#i don't even think it's particularly bad it's about the principle

[lamphoera]

this is a NO FRIEREN ZONE ☝️🚫

[stopmakingliberalslookbad]

Principles that so-called "leftists" have abandoned since October 7th

Being against religious fundamentalism: You guys used to think that fundamentalism was a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, you still believe that OTHER religions that are fundamentalist are bad, but Muslim right wing religious fundamentalism is very much okay with you. When you express support for religious fundamentalist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Islamic Republic, you are supporting suppression against women, LGBT people, and Jews (though the latter doesn't bother you at all). These are not resistance groups, they are terror groups.

Anti-racism: Mocking Israeli accents is suddenly funny to you. Jews aren't oppressed any more and antisemitism isn't as important as other forms of ethnic hate. It's okay to discriminate against people based on where they're from (the treatment of twenty year old Eden Golan is a particularly disgusting example). Indigeneity expires if you're Jewish. You support land back efforts for everyone but Jews. You employ the noble savage stereotype against Palestinians, because "That's just their way!" Holocaust inversion and even denial? NBD. Jews are trying to take over the world and are bloodthirsty monsters who support genocide. And the blatant tokenization is horrific. Some of you have even used the expression "Good Jews".

Being against ethnic cleansing: You bleat about the non-existent "genocide" in Palestine (and it is NOT a genocide according the the actual definition of the word), but your only solution is to ethnically cleanse Jews from the Middle East instead of supporting the two state solution.

Anti-nationalism: Jewish nationalism is bad. Arab nationalism is good. There are 22 Arab states and over fifty Muslim states, but even the two state solution in which there would be 22 Arab states, over fifty Muslim states and one Jewish state isn't enough, because Jews bad. Arab and Muslim conquest and imperialism? It's a good thing, ackchuyally!

Belief in science: Genetic studies prove that all ethnic Jews (yes, that includes Ashkenazi Jews) are indigenous to the Levant, but you guys seem to believe that we fell out of the sky. Archaeology proves that Jews were there first, but those findings are "fake" according to you.

Once again, I am asking why are you guys willing to sacrifice your principles for Palestine?

[normal-thoughts-official]

It's actually insane how brave Wyll is when it comes to Mizora. Not only by not killing Karlach but also all the small ways he defies her - calling her an asshole, saying she's full of shit, even when Mizora is literally choking him he's still telling her that she's a liar. Whenever she shows up it's pretty much guaranteed that she will have to threaten him with lemurehood because he simply refuses to play nice. Even if it accomplishes absolutely nothing and in fact is actively dangerous to sass her

And like. Of course this ties in with how Wyll has pretty much nonexistent self preservation skills and a sense of moral fortitude so strong he can't even pretend to not be hostile towards her. But i also think it ties with Mizora's obsession with him

Because while we all know Mizora is evil and annoying on principle and all that shit, she seems to be particularly interested in tormenting Wyll. I have to assume shit like putting a tracker on him and showing up randomly just to spite him and staying in camp just to be annoying even after the contract is over are Wyll specials, because if she did this to every single one of her warlocks then she would have time for nothing the fuck else. And we know from Karlach that she's generally more worried about sucking Zariel's toes, so

(Also, I've been told that in early access she was like... Straight up jealous if you romanced Wyll, so, again. Obsessed with him in particular)

I always got the impression that she was so evil and annoying to him because she was overcompensating. Mizora is a cambion, which means she's half human, which means that in Hell's hierarchy she is fucking trash. Even the official cambion lore states that they are often rejected in both realms and struggle to earn one of their parents' approval. And it's obvious that in Mizora's case she's aiming to be accepted in the Hells.

I've seen some people claim that Mizora is too cartoonishly evil, and while that is objectively true... I think it works precisely because it's so cartoonish. I'm thinking particularly of how she describes her home in the Hells being all "oh, how I adore it, the delicious agony of it all". It's so over the top it's eyeroll worthy. I don't think Zariel herself would be Like This about it

In other words: Mizora is a tryhard

And Karlach even implies that Mizora resented her because she was Zariel's favorite, which is why I think Mizora's tryhardness was intentional as opposed to just a lazily written villain. She wants to fit in the Hells so bad it makes her look stupid. And she never will, because no matter how over the top she is about being Generically Evil, she is simply not that powerful or important.

So she overcompensates, and then she uses Wyll as her punching bag. If her own superiors will always see her as vermin, then at least she can cope with that by treating others that way as well.

But like I said, she will have no time left to suck Zariel's toes if she spends all her time tormenting every single warlock under her patronage, so the question is: why Wyll?

Obviously his unwavering goodness is the biggest reason. His soul is already damned and yet he refuses to be selfish with the time he has left on the material plane. Mizora can own him, but she can't corrupt him, and that makes her hate him. The fact that even despite her best efforts he is still recognized and beloved as a hero has got to sting too, considering she tries so fucking hard to be the Evilest Cashier In Hell or whatever. And the fact that he still manages to belong in his world (however isolated and lonely he obviously is) despite his connection to hers and she can't belong in her world because of her connection to his... Well, jealousy is to be expected.

But I think his refusal to play nice with her also plays a big role.

There's the obvious "this makes her resent him even more" factor; if Mizora wants to feel superior, it must piss her off to no end that Wyll refuses to bow to her, even if he does her bidding.

But, paradoxically, this also makes her feel more powerful.

Because at the end of the day, she does own Wyll's soul, and he does have to do her bidding, even if he doesn't go quietly. And the fact that he hates her so openly makes it all the more satisfying to have him do what she wants anyway. In Wyll's words, "the more bullshit she pulls, the more [he's] forced to swallow". His hatred for her is exactly why she wants him so bad, even though she obviously hates him just as much.

And so this is why she's so desperate to get Wyll's soul back, and why, even if he breaks the pact, she still makes it a point to stay in camp just to fucking spite him. Because Wyll is the only warlock that actually makes her feel appropriately Powerful and Evil, if we assume that her other warlocks are simply not as good aligned as Good Alignment Georg or even just don't want the trouble of spiting her for no reason. She can be obeyed and tolerated and maybe even revered by the other warlocks, but only Wyll can make her feel like an absolute, inescapable power. Because the other warlocks choose to obey her. Wyll makes it clear that he has to, and thus, she feels like she is mighty.

And obviously I know that the whole "person who has it all is obsessed with the one person who doesn't obey them" trope is a well known cliche, but I think Mizora and Wyll's dynamic is unique in that Mizora doesn't actually want to make Wyll bow to her and respect her as an authority; she wants him to fight back so she can feel like she's winning.

(And, of course, because Mizora doesn't actually have it all; she's just a petty errand girl who wants to feel special)

So, yeah. Wyll's incredible bravery in constantly defying her is exactly why she is so eager to keep him

[drdemonprince]

why would anyone even want an X on their passport? If you have a passport presumably you want to travel or at least have the opportunity to leave the usa if shit gets bad. But with that X you are limiting yourself to like 10 countries to go to, its going to cause you issues at any passport check that isnt overwhelmingly progressive.

I think that many people are rightly horrified by the fact that coercive gender assignment at birth has forced them within a particular category, and that this determines the shape of many of their interactions with large institutions and the identities and roles possible for them. they see removing that forced gender marker as a means of escape from coercive gendering -- though in actual practice, it essentially never works this way. having a non-binary gender marker on your identification doesn't change the fact that most insurance providers only categorize customers according to the binary, and will assign a binary categorization to every person regardless, or that virtually every government institution and state on the planet views binary gender as an essential means of sorting individuals, and will continue to sort individuals even if you attempt to personally opt out. I think many of us in the United States in particular are especially inclined to think of queer liberation in terms of personal identity, rather than political might, and so they're not primed to think of the pitfalls of outing oneself as inscrutable to the state. we get indoctrinated from a very young age into thinking that freedom is earned through taking a principled stand and speaking one's truth - this propaganda leads many of us to believe that our only means of enacting change is through our stances and identities as individuals, and it does not make us particularly politically shrewd or self-protective. particularly those of us who are white and from a European background within the imperial core are not accustomed to the idea that the state is not our friend, and can cast us out as enemies at any time. many of us don't even think about the risks inherent to giving more vulnerable information about ourselves to the government. but I hope that more and more of us do.

