#i agree with that but say that that’s the issue then and not ‘how hard is it to stop writing this because it shouldnt exist’

[osakanone]

I read and agree with 95% of your post.

Prefacing: You're great. You are wonderful, I am now following your very good posts and I am a ball of weird neurotic energy that has to get this off my chest.

Why?

TheHorrors™ as of late have made me need to explain this like five times in four days.

Writing it like this means we can discuss it, i can link a post and people who need to see it can see it and I can get on with my life instead of having a redundant talk.

I might add citations pictures, etc etc later but I've already spent 45 minutes writing and re-writing this and I need to get this out of my system.

Once again, you're great and the fustration inside the response is not directed at you but at the issue itself.

You? Wonderful. Glorious poster. Evil baby. Delightful. Much love. Excellent Blorbo choices.

Issue? Shitty. Fills me with outrage. Paradoxical. MurderDeathKill.

Okay? Okay: rant begin:

The problem is "atomized individualism"...

1) Has a really well known and distorted meaning in libertarian circles you're probably unaware of which says "we're very rational and we never get emotional, and if I've got mine fuck you" coming from John Locke who quietly leaves out the "equality" part. 2) Actually self-defeating and paradoxical (I'll explain this)

Atomism claims everybody is

self-interested, self-sufficient and that altruism (being nice for the sake of being nice) is purely performative -- and that in functinal applied practice, asking for help or having systems to fall back on is inherently not-ok because you're not being the platonic ideal of the atomism (this is actually how familial orders emerge, instead of socialized safety-nets).

The fine text is also supposed to state that every member is equal which kind of contradicts the idea that the individual is pushed first; if you have more resources than others, your ability to execute on your individuality is inherently unequal.

It boils down to "the individual" vs "every individual" which gets very very messy.

It should mean freedom from bad things (over-exposure, abuse, starvation, etc, etc) not freedom to do bad things -- but this is where things start to get dicey.

Individualism claims the individual is the primary source of all value, and that the individual is always rational -- with the applied caviat that if anybody is acting irrationally, they lose their individuality.

You're gonna see a lot of applied caviats. Things which sound good on paper, but play out in really really messy ways in real people as side-effects of value-systems which then become the main goals of said systems when they benefit the people upholding those systems.

Combining atomization and individualism, you get...

"I am entirely rational, I am the only source of value, I am self-sufficient, and I am concerned with myself, and anybody who disagrees with me is irrational, because I am rationality defined"

So to go over the freedom part again:

This plays out as...

"uhhh yeah its a philosophy that means its good for me to not pay my taxes, because taxes are evil because they hurt me personally and specifically as an individual by subtracting my explicit capacity to execute on my self-interest (eg, get thing)"

This the mentality of your Peter Thiels, your Elon Musks, and your Donald Trumps. People who only see the "the divine right of kings" as wrong because they themselves are not the kings.

Wait, this is a lot, how did we get to this???

Their definitions ignore that most social definitions and benefits come from implicit attitudes and behaviors we do unconsciously (since humans spend most of their time running in a kind of autopilot called automaticity).

We learn this implicit automaticity from being raised, cared for, socialized, taught, and forgiven. They are hard to measure with a utility function mathematically, because they're hazy and vague and are often the root of interpretations of words (as we've experienced here, with this very thread).

Explicit attitudes are those which happen at the conscious or aware level: Its when you know you have to do something, or you haven't engrained something so you do it performatively out loud. This is significantly easier to measure with a utility function and is a huge part of how the legal system functions, and why the legal system assumes all actors (people) are rational.

Spoilers: All "rational" decision-making neurologically speaking originates from urges and feelings, and is then packaged and organized into "rationality".

Nobody human is rational; there are only rationalizers. Anybody who claims to be rational and calls anybody else emotional is both lying and projecting. If nobody felt anything, nobody would do anything: That's what depression is, even high functioning depression.

Going further, communication and implicit attitude learning and how explicit attitudes become implicit attitudes is the human skill.

Its why its inherently nonsensical to try and atomize us from eachother. We are all disturbingly susceptible to propaganda.

It isn't our tool-use (corvids molluscs, diatoms and arachnids have us beat there up until the last 80 to 15,000 years when we did metal properly afaik) -- its not our intelligence or short-term-memory (primates have us beat there, as genius level counters, strategizers and selectors): Its communication and sharing out strategies.

This is what we mean when we call humans "social organisms".

Seperating individuals truly leads to brain damage, which we see in those who undergo extended solitary isolation -- and likewise those who are placed into extended sensory deprivation such as white-room torture.

So, returning to our point:

What actually happens to our self-interested agents?

They refuse to concede that they can be irrational (which they scientifically and verifiably are: we are all irrational most of the time running on habit and memory, not pure decision making).

Result?

Self-interested agents who will not concede always compete -- whether towards singular or group-goals, and as resources collapse the group goals become singular goals.

Why?

Conceding that you are capable of irrationality and understanding what this means and the consequences and trusting that you can feel safe doing this requires emotional insight.

To develop emotional insight, you need to be a skilled communicator or have had excellent social training either through direct social contact or secondary social contact (social and cognitive stimulus creating cognitive simulations, aka media you consume).

The venn diagram of properties producing ultra-competitors is...

