose my mind. If you take that into consideration, it has to have influenced their society or how they socialise somewhat. What must their perception of the world feel like? What are the social conventions/ethics of it all? I feel like they only scratch the surface of this topic in the show and long story short I would like a handbook that explains all of this in depth.

Imagine, then, going from a society that Could, if they wanted, connect to each other psychically, then having it all taken away. How empty that must feel??

The society: While my memory on Gallifreyan culture is a little muddied, it's been made Pretty clear the culture and socialisation is very different to, at the very least, humans. For one, the hubris Time Lords are taught to believe in. (At the very least, Time Lords being Gallifreyan but Gallifreyans not necessarily being Time Lords)

What other subtle differences might there be from there? I imagine they would be taught cultural norms/habits of other species in order to blend in or better communicate ((for example, the story the Doctor was telling about aliens who communicated largely with their eyebrows)). Time Lords in the show are vaguely "human" with certain landmarks to prove them as a different species, two hearts as the most prominent example. They are also implied to have three brainstems, and I'm sure, other internal differences (isn't it mentioned they have orange/rust coloured blood?) Therefore, what forms of socialising did they evolve differently, that they must adjust for speaking to humans? It's just cool to think about!!!

Biology: Largely touched upon in the previous point but their Blood is Orange. That's pretty neat!!!!!! WOAH ALSO. Their body temperatures being naturally lower!!!! That's an absolutely fascinating detail. I wonder if the Doctor ever discloses these medical details to their companions in case of emergency? Almost definitely not...

Aspirin: It's fatal to Gallifreyans? Insane. And has the Doctor ever mentioned this to their companions, just in case? Probably not.

THE GOD DAMN FOBWATCHES: Insane to me that they can just. Do that. As a lover of Tensimm, I regularly think about the set up of series 3 and how insane fans must have felt watching it live. Fobwatched Ten largely sucks though, my love goes out to Martha always. (But also... does that imply Ten's memories and experiences made the Doctor kind? Or being a Time Lord in itself, though that seems to align less with what we know)

Aaaand that's all I can think of for now!!

*((Special shout out to Mandolorian culture also, though. I am entranced and fascinated by it))

[ewingstan]

So all the wildbow protags seem to have some frog-being-boiled trick about them where you are nodding your head along with all their choices and then look up from where you started and start noticing how bonkers things have gotten. But how exactly that manifests differs between books in pretty interesting ways.

Taylor makes a bunch of choices that read as understandable for an awkward teenager trying to make the best out of a bad situation, but it doesn’t take long before those choices become pretty clearly (although crucially often not to the extent that they would stick out while reading through the first time) indicative of a much higher willingness to use people as tools than the norm, not be motivationally hindered by empathy, etc. And of course in hindsight a lot of her choices are less careful utility calculus and more an expression of her desire for friendship and control as well as her need to be invaluable in whatever circumstance she finds herself in.

Blake has a much more prototypical set of ethics and motivations, and these largely don’t change throughout the text. He starts and ends as your stock angry but fundamentally “good” YA protagonist. He’s just put into situations where the morals of that type of character means he acts like a horror movie monster. Which is a pretty neat thing for a text to do, to take your typical Percy Jackson-esque character and show that “hey if you put him in enough situations then he could end up asking a facebook group of teenage girls if they want him to kill any of their husbands.”

Sylvester is an interesting case because he starts performing actions the audience would consider objectionable well before they’d get acclimated to it as they could in the case of Taylor or Blake. He performs extrajudicial killings of rouge academics for the government using manipulation and underhanded tactics while peeking up people’s shirts. It’d be tempting to say that his gradual transformation is into an okay person, and that might be true to an extent—the seeds to him eventually rebelling from the academy get planted early and slow shifts in his perspective before that point could be detected going a while back. I don’t think that would be the whole story though. It would probably be more accurate to say that you don’t notice how much Sy’s matured until he’s at the point of rewriting his personality to an adult’s persona.

