#i need the moral high ground

[balkanradfem]

fatherless sl*t

the way I wish this was true.. not only my father would be dead but I would be out there having sex with women.... we need to make this happen

[inbabylontheywept]

Want Better Things

“You thought that was a bioweapon?” 

The translator broke down for a second as the creature did a sort of broken exhale. Connotations were all that came through. Vague implications. Pity, the software flashed. Disgust. Anger.

A pause as it decided.  

Sadism. 

Valta was already backing away. The final decision didn’t change his behavior, it just made the hall feel far, far too short. 

“I didn’t order it deployed. I didn’t make it.” 

The thing was staring at him, and he couldn’t look away. The two eyes moved in such perfect tandem that he didn’t think it was conscious. It only had binocular vision because it only needed binocular vision. Always the predator, never the prey. 

And now it was moving in on him. 

“Oh, but what if you had? Then I could tell you all the things that were wrong with it.” 

One of its hands - a sprawling, five fingered  spindly thing - traced carelessly along the station's walls. 

“No incubation period. Symptoms arrive within 40 minutes of exposure. No time to spread undetected. Minimum should be one week. Embarrassingly low.” 

The pressure the thing was putting on the wall increased, the gentle glide turning into a buzzing scratch. Humans were strong, but not strong enough to cut through metal like this. The suit had to be powered and clawed. 

“Spread through contact. Limited waterborne. No airborne. Intended mechanism of infection is viral load being put on hands from scratching, and then passed into the environment. Pathetically inefficient.” 

The translator was working, but the thing was overeunounciating each word. The meaning was being passed along by a clean, helpful voice in his suit, even as the sound was being passed on through the environmental speakers. And the sound was dreadful - clicks of ceramized bone jarring against each other, wet muscles modulating air into something sharp and rasping. 

“Mechanism of death? Lysis overload. Could be dangerous if it was transmitted into the lungs, but since the initial load tends to be dermal all we wind up with-”

It took its helmet off. 

It took its helmet off. 

It took its helmet off it took its helmet off it took its helmet off in a biozone it - 

It looked a little pink, actually. A little scratchy. It lifted a delicate, taloned hand and rubbed its face against it for a moment before finishing. 

“-is a rash.”

Valta’s prey drive had glued him to the spot. It was too close. The stupid, stupid part of his brain that still thought he was grazing on Duranga hoped that if he stood still long enough, it might not notice him. 

The human paused a moment before continuing. 

“Do you know why they sent me? Alphonse Ericsen, PhD, MD, civilian doctor, here to speak with you?”

Valta’s snout twitched. The suit translated the gesture for him. 

“No.” 

“Because one of our grunts is a dumb fuck,” the human said simply. “And he spent two days fighting on your station with his helmet off. He got infected that way and brought back your stupid, itchy plague to our carrier ship, and now we’ve all spent the last 8 hours scratching ourselves raw. But the jokes on you, because when we were treating that guy you know what we found? That he was in the asymptomatic phase of a COVID infection. So if this-”

It gestured to its pink face with a snarl. 

“-is your idea of a bioweapon, then COVID is going to be your apocalypse. But if you work with me, and shut everything the fuck down for the next three or four months, I might be able to save most of you.” 

Valta unstuck at that. He’d spent weeks down here, worrying about nothing more than the next skirmish. Now he was looking at a genuine existential threat. 

“...What? Why would you help us? We wanted you to die. All of you. I wanted-”

The human cut him off with an exasperated wave of his hand. 

“You wanted something stupid. Doesn’t mean I have to join you. Best I can do to fix you is keep you alive and hope that you feel ashamed later. That, I genuinely look forward to. Now come on, you’re going to be the one explaining to all your friends what’s at stake here. My bedside manner is so bad that they limited my patients to virology slides and USMC marines. I think that’s actually one rung below the guys that just dissect cadavers.” 

Valta would’ve made an amused hum at that, but something already felt scratchy inside his throat. 