Dysthymia (being unable to create enjoyment or satisfaction without external validation, such as scoring, numbers or from another perosn)

An insecure/avoidant attachment style (eg, you depend on the numbers system because forming trust is compromised for whatever reason)

This produces an arms-race of ultra-competitors all trying to maximize whatever society sees as the most valuable (eg, money) -- who quickly figure out that the optimal strategy is to limit the number of competitors they have.

They do this by tricking the other members into playing "other games" or to collect "other things" as a distraction to sate them while improving how well they achieve their own goals.

These are your time vampires like the internet, your endless merchandising of ownership/consumer status, your religions to sate existential status needs, your abusive families playing for membership approval status needs, etc.

Rant End.

Okay, so now what?

So I agree with 95% of what you're saying, and I'm a pedantic bitch basically.

I love betraying nation and bloodline. I love rejecting the social order. I love being able to pursue my own goals even when the world around me wants me to adopt theirs instead. I love blasphemy and queerness and getting to choose who my family is.

I love this.

Everything you want is good, but atomized individualism is not the descriptor for those things because pure atomized individual reinvents the problems it seeks to solve for the individual by externalizing them to maximize its own returns.

Its why libertarians always create government again, but with extra steps where they are the leaders, which is apparently fine for some reason.

"I love atomized individualism" is not a statement you can make in a void, especially given current events.

What you mean is

"I love equitable atomacized indivividualism"

And by adding just one word that clarifies your statement and nullifies so many MANY problems, I 100% agree with you.

Okay got that out of my system.

Phew.

May your self-loving-vampire and may all of your self-loving be glorious and your Kohaku pleantiful.

Take care! :3

I love atomized individualism. I love betraying nation and bloodline. I love rejecting the social order. I love being able to pursue my own goals even when the world around me wants me to adopt theirs instead. I love blasphemy and queerness and getting to choose who my family is.

[ghouljams]

I just wanted to know if I'm alone in this, but do you ever wish the COD fandom was a little less ghost centric? No hate to anyone who writes about or loves ghost, I like reading fics about him, it just feels a little boring sometimes when 80% of all fics, fan art and cosplays are of him. No hate at all, I love your work, I'm just curious.

Oh no I agree it's very Ghost centric, and I say that as part of the problem. That's my boy, I love that mess of a man. I think the reason behind it is really simple though, and it's TikTok.

I think a lot of people(especially young people) were exposed to MW2 through TikTok because someone on their feed was gushing about the masked men in it. I have serious doubts as to how much of the fandom has actually played the games, and while sure there's always one character every fandom latches onto, I would've thought it would be Soap because he's one of the playable characters, or even Graves for the same reason! (Unfortunately there's too much racism in fandom for Gaz to become the one everyone latches onto, but he should've been, he's so charming and pretty everyone should've gone crazy over him.)

Another part of the issue is how Activision treats Ghost. He's constantly getting new skins and merchandise, and while this could be because he was the darling of the original MW2 franchise('09 Ghost my love) it's also probably a response to fandom engagement.

I agree, it does get boring when he's all that's out there. And again when there's so much of the fandom that's never played the game, sometimes it can be hard to sift through and find actual accurate characterization of him. There's so much flanderized Ghost in fandom and it kinda grinds my gears. Not because I think my interpretation is perfect or anything, just because some of it is so far from Canon that it's painfully clear the writer is a fan of Ghost cosplayers and not Ghost the character.

So I think a lot of folks would agree with you. That's why I see such a push towards Gaz/Soap/Price as the main love interest in fics. There's just so much Simon Riley to wade through...

[thewalrusespublicist]

Re: John and domestic abuse, and your tag: 'John as an abuser is something I don't think the fandom knows what to do with'. 

I think my big thing about why and how it's all so difficult to unpack this is that the stories predominantly stem from and around the Dakota years and that is an incredibly murky time, in terms of straight facts and reliable narrative. Most of what leaks out of there comes via blackmail or disgruntled ex employees who are then silenced with gag orders. I think only May Pang's version of events is the most clear cut, level headed. And for what it's worth, I think she describes a mutually abusive relationship between John and Yoko, which I can believe. (I also take from it that she was in an abusive relationship with John, but that’s my take and I’m not going to put words in her mouth). And I know that you link to AKOM's discussion about John's beatings and abuse of Yoko, where they read from Goldman's book, but I think it's worth saying that AKOM wrote a eleven episode series to highlight how important it is not to take Tune In at face value because of Mark Lewisohn's clear bias in favour of John, and against Paul, and how this bias can inform a narrative and therefore objective facts can become subjective statements... and then go and quote *directly* from Goldman, who plainly and nakedly despises John - even three year old John is held in utter contempt! That doesn't mean that I don't believe the stories aren't true; as you point out, John and Yoko themselves have openly discussed John's violence. But just like I can't use Lewisohn as a source, unless it’s for a specific recording date, say… I can’t use Goldman either. 