[homielander]

victoria's death made me... so sad? it was so abrupt and anticlimactic that i actually skipped back to watch it again because i could not believe that was it??? we didn't even get a lingering look of horror as she realized what was about to happen? what...

i feel like her relationships with stan and homelander and hughie were so underexplored (literally the only reason this close friendship between her and hughie played well at all is because the actors have excellent chemistry, there wasn't much groundwork in the writing itself). and i would have loved to see more of her and zoe, too. incredibly compelling backstory and dynamics all played by a very charismatic actor but i wish she had been fleshed out more, particularly in lieu of multiple members of the boys essentially just repeating arcs from prior seasons and gobbling up already-limited screentime. (write something original or relegate them to background roles, i don't care!!!)

anyway, very very very upset that this is how it ends for her. i wish her death had packed more of an emotional punch because the material was certainly there. there was so little opportunity for her death or the tragedy of her life to sink in. it sucked! (zoe ending up at red river was a good inclusion, though)

it is also not lost on me that this finale killed off two women -- mallory and victoria -- solely to mark two male characters' turns to darkness. i'm not against this in principle but this show has an annoying habit of killing off female characters in pretty poor taste, i think. these did not feel like worthy conclusions to their own arcs.

mallory's death could have worked if not for the lack of meaningful interaction between her and ryan last season. it makes a lot of sense that ryan restored purpose in her life after the death of her grandchildren! why didn't we get any hints of that in s3 though🤔 and why was she so bad at delivering this news to ryan when she already manipulated butcher with the same subject matter very tactfully and effectively??? not thrilled that this is how a first-season character goes out.

[vicvulpes]

hiii guyyss hiii tumblr dbd fandom

I came from twitter and wanna try using tumblr

a couple of days ago I came to dm of my fandom bestie @adskayapanda with a discussion about painland hanahaki au

then I decided that I wanted to describe it in more detail and post it on twitter AND THEN all this shit happened there that made our beautiful jayden revri deactivate his twitter account and want to stop all interaction with the fandom altogether

so I don't want to post this on twitter yet

hope you like it, have a nice read🤍

✨SO PAINLAND HANAHAKI AU✨

it's a dubious idea I agree BUT PLS HEAR ME OUT

I know it's weird considering that the main point of hanahaki au is that the living characters ARE DYING OF NOT MUTUAL LOVE AND HERE OUR TWO JERKS ARE ALREADY DEAD BUT

let's imagine that in the afterlife this works in a special way: for example flowers in the lungs feel about the the same as cat scratches or iron

and in particularly advanced cases of illness instead of death the ghost may simply disappear forever

btw it's worth noting that cases of illness are rare even in the world of the living, not to mention the dead but we all know how "lucky" edwin is for all kinds of suffering

soo just imagine after confessing in hell charles begins to notice how edwin is increasingly abruptly going somewhere perhaps not turning pale like alives but e.g. sometimes becomes slightly transparent and in principle begins to avoid his company

and then he abruptly begins to find scraps of bright red poppies in the office (neatly collected in a bouquet or bag) and thinks that these are gifts from edwin's new admirers or new attributes for spells (if we are talking about bags with petals you never know what they can be useful for charles is not so well versed)

but one day edwin doesn't have time to escape and charles accidentally finds him in another attack

charles did not really believe that people could have hanahaki at all - there were legends about it and nothing more but for ghosts hanahaki does not make sense at all!! they are ALREADY dead! - charles thinks trying to calm down and watching edwin vomit bright red petals

he doesn't recognize these flowers at first..

but when almost a whole flower bursts out of edwin's throat the realization suddenly comes along with a sudden flashback from childhood - charles often ran away from home at an early age when his father raged too much just to the nearest poppy field - and then brought small bouquets from it for his mother

charles's heart sank with realization

it hurts him to look at edwin in such a state and realize that it is entirely his fault that he did not reciprocate such a wonderful man as payne but it hurts even more to think that he will somehow misunderstand his feelings and break edwin's heart

and therefore after charles took care of edwin during the attack it was tacitly decided not to discuss it as always

(but edwin of course has already studied everything about hanahaki and knows what it leads to, but he tries (unsuccessfully) to calm himself with thoughts that, at least, this is not hell and that he did everything that depended on him - confessed his feelings)

and as a result, it turns out that boys "live", solve cases, and charles literally watches edwin fade away - his body is becoming more transparent, more and more often he turns into a ball shape in order to imbue himself with at least some energy and delay the moment of the inevitable even a little bit, but this is not enough for a long time

and edwin despite feeling as bad as possible tries to hold on as best he can and gets so many cases that there is not thes lightest extra second to think about his tragic situation

and charles understands the horror of the situation (and finally realizes his feelings) when e.g. edwin suffering from a particularly severe attack goes without warning for a week's treatment to some hermit sorcerer in his wilds for a rare ritual that promises to at least alleviate the symptoms of hanahaki and prolong the existence of a ghost and at most to completely cure it

and charles thinks that he is gone forever (cause just the day before while investigating another case leafing through the book "magical diseases" he came across a chapter about hanahaki among ghosts where some main points were highlighted in blue pencil and edwin's hand as well as repeated handwritten notes - edwin obviously studied for a long time and tried to do everything possible to improve his well-being. and in the end of page the inevitable scary result DEATH is emphasized and at the bottom there is a footnote that death for a ghost is a conditional removal from the universe he generally will cease to exist)

and this is the very moment when charles realizes everything - that he simply cannot exist without his edwin and that the feelings in his heart are not just friendly

at first when charles doesn't find edwin he thinks that he just left on business as often happens

then when he conditionally doesn't return in the evening charles begins to worry

BUT WHEN EDWIN HAS BEEN GONE FOR 2-3 DAYS CHARLES STARTS PANICING AND LITERALLY GOES CRAZY

he can't find peace worries panics tries to do something find edwin convinces himself that everything is fine AND THEN CATCHES HIMSELF THINKING THAT EDWIN MAY NEVER COME BACK (AND ALL BECAUSE CHARLES DID NOT RECIPROCATE IN TIME AND NOW IT'S TOO LATE!!) AND HE'S HAVING A TERRIBLE TANTRUM

and when edwin arrives a week later CHARLES IS ALREADY ON THE VERGE OF MADNESS AND AFTER HE SEES EDWIN HE CAN'T DECIDE WHAT HE WANTS MORE - TO KISS HIM RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW WITH NO WORDS OR KILL HIM A SECOND TIME HIMSELF

(after all he doesn't do any of this just hugs and sobs on his shoulder choking in tears wailing how he was afraid that edwin had disappeared forever)

then charles sits edwin down on the couch and interrogates WHAT ACTUALLY THE FUCK WHY THERE WERE NO WARNINGS OR NO NEWS FROM HIM

and edwin rather casually replies that he felt unwell and went to be treated by some sorcerer who promised to rid him of hanahaki (here he adds that his stupid feelings initially interfere with both of them and charles's heart feels like it's splitting)

(wow edwin looks noticeably better, - thinks charles)

and then charles's already nonexistent heart suddenly sinks into his heels - it seems to him, judging by how well edwin looks and holds himself that he succeeded

which means only one thing - he managed to stop loving charles - just at the moment when charles finally so acutely realized that he loves him back, that's so unfair!