Its much too early in my reading of Ward to be able to say if the pattern is going to hold. But I found it interesting to see one of the big morally questionable decisions be made early, and in a pretty noticeable way. I’m talking about Victoria secretly tailing Rain home after the capture-the-flag game, after he specifically denied her offer to follow him for protection. It doesn’t read as totally unjustified or anything, she is doing it to protect someone’s life when she has good reason to think its threatened. But she’s also doing it because she’s suspicious Rain’s been lying. And she flies in uncomfortable conditions for hours to find out what he’s up to. Its a huge breach of privacy, and while well-intentioned, it does read strongly as Cop Shit™. And while I only have my own response to the text to go off of, it kind of feels like it was meant to be framed as a pretty ethically questionable act on Vicky’s part. So if I was reading this with no knowledge of the story, I might think “Oh, wildbow’s done the here’s-how-being-in-the-social-position-of-the-criminal-puts-certain-behavioral-pressures-on-you story, now he’s doing the here’s-how-being-in-the-social-position-of-the-protector/peacekeeper-puts-certain-behavioral-pressures-on-you story. We’re gonna see how the moral beliefs that make someone strongly want to be a superhero, and the system of designated “heroes” they get slotted into, cause a lot of shitty behaviors.” But from everything I’ve heard, that is very much not the type of story I’ll be getting! This isn’t the “ACAB doesn’t exclude the well-intentioned cops” story, this is the “we do need a carceral justice system because people need to face punishment for past crimes and also some people are just inherently evil” story. And right now I’m not seeing how we get there?

[naavispider]

I got another silly little prompt for the caught fic that may interest you 🥰

Ok so what IF, at some point the brain scanner is used on Spider for the second time (perhaps as punishment for bad behaviour) and as he blacks out and his iron grip on the memories is released, one of them is finally revealed….but the memory is not of high camp or it’s location. No, the memory is of events that occurred a year ago when humans returned to earth.

In said memory, it’s all red and animal screams can be heard from all over the place. Spider runs through a burning forest, reaching hell’s gate where sirens blare as the scientists scramble to evacuate. Last second, Spider is grabbed by Norm and as they fly away on the scorpion, an apocalyptic image is shown and the boy crashes in avatar’s arms, sobbing and screaming at the horrid sight.

Then, the memory fades away, and Miles’s heart, to his disgust, clenches at what he had just seen, at the suffering his boy endured at the hands of his own kind, those who he is supposed to FIGHT for.

I LOVE it!

I got this just after I'd written the side plot of the Neuroscanner being sabotaged, but it's such a great idea I wanted to publish the ask anyway! Imagine what seeing that would make Quaritch feel. Would he develop any sense of empathy for Spider (in this AU)?

In the canon timeline, I straight up see him questioning the side he's on, but being too concerned to voice those fears - to anyone. Maybe him and Lyle have a late night discussion one evening while Spider sleeps, about the memories they saw in his brain and how that must have affected him growing up. Quaritch tries to hint at Lyle that maybe what the RDA is doing isn't so great after all, but Lyle reminds him (with advice that only a bestie can provide) that it's not their job to muse over the ethics of their orders. Their business is with Jake Sully and avenging the wrongs done there.

[mitigatedchaos]

Have you heard about chaosprime?

I drafted a short post about the incident, since it's both relevant to the scene and provides information about how ethics in the scene are doing. However, I declined to post it, as the seriousness of the allegations was quite severe relative to my level of certainty about the allegations, and I didn't want to go digging to verify (especially as chaosprime has already deleted his Twitter account).

Twitter user chaosprime was associated with TPOT / the rationalist community on Twitter.

Apparently, there were allegations that he engaged in three instances of consensual at the time, but bad somehow, sex. (It was pretty vague.) Given members of the community's history with questionable accusations and norms of evidence from conflict with the feminist movement in the 2014 era, he could have weathered this.

However, during the arguments surrounding the accusations, some twitter users reportedly dug up his arrest and conviction history, showing that he was previously accused and convicted of sex crimes against multiple individuals, including a minor.

It appears that he agreed that he had been charged with all of those crimes, except for the specific dates.

Another user posted a screenshot of a tweet in which chaosprime apparently said that he 'didn't mean to brag,' but his sexual orientation was too taboo to discuss on Twitter.

At some point following this, he deleted his Twitter account.

TracingWoodgrains (tw: tracewoodgrains), probably better known from TheMotte, said,

I appreciate the thread and always appreciate pushes to humanize and show general compassion. I also think as a matter of policy someone who has a history of sex crimes should probably stay away from any sort of weird sex stuff from that point forward.

How do we assess whether someone has truly reformed, or whether they're the Type of Guy who still represents a risk? I think TracingWoodgrains' approach here is a good one.

(Chaosprime and I are of no relation. My Twitter account is q-----md------k, as shieldfoss can confirm.)

[fuckthisshitimoutyall]

begging you to recommend me freaky fucked up dutch lit

Ok ok ok,,, so!