So with regards to fandom, yeah, many people don’t know how or where to put John’s violence and abusive behaviour. But that is true of *all* of the Beatles. It’s an undisputed fact that three quarters of the Beatles have been accused of, or admitted to domestic violence, yet it’s airbrushed from Paul and Ringo’s stories. Ringo will forever be a beloved king and no-one will bring up the fact that he beat his wife so hard that he believed he had killed her. And as for Paul and Heather Mills; while those allegations have a right to be strongly contested, it’s a fact (and I am old enough to remember), that Mill’s was utterly destroyed in the British press (Amber Heard has nothing on the sheer hatred that the media had for Mills), to the point that her testimony was obliterated and has been erased from any narrative to do with Paul. But Paul is a Blorbo, and no one wants to fold any negative character traits into his persona. And as for John - I’m not surprised you got it in the neck for saying that John had mental health issues - but I am surprised that it came from John stans! I got yelled at for trying to discuss John’s very likely mood disorder, but the yelling came from influential Beatle people who saw that as an ‘apology’ or defence of his behaviour (which it wasn’t). I actually think of all the arena’s of fandom, Tumblr has the healthiest approach None of them are held in reverence or as Saint’s, and they aren’t just out and out assholes either. 

t/w coercion, abuse, child abuse

Hi anon, thank you for your message and for putting forward your perspective! This is a difficult topic, and I am not an expert in these matters. However, I’m going to try and answer this the best I can and with the amount of sensitivity I think this conversation needs.

Just to start off,I totally agree with you that Tumblr is by far the best place in terms of their approach towards the Beatles and their behaviour. I think in other places like Reddit, some of the fans there are older and grew up with the ‘Saint John’ image put forward by the Lennon estate. If you have that context, the minute it’s revealed that maybe your hero wasn’t perfect, the natural response is to either deny it completely or start to demonise them. It’s not healthy or productive but it’s understandable. I also agree that the fandom does not know how to deal with the allegations of domestic abuse with all the Beatles and that is a widespread problem. In the case of Paul, I think his negative traits are acknowledged and there is good discussion about it, though equally some of these issues are played more for laughs. I’m also not the right person to do a deep dive on the flattening and cinnamon-rolling of Ringo in the fandom but I think one needs to be done. I do however want to put forward an alternative perspective on a couple of points that you mentioned.

Despite my belief that all of the Beatles probably engaged in terrible behaviour towards women (the repeated mentions of Paul’s control issues from multiple sources really concern me), what sets John apart from the others is the consistency and the severity of the allegations. With Paul and Ringo, the allegations or the incidents are, as far as we know, situated in the context of a crisis and not an established pattern. This could be wrong, but we don’t have any further information to dispute it properly (Paul’s long, adoring relationship with his first and third wives and his children suggest not in his case at least). The same can’t be said for John. You raise the point that AKOM cites Goldman and how this could be seen as hypocritical and that a lot of the information comes from the murky Dakota years. I understand where you’re coming from but I don’t think this is is 1000 percent accurate. On the AKOM point, I think this mischaracterises what the ladies were doing as they were citing direct reports from staff in Goldman’s book, not Goldman’s interpretation. As Beatles historian Erin Torkelson Weber states, Goldman was excellent in obtaining information, it’s how he construed the information that raises severe problems for his credibility. As the ladies said as well, whilst they acknowledge Goldman’s problems, the tapes with this information on are available in the archive. Still, he is a dodgy source, so the points need to be cross-referenced with other sources. In this instance, the sources are John and Yoko themselves.

It’s also true that a lot of the allegations for the Dakota years are from the disgruntled employees pack and so are harder to verify, however allegations of violence and abuse both predate this period and are corroborated later on. Whilst John Lennon fanboy of the decade Lewisohn tried to downplay it, John did hurl insults and abuse at one of his early girlfriends to try and force her to sleep with him. John did beat up a random woman in the Bob Wooler incident and barricaded Little Richard in his own dressing room whilst hurling mocking abuse at him. Further, whilst Cynthia said that John rarely hit her, John himself disputes that in Hunter Davies. Post Yoko, we have reports of continued violence from different sources like Nilsson that corroborate stories like John choking May. Mintz, who was/is doggedly loyal to Yoko, was the one to repeat the story of John purposefully humiliating Yoko at the party by loudly sleeping with a stranger. Then you have Sean and Julian’s own recollections of abuse. These aren’t one off incidents, this is a repeated pattern of documented abusive behaviour that exist throughout John’s lifetime as well as the well-worn pattern of victims trying desperately to defend his behaviour in language hauntingly familiar to most abuse victims (‘he didn’t mean it’, ‘he’s sensitive’, ‘he didn’t know what he was doing.’) In this context, it is hard to say why the disgruntled employees narratives should be seen as so outlandish.  This is what sets the conversation about John apart from the others as his pattern of abuse is inescapable and entrenched in all his close interpersonal dynamics (yes, including his relationship with Paul but that’s for another time).

I’m not saying all of this to demonise John, all of this has to be understood in the context of a man with a deeply traumatic childhood, who likely had a severe mood disorder as you said, was in what I believe was a mutually abusive relationship as you and May Pang posit, and was trying his best to improve in a time period that could not give him the support he needed. But this is a lot to ask a fandom to deal with and handle carefully so often it gets shoved down or outright ignored when it’s integral to understanding who John was and why we need to take so much care in certain discussions about him.