having received this realization charles abruptly gathers up wipes his tears pulls away slaps edwin on the shoulder congratulates him on his recovery and begins to leave

and then edwin who bitterly thinks that charles is making such a mockery of him breaks through: tears flow like a stream his voice breaks and trembles and in his eyes there is a mixture of doom fear resentment impotence and PAIN

with tears in his eyes, he explains that even the promised "wonderful" weekly ritual of that sorcerer could not rid him of these painful damn feelings that spoiled everything from the very beginning and no matter how he tried to get rid of them nothing works

charles turns around in shock and sees how because of all these painful emotions edwin twists another attack of hanahaki

bright red poppy petals fly to the floor again

charles hesitates for just a second and then instantly flies up to edwin falls on his knees in front of him gently grabs edwin's face with both hands forcing him to look into his eyes and in an incredulous whisper clarifies: "so you still love me?"

edwin's eyes start running again counting every red petal on the floor just to avoid meeting the deep brown eyes looking at him such hopefully

charles has enough barely audible "sorry" to immediately start covering edwin's entire surprised face with happy little kisses saying between them how much he loves edwin what a fool he was how scared he was that he might lose edwin forever how he wouldn't let go anymore and a bunch of other sugary nonsense

from that very moment on bright red poppies began to appear in their office only in beautiful carved vases reminding of something personally important for these two dead idiots..

thanks for reading!!🤍

and one more: english is not my native language so I'm so sorry if smth is written incorrectly

[descendant-of-truth]

On principle I don't really like the idea of Sonic being sent after Shadow at the request of G.U.N for two reasons:

It robs us of the god-tier cold open of the original game where Sonic busts out of a helicopter to escape arrest

I always loved the setup where Sonic and Shadow meeting was pretty incidental - neither of them had any idea who the other was, but Sonic thought Shadow was impersonating him on purpose while Shadow just thought he seemed fun to mess with

But depending on what the surrounding context is, I can see how the movie could make this plot point interesting in a completely different way that still complements these versions of the characters, even if I don't prefer it to the original.

So, some ideas:

G.U.N has been the villain of the last two movies, so in order for Sonic to be working with them, they must have a pretty good deal for him. My guess is that they promised to leave him and his family alone - no more schemes, no more kidnapping, nothing of the sort - on the one condition that "Team Sonic" helps them deal with Shadow.

This would already function as a narrative parallel to Sonic enlisting Robotnik's help later for the same thing. The name of the game becomes "we don't like each other, we're enemies, but we need to work together to deal with this guy because he's too powerful," which becomes a triple threat if the whole cast including Shadow gets to team up at the very end to save the world

I think it would also be very fun if Sonic is trying so hard to talk things out with Shadow in large part because he heard that there was another hedgehog on the loose, and wants so badly to be friends with someone like him that it takes at least one full-blown beating before he gives up on that idea

(The other reason he keeps trying is "it worked on Knuckles" of course)

Now, this puts Sonic in a fascinating position, particularly when using the game as a frame of reference. SA2 was very straightforward with how it presented its conflict at first: you have a Hero Story and a Dark Story, and as such you're primed to think of everyone on both sides as either being good or bad.

And most people, I think, were inclined to play the Hero Story first; it's the one with Sonic in it, and the select screen hovers over it by default, too. It tells a very simple story of Sonic and friends stopping Eggman's (admittedly very threatening) evil plan, developing some new rivalries along the way.

It's already a little bit of a twist for Sonic and Knuckles to have formed a respectful relationship with Shadow and Rouge by the end, since you see them as villains initially, but they still remain antagonists. Rouge returns the Master Emerald pieces, but she's still working with Robotnik. Shadow thinks Sonic is pretty impressive, but he still tries to kill him to stop him from saving the world.

But then you get to the Dark Story, and then the Final Story, and you think, oh. It's really not that simple.

For starters, you get to see more of Rouge's bond with Shadow. There's some conflict inherent to their relationship because Rouge is a spy and is only here to get information on Shadow, but after he saves her life, there's a definite shift to their dynamic. There's something genuine there, even if it doesn't get a lot of screentime dedicated to it.

But most important to the story is what we learn about who Shadow is, in part through his interactions with Rouge.

Shadow is cunning and ruthless - heck, his goal is to literally blow up the world. But whether out of compassion or survivor's guilt or both, he can't let Rouge die, so he saves her and then lies about his motivations for it to seem colder than he is.

And even though the things he's doing are definitely bad, his motivations are famously sympathetic; he wants revenge for his best friend, a young girl who was killed by the G.U.N military during a raid.

(It was implied that there was some sort of brainwashing done on him by Gerald after Maria died as well but that part of the story is incredibly vague)

By the end of the game, Shadow comes into his own as a hero and helps save the world instead of destroying it. And suddenly it makes sense why the stories weren't called Hero and Villain, because neither Shadow nor Rouge are especially villainous characters; Rouge is selfish, and Shadow is driven by grief and hatred, but they're ultimately kind at the end of the day. Both of them find people to care about - each other, as well as Knuckles and Sonic respectively.

But y'know, there wasn't a lot of ambiguity about who the heroes were in the Hero Story itself. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles are pretty clearly The Good Guys, and nothing they do is really questioned because they're always fighting The Bad Guys.

So what I'm seeing here is an opportunity for Team Sonic to not be totally in the right for once. Yes, it's good to stop Shadow from going on a rampage and destroying the world, but look at who they're keeping for company here. G.U.N? Robotnik and Agent Stone? As if either of those groups are trustworthy enough to not stab them in the backs as soon as it's convenient. As if they're not going to find some way to exploit Sonic for their benefit.

And frankly, Shadow is totally in the right to hate G.U.N, and Team Sonic for working with them. Given that his backstory seems to be largely unchanged, it's kind of impossible not to be on board with him fighting the protagonists at least a little bit.

Besides, I don't think it's a coincidence that Shadow is doing the wrong thing for the right reason, while Sonic is doing the right thing with the wrong people (and maybe also for the wrong reason). That has the potential to be very clever if executed well.

I can only imagine the dawning horror on Sonic's face as he realizes just how much he's not on the right side of this conflict; when he learns about what happened to Maria and everyone else on the Ark. Especially if Tom's family was involved in it, like the current popular theory going around.

Also, last-second realization: what if there's something more to that line from Tom, "it wasn't always easy, but you didn't change who you are in here"? Most likely it's going to be used as a way to show how Shadow is different from Sonic, because he did change who he was in response to trauma and it'll be really poetic when he "finds himself" again

But also, consider: maybe Sonic does end up changing throughout the movie. Maybe he does something that goes against his core principles in order to get an advantage in some way, and they kind of play around with the idea that Sonic is similar to Shadow in ways that aren't always flattering to either of them. I want those hedgehogs to make each other worse before they get better

In any case, there's a lot of potential here, and I'm very curious to see what they ended up going with

[whinlatter]

sorry if you've discussed this before, but do you think ginny's quidditch talent came out of nowhere? it's a common criticism I see about her but I feel like that kind of overstates how much of a quidditch "star" she was at the beginning, like she was consistently described as good but not great until partway into hbp and I also think it makes sense she'd keep it a secret from her teasing brothers. but maybe they're right and I'm just biased towards defending ginny

thank you for the question, anon!

the short answer is - no, i think it's (just about) plausibly rendered in the books. i think the series gets away with it because:

the story is told from the perspective of a teenage boy aka peak obliviousness in corporeal form, so we see what harry sees (and harry notices big fat nothing)

there is an entirely adequate narrative explanation for ginny's sporting skills that most readers not operating in bad faith* can put together, as you suggest: ginny comes from a sporty family who are all good at quidditch; she is of middling-to-good seeking ability when she first joins the team in ootp; she then has a good few months flying several times a week where she would necessarily grow in confidence and experience, leaving her perfectly able to blossom in hbp in a high school sport where she is competing against other children. fine and dandy in my book.

also quidditch is a broadly dumb and pointless plot so ginny being good at it is just a fun extra that we don't need to deep too much because - let's be real - quidditch is a waste of page space.