I have compiled a lil list for you, here's the thing though. These luckily do have english translations and depending on if you are Dutch/speak Dutch you will probably have heard of these. You will have seen them on the reading lists during high school because although your teacher tries to find something for everything and be a bit more modern,, it’s not all that successful.

sidenote for context:

Oftentimes, Dutch lit is not really for me. this has to do with the high school thing. reading levels in the Netherlands are down, about every year there will be some boomer or other complaining them youngsters don’t read anymore. True, but I vehemently believe this is because of what we had to read in high school. Because although its great if literature is weird, I mean yay artistic expression! Not too handy dandy when trying to introduce a bunch of teens to it to just throw em in the deep end and hope they’ve read them by the end of the year. It’s kind of a IYKYK thing. (it’s a rather complicated matter and this is a very condensed version of it but if I talk about that you’ll get an essay to get my thoughts across instead of what you’ve asked me which is some recommendations.)

Another bit of context: dutch lit doesn’t really shy away from religious, sexual, and sometimes gory themes. Infidelity sometimes feels a bit like the norm. Also lot of it is very straight (incest too). That being said, dutch literature has plenty of great stuff too (kader abdoulah has some cool stuff but is a lot less weird than trad dutch lit)

Having all That out of the way: FuckyWucky dutch lit incoming!:

(I have copied the descriptions from goodreads because I have not read all of these and if I were to go as far as do so this ask would not be answered for another two years)

De avond is ongemak/The discomfort of evening by Lucas Rijneveld

(The first one that reminded me when weird dutch lit comes to pass)

“I thought about being too small for so much, but that no one told you when you were big enough ... and I asked God if he please couldn't take my brother Matthies instead of my rabbit. 'Amen.'

Jas lives with her devout farming family in the rural Netherlands. One winter's day, her older brother joins an ice skating trip; resentful at being left alone, she makes a perverse plea to God; he never returns. As grief overwhelms the farm, Jas succumbs to a vortex of increasingly disturbing fantasies, watching her family disintegrate into a darkness that threatens to derail them all.

De engelenmaker/The angelmaker by Stefan Brijs

The village of Wolfheim is a quiet little place until the geneticist Dr. Victor Hoppe returns after an absence of nearly twenty years. The doctor brings with him his infant children-three identical boys all sharing a disturbing disfigurement. He keeps them hidden away until Charlotte, the woman who is hired to care for them, begins to suspect that the triplets-and the good doctor- aren't quite what they seem. As the villagers become increasingly suspicious, the story of Dr. Hoppe's past begins to unfold, and the shocking secrets that he has been keeping are revealed. A chilling story that explores the ethical limits of science and religion, The Angel Maker is a haunting tale in the tradition of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein . Brought to life by internationally bestselling author Stefan Brijs, this eerie tale promises to get under readers' skin.

Het smelt/The Melting by Lize Spit

Eva can trace the route to Pim's farm with her eyes closed, even though she has not been to Bovenmeer for many years. There she grew up among the rape fields and dairy farms. There lies also the root of all their grief.

Eva was one of three children born in her small Flemish town in 1988. Growing up alongside the boys Laurens and Pim, Eva sought refuge from her loveless family life in the company of her two friends. But with adolescence came a growing awareness of their burgeoning sexuality. Driven by their newly found desires, the children begin a game that will have serious and violent consequences for them all. Thirteen years after the summer she's tried for so long to forget, Eva is returning to her village. Everything fell apart that summer, but this time she'll be prepared. She has a large block of ice in her car boot and she's ready to settle the score...

Tirza/Tirza by Arnon Grunberg

Jorgen Hofmeester once had it all: a beautiful wife, a nice house with a garden in an upperclass neighborhood in Amsterdam, a respectable job as an editor, two lovely daughters named Ibi and Tirza, and a large amount of money in a Swiss bank account. But during the preparations for Tirza's graduation party, we come to know what he has lost. His wife has left him; Ibi is starting a bed and breakfast in France, an idea which he opposed; the director of the publishing house has fired him; and his savings accounts have vanished in the wake of 9/11.

But Hoffmeester still has Tirza, until she introduces him to her new boyfriend, Choukri - who bears a disturbing resemblance to Mohammed Atta - and they announce their plans to spend several months in Africa. A heartrending and masterful story of a man seeking redemption, Tirza marks a high point in Grunberg's still-developing oeuvre.

(also I think believe he has a thing for his daughters)

De donkere kamer van Damocles/The darkroom of Damocles by Willem Frederik Hermans

During the German occupation of Holland, tobacconist Henri Osewoudt is visited by Dorbeck. Dorbeck is Osewoudt's spitting image in reverse. Henri is blond and beardless, with a high voice; Dorbeck is dark-haired, and his voice deep.

Dorbeck gives Osewoudt a series of dangerous assignments: helping British agents and eliminating traitors. But the assassinations get out of hand...

The story of Osewoudt's fateful wanderings through a sadistic universe is thrilling. Is Osewoudt hero or villain? Or is he a psychopath, driven by delusions? It is the impossibility of ascertaining whether Osewoudt was on the "right" side or the "wrong" side - the moral issue of the Second World War in a nutshell - that makes Hermans' novel as breathtaking now as when it was written a decade after the war.