[louisferrignojr]

gotta say that i disagree that nobody fights for buck. in s5 taylor said it best: buck's life is full of meaningful relationships, actually. every person of the firefam would fight for and support buck. he is and will never be alone again in his life, especially during the hard times (which they reiterated in 8x05). meanwhile, we see thus being contrasted with tommy not having any kind if support system like that. the same seemed to be the case for taylor. i know people want tommy to fight for this, and i agree that i definitely need him to check his trauma and fears to work this out with buck. but buck is the main character that has had seasons of alleged development. he died and came back, got clarity, was supposed to finally feel good in his own skin, worked out his childhood trauma with his parents in therapy, formed a support system, now discovered he is bisexual and felt free with it. and now tommy is the only one who should grovel? i get the idea but. evan buckley is the character we have seen grow and learn. i want him to put in the work as well. look at how he fought for his job when he thought he would lose it forever. THAT is what i need from him rn. if he is just giving this up with a shrug, then i don't want bucktommy in canon. we have seen tommy taking care of buck and supporting him in all his shenanigans. i need to see that buck is absolutely serious about this and ready to fight for it. if he doesn't, he still hasn't found his true love or still doesn't know what he wants in life. i am bored by this. we have been here multiple times already. do something else with evan buckley finally or just allow him to be a bachelor forever.

okay yes buck has meaningful platonic and familial relationships.

no romantic partner has fought for him. abby ghosted him because of her own issues even though she's a fucking grown ass woman, ali got a reality check and broke up with him when he was in recovery after nearly dying, which okay, fair enough. and while i believe taylor did nothing wrong in reporting the jonah story, the narrative wants us to think she prioritised her work, and she did betray buck's trust which, again, buck wanted to protect his firehouse (which is his family) so he wasn't being objective. reporters exposing scandals within govt orgs that are supposed to protect the public is not a bad thing, actually. the only time he's broken up with someone first is natalia and we were told it's because she was obsessed with his died-and-came-back experience.

and listen. i love tommy more than anything. but buck is still the main character. we're going to see buck going through the breakup, not tommy. we're not going to get much about tommy's past. we're not going to get any scenes with tommy and another character if buck isn't also there. you remember karen going to chimney and them day drinking together because they thought hen was being unfaithful (again)? i wish we could see tommy and chimney talking about their buckleys. but the way the show got rid of all minor characters and consistently treats LIs as nothing more than LIs... i'm not hopeful. we'll get one scene with tommy's Explanation and i'm not even hopeful it's gonna be well written (but i'm sure lou will be serving. god. they wrote such a shitty break up scene and he fucking ATE.)

yeah, buck fucked up by jumping the gun and asking tommy to move in with him when he couldn't even say the i love you, and i hope this will be addressed in future eps. but tommy immediately ended the relationship because he Knows Better and left buck heartbroken. this is what happened on the show. the average viewer isn't doing ten layers of analysis to understand tommy's perspective, nor should they have to. i love the metas, i'm digging into tommy's headspace in my next fix it fic, but this is still the dumb weewoo show.

i don't think tommy needs to grovel, i don't think he's the Bad Guy in this story, i have a lot of empathy for tommy and so does the GA! they're not mad at tommy, they want him back! they want bucktommy back! and i want them both to fight for each other, to apologise and admit to their fuck ups and admit how much they care about each other and that they want to be each other's forever love! i want them to say i love you!

but buck is still the protagonist in this story and i don't want to see him running back to someone who broke up with him in such a way that had him asking "wait, did you just break up with me?" because again, this is what happened on our screens. i want tommy making the first move, opening the door for reconciliation, showing that he knows he made a mistake out of fear from his past trauma, for buck to then know he is wanted, that tommy came back for him, and then put in the effort to fight for them.

hope this makes sense. and as always, for people reading this - this is not the space for you to bash on buck's previous LIs, please take it elsewhere.

[osakanone]

🎵 4Aesthetics

I don't believe they did copy his older works given how much of a departure most of the designs are and how much osmosis has happened since Kawamori's last contribution to Armored Core prior to 6 was Armored Core For Answer and only the NEXT, White Glint in 2008.

AC6 went in to development in 2018, which puts a full decade between Kawamori's prior work and the nature of mechanical design is like that of horizontal gene transfer: there's an enormous amount of contact inheritance, so much so that you can't really use terms like copy and instead iterate or explore is better -- which 100% happened given the length of the timegap.

Mecha evolution is parallel, as many have said before and Argonbolt recently reiterated -- though from a presentation standpoint the taxonomic format of the video feels shitposty, I think taxonomic-adjacent descriptors are a really good way to think about mechanical design, and design as a whole.

I haven't yet gotten around to a translated read of ARMORED CORE VI FIRES OF RUBICON OFFICIAL ART WORKS as I'm busy with other projects right, and I'm a lot less enthusiastic about 6th gen than 4th gen so its kind of on the backburner.

tl;dr of why I'm less enthused: I very much agree with the Steam page that AC6 is based on the concept of Armored Core, but I wouldn't say that it is Armored Core, truly since it lacks the fundamental combat calculus defined by rates which is why AC6 is so statistically biased over being mechanically balanced. This is why the combat doesn't resolve in a satisfying way, and why the meta keeps dancing around its fundamental problems. I noticed this before the game was released based on the motion footage we got that was leaked. Following the game, my suspicion was confirmed by Inveigh and SilverGlint who felt the same way, who I consider far more hardcore players of the game than me, and I got a few apologies from people who thought I was exaggerating the design issues. I'm still very sore about AC6, both its gameplay and its story. <grievences>

Moving along:

To my understanding, Kazutaka Miyatake, Takayuki Yanase, and Ikuto Yamashita were staff designing for Armored Core 6?