*i say this because, most of the time, these takes come from those who don't like hinny as a pairing. which is entirely their right and prerogative! it personally doesn't float my boat to spend my days doing worst faith readings of the text in order to make the case against canon ships i don't like, but as this is a race to the bottom - we are all adults dissecting children's books written by a nasty spiteful woman rotting in her mouldy castle spouting slurs, after all - who am i to judge.

(i also suspect the 'ginny is good at quidditch out of nowhere' takes have enjoyed such a long shelf-life on eg. reddit because the films are still most people's primary reference for HP takes so complaints about them then get cast back on the books - and, in the films, ginny does in fact rock up in film 6 like she's mbappé, if mbappé had the charisma of an extraordinarily soggy bath mat.)

with that said... could it have done with a bit more foreshadowing? yes, probably. people who don't like hinny as a pairing and prefer another are never going to be convinced - that's fine! but here i am, a paid-up hinny supporter, and even i think ginny's character development is sometimes wanting, to a frustrating and problematic extent. good writing (usually) means showing not telling, and it's weird and lazy of jkr to be so slapdash about revealing this and other character details about ginny and other (often female) characters. i think it's particularly striking that jkr underserves characters (again, usually women) who exist to serve the emotional development of characters (usually men), rather than the mystery plot(s) that drive hp as a series. (wanted! tonks' personality! last seen making fake pig noses and being the only auror mad eye moody mentored as his successor, for no plot reason!)

while i'm not a die-hard adherent to the chekhov's gun principle, i think one of the strengths of many novels du jour - especially the nothing really happens postmodern novel that crowds the bookshop shelves these days - is that their conventions allow authors to add colour to characters without each tiny detail being pregnant with meaning and in service of a driving plot that must be marched forward at all times. that can be really nice! as readers, we like to get a sense of characters as well-rounded living breathing people who go for a wee and take the bins out and stick on an album because it slaps every now and then; in these novels, we're also happier with the idea that things can happen to characters beyond the protagonist that don't directly impact the plot or demand the protagonist knows more than their own very limited vantage point. you have more room to play with character as a result.

jkr, ofc, isn't that kind of author. jkr is in fact an author for whom everything about her characters serves the plot. this, after all, is the brain that brought you 'remus lupin' the werewolf, and named the bad-guy-turned-good-guy in a book using a big black dog as a red herring omen of death 'sirius black'. jkr wants her audience to notice clues and remember little details about characters because they might be significant later on. this is entirely her wont and - lupin and sirius aside - she's often very good at it. the hp books are all standalone mysteries, and, when they land, those mysteries slap. ginny being the culprit in CoS is a genuinely satisfying resolution to the whodunit plot: this was reflected in critical reception at the time and was part of the reason why hp was able to be marketed as a children's book adults would also enjoy thereafter. there are also very satisfying foreshadowing and mystery plots that straddle the entire series and that reward the reader with reasonably good pay-off at the series end. (my favourite is the foreshadow within the foreshadow - e.g. regulus black barrelling back from ootp in DH, but then regulus' plot turning out to ultimately exist to foreshadow snape's own double agent status... delicious).

for my part, it's also what i want out of the fiction i read and the stories i try to write. i want everything to mean something. i want the weather, clothing, setting, body language etc to all do heavy lifting. i want character work to do work. it makes it fun for me to write and (i hope) it can it a bit more fun for the reader.

the problem is that while jkr is good setting up some mysteries, she is bad at others, and the romantic plot is one she falls down (a bit) on. she sets herself up for this: she wants to be a plot-centred mystery writer, so she does have an obligation to do better in how she deploys character details. jkr does to try to write the harry/ginny romance like a mystery, with little hints throughout the series up to the reveal of harry's feelings for ginny in HBP. (even ginny's full name is nominative determinism, finally revealed in DH once the reader has been told her place in the plot - ginevra, so guinnevre, the hero's queen). and while i will never not tire of pointing out to all of reddit that harry/ginny didn't come out of nowhere, and there is some satisfying foreshadowing knocking about here and there, i think it's fair to say that the harry/ginny build-up is not as satisfying as it could have been because jkr is basically lazier about the clues that ginny is the character harry will ultimately fall for, while she is much better at dropping clues for the series' central plot. that ginny ends the series with no real resolution of the primary tensions that motivate her other than her love of harry is probably the most acute example of this. but there's lots about her character where jkr phones it in a bit in fleshing her out or taking it to any logical conclusions or interesting plot directions. a smattering of examples:

ginny is the character who spends the entire series demanding to be included and not underestimated ends the series... with no real major role in the battle other than causing harry panic, while all other central characters receive a satisfying narrative arc that speaks to their central motivators across the series as a whole. (for an interesting discussion of what should have happened with ginny and the horcruxes, see here. i didn't even pay @saintsenara to write this!)

there are lots of shades of colour to ginny's character that are introduced pointlessly. i have previously talked about my beef with arnold the pygmy puff. we know ginny is popular but we know nothing of her friends who are all faceless plotless nobodies. we know ginny supports the all-womens quidditch team in a way that implies a nascent feminist politics after a childhood being excluded from playing a sport she loves by her brothers - yet we know nothing of it. we know ginny loves the one wizarding band that seems to exist because she has a poster of them on her wall and it just.... is something we just get told about her. now, all of these suggest ginny is a good time gal and a right laugh at the pub. and that's nice! i too am fun at the pub! but why does it matter? it wouldn't, in another series. but in a series where Everything Matters, it really stands out.

now..... i don't think all of this is an unsolveable problem for those of us writing fanfiction about ginny or harry and ginny as a couple. i don't think this makes ginny an inherently bad character. i hope the amount of life i have wasted thinking about this character is testament to this (...) and i personally find trying to cook up some fleshed-out characterisation and a satisfying arc for ginny, and for female characters more generally, from the crumbs of the original source material to be a very rewarding way to pass the time and a fuck you to a woman who thinks she can gatekeep womanhood while writing some astonishingly antifeminist fiction. i think harry and ginny are a deeply compelling and eminently plausible couple, and i think i return to writing about them as much as i do because i think they have a ton of potential as narrative mirrors and as characters with a rich well of tension but also devotion between them. as i say a lot, i think one of the things the harry/ginny pairing does refreshingly well compared to other romantic lead couples in YA fiction is show a couple that, at heart, genuinely get on very well, have a laugh together and enjoy each other's company in completely mundane lovely day-to-day ways (laundry and taxes u know). i think that's a striking and refreshing dynamic that i like to spend time fleshing out and playing with and writing about. but i can also see that there is an inconsistency in jkr's character work here, particularly her character work writing female characters, of which ginny is among the most acute examples.

[thebreakfastgenie]

Is it just me, or have liberals largely drained their poison of Bernie Sanders? I remember back in 2016’s aftermath you couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a dozen people saying he single-handedly got Trump elected. (Brainstatic even blamed him for personally ruining the Dems with young people)

I think we've just kind of moved on. There's still some anger at him, some for 2016 and some for 2020 and some for things he's done since then, but it's been years and we have bigger fish to fry. We can't re-litigate 2016 forever. I think some of the anger was exaggerated or misdirected because it was a very emotional time, so it's natural that this was recede over time. Some of it was also, in my opinion, kind of a tit-for-tat thing because people were so angry at Hillary Clinton and her supporters. I'd call that part not entirely reasonable, but very understandable. It is worth remembering, though, that most of it was based in very real grievances.