Having given these five recs, this is like the tip of the iceberg

[wandercr]

thoughts on the vaults (namely vault 101) in light of the fallout tv show.

i've been super excited that the tv show gave us a glimpse into the vaults and their structure beyond "look at this horrifying, dilapidated metal tomb and all of its ghosts," and i've been waiting to be done with the show before deciding how much of what we see in vault 33/32 is applicable to vault 101 and eliana's upbringing and honestly?

i don't think a lot of it is.

in lieu of finding out that 31, 32, and 33 were built to support real communities led by vault-tec, i just don't think other vaults would have contained near the amenities and luxuries, even in ones that were fairly functional, like 101. so, here's sort of where my thoughts are:

101 likely does produce some of its own food, but it's probably the likes of what we see in the rivet city hydroponics labs: carrots, potatoes and other root-based veggies. i just can't imagine that they were producing any sort of consistent crops. everything else is pre-war food and/or military rations.

individual entertainment is more or less not a thing in vault 101. not only does this fit with 101's views on work ethic, it makes sense to me that a population containing (eventually) purely post-war generations wouldn't be accustomed to having their own personal media collections. movie nights, dances and other such events would have been group and community-based.

this is subject to change as i toy with the idea more, but i don't think 101 had near the opportunities for personal development and growth that 33 and 32 had. the idea of the overseer allowing his vault dwellers to learn to fight, for example, is laughable to me, even if it would make the lone wanderer's adaptation to the wasteland less ... perplexing. (i, for one, headcanon that james taught eliana what he could, which is why she knows how to throw a punch and shoot on target, but she wouldn't know the fighting skills that lucy has until she's trained with the brotherhood.) i imagine 101's citizens were encouraged to stay in shape through more harmless exercise, though, which is why eliana can outrun or at least keep pace with wastelanders.

life in 101 was overall more stringent and controlled. the thing in vault 33, in which chet and norm can disappear for hours and no one questions it? yeah, that's not happening. vault 101 residents are largely: working, in school or taking part in overseer-sanctioned activities. privacy and free time? never heard of her

if you also have Thoughts and ideas, feel free to toss them in. i think there's going to be a lot of opportunities to grow vault canon as the show progresses, so i'm all for hearing what others are thinking

[mylordshesacactus]

21 for the oc ask game,and congratulations!

Thank you! We've been pretty quiet about it on tumblr because it's been eating up 110% of our entire brains in every other part of our lives.

Very excited! But oh god the logistics leading in.

How does your OC handle relationships, platonic or otherwise? Do they forge bonds easily, or prefer to not get attached?

Benny is a deep classic romantic at heart. She's not terribly demonstrative with her feelings, but when she lets herself fall for someone, she falls fast and hard. She's prone to insecurities in her romantic life--she's ace and extremely sex-repulsed, sex is never going to be part of any of her romantic relationships, and that's a deal-breaker for a lot of people. She tends to hold back on letting herself fall for anyone if she's not...sure they mean it, when they say they understand what that means.

Rinda's courtship with her wife was deeply emotional and extremely quiet. They worked very, very well together in the field--with Rinda acting as her secret-keeper and sharing an intense mutual respect for one another's honor, courage, and kindness. Rinda saw how Talet acted around her apprentice-slash-ward, a traumatized young mage with debilitating anxiety and PTSD around using her own magic; Talet saw how Rinda handled herself, heard her talk about her kids and her late sister. They didn't make a move right away--but they kept in touch, arranged to work together again a few months later, and during a quiet moment in that adventure, they sat down and had the conversation they'd both known would need to happen.

It was a very honest, earnest, adult relationship from the start--tender beyond words, but not dramatic.

Rinda is much more demonstrative with her platonic relationships. She'll roughhouse with Talet's daughter, toss her own kids in the air, rib them and their respective partners; but with her wife, it's usually very quiet and soft and private.

Kite mostly-but-not-entirely left her family for ethical reasons, and is a walking disaster of a woman when it comes to romance. Mostly it's that she was.........it's kind of the gnollish equivalent of having been raised in a wealthy, very blandly American Protestant household. Nothing exciting, no crazy uncles dropping slurs at Thanksgiving dinner, but still very rigid in ways the family didn't even seem to notice. Gender roles enforced not by violence but by stifling homogeneity and constant very reasonable requests not to rock the boat or by persistent "confusion" and open discomfort and "concern" any time you deviate from an extremely narrow norm.