Kawamori only designed IBC03/HAL826 and IB07/SOL644 afaik.

Like he gets a lot of credit, but the idea that he does "all of the design" for Armored Core is a massive misconception.

I don't know if Makoto Kobayashi or Wataru Inata, Masahiro Miki, Akihiro Goto, Kaichi Satou or Tetsuya Taniyama have returned.

I don't understand the capacity Kawamori functions under when he staffs at FROM, but if I had to make an educated guess I'd say he either briefs other designers, or serves as a means of keeping other designs cohesive in design reviews. There isn't a lot of discussion about this.

Like Okawara, he's a designer who needs very strong direction to produce good outcomes, and I get this might be heracy but his newer work while more mechanically cohesive in terms of the ability to execute on it as a physical product like a model toy is far less stylistically ambitious with its forms.

It has a far more passive appearance which in 2024's design climate (especially that of twitter or pixiv) feels very strange in a post-Syd Mead and post-Yuzo Kojima era.

This is characterized by narrower hips and a greater emphasis on chasing a more humanoid form which ironically is less characterized, less recognizable and less iconic.

I consider this kind of strange, given that Kawamori's original trick was that audiences were really really forgiving of what a robot would look like despite being somewhat strict about vehicles, and he used this to his advantage throughout many of his transforming designs.

It feels like the problems of the mechaical designs and how hard they are to realize into functioning models in Macross Plus kinda... Haunt him? Like he girlbossed too close to the sun?

My personal theory is there's a habit of mechanical designers who get typecast or trapped into redesigning the same problem for a really long time: Just like neural networks can hallucinate or hypernormalize values beyond norms to chase a utility function the same is often true of design.

I think this is what Takeshi Murakami was trying to say in his sculpture, Second Mission: Project Ko^2, which is an anime style naked girl of the era and style of Studio Nue (when Kawamori afaik got his start) transforming into a fighter-plane in an act of fascinating if grotesque body horror.

aside: I wonder how Kawamori feels about Second Mission Project Ko^2 almost daily, and if I go to Osaka Expo 2025 (which two people want to take me to) I want to ask him since he has a booth but I feel it would be really impolite???

This is how you get really strange gangly forms, or structures which don't make a ton of sense, and is honestly the work image collaging AI systems were most interesting doing.

Human designers replicate this too:

You see it with the recent BMW car designs with their giant snouts, and you also see it in Apple's fetishistic obsession with less buttons reducing to one button with the iPod nano 3rd gen which was considered unusable since users had to memorize tap sequences to use it.

Its like a kind of Fisherian Runaway but for design

I think too, we also see this in some of Mamoru Nagano's work on GothicMade, where his reinterpretation of Mortarhedds has become hypernormalized.

I'd really need to think more on this.

I don't know why this giant discussion fell out of me, and I'm not even sure how "factual" a lot of it is.

I feel a lot of what I'm saying is probably rude or perhaps even parasocial on some level, and the thought of actually testing any of this or publishing properly would insult an entire industry of wonderful people I hold nothing but the deepest respect and admiration for.

That said, I still feel compelled to write.

Its very vibes based and while I'm providing evidence, I'm probably either making a massive mistake and confabulating information/hallucinating linkages as a mentally compromised individual with autism who thinks far too hard about fictional robots and the schools of design that link them together or I'm making an insight that people will talk about long after I'm dead if my blog survives.

Then again, maybe the fact I'm even contemplating that I might be wrong might mean I'm actually covering my bases and I might actually be right? That's... The feeling I have? I wish I were brave enough to make video essays.

The thought that someone might actually read any of what I write, and even enjoy it is one of the seven thoughts that helps me keep going through my depression.

Take care.

Remember, the ask button exists.

Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon Official Art Works

[estrangedandwayward]

Still thinking about larys helping aegon off the floor, a display of physical strength which he would normally keep hidden, a brief slip of his mask of helplessness he told aegon about last episode. He disarms himself in a way, by showing the strength most assume he doesn't have

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

Reading the fleetway Sonic comic now and

I'm convinced that Tails is his special little guy??

I mean, he's an asshole, no doubt, but he passes up a party (mind you, he loves being celebrated as a hero so much) to go looking for Tails

He goes looking at his "favorite place" and literally dons shades and a worse attitude at learning Tails was taken

He genuinely cares about him as his buddy? Sure he complains about him or insults hin fairly often, but he clearly likes having Tails around enough to want him back??

Are we gonna talk about how Tails breaks free from Robotnik's control because he can't bear to keep hurting Sonic, because he cares?

This scene too reminds me so much of that scene from Fang the Hunter issue 1 where Tails called for Sonic and Sonic bid himself to be patient and not lash out because Tails is his friend. Like again, Fleetway!Sonic is an asshole, but he's holding back when it comes to Tails even a little bit

There's just constant proof whenever Tails is put in danger or captured that Sonic cares about his well-being. In fact he cares so much he just kind of is just indifferent about those he puts in danger by zeroing in on saving Tails (and those he saves he doesn't necessarily save with intent to). In this issue specifically, Sonic, the animal companions with him, and an unconscious Tails get washed away in a current of water, and rather than worry about his own well-being or those of his companions, he yells at them to keep ahold of Tails in the water so he can take care of the badnik.