Bernie insisting on remaining in the primary after he'd been mathematically eliminated did contribute to the party being divided and by that point we could see how serious a threat Trump was going to be. A lot of the arguments people use against the Democratic Party "from the left" now, or just arguments the progressive wing uses against "establishment Democrats" originated with Bernie's rhetoric, even though in many cases he didn't use them quite as egregiously, he got the game of telephone started. Some of that I think he couldn't have reasonably seen coming, but some of it he could have. His complaints about superdelegates did give a lot of people an inaccurate understanding of the primary process in a way that eroded trust and created a false belief in corruption. That one I think he did knowingly to help him in the primary and I think it was wrong and had bad consequences. He introduced a whole new demographic into politics and specifically Democratic politics and I think he was very short-sighted about how he did it.

A lot of the worst stuff came from Bernie's supporters (really a vocal minority of them), not from Bernie directly, but he encouraged some of it to varying degrees. "Bernie or bust" was a real problem. I don't think there were many people who actually voted for Bernie and then declined to vote for Hillary Clinton, and I think of the ones who did, most of them would have simply not voted in the primary at all if Bernie hadn't run and would not have voted for Clinton anyway. However, the Bernie or bust rhetoric and the constant negativity about Hillary did hurt her campaign. And I think liberals were/are understandably angry regardless of material effect on the outcome, because that rhetoric shows a clear disregard for the threat Trump and Republicans hold. Partisan Democrats (and anecdotally I think a lot of liberals gained a stronger partisan identity particularly from 2016-21 in the process of organizing against Trump) are offended by Bernie being a Democrat when it benefits him and an Independent the rest of the time. Honestly that bothered me too, more so with his 2020 campaign than his 2016 one because he left the party in between, but it only bugs me slightly on principle, some people feel a lot more strongly.

There are liberals who dislike Bernie Sanders for other reasons besides Democratic Party infighting, too. The sexism issue is very real, though I have seen it exaggerated and used in bad faith. I remember when he called Planned Parenthood "the establishment" because they endorsed Hillary.

The other reason you're seeing less liberal anger at Bernie now is that he's just less relevant. Bernie and his followers, including progressive Democrats who were elected in the wake of his 2016 campaign, had a decent amount of influence from 2017 to 2024. It might not seem that way because leftist posters ignore or outright deny it, but it happened. The Biden/Harris administration got a lot of policy from the progressive wing, and they were just a bigger part of the national culture and conversation. The era of every corporate office adopting DEI and campuses doing land acknowledgments. 2024 put a pretty abrupt end to all that. The national mood has shifted to the right and the narrative about it coming out of both traditional and social media makes the shift out to be even stronger and more widespread than it actually is. Bernie's brand of leftish populism is no longer getting much attention or consideration, and won't for a while. I think a lot of liberals are also assuming the Democratic Party will pivot to the center, not necessarily because they want it to, but because historically that's what happens after this type of loss. Think Bill Clinton in 1992.

I'm going to add a little personal context about my opinion of Bernie Sanders because he's a very polarizing figure and I think I'm able to be a bit dispassionate about him in a way that's unusual online.

I was aware of Bernie Sanders before 2016 despite not living in Vermont. I have my issues with some of what he's done, but I still have an overall positive view of him for the most part. I supported him for a while in 2016 and stopped supporting him because I was dissatisfied with his campaign; I felt he was repeating the same talking points in every speech and he did nothing to convince he had a plan to actually accomplish any of his policy goals, most of which I supported. I already liked Hillary too (I adored her as a child before she even ran for president and rooted for her in the 2008 primary when I was 12) and throughout the campaign she came across to me as more prepared to do the job of president. In 2020, I voted for Joe Biden in the primary because by the Ohio primary Biden and Sanders were the only candidates left and I did not want to vote for Sanders. My priority in 2020 was beating Trump and I based my primary vote on that. I was angry at Bernie for running again under the circumstances, but I was angry at a lot of unserious candidates in 2020, it wasn't personal to him. My ultimate conclusion about Bernie Sanders is that I think he's a perfectly fine senator and I would feel fine voting for him if I lived in Vermont, but I do not believe he would be a good president. At this point, he's done some things, including recently, I dislike, but I don't hate the guy. I don't get mad at people who do, though, we all have our personal grudges. Mainly I'm unhappy that he ran for re-election this year when his state has a Republican governor. I think that was irresponsible.

I've definitely observed variation in how socially acceptable it is to speak negatively or positively about Bernie Sanders in liberal circles. Some of that is different periods of time, but some of it is just which liberals are in the room. The intense anger exists but it's never been universal among liberals. I think at various times people choose to stay quiet because arguing about Bernie Sanders won't accomplish anything so there's no reason to make people mad. I don't think it's a dangerous "you're not allowed to raise a dissenting opinion" thing, just people choosing their battles in social situations.

And, you know, maybe other liberals had the same experience I had of talking to normie Bernie supporters and remembering that most people who supported Sanders just liked him and happily voted for Hillary Clinton in the general and this whole feud mostly exists among people who are hyperengaged in politics. Very offline Bernie supporters are all over the place in New England and talking to them really helps me get a sense of perspective. There's more overlap between 2016 primary Sanders voters and resist libs than you would think if you spend all your time in online left-lib slap fights!

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

There are two related things I've noticed coming from the left that I really want people to examine deeply in themselves, because it's a major problem that I see happening over and over again. The whole I/P issue is the most currently salient example, but it is one of many.

1. There's this tendency towards retributive justice, wherein the solutions proposed fail to take into account whether the proposed punishment is at all proportional to the alleged crime, but rather is just treated as the natural consequence of that action.

2. This same principle is also extended backwards in time and used to excuse violence post hoc that they might not have chosen as an ideal punishment but have nevertheless decided was deserved because that person [allegedly] did something bad.

Both betray an underlying punitive or retributive justice mentality, where the goal is not restoration or reconciliation + accountability, but rather punishment. (There are some interesting religious and cultural aspects to this I could get into but don't want to derail this post.)

This untethering of crime to punishment in terms of (a) due process, (b) proportionality of punishment to the crime, and (c) a failure to consider restorative justice, reconciliation, and teshuva processes instead of retribution leads to monstrous and morally bankrupt results.

Put another (blunter, crasser) way: the left's longstanding hard-on for vigilante violence is a critical failure that undermines the entire movement.

You cannot base your politics on humanism, compassion, and due process out one side of your mouth and then cheer on vigilante violence, cruel and unusual punishment, and mob mentality out the other. It doesn't work like that.

Now I understand that sometimes armed resistance is necessary. People living under authoritarian and inhumane conditions may, out of necessity, turn to guerrilla warfare and unofficial armed resistance in self-defense. But even that has limits. When leftists fantasize about death by curb stomping or slitting someone's throat as a good thing, they are imagining this happening to armed fascists, Nazis, white supremacists, or possibly other categories of irredeemable people such as domestic abusers who maim or kill their partner &/or children, pedophiles, human traffickers, etc.

What they aren't imagining is the other side of that coin, which is the alt-righter who murdered Heather Heyer with his car, abortion clinic bombers, violent Q-anoners or terrorists. Each of those people also believe in the justice of their actions and their entitlement to act as arresting officer, judge, jury, and executioner.

"But those people are wrong!"

So? Why do you get to decide that for everyone? What about the people who think YOU are wrong?