(The people who wholeheartedly believe that girls are just as good as boys! Girls can do anything boys can do! They would LOVE it if their little girl grew up to be a doctor or a scientist or a CEO or a cop! They say while equally cheerfully taking a toy horse out of their son's hands while explaining that no no sweetie, that's for girls, we'll get you a different one that's for boys instead? Flip the gendered expectations--gnolls are hyenas, so females are expected to be dominant and aggressive while males are meant to be submissive homemakers--and you've got Kite's family.)

So, she was raised in the privileged position in that kind of household. Her family wholeheartedly accepts and supports her being gay! But she herself was raised with....expectations for what romance looked like. She knows this about herself, that she's internalized a lot of normative bullshit, but that doesn't make it....easy, to stop being afraid.

Vulnerability is hard for her. She's the second-eldest daughter of a strong clan. She was meant to be strong, confident, desirable, her romance was meant to be her having her pick of any of the several pretty girls who'd be falling over themselves to catch her eye. She knows that's toxic and awful. She doesn't want it. But she doesn't....know how else to be. She's trying to learn.

[genderqueer-miharu]

Remember that Harrow cover i reblogged a few days ago? Well i checked Kingsleigh channel to see if they had any other Milgram covers and, to my delight, not only did they have covers for every song in trial one but after listening to all of them i've come to the conclusion that they might just have the BEST Milgram covers i've heard. Not only do the lyrics flow SO SO well with the beat and rythm of the song but their choice of lyrics is absolutely AMAZING. The way they adapted all the songs fit so well with all the characters and their mentalities like they REALLY understand these characters these songs have fantastic lyrics. These ones in particular are my favorites:

Bring It On: I think because of the frantic nature of the song many covers are not able to make the lyrics flow that well with the song, but this one does that SO well. And again the lyrics they chose are absolute bangers and it fits with the tone of the original.

Throw Down: This one's great because the lyrics they chose REALLY made me question if they watched Triage while making it (they didn't this was uploaded last year) because seriously it's like they Knew. Like just look at these lyrics

"Ah tick tock tick tock tick tock you know, all my reasons stay but you don't. They'll keep holding on if stop"

""Throw down" the thread connecting you with me it's in your breath, the seconds while you're still living/"Throw down" the calling that i can't take back, for every lie i say, comes hope and can that be the same?"

(Thay "calling" line specifically really hits hard aftet Triage because of the cut phone line noises in the song)

"Hey, remember what it feels like? If what i want comes at a price, then i'll give through sacrifice"

And my personal favorite part

""Throw down" all ethics are a delusion. But my guilt is still the same when morning comes/"Throw down" emotions that are colorless. Should i be scared of death when i have nothing of me left?"

Just...ough. They're really really good

Half: I think because Kazui is such a hard character to grasp, a cover of his song in english that fits with his character can be really hard. But they did it they managed to make a cover that fits Kazui so well and it highlighted certain things from the original song that i never noticed. Such as these lyrics:

"And though one day your heart could change, i know it never will. So i will, to love you still. You ever heard a lie so sincere?"

"But if hiding this in every kiss is called unhappiness. Then i vow, I won't allow, A single word to ever reach you"

I love this one because it made realize oh he's not lamenting that a single word won't reach his wife he's making sure that's the case. Also the entire final bridge of the song is fantastic

"How did I think that we could always stay the same? We'd laugh hand in hand, making up dumb names And if I Could pick the coward's thing to I'd take the fiction over truth"

"What I gave up didn't matter anyhow So many years ago why's it coming back now? And if I Could pick the coward's thing to do I'd take the fiction over truth"

The fiction over truth, simply amazing. Also i love that in the description they jokingly called this song "Am i lamenting or am i resenting" like yeah that really sums up Kazui really well

Harrow: Ok so remember how i mentioned two days ago that i wanted Kotoko to get Undead Alice as her cover this trial? Well this cover was the main reason i came to that conlusion. It honestly gave a very different perspective on her character and it showed me a side of her i didn't even consider. It's because of this cover that i realized what many lyrics in the song actually meant, i'll compare them:

Cover

"Now that I'm prowling through the haze and Crawling through this maze I Can't go back to who i was

Feeling myself fading Burdens i've taken Weigh me down but drive my soul to go on

The evil out there I'm sickened to the core Pick a poison that i've done before"

Original

"Becoming light-headed again, it all becomes crazy

The normalcy sought for, Fading away, Everytime death comes The soul moves forward

I hate all the evils in this world, I feel like I’m about to break The surrounding net covered with poison"

Cover

"Now when a soul is too far gone you do what you got to Put it out of misery

"I'll never do it again" "I didn't mean to do it!" Even when I catch them I just can't win"

Original

"Shall we replace the poor soul, and the miserable delusion

“I didn’t mean to offend”, “I won’t do it again” How many wins in a row?"