[spicyvampire]

Alright this is all I'm gonna say about this but after 10 episodes this show whole moral goodness dilemma/debtors vs rich people before the climax in the next 2 episodes: Joke better not be the only one growing and understanding stuff, Jack needs to have also acquired some level of moral nuance during these 10 episodes too, after being a debtor/becoming a debt collector/helping people while being their debt collectors/"freeing himself" from that situation/and spending his whole life watching people exist in that infernal cycle with no way out, he should have moral nuance, and we are at a stage he should understand his boyfriend's way of thinking now to a level that Joke lying to him about the ring shouldn't be an issue that takes more than 10/20 minutes to digest, forgive Joke and come up with a plan to fix it together with Joke and the gang all in that time frame

[tonberrykins]

It's funny to me that so many people are insistent on "fixing" Astarion. It's not as if he is entirely devoid of sympathy for one, and it is clear that even with his more violent and selfish tendencies traveling with a more good aligned PC, as well as his other more good natured companions, does have a positive effect on him ESPECIALLY when he finds out that he is genuinely CARED FOR. So what is this fixation with "fixing" him? What is broken in him--his sense of self, of personal agency--becomes repaired to a degree organically through conversation and action of the PC, if they so choose. Some people are naturally more selfish and we love them anyway. Some people can't be arsed to bother with grander problems beyond themselves and we still love them anyway. And neither person is any less valid than someone else, but we're always going to be biased based on our own experiences with people and whether or not we know them personally. There's something there, something in that, and it bothers me because it smacks of wanting to change who he is at his core because you like the package but not the whole product. It feels like saying he is only TRULY worthy of love and acceptance when he falls within certain expected and "respectable" social parameters, and that just doesn't sit right with me.

[grilledcheeseandgravityfalls]

yes, what noah schnapp is doing is fucked up, and yes, zionism is awful, but i think that perhaps sending a 19 year old death threats on twitter is not, in fact, a great way to convince him to change and grow as a person. additionally i think we should all remember that growing up as a jewish child in the hollywood zionist hell machine might, just possibly, have caused him to fall victim to pro-zionist propaganda, and screaming for his blood will not change this, nor will it actually help palestine. by all means, boycott stranger things 5, and demand accountability for noah’s actions, but also maybe call your reps and log off twitter for five minutes. fucking hell, yall

[douglasfeiffel]

i am really enjoying impact winter but yet I find myself wondering the same thing I wonder when consuming most vampire media: if the vampires can control how much they drink from someone, why don't they? It's hard to see the vampires we're supposed to see as good people as good people when they're murdering non-vampires left and right when they could. according to the story itself. just not do that

[thefabelmans2022]

what's with the weird neurodivergent superiority complex going on recently. that makes me uncomfortable.

[furiousgoldfish]

(personal post, need an opinion on falling out with a friend. tw for description of childhood physical abuse and forced alcohol consumption.)

Recently I found out that the most destructive trauma symptoms I had were due to repressed rage, and I decided to try and work on expressing the rage, mostly via writing since I'm currently not in a shape to do anything physical. I've talked about it to a childhood friend, who is usually very kind, and they offered if I wanted to talk about the trauma, and express my anger to them, I should.

So I spoke about it a little, with not much detail, and the friend started asking me questions like, 'well, why did the abusers do this to you?' which already was annoying, I dislike greatly having to put myself in the abuser's head, because then I lose my own sense of self and have to see myself thru their eyes, which is the worst possible way to see myself. But, I've tried to explain their intentions (control, power, sabotage, keeping me captive and helpless). Then at one point, I talked about an incident where I was pinned down and pressed on the floor, my arms were held still, my head was held upright, one person held my nose closed and another poured strong alcohol down my throat, while I was screaming, shaking and crying. I was terrified and the alcohol hurt my throat. Afterwards I just went into shock and went numb and lost memories of anything that happened afterwards.

And my friend goes 'Well, why did they do that?' and I try to remember and it's like 'well they thought I had some disease and the alcohol was apparently, the cure' and my friend goes 'oh, well they were well-meaning then!'