There's a reason courts and due process exist. It's the same reason why "free speech" protects the speech you hate, why freedom of the press protects that rag whose opinions you hate, and why free exercise of religion protects shitty religious groups you wish to see gone. It's because we live in a society and you aren't the arbiter of justice for everyone. If you give in to that mentality, you will inevitably end up in a "might makes right" society, which never ends well, particularly for marginalized people.

If you wouldn't accept l'chatchila a certain punishment being administrated by a court of law without outcry and protest for human rights abuses, then don't cheer it on b'dievad. Either rape is unacceptable or it's not. Either torture is unjustifiable or it isn't. Either maiming is an acceptable punishment for certain crimes or it isn't. You either support the death penalty by certain methods (beheading, burned alive, strangled, hacked apart, stoning, hanging, etc.) or you don't. Collective punishment is either acceptable or it isn't. Vicarious punishment is either acceptable or it isn't.

All of those things are either human rights abuses, or they aren't. All of them fall outside even the rules that might permit self-defense or guerrilla warfare or other uprisings of the oppressed.

Due process is the same - either you believe in due process and the right to a fair and timely trial, or you don't. The moment you support one extrajudicial punitive killing, you have opened the door to the justification of murder, provided the killer has sufficient justification.

It's true that the rules of armed conflict and war are different, but that they exist at all is relevant here too. The reason they exist is to minimize suffering during an event that is guaranteed to cause great suffering. It's the same reason why the laws of self-defense are different than the laws of intentional murder.

The truth is that in order to live in a just and civilized society, there must be specific rules that govern the administration of conflict resolution and harm. These rules must be enforced consistently and equally, and the decider of fact must have reasonable access to the evidence that exists. The state or any court of law or other tribunal must render its decision in the most impartial way possible, even for the worst, most obviously guilty people. Even those that commit heinous crimes must be given those same rights. Without those safeguards, you create the opportunity for bad faith actors to label their undesirable groups or individuals as whatever category people find so despicable that they fall out of being considered human and lose their claim to human rights protections. It must therefore be impossible to forfeit your right to due process and freedom from vigilantes and mobs.

[alexanderwales]

I finished the rest of Save the Cat almost in a single sitting, not because it was particularly riveting, but because I had time to kill, so this pseudo-liveblog is at an end.

Chapter 6 and 7 are basically the same, collections of small tricks and tips. Neither of them are terribly helpful, and all the tricks have terrible shorthand names like "Pope in a Pool". There's very little in the way of any thematic cohesion to these bits of advice, and no grand theory of the Laws of Storytelling emerges, in spite of the laws being invoked a number of times.

The advice itself is, I think, generally good:

give the reader something to root for early on to kickstart investment

spice up exposition with something entertaining

only one kind of magic per plot

don't tell a story that requires too much setup

don't tell a story with too many moving parts

include a ticking clock

have character arcs

keep the scope limited to the characters we care about

make the hero proactive

show, don't tell

make the bad guy very bad

the plot should go faster the further in it goes

use the whole spectrum of emotion

make sure each character has a distinct voice

make sure desires are "primal"

give characters something that makes them stand out

I don't endorse this whole list, and I especially don't endorse the way that Blake Snyder talks about them or the examples that he gives. And if I endorsed the list, then I would include a lot of caveats, and some general principles of storytelling that should be followed, rather than these specific pieces of advice, which are all conditional. Like ... okay, here's an example:

Exposition is a broccoli that the audience doesn't want to eat. There are very different ways of dealing with this, but we can start with "minimize exposition" as the first "law" of storytelling, and from there, we have different strategies:

Spruce up the exposition, making it into a mini-story, delivered in an entertaining way, so that people aren't bored.

Run something alongside the exposition so that people aren't bored, like sight gags in a comedy or an action scene in a thriller.

Have the exposition delivered through implication and clues, rather than stated outright, like having a character limp rather than explaining to the audience that they were wounded in the war. This is show, don't tell, and it's harder than it seems.

But while Snyder lays out some of this advice, it's all in different sections even though it's dealing with the same fundamental problem, and I'm not sure that he really understands that. If he does understand it, then he's not making that clear for the reader.

My thesis is that to understand storytelling, you want to understand root issues and classes of solutions. I have not written a book on writing, nor do I think there's a market for that, nor do I think I'm qualified, but it's the kind of thing that I would strive to deliver. There are a lot of writing problems that are parallel to each other, and there are a lot of structural elements that are mirrors of each other, so why not try to put it all together that way?

But Snyder makes basically no attempt to put even very related problems together, it's just little bits of advice to gnaw at the most common problems, and ... maybe that's fine, but it felt lazy to me.

Chapter 8 was the final chapter, and was mostly about trying to sell screenplays. This was irrelevant to me, but kind of interesting, and also made me feel like Blake Snyder is a better marketer and salesman than a screenwriter, and also maybe just got lucky to be working at a time when scripts were getting huge bidding wars for no good reason. The efficient market hypothesis gets clowned on again, I guess.

I'll probably write up some overall thoughts, a short review: I think I am unsuited to liveblogging because I go long. But the even shorter version is that I think I picked up a few things that were interesting to think about, and while Blake Snyder is a hack, he's an entertaining writer.

[tanadrin]

Are you totally against the concept of evil?

In the sense that "evil" is a value judgement, being "against the concept of evil" is like being "against the concept of stinky." People have their opinions about what they think is evil and what they think is not, just like they have their opinions about what they think smells good and what they think smells bad. Indeed, in this sense "evil" is just a particularly strong condemnation of things we find morally bad.

That said, as a value judgement, I don't find it a very useful one. Even among people who profess to want to think deeply about difficult moral questions, when the word "evil" is raised, it is being used as a thought-terminating cliche, a signpost that says "I am unwilling to be challenged on this opinion further." Like, I see this a lot in rat-adj types here on tumblr who would balk at you shutting down a conversation on sexual ethics or economics or recreational drug use with a cry of "evil!" using it the exact same way when it comes to their own ethical bugbears.

And the reason that a cry of "evil!" shuts down conversations more than even other pure value judgements is that it doesn't appeal to anything, except an affective sense of ethics. If I say (for example) "legalizing weed would be bad, because of consequentialist concerns X, Y, and Z," or "foreign military intervention is bad, because we ought to adopt a strong deontological rule against violating other states' sovereignty," then you might disagree, but at least there is a conceptual basis for our disagreement. If we want to have a conversation about it, we could; it might be a frustrating conversation where neither convinces the other, but we can at least understand each other in principle, even if we continue to disagree quite strongly.

But if I say, "we cannot legalize weed, because doing drugs is evil," or "we should disband the American military, because the Pentagon is evil," what is there to discuss? We're no longer talking about beliefs about the world, just attitudes. If someone thinks I am or believe something that is evil, what am I supposed to do with that? Yelling "you are evil," or "you believe evil things" is not going to change anybody's mind. It's not going to shock them out of their moral complacency, they're not gonna think "oh, this person think I am a bad person, I should really care what they think." Of course not! They're gonna think "oh, this person is an asshole," or, even less productively, "no, you're evil!", and the traditional way of resolving those kinds of conflicts is burning an entire continent to the ground.

Nowadays, we mostly just have shitty flame wars, but those are still kind of unpleasant and I would prefer to avoid them. I can't tell you or anybody else how to use language or how to think, but if someone were asking my advice, I would say: when you have the reflexive feeling of outrage and disgust that you associate with "evil," it's worth reflecting on 1) what your actual moral objection is, and 2) the reason why someone might actually believe or do something you think is evil. And that's not "because they're evil." Again, that is a value judgement, not an explanation! No one goes around thinking to themselves, "today I shall be evil because I love evil."

I must emphasize that making value judgements is not bad. Making value judgements is a necessary component of living in the world and thinking about ethics and caring about other people. But on the basis that "evil" seems particularly prone to being reified as an objective force in the world, and a value judgement that suffices for and replaces actual understanding, I have made a self-conscious effort to exclude it from my analytical vocabulary.