Like comparing these lyrics i realized that "the normalcy sought for" and the "poor soul" Kotoko is talking about isn't refering to another person or the evils she's trying to get, they're refering to herself. She's lost herself and abandoned what the concept of justice meant for her in order to catch the people she's hunting, and the "pick a poison" line in the cover drives home the point of her using the bad things she's done before to complete her goal.

These lyrics really make the theme of her storyline being revenge even more clear. And the final bridge of the song as well

Cover

"When I was young HARROW HARROW Why can't I let it go? All of this weight, all of this hate If not for them what can hope for?

The moon is full HARROW HARROW I bare my fangs into a grin and I know how I can win"

Original

"Newly born “HARROW” “HARROW” It’s ok to dislike, right? Losing it, losing it, What should I hope for

Goodnight “HARROW” “HARROW” Laugh and I can get to like myself"

The lyrics here made me realize that throughout the song she expresses her doubts with what she's doing. She's using the things the people she deems as "evil" have done in her favor to get what she wants. She believes this is the only thing she can do but doesn't want to admit to herself that she's the same as those people if she uses the same methods they have, so she covers it under the excuse of this being "justice" and tells herself that this is for the better of everyone and that she's actually helping all those poor weak victims who can't protect themselves. She can't admit that she's doing this out of a sense of self-satisfaction and to make herself feel better, so she uses "justice", a concept that she considers corrupt and dead, and uses it in her favor, to disguise what she's doing as being the "right" thing to do, which is represented by the wolf's skin seen at the beggining of Harrow coming back to life once Kotoko looks at the audience.

Kinda similar to how Mahiru fogave Kotoko for what she did by thinking: "Kotoko was doing what she believed in and what she thought was right for her so if i admit that what she did was wrong it'll be like admitting that what i believe in and what i was doing was also wrong", Kotoko probably thinks: "If i admit that what i'm doing is for myself and my own satisfaction and not for justice and to protect other people then it'll be like admitting that i'm the same as those people who do evil". She's killed and buried any doubts she may have had with all her vigilante work because she doesn't want to deny herself, she won't allow to doubt herself anymore because if she does then everything she has dedicated a big part of her life will seem meaningless.

Which why i believe Undead Alice would fit her really well especially in this trial. Especially as a follow up to Anti Beat, which imo touched more on Kotoko's doubts and frustrations with what she was doing, and Undead Alice could showcase her slowly convincing herself more and more that she's in the right and that she shouldn't doubt so much.

"“Live by feeding on me, since you can’t die even if you want to” Everyone except us is crazy, even though your echo can be heard by everyone

Every time I ask for ideas to hurt myself, I breathe in happiness and breath out poison The ideal junkie, doesn’t it feel good that only the two of us are normal?"

She's using ideas and methods that she considers bad and corrupt under when other people use them but she's using them in her favor as well, and she can't admit that what she's doing is wrong, so these things are ok if she uses them against those who do evil. But even if she revives that dead wolf skin, it was still the same wolf to begin with.

"The disease that makes me want to hide wanting to see you, an overflow of a LOW mood because I can’t see you

They ended up becoming close, this is torture Starting to hate the butterflies, please die before I kill you"

"The instincts of being good, and the fat of being bad, They ended up becoming close, this is torture Superficial actions have become a habit, I’m dead before I kill myself"

These two lines could highlight her contradicting stances. Her need to deliver justice clashes with the methods she's using, so she kills all these doubts so that they don't weigh her down, which is also highlighted with the main bridge of the song

"It’s ok to live for yourself, It’s ok to cheat a little It’s ok to break it, it’s ok to be scared

Let’s bury this cowardly love here, Let’s stop and forget this

It’s easier to hate But it’s ok that you chain me down with your love"

It's ok if she uses underhanded methods to get what she wants, it's ok if she uses the same methods the people she's trying to hunt have used, she's doing it for a good cause after all right?

Right...but even with all of this and with how much i may dislike Kotoko, this next part of the song could especially highlight a part of her that she doesn't really show much

Undead Alice

"I thought we would be able to keep dreaming together, just like this But what did your smiling face look like again?