And I just completely lost my nerve. The words struck me like lightning because that cannot be well meant, pinning a child down while they're crying, terrified and shaking, and forcing something in their throat. I could have been taken to a doctor and healed normally. It wasn't even a cure, they were experimenting and using any kind of excuse to hurt me 'for my own good'. Next time I had any kind of problem I simply didn't say anything to anyone because I understood that if someone found out, I would be tortured.

I told my friend that it 'wasn't well meant' and they 'should have taken me to the doctor', but my friend, insisted that the intention behind the act was good, even if it wasn't 'very pleasant for me', which also, struck me like a minimization of what I went thru. It was not 'unpleasant', it was traumatic. I dissociated and lost memories.

I ended up shutting down the conversation, and I told my friend I need space. My friend continued to send me messages over the next few days asking me to talk to them, but I feel livid and disappointed every time I even think about talking to them. I don't know what to do, I feel almost kind of dumb because this friend always acts like that, it just usually doesn't hurt me that badly. Usually when they go 'well maybe this person who hurt you had good intentions' I can just go 'lol nah' and not linger on it. I shouldn't have spoken about trauma to them - but I was also not in my right mind, affected by inner rage and desperate to talk to someone.

I need a third person view into this situation, because I'm still not in my right mind. I've been trying to write my anger down and figure it out and I ran thru a pen already and filled half a notebook and I got absolutely nowhere except that I feel dreadful.

[guardian-instincts-bad]

okay none of this is new information but as usual i am thinking about gorrik and arenanet just. really never considered the timeline of his life and the implications of that at all, huh

like, okay, for eod you needed him to have a relationship to ankka and you needed ankka to have connections to the aetherblades, so you threw them both in thaumanova, fine

except. thaumanova. which blew up in 1324.

and no, we don't have a canon age for gorrik. but we know taimi's age, that she was friends with blish, and that blish is older than gorrik

now. taimi didn't know that the brothers had joined the inquest. which means either they'd kept it a secret from her, or more likely, it happened after they lost touch

taimi was born in 1313, meaning that the absolute oldest she could have been when she last saw them, is ten

now sure, taimi skipped a couple years, she's a prodigy even among asura - but age really matters when you're in single digits. for blish to be a friend, rather than a mentor, he can't be much older than maybe four years above her? i'd put that as the reasonable upper limit, they could be closer

(i'd also honestly guess that gorrik is a bit younger than taimi, given a) how much he looks up to blish, and b) that taimi prior to s4 only thought of him as blish's weird little brother, they weren't friends. and again, at that young, age matters - if you're 7, your friend is 10, and his little brother is 8 or 9, your first connection to him is probably not "oh, the little brother", because he's not little to you)

but assuming im wrong on all of that, just going back to our facts, that puts gorrik at the most about 2-3 years older than taimi

which means that the age we're looking at, for joining the inquest, thaumanova, all the stuff with ankka... he was somewhere between 9 and 13. could be even younger but im giving him the benefit of the doubt

gorrik says he never thought about ankka romantically and i believe him, but if there was ever anything there from her side, it was definitely a kiddie's first crush kinda thing, like oh we are a boy and a girl who are best friends clearly this is what romance means

because both of them were so fucking young

god knows spending her teenage years in the aetherblades was not great for ankka's everything, and by the time we find gorrik and blish in bug in the system, they've been working for the inquest for at least 8 years

that's almost half his life, at that point. working for an organisation that the thaumanova fractal and rata primus make incredibly clear does not value the lives of its workers in any way at all - they'll feed you to their latest experiment just for standing there, and gorrik wasn't just keeping his head down and going along with it, gorrik was actively sabotaging their research when he morally disagreed with it

(and this isn't even getting into why they joined the inquest in the first place, which i will bet anything i own on being because of blish's illness and needing the technology to save him)

and to their credit, i do think this comes across in bug in the system! because if you go back to early gorrik, first half of s4, having played through the rest of the story? the difference is shocking, like he is so distrusting and snide and defensive as hell of his brother, he talks like he expects you to attack him or blish at any moment

but then they never do anything with that ever again, and like, i love all the new gorrik content, genuinely i do, but arenanet there are layers to this character that you have entirely forgotten about, and god i wish we had a story that actually explored that

[aperture-of-bullshit]

sorry twitter is like an actual entire cesspit. some fuckers on there are so mean for no good reason other than dunking super hard and cool on some rando with bad art.