[catbountry]

Re: your reblog: No idea why a lot of men don't want anything to do with a movement that was regularly comparing them to bowls of poisoned M&Ms. It'll forever be a mystery

Oh fuck, that fucking post.

Like, look. I understand the importance of communicating why women might be intimidated by men. But that was such a bad comparison. I remember it being circulated by the kinds of people I was hanging out with who would wind up becoming increasingly right-wing, and it felt like every single time there was some sort of poorly articulated point about the fear that gets ingrained into us, it would just push these guys further and further away. This is purely anecdotal, but I was in a discussion with some guys in a server who said that they'd talked with multiple guys who were just kind of vaguely anti-woke not because of any deeply held principles, but because someone on the left was mean to them or disparaged them. In nerd spaces especially, these are guys who were likely already ostracized in school for being weird and are looking for, well, a safe space. And when perceived outsiders (other nerds who are demographically different from them) come in and try and make a space more inclusive, make it safer, and call anybody who objects a bad person... there's a really big social element to that. Like yeah, there's probably misogyny or racism or homophobia that could be unpacked, but those are things you can unlearn. And the best way for these guys to unlearn these behaviors is just through contact with people who are different from them with whom they have positive experiences. It's not the whole process, mind, but it's a good first step. And simply telling someone off for being bad when they might not even fully understand why it is that they have objections will succeed in getting rid of those guys from your spaces, but where do they go from there? Not the diverse and inclusive spaces we would hope they'd go, that's for fuckin' sure.

I don't want to say that it's our jobs to be super nice to these guys all the time, because you know what? Yeah, some of them do suck, as many people of all walks of life do. They won't change their minds because they see no reason to do so. But if you have the energy to try and level with these guys and just say things in a way that isn't accusatory and is just matter-of-fact, it works better. They're more likely to see you as a whole-ass person if you're willing to engage with them as a whole-ass person. It's exhausting, and I'm not the best at it, but goddammit, I've tried, with varying results. Even if they come in swinging, they can be tripped up by a simple "why would you say that?" or "I don't get it." Challenging them in a way that's not accusatory so much as it is asking them to self-reflect. Why would you say that? Why is that offensive joke funny? Why do you think it's an appropriate thing to say to people you barely even know?

I'm not one of those people that denies the existence of the male loneliness epidemic, though I certainly do think loneliness is up with everybody, not just men. I think neuroatypical men are particularly vulnerable; people with autism aren't any more likely than NT people to believe conspiracy theories, but I definitely found myself taking the word of people who I was friendly with when they perpetuated misinformation to me about shit like AGP or ROGD because why would they lie to me? Looking back, there were definitely people who were racist in a more lowkey way that wasn't immediately detectable by me because I couldn't hear the dogwhistles. But just by virtue of being a enby in predominately queer social circles, I have people around me that were able to challenge these views and help pull me away from these ideas (and help me realize that my gender is more "woman?" rather than just "woman"). These friends allowed me to realize just how stupid they actually were. There's a lot of guys, particular straight guys, who just do not have that in their lives. The bigots are always recruiting and there's nothing they love more than disenfranchised young men who are full of misdirected anger and resentment, especially ones who might be psychologically or emotionally vulnerable and incredibly insecure about it. It's a really hard mindset to get out of, particularly when your views get more extreme, and it's also something you have to actually want to change. Admitting you've been played for a sucker by people with agendas and who don't actually give a shit about you is hard. Nobody wants to admit when they've been had.

There's always a lot of resistance whenever anybody floats the idea that hey, maybe we shouldn't automatically assume these guys are assholes when we encounter them; they might just be ignorant, and you can talk to people who are ignorant without coming across as condescending or sanctimonious. Some of them might be assholes but let them show themselves first before deciding that you can't deal with them. But men are like most people; they don't want to see themselves as fundamentally bad or wicked. Nor should they. I know a lot of women who have been hurt by men; shit, I was hurt by the same man over and over and over again and was in denial about it for decades, and it was only after leaving him that I realized just how absolutely fucked he was as a person, and how he'd never have any incentive to change, even when faced with the consequences of his incredibly selfish actions. I tried so fucking hard to get him to improve only to be met with the same rote excuses for why he couldn't, and I kept giving him grace he did not earn. But also I was trying for 21 years. But his problems are his own. Not every man is going to be like him. I've known men who are, deep down, decent people, but they pick up shitty ideas that linger around them like a stinkcloud. The good news about stinkclouds, though? You can take a shower and smell better. You do it regularly enough, you won't stink no more. It's not an immutable trait. But it definitely helps to not hang around other guys who cluster and form a larger stinkcloud. You gotta wash your ass, if you must, as Del the Funky Homosapien once said.

Fellas, you are not a poisoned bowl of M&Ms. You might just be kinda smelly and in need of a bath. You can't remove the poison from those M&Ms, but you can clean up and become the best version of yourself. A lot of us have the stink of a lot of cultural ideas we've been fed without question, and you're not a bad person for having thought these things one time; it's a long process trying to challenge and prune these ideas. But you might be a bad person if somebody tries to reach out to you and you go and roll around in pig shit and declare how much you love being stinky, while also being upset that girls don't want to talk to you on account of the stink... unless they are taught from a young age to ignore it, or they also want to just socially isolate themselves by diving headfirst into the Bog of Eternal Stench. Those women do certainly exist, but they're not going to bring out the best in you, you know?

It's not an easy process, and it's not easy to reach out to people and have the psychological wherewithal to be able to handle some potentially wild shit. But if you're the kind of person who believes in rehabilitation in the justice system, then you should be able to extend that to people who just have some really shitty ideas that they just internalized without question who might just need to hear a perspective that they haven't heard before. Not everybody can do it, but for those who can? Try. You might help keep somebody from quoting crime or suicide statistics to strangers online in an attempt to feel some semblance of power above those they see below them in the societal hierarchy. You can't force change, but you might be able to nudge them in the right direction.

I think that's the best anybody can do. Try to be as kind as patient as you can, but don't take any shit, either. Remain firm in your principles. Remove yourself if you have to. But at least try, even when it's hard, because like it or not, we need as many of these guys on our side as possible of we want to affect the kind of change we want to see in the world.

... And that's all I have to say about that.

[blockgamepirate]

What sucks is that I can feel that a major split in the fandom is probably inevitable now

I guess this is doomposting but I can already see it happening

idk, I'm gonna support the workers in any case

I don't particularly care about the current argument over the union, it's pure distraction to shift the discussion away from the actual problems, as if anyone here actually cares about the union and not just what the union can possibly facilitate

But I do care about the employees and former employees of QSMP and they deserve respect and dignity and credit, not slander or vague passive-aggressive accusations

Which I've unfortunately seen even from people I know and care about, even people I follow or used to follow here on Tumblr, even people I consider friends

So, I feel like I should just be honest here, idk how I'm gonna handle this diplomatically in order not to burn too many bridges unnecessarily, because I don't actually want to lose people over this, but I do also have principles

I had no animosity towards Quackity before this, I hope you can see that from my blog history; I've never been a cc!Quackity hater. Unfortunately at this point I do need to see him do better than this, because his employees and former employees deserve better

If he does actually try to make it all up for them, if he actually talks to them with respect and a willingness to listen to their concerns and their experiences, then I have no more beef with him

I don't think he's a bad person, but he is doing a bad thing

That's all

[olderthannetfic]

I think for me, one of the big stumbling blocks I had for a long time with understanding the problem with antis and how they act is that I came from the world of anime fandom, and I have seen all the time how the idea that you're expected to be tolerant and accepting to straight men who are really into lolicon or slavery isekai or whatever in the name of "sex positivity" does in fact lead into a lot of normalization of genuine creepy IRL behavior, and ignoring red flags for those. Because I've never met a man where doing a lot of apologetics for his interest in fictional 10-year-olds as a grown man or why you just need to understand that in this fictional culture sexual slavery is totally normal etc. didn't come along with some grosser attitudes about real women in girls - look at how a ton of the guys in the first group, for instance, are always trying to argue that "Japanese culture" is actually A-OK with relationships between young teens and grown adults and it's just your mean feminist American bias that's getting in your way. (None of that shit's true about Japan, btw.) Like if it were a purely fictional-preference thing, they wouldn't be saying that about real-world relationships as well.