It’s an illusion to think that everything will go back to how it was after saying bye bye

This is pretty painful, slice open the chest and crush the heart"

Harrow (Kingsleigh cover)

"Now that I'm prowling through the haze and Crawling through this maze I Can't go back to who i was

Feeling myself fading Burdens i've taken Weigh me down but drive my soul to go on"

Harrow

"Becoming light-headed again, it all becomes crazy

The normalcy sought for, Fading away, Everytime death comes The soul moves forward"

She's dedicated so much of herself to this hunt and her justice that it seems she's lost herself. Thinking about this more i am reminded of the Clock Over Orquestra collab comics. Which i think is important because that's the only time we ever see Kotoko genuinely smiling. For once when she's not thinking about her ideas of justice or her plans for revenge she's having fun, she's doing something she likes: excersising, and she's genuinely having a good time, and it just makes me think that...maybe this the side of herself Kotoko lost. She's killed and buried all her doubts about what she was doing, and using them to fuel her hunt. Her "normalcy" has faded away the moment she decided to revive that wolf. Now she can't go back to who she was, even if she misses how she was, she's killed that part, she's buried that other her, she's done all of this for her goals, and if she doesn't achieve them then all the she's discarded, all the time, her morals, her regret, her self, all of that...would've been for nothing.

Anywayyyyys it's kinda weird how long this got but um. Yeah. Please go listen to Kingsleigh's covers

[hyperlexichypatia]

Please explain the relationship between HIPAA and second wave feminists being ok with calling adults girl

Okay, but you must understand that this is truly my most unhingéd, crack-est opinion that I would generally reserve for High Rambling. If I were a vlogger, I would be saying it in my car. I do not have "evidence" or "logic" or "a coherent argument." You cannot hold this against my actual thoughtful arguments that I promise I also have, because this is not one. But. Okay. If you still want to read my unhingéd crack. Here goes.

So, for most of the 20th century, it was colloquially common to call adult women "girls," and this was part of a pattern of women being infantilized and treated as children, and a big part of second-wave feminism in the 1970s was pushing back on that infantilization, including insisting that adult women be called "women" instead of "girls." Right? Right. But then by the 1990s/2000s, many of those same feminists were openly calling women "girls" and using infantilizing language (like dismissing women voters as "girls trying to impress boys"). What changed?

Now obviously the most obvious explanation, and undoubtedly biggest factor, in this shift is just the passage of time and ageing. The older people get, in general, the more they tend to infantalize younger people. Somebody in their 20s in the '70s would be in their 50s by the '00s. They might have grown children of their own. This is the logical explanation. Okay.

But also...

Until the 1990s, the status of patients' rights to medical privacy, autonomy, and decision-making in general was, well, abysmal. A lot of people who grew up in the post-HIPAA era don't realize the extent of it -- they think the laws around medical privacy were just codification of what was already an established cultural and ethical norm. And of course it was worse for women, people of color, disabled people, poor people, queer people, etc, but honestly, even for a straight white abled middle-class man, it wasn't that great. Doctors would tell patients' families a patient's diagnosis and tell them to lie to the patient about it! Doctors would go around in public talking about Mrs. Smith's gallstones! There were some ethical guidelines around privacy, but patients had no real recourse to enforce them.

'70s feminists somewhat supported medical freedom and privacy as part of women's rights -- like, they opposed the common practice of doctors bringing a woman in for a biopsy and just scooping out some organs while you're in there -- but they also weren't especially pro-privacy or pro-autonomy in general, and were generally sex-negative, transphobic, etc. We know this.

When patients' right to privacy became legally codified (HIPAA being the most prominent example), privacy rights were primarily defined based on age. Thus why "parents rights" advocates were outraged! That minors could have privacy rights for reproductive healthcare (but depending on the state, not for any other kind of healthcare!). See, prior to that time, "adulthood" as a status didn't necessarily confer a medical right to privacy.

(I'm actually working on writing something longer with actual thought and evidence and logic about the social construction of the "age of majority" and how it's not necessarily meaningful to talk about different times/contexts having a "higher" or "lower" age of majority without unpacking what that meant at that time... but this is not that. This is unhinged crack.)

And... around that time... you just... quietly... heard less and less about "Don't call adult women 'girls'" and more about "Influences on Our Girls."

So I guess the actual grain of theory behind my rambling, if directly stated, would be: As "adulthood" became ontologically defined as conferring an individual right to medical privacy, the authoritarian wings of the feminist movement quietly rescinded the claim that women are "adults."

I guess I could've framed this around Lawrence v Texas and sexual autonomy rather than medical privacy, but I happened to be thinking about HIPAA at the time.

Anyway, bet you're sorry you asked, huh?