Personally I feel like this sequence speaks for itself? Although Sonic is fairly confident, he risks his life on the chance that he can steer the Death Egg off course (and we're not even factoring in whether he can escape in time), and sends Tails away in the only escape pod. He literally gambles his life on this act of saving Emerald Hill and worries first about securing Tails', even if only Tails may end up escaping.

There's also the setting? Tails crying for Sonic and calling him the bravest hedgehog he ever met, Sonic reacting like he didn't just narrowly avoid death and that Tails is just stating the obvious, the two of them floating down in the escape pod during the sunset

I don't have the picture space to show it, but there's also another part of this issue where Sonic continuously nags Tails to stay out of danger and to let him handle everything alone, and then (after falling into a trap), starts talking to himself about how glad he is that Tails wasn't around to see him make such a rookie mistake. It's easy to read as Sonic always leaving Tails behind because he doesn't think much of him or thinks he'll be in the way, but I don't think that's completely true! I get the idea that Fleetway Sonic likes having his buddy around just as much as he wants his buddy to be safe. So he brings him around everywhere he can, but he forces him to hang back during the dangerous bits. And that's not to mention how this issue showed just how much Sonic values Tails' opinion of him.

And BOY does this scene get me

It's like

This is the first time Super Sonic ever appears in StC. Are we going to ignore that Fleetway!Super Sonic stops attacking and reverts back into regular Sonic because of Tails?

This is like Mecha Sonic in Archie's Mecha Madness special all over again, except Fleetway!Super Sonic is under no one's control. He stopped attacking because Tails bids him to remember them.

There's just so many little things about them in my reading so far that I almost can't believe it (and would hit the tumblr photo limit a number of times if I were to show it off)

If I had to label their relationship in StC, I'd say that, to Tails, Sonic is someone he admires greatly. He doesn't seem to be fond of Sonic's attitude (largely when it's aimed at those other than himself), and he expresses criticism as to how vain Sonic is and his eating choices, but ultimately he cares about Sonic enough to stick around with him and go on adventures from time to time. For Sonic, I think Tails is someone he secretly likes having around. He often criticizes him, and depending on his mood he'll do it whenever he gets an opening, but he's also just...bad at feelings. When Tails is in danger, he'll zero in on saving him, almost above all else, and then when he saves Tails he's going off about how he can't trust Tails to be alone, angry and annoyed. He's a jerk, but a jerk who cares more than he lets on about Tails. Tails isn't just some admirer, he's important to him, and at the same time, Tails' is someone whose opinion of him he values. Ahsjsjs and....he's also the kind of guy who would say something like "Hey, that's enough! Only I get to bully Tails!"

Is their relationship healthy? No😂 But also in StC it also comes off like...they're both choosing this. Despite everything they choose to be buddies

Idk I'm fascinated so far😂

The Sonic the asshole and his special little fox

[irrealisms]

every time I see a “it’s actually totally fine and nbd to have sex you don’t enjoy and are uncomfortable with because your partner wants it and you want them to be happy, as long as you’re giving uncoerced consent!” post I lose a month off my lifespan

[cazort]

I strongly agree with almost everything in this post, but I have one quibble, and this is the use of the term "moderate".

I find this frustrating because I'm trans and nonbinary, and I consider myself a moderate, and I very much dislike how some people use the term.

Being a "moderate" on trans issues does not mean caving to any of the right-wing attempts to roll back trans rights. What it can mean, however, is:

wanting sports leagues or their independent governing bodies to make their own decisions about who can and can't compete on what teams (contrast with the right-wing stance saying they want the government to bar trans people from competing even if sports leagues want to allow trans people to compete, but also contrast with far-left stances saying they want the government to force all independent sports bodies to accept trans people according to some set of criteria that the government sets) Why am I moderate on this issue? Because I don't want trans identities politicized. I don't want politicians to be debating our rights. If it's kept in the realm of the independent sports bodies, it's kept out of the political sphere and I see that as a win.

wanting all trans people to face zero pressure one way or the other when it comes to any sort of medical transition (contrast with the right-wing stance which wants to make medical transition illegal, or at least ban it for minors and make adults have to pay for it out of pocket, but also contrast with the transmedicalist stance which is unfortunately common in left-wing circles, which says that medical transition is the be-all and end-all of transition and trans people need medical transition to be happy, it's necessarily the right choice for all trans people, and you aren't really trans if you haven't medically transitioned) Why am I moderate on this issue? Because I see great pressure to medically transition both from transphobia (not having our genders recognized unless we transition) and from other trans people (glorifying the effects of transition, saying it will solve all our problems, etc.) and from left-wing pro-trans ideology which can get wrapped up in transmedicalism (equating "transition" with medical transition, equating medical transition with transness, etc.) and I hate this pressure. When people don't desire medical transition, it can lead to regret. When people do, it can mess with our motivation because it can be hard for us to sort out which desires or motivations are innate vs. which are imposed on us.

wanting people to be a bit more tolerant of the language people use, especially in the absence of any overt rudeness or explicit proof of bad faith. For example, not berating people or snapping at them for using the wrong pronouns (only politely correcting), not criticizing people or telling them they are "wrong" or "transphobic" for using older terminology (like "FtM", "MtF", "became a (wo)man", etc.) Why am I moderate on this issue? Because I've seen so many people get attacked, sometimes brutally, for using the "wrong" terminology, and this then makes the trans rights movement look unreasonable. Also the single worst stereotype I have to contend with as a nonbinary person is the expectation from others that I will be "demanding" and get angry at them if they use the wrong pronouns or gendered language to refer to me. And this is so frustrating because I'm actually laid back about these things, but I have to contend with these stereotypes in part because a lot of people do react this way.