But see, I have literally never seen those kinds of arguments from, say, women who write fanfiction about teen/adult relationships. To me the problem with a lot of anti behavior is not just that it's pro-censorship (which I oppose on principle, I don't think any of the stuff mentioned in the previous section should be censored, for instance, much as the prevalence of lolicon in anime squicks me out) and that it's puritanical and sex-negative, but also that it goes after the wrong people. There IS a huge creeper problem in fandom but it's largely not coming from the predominantly AFAB and queer world of fanfiction and shipping, most of whom are pretty good at separating fantasy from reality. Or their "fucked up" ship might not even be "their" fantasy but just thinking a particular character dynamic is really interesting and it happens to fit into some particular "problematic" broader dynamic. Sometimes it's specifically that it's fucked up that we like, that's what makes it interesting!

But I do get uncomfortable sometimes when people take the fact that censorship is wrong, harassing people for what they ship is wrong, what you like in fiction is not necessarily what you want in real relationships.... and take it to the extreme of "fiction has no impact on reality / there is never ANY connection between what gets you off in fiction vs. real life" (I do think it's rarely an exact 1:1, but for some people there is a connection), or feeling like you're never allowed to just privately judge people for what porn they're into or they talk about or post about when they go horny on main, or decide you don't particularly want to have, say, cis men who are super into loli as a part of your social circle.

Because I've seen cases where men use that, and other people being shamed for taking issue with how they talk about it because it's not "sex positive" or "you're just like an anti" etc., to raise the temperature on what kinds of creepy and red-flag behaviors are allowed. Or like, people start to get suspicious of things these guys are doing to real people, and question themselves because they worry they're just judging them for liking loli.

I mean, is it wrong to think that a guy who is really into underage girls AND talks a lot about how culture needs to "normalize" it AND makes people feel bad for being uncomfortable with that particular interest of his, is throwing up a lot of red flags for how he's likely to view real women and girls and IRL sexuality?

Once again, I've basically never seen cases where a fanfic writer (other than in some cis-man-heavy fandoms like MLP) who is into some "squicky" dynamic feels like they have to constantly talk about it even to people who are uncomfortable, or feels like they're not "accepted" in a space where they can't constantly bring it up. Maybe they exist. But then maybe it's fair to say that behavior is creepy in a way that just peacefully shipping [whatever "problematic" dynamic] and writing and reading fic for it is not.

But I've seen people be like "a lot of you act like 'well that behavior is only problematic when cis het white men do it' well no i think you're still sex-negative if you're against ANYBODY liking it" and like I'm sorry but power dynamics matter, and HOW you talk about this and to WHOM matters and I think it's just kind of ignorant to act like there isn't a huge difference between how a lot of cis men in anime fandom talk about this shit vs. other kinds of people in fanfic fandom, and that the former is very much informed by the fact that cis men and especially cis het men have cultural power that they are throwing around in the way they influence those spaces.

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[lenoue]

We can discuss the significant difference in independence between Sam and Dean and how this difference is often misrepresented by many in the fandom.

Sam was frequently left home alone while John and Dean went hunting, which indicates that John often left Sam to fend for himself. While this may have contributed to a sense of abandonment, it also allowed Sam to develop his independence as a teenager. To earn the scholarship to Stanford, he must have worked hard for several years prior to graduating, showing that he was already contemplating a future separate from his father and brother.

By the time Sam went to Stanford at around 18, Dean would have been 22 and still living with their family. Meanwhile, at 22, Sam was living with his girlfriend in another state and pursuing his studies.

When it comes to discussions about Dean's abandonment issues, I’m not entirely convinced. Dean spent more time with their father and had a relationship with their mother. When John disappeared, Dean immediately set out to find Sam, which speaks to his commitment.

As for John’s reasons for leaving Sam alone during hunts, I believe they could be multifaceted, possibly even protective. John seemed aware that there was something unusual about Sam but never took action to address it. His statement to Dean about killing Sam if necessary struck me as an attempt to transfer responsibility, as he seemed incapable of confronting the issue himself, despite knowing for a long time that something was amiss.

In my view, Dean exhibits more dependence than Sam. Although Dean has been separated from Sam on several occasions—like when he expressed resentment about Sam going to Stanford or being upset with Sam for being with Amelia—it often feels less like a supportive stance and more like a reaction of indignation. This raises the question: has Dean felt abandoned by anyone other than Sam?

this has been collecting dust in my inbox cause i needed to gather my thoughts a little for this

okay, so

has Dean felt abandoned by anyone other than Sam?

now, I understand what you're getting at, trust me. dean had tangible, maybe feeble but real connections with people which sam perhaps did not.

but it's the assumption that abandonment issues lie in the real and true act of abandonment is what I don't agree with. even more so for dean.

cause see, thing about dean is that mary's death caused a significant shift in his life. it wasn't changing houses and streets, going to a different country or something. while we don't know how rapidly they shifted into the nomadic, violent lifestyle, we know that it did not leave any room for mourning. normal people don't consider death as an abandonment, especially when its involuntary. but we need to consider that 1) dean never saw mary die and 2) john did not give him the space to mourn when they were spearheading into the revenge murders. he was too occupied in assimilating into this new society and their principles that he must adhere to.

he grew up in mary's absence. we see john haunting the narrative for season 1, right? mary was haunting the winchesters all throughout before that. if you think about it from a child's perspective: Mom is not with us -> everything has been bad since -> Everything is bad because mom is not with us -> Not being with family makes everything bad. This is the foundation he's grown up on.

now, onto the next point

the topic of independence can get kinda tricky. we have nothing but what the characters say to go on, and we also have other characters saying the contrary (one thing I appreciate about s1 is its commitment to keeping things vague if they don't particularly impact the story). It's definitely true that Sam displays more independence than dean. it's a trait grown by need.

here's the thing

dean, after Mary, sees drastic change as something scary, unfavorable. sam was born under this scary, unfavourable roof. it's significant to remember this when considering how resistant dean is to any kind of change, especially with sammy/sam. consequently, sam is less resistant to change but he's wary of entrapment/stagnancy. he does not want to go off on his own after being 18 because he does not want to experience change. last time it happened, he had his family around him. its entirely possible that he believes he survived because of them

this is why he will never understand sam going to stanford. he will never grow out of the emotional headspace of a 4-8 year old who clutched at his family for stability.

and then john, the proponent of "family as one" takes off. because, at the end, john was an adult who could connect and disconnect with beliefs to prioritise interests. dean cannot do that. he looked at sam leaving and thinking of the burning house in kansas. he's thinking of dad dying on a hunt and thinking of the burning house in kansas. he'll always be there. old enough to get himself out but he won't.

so to answer your question : Yes, I think Dean has felt abandoned by nearly everyone in his life. the caveat is that most of it is not rational. some of it is self fulfilling prophecy. you keep acting like a paranoid bastard tying people down to you kicking and screaming, ofcourse they're gonna want some breathing room. but to him, its all very real and out there to get him. turn his life upside down again.