[toomuchracket]

Okay wait genuinely wondering what that anon meant in regards to surrogacy being human trafficking? Maybe it’s a cultural difference because I’m from the US but I’ve heard plenty of people say that exact opposite (in the sense that they view adoption as human trafficking and surrogacy as the more morally correct option, especially if it’s altruistic surrogacy). You absolutely don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to start a dialogue about this stuff on your blog btw I’m just curious

no there's defo cultural difference in attitudes and norms. i mean, i think there's some ethical concerns around surrogacy in that it might be used to exploit vulnerable women desperate for money, and also the potential that surrogates' health and wellbeing might be neglected by parents who only really care about the baby they get at the end of it. in the uk, i believe the surrogate mother is also considered the legal mother until she signs away parental rights or some such to the biological parents, which has its own set of issues in terms of what happens should she decide she wants to keep the baby she's just grown and birthed or whatever. the human trafficking statement is probably to do with the fact that it's someone's body being used for another's biological gain, and that consent around this could be very dubious - again, more vulnerable women are likely to be put at risk from this. i know that in the u.s. you have companies specifically designed to match surrogates and would-be parents, like it's a whole paid process, whereas it's not a thing to that extent in europe - i think there's a lot less security and more risk involved with surrogacy, so a lot of people are rightfully wary. also, in the uk, the nhs don't have anything to do with surrogacy, so it would mean going private for healthcare and a lot of people aren't prepared to do that - obviously in the u.s. there's no real alternative to paid treatments.

but that's not to say that there aren't issues with foster care and adoption either - children of colour are more likely to be disadvantaged by the systems, which are overwhelmed. in the uk, unlike the u.s., third-party and private agency adoptions are illegal - you have to go through the social care system to adopt legally - and there's statistically less international adoption (i looked it up) in the uk than there is in the u.s.; as such, there's less potential for adoptions to be instances of human trafficking. that said, though, there's definitely a lot of fear of child abuse regarding kids in the care system here.

i don't mind keeping the dialogue open, but i'd ask we keep it all respectful if we do, please <3

[chubby-femme-boi]

When I am too tired/depressed/what have you and I only put on eye liner and mascara I always immediately hear that Tumblr post about how "you shouldn't HAVE to wear makeup to go anywhere" and the replies missed the point going "eye liner bare minimum" and while I still feel the compulsion, I acknowledge it is stemmed out of my own abuse and trauma.

However, when I choose to go without, I feel good. I feel ugly, yes, but I also feel good in the respect that I am doing what I want, not what society expects of me.

I was that teenage girl who put on concealer on her T zone and acne as it was not only what was taught at the time (YouTube tutorials my beloved) but because all other high school girls were doing full faces and either it was acceptable to NEVER wear makeup (heaven forbid you did some and didn't some) or were always on fleek. I'm so happy little me had the balls to try more "out there" makeup as I certainly cringe now at the stark blue eye shadow and what not.

When I see a teenage girl who pulls a look like that, I giggle because I see younger me and it's this joyous thing to me of. Ah I remember that, trying to figure out what I like. I just hope young people wearing makeup do what they enjoy to wear. Especially when you have so little options when you're that young. You don't get the option to spend more money to get more ethical things. Elf is your best friend when you're poor. Hell! I'm disabled too! A lot of this also gets thrown onto disabled people who just want to partake in art and express themselves.

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and while yes we can strive for more ethical options, a lot of people on Tumblr (*cough* white able bodied *cough*) forget that intersectionality is very much A Thing™ and how it's not so easy to just. Cut out "the bad".

My first makeup pallette was this very cheap, like so cheap it was definitely made with underpaid labor, and poor quality 50 shade rainbow from a brand I never heard of and still don't. It was a Christmas gift. Do you know the joy that thing brought me? I used it until there was nothing left (what you should do, if you want to fight overconsumption and improper treatment of laborers by the by) and due to the wide color range I experimented and I learned that I absolutely LOVE colorful and expressive makeup.

Six, almost seven, years later I'm sitting at my place of work with a face of makeup. Yes it is expected of me to wear makeup (and required but that's a whole other discussion) but I'm still breaking the norm with very bright and loud eyeshadow and blush (I don't conceal anymore ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

TLDR: companies bad, individuals cannot be held to broad statements or examples as, y know, individuality and intersectionality is a huge factor in these discussions. Let people wear what they want!

there is a huge difference between criticizing an institution and criticizing individual behavior. i can criticize the makeup industry without criticizing the 14 year old girl who uses concealer because she’s self-conscious about her acne; i can criticize the plastic surgery industry without vilifying the woman who decided to get a nose job after two decades of pointed comments and bullying. it is intellectually dishonest to respond to an institutional criticism as if it were a personal attack; on the flip side, it is cruel and unnecessary to leverage personal attacks in the name of institutional criticism

if i see one (1) more person respond to a perfectly reasonable beauty-industry-critical sentiment with “but i personally enjoy eyeshadow. why are you attacking people who like eyeshadow :(” or “exactly, all women who wear makeup are miserable and brainwashed” i am going to climb a tree and bite the top of it