wanting any pro-trans people to be more understanding of things like how it can be hard mentally and emotionally to adjust to people changing the gender, name, and/or pronouns they are referred to by. Why am I moderate on this issue? Because I prefer they/them pronouns and yet I still find it a bit hard or awkward sometimes, even though I prefer them over he/him and she/her pronouns. And more broadly, even though I'm nonbinary, I find the concept of nonbinary genders highly abstract and a bit confusing and hard to wrap my mind around. So I figure, if it's hard for me, it's probably going to be even harder for a cis person so the least I could do is to have a little bit of patience with them. Also, I don't want people to perceive my gender as an imposition on them so I don't particularly want others to be abrasive or aggressive about enforcing my pronouns or gender.

So yeah, I'm a moderate on trans issues. What this means is that I want to keep government out of gender, and more broadly, keep trans people from being politicized, I want there to be no pressure to medically transition one way or the other, and I am tolerant of people using older and/or nonstandard terminology to refer to trans people, and I'm relatively laid-back about people misgendering me or using non-preferred terminology to refer to me.

It does not mean I want to cave to any of the demands of far-right ideology.

The state of gay rights in the early aughts was not good; criminal penalties for homosexuality were rarely enforced but were on the books in many places, there was no right to marriage, and the morality of homosexuality was hotly contested in public. Big culture war issue. In that environment, where substantive protections were lacking, Democrats could be tepid on gay rights without actively giving anything up—if, like Obama in 2008, you didn’t support gay marriage, you could still be seen (correctly) as advocating for an overall better situation for gay people, or at least one that was no worse, in contrast to your right wing opponents.

Trans rights are not in the same position. Before the big trans rights backlash started, access to gender affirming care was pretty widespread, was everywhere legal, and was a matter for private concern only. Trans people could play in school sports subject to whatever their league’s rules were, and the idea of trying to make it illegal to cross dress in public was absurd. The conservative position since has become one of an explicit rollback of rights: revoke access to gender affirming care, create new criminal sanctions to punish trans people, make it illegal for them to participate in school sports, etc.

In that environment, tacking to the right on trans issues means deciding which elements of trans rights you are willing to concede to this project of actually rolling back trans rights. The only thing comparable from the gay rights fight is maybe state constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage, or DOMA—all of which were, IIRC, passed despite gay marriage not being legal in affected jurisdictions. Their enactment, while deplorable, had no material negative affect; gay people already couldn’t get married.

And that this project of rolling back trans rights is not a particular fetish of the religious right is more worrying. Plenty of liberals and liberal institutions are pretty transphobic. Britain has been working to export its flavor of (Moderate, Sensible, Secular) transphobia to other countries in Europe and the Anglosphere. Transphobes winning these fights isn’t a status quo situation—it’s a sharp increase in repression of trans people.

In light of that, I regard calls to “moderate” on trans issues with at best scorn. I think the party of civil rights condoning the rollback of citizens’ civil rights is really bad for its brand, won’t win it more votes, and may sufficiently alienate members of the base—who are invested in the party specifically because of its historic support for civil rights—that they simply don’t bother to show up in elections.

[ccbatman]

I once said that I thought Steph would make a great Black Canary, and I still think that's one of the realest takes I've ever had.

Like, this moment seared itself into my head and never faded:

{ Robin 80-Page Giant }

[yallemagne]

#fully agree #and to add #it makes me mad when people are like #i don’t get the issue she can still have sex just get creative #and like. wow the point flew way over your head #yeah im sure she could. do you know how agonizing that would be though?

Hope you don't mind me nabbing these tags! Yeah, that response is just... kinda gross. Like if they're saying it just as a joke, it can be kinda silly I guess, but it's missing the point entirely. Yes, contactless/clothed sex exists. Yes, power-inhibiting collars exist. We know. It's not just about sex, you dolts.

#and also! #sorry i dont even think it’s JUST about romance even! #that’s a HUGE part dont get me wrong #but god like. just imagine not being able to touch any living thing. with your own hands. #that’s hard! #that’s agonizing #and that’s her number one source of trauma #and i feel like people boil it down to ohhh woman want romance want sex but cant boo hoo #when that is so. not the issue and the surface level

I don't mention the other conflicts that arise in the original post because I felt like saying "noo you're wrong that's not the only thing about Rogue!!" would be kinda pointless. These people are already ignoring all the non-romantic conflicts Rogue's powers cause so they can write her off as a one-note character. The point of my post was to illustrate how the intimacy conflict is worthwhile, not cliché or overdramatic like these people like to say. Not to weakly justify it by pointing out other stuff.

I'll use X-Men: TAS as an example. I believe the first instance of exploring the pitfalls of Rogue's powers is when she has to resuscitate Cyclops and gains his powers as a result, temporarily losing her ability to see in a dangerous situation. Most other times she uses her powers, she is trying to depower overpowered people, and she gains the powers and the mentality of those characters and it is often very overwhelming. Poor woman has to absorb so much damage from villains to do her job. And the other powers she has belong entirely to someone else! She was forced by Mystique to absorb Ms. Marvel's life force, taking her life in the process. The only thing that can relieve her of the guilt (and prevent Ms. Marvel from taking over) is to completely suppress those memories.