[coockie8]

Referring to people who happen to ship something you personally don't (especially a ship between two fully adult, unrelated characters, but also really just any ship) as "sick freaks" in your tags is an excellent way to catch yourself a block, and not necessarily just from the people who ship it.

Even if I also don't ship that thing, even if I find the ship in question absolutely disgusting, that's still no reason to refer to real people with ableist slurs.

This is fiction, I don't care how much the fiction in question means to you, that's no excuse to use slurs against real people.

[gloriousmonsters]

been getting steadily more enamored of nabooru and ganondorf as an ideologically differing friends to ideologically opposed tragic enemies arc (which tbf, is what I try to turn every ambiguous relationship into. i like it) and have hence been Revolving Things and might make a more serious post at some point. but primarily I've been playing with the idea of Ganondorf being extremely hidden away for his early childhood bc Koume and Kotake were taking no chances on anything happening to him/decided time that could be spent on distractions would be better utilized learning to violate the laws of nature and listening to their renditions of That's My Lullaby every night, so very few people have actually seen him by the time he's a young teen.

Nabooru has definitely not seen him, because she has no interest in even trying, because this whole king thing seems sort of dumb (she's an edgy rebel teen a free thinker and absolutely is not bitter at all at her dreams of being gerudo president being ruined, etc). Nabooru also doesn't have many friends, which is totally because she doesn't want any, BUT while hanging out at one of the archery areas at times when other people usually didn't go, she has started running into this weird silent butch girl who seems extremely skittish (will not stick around if other people are showing up?) but is really fucking good at archery, very down to spar, and y'know she isn't familiar but she's probably just from a different area and it's fine if she's mute, Nabooru can do the talking. She doesn't seem that impressed with Nabooru's opinions, but at least she doesn't interrupt!

that is until one day when Nabooru is halfway into her recurrent Fantasy Genetics Distributing XY Chromosomes Is No Basis For a System of Government rant and nearly has a heart attack when Koume and Kotake turn up out of the blue, yelling something about 'this is where you've been running off to' and 'driving your poor old mothers into the grave with worry' and 'impressive illusion magic to make it look like you were still in your room, though' and Weird Silent Butch Girl(???) turns to her and in a slightly deeper voice than the norm is like 'well this is awkward'

[invisiblemelonmoose]

Thinking about how I rarely get the yuri I want in non-yuri specific media that has canon queer characters or a least a sizable yuri fanbase

[whitegownsandflowercrowns]

Do I think that, once we have Seasons 3 and 4, this will turn out to be the weakest season of the show? Yes.

Did I still enjoy this season? Yes.

Did I still think that this season was well-written? Yes.

Did I still think that this was a good season? Yes.

[thekimspoblog]

I've been sort of circling this point for a while now. But given how many remakes of public domain stories Hollywood has been putting out recently, I think it's kind of weird we haven't gotten any Animal Farm trailers yet.

Revolutions are hard, and ugly, and even if you win it's an uphill battle not repeating the mistakes of the previous regime. These are themes which are incredibly relevant right now, and yet most of the movies that have come out in the past 5 years discuss the overthrow of tyrants in very black-and-white terms, if at all.

I think what's important to keep in mind is that the farm WASN'T doomed from the start. That while the story has a downer ending, the idea that revolution is a crapshoot is a thought-terminating cliché and misunderstands the point of the book. There were times where it seemed like everything could have worked out for the better... then Snowball was chased off by Napoleon, and the focus shifted from citizen welfare to competing in the human economy, and a caste system began to reemerge. These were tangible missteps which give the reader a deeper appreciation for how hard it is to establish a true democracy. We study dystopias to think critically about or imaginings of utopia, not to simply bum ourselves out.

[londonfoginacup]

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