But since people don't take women seriously it's all just "she's being overdramatic about not getting to fuck her boyfriend it's sooo annoying, she needs to get creative or get her priorities straight".

I keep seeing posts criticizing Rogue for her most explored conflict being how her powers affect her romantic relationships, and I don't wanna be like "those people don't get it" because, of course, it's not that simple. It's a matter of opinion to go "I don't hate Rogue I just wish she'd stop having intimacy-related conflicts because I feel she's defined by the men in her life". But I don't agree...

I've seen posts that are like "I'm sick of the romance, do something else, what if her powers did something in this scenario? in this scenario?" and you can have that and still have the romance because, like it or not, it's just a part of Rogue's character. The conflict has the potential to be poorly written, but it also can be amazingly written and I feel these people would still dismiss it because it has to do with romance and romance is frilly and frou-frou and has no substance to them when coming from a woman's perspective. Maybe I'm assuming too much, but it comes off that way.

I think it's fine for a female character to be preoccupied with romance and to place physical intimacy on a pedestal because its something she can't have/can't normally have. That's just human. People fixate on things, and it can get exhausting watching this character beat herself down, but that's how you're supposed to feel. I mean, if you get to the point where you're just sick of the story, yeah it's just not for you. But it is exhausting to have this insecurity eating at you constantly, making you feel less-than, making you feel unworthy of affection because you can't give or receive it in the way you imagine is the most important.

Of course, it's a conflict that needs resolving. It's just that it's not a conflict you can resolve in one interaction. Rogue will need to actively tackle her insecurity every day of her life. She'll have to power through seeing others share bare touches without beating herself up about it and shamefully cutting herself off from those who love her. And you know, maybe, every day it gets easier to accept that this isn't the life she wished for, but it's the life she has, and she's blessed to have that life and to have a partner who loves her just as fervently as he would if he could touch her. She doesn't need touch to prove her love is real because it just is.

[gladiatorcunt]

lmao i got vague posted

[2024skin]

People will come online fuming with hate and anger about Anything and expect everybody to instantly understand and validate them instead of being concerned about.... the genuine hate and anger. You know that behavior wouldn't fly in front of IRL strangers

[tsukihigui]

deleted my twitter app (not account) bc i really can’t handle the intense no-nuance high-stakes takes right now. not that here is all that much better but it’s definitely less of a time sink

[radmista]

.

[awkward-teabag]

An advertising company that's faced or facing multiple anti-trust lawsuits and has lost multiples of them—including being fined collectively over €10 billion for violating EU laws, has been sabotaging its websites performances on alternative browsers to "encourage" people to use its browser instead, will collect and store your data even in incognito mode, partnered with a healthcare system to collect and store people's health records and promised it was safe and secure and wasn't shared or visible to anyone else but never notified patients of it or let them opt out of it.

An advertising company that has been pushing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which has ruined search engines because bots and large companies can devote the time and resources to adding and constantly adding/changing these invisible keywords, has removed or dramatically lessened the ability for people to be specific or granular in their searches, sells advertisement space so you can be a "sponsored" link on search pages that looks nearly identical to the actual search results.

An advertising company who has done nothing about malicious actors buying ad space in search results to get people to install malware or who hijack browsers to the same effect even though this has known (and reported) for years.

An advertising company that let slip they alter the search results in the background so they get more money out of it. They do not inform users about this.

An advertising company that created and is pushing for Manifest V3 that will not only limit or prevent you from blocking ads on Chrome but it reduces the ability for add-ons to protect your data or give you privacy... if the add-ons are even allowed on Chrome anymore. And MV3 will be the default on Chrome when it's rolled out.

An advertising company that is notorious for killing off projects that it gets bored of or doesn't make enough money (not unprofitable, just doesn't make as much money as they want... ignore they make hundreds of billions in revenue and could have absolutely kept most of these projects going infinitely)

An advertising that bought Youtube (which has its own host of issues and the algorithm tries to push people to right-wing content) and recently got in a slap fight with an ad-blocker because it tried to block Youtube on browsers that had an ad-blocker installed and tried to push people to buy Youtube Premium to get around this even though people with Premium still got warnings about using an ad-blocker. Oh and increased the price of Premium after doing this and having people sign up.

An advertising company that not only lets generative AI art be in its image search results but pushes those results higher thanks to SEO.

And so, so much more. Like how it's sold data to cops for racial profiling facial recognition or how it's helping Isreal to commit genocide by using (and training) its military AI.

You don't have to switch to Firefox but you should ditch Chrome and Chromium-based browsers and switch from Google to another search engine (personally I use DuckDuckGo). Google/Alphabet is a sketchy AF company that is infamous for collecting user data, falls foul of EU laws regularly, and has so many conflicts of interests but can get away with it by being a monopoly.

Though I don't recommend Brave. It has built-in crypto and was co-founded by a former Mozilla employee (who is CEO of Brave now) who chose to leave because he (and the company) faced internal and external backlash due to his donating to the Republican Party and being homophobic. He also believes in covid conspiracy theories, which you can find throughout his Twitter.

The most popular browsers in different countries in 2012 and 2022.

by @theworldmaps_