#i have no idea how to talk to people in any fucking capacity without feeling like ive ruined the conversation

[scoobrt]

ah wow love getting suddenly hit with the worlds worst cocktail of emotions!!! gotta love it

[hms-no-fun]

in your view of things right now, with the political climate so hot coming into the election, and companies doing worse than ever in terms of amassing greed and power and fucking us all over... what do you think has to change to find a way out?

oh boy, what a question. i've got a BA in film studies. i pay my bills by making youtube videos and writing homestuck fanfiction. i am not an authority, i only kind of vaguely know what i'm talking about in any given conversation. but i do think about this question a lot, and i've been wanting an excuse to arrange some of my thoughts on the matter. so, you know, don't take my words here as gospel, or as a coherent platform, or whatever. i'm just a goat with some opinions who hasn't read enough theory but means well.

alright. as a communist my answer is always gonna be "proletarian revolution," but that's an endgoal we're currently nowhere near achieving. the path to getting there is impossible to truly know, because of course revolutions are historically contingent on an organized vanguard being prepared to take control in a moment of national crisis. we don't have a leftist vanguard in this country, haven't done since the FBI and state governments went to war with the Black Panthers. my ideal vision of an effective communist party is one unlike any that currently exists on a large scale in the USA, built by organizing communities to coordinate neighborhood needs, as part of city/county organizations coordinating local needs, as part of state organizations that etc. right now political parties are exclusively focused on electoralism. i want a party that can organize eviction blockades, free community daycare, reading groups, high-capacity cafeterias, and all manner of mutual aid. i want a party that can operate with solidarity, as the Panthers did by supporting the 28 day 504 sit-in that resulted in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. an effective vanguard party interfaces directly with the working class and builds its policy platforms based on their needs with no apology, rather than the acceptable liberal half-measures we've grown so accustomed to.

but it's a loooooooong road to get even that far. and you might say such an organization would be offputting, but like. the Panthers won over a lot of moderates over time because they weren't just out on the streets posturing. they took care of people. we only have free school lunch programs at all because of them. this is the thing that drives me nuts about so many leftists today-- you don't win over a moderate or conservative by debating the merit of their ideas. you help improve the material conditions of their day to day life, thanklessly, as you'd do with everyone in that community, because you cannot adopt means testing by another name without selling off an essential part of yourself. slowly, over time, some of those people will be won over. it'll never be everyone, but it doesn't have to be everyone. it doesn't even have to be a majority. you can get a hell of a lot done with even just 30% of people, especially if those people are even mildly-disciplined members of a well-organized party apparatus.

so, okay, that's my sense of the broad strokes. i want a proletarian revolution by way of a militant vanguard party. not saying this is the ONLY way forward, just the one i think would be most likely to succeed under the right circumstances. but again, we're a million miles away from having a communist vanguard in this country. quite frankly, such a thing feels an impossible pipe dream at this exact historic moment. so the question for me then becomes, how do we create the conditions that would allow for such an organization to emerge, claim power, hold it long enough to build a substantial base, then act on it towards a revolutionary goal?

first you've gotta ask why it's so hard to imagine this fanciful 20th century ass operation today. obvious answers: it's fucking impossible for a third party to gain a foothold in the system as it stands, so let's fix that. ranked choice voting would be a good place to start. i'm no electoralist, but if we're presuming that the revolution isn't happening tomorrow then some element of its foundation must be in making our democracy an actual democracy that can reflect people's needs. repeal citizens united. put HUGE limits on campaign donations and make it harder to conceal donations through super PACs. redistricting is another essential piece of the puzzle-- there is precisely one map of every major usamerican city and it's the map of redlined districts where people of color were not allowed to buy property. look at wealth distribution in communities and it'll map 1 to 1 to historic redlining, guaranteed. we gotta fix gerrymandering, loosen restrictions on poll access (such as the ad hoc poll tax that is government ID requirements), and if we're really feeling frisky push for a mandatory federal voting holiday so that no one has to work on election day (which elections count for "election day" is a whole other quagmire of course). less obvious answers: the cops and the FBI are still imprisoning and murdering black, poc, native, and queer activists in broad daylight. the national prison population is an IMMENSE locus of potential revolutionary energy. some goals on that front: abolish prisons, massively defund the cops, and curtail the surveillance state. restore the convicted felon's right to vote, and otherwise remove the many bureaucratic roadblocks that artificially create the cycle of recidivism. put money into nationwide job training programs (NO PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS) not just for ex convicts but for everyone, for reasons we'll get to momentarily.

i focus on electoral reform at the start here because i think it's an illustrative example of just how sprawling the task before us is. my goal isn't to overwhelm you or make you feel doomed because "holy shit that's already a lot of stuff that feels totally impossible and you haven't even mentioned healthcare yet," but to hammer home that the class war is being fought on a million fronts. you will go completely numb if you expect any one person or organization to address all of these issues simultaneously and as soon as possible. in an ideal world, there are many many affinity groups working towards these ends all over the place, either as part of or in solidarity with our imagined vanguard. i'm trying to look at ways to materially improve the lives of people in our political economy as it currently exists, rather than just saying "we need revolution" and leaving it there.

alright then, so what about capitalism? another major factor in the systematic disenfranchisement of the working class is the role corporate employers play in maintaining the class war. nobody has time to participate in local political actions because everyone has to work crushing hours, and when they do have days to themselves they still have to personally drive to wherever things are happening and find parking, instead of grocery shopping, taking care of kids, just fucking relaxing, whatever. obvious answers: medicare for all. right now, healthcare access is tied to employment status unless you are COMICALLY poor (i just got kicked off of medicaid a couple months ago because i now make marginally more than the cutoff, which now means i'm paying $200+ more a month on healthcare and am now way more worried about money than when i was on welfare. what a great and functional system!). if you're afraid of losing your health insurance for any reason, then you are disincentivized from expressing any opinions you might have about the conduct of your employer by, say, quitting. just passing universal healthcare alone would cause some major turmoil in the US economy. invest in mass public transit with rigorous local neighborhood access, and now a hell of a lot more people are empowered to participate in civic duty. less obvious answers: get rid of at-will employment! make it much much harder for employers to fire people, and regulate the ability of corporations to do mass layoffs. this would go a long way towards throwing some wrenches into the methods corps use to invent economic prosperity through the creative application of spreadsheets. on top of that, let's nuke the absolute fuck out of means-testing for programs like food stamps, medicaid, social housing, or literally any other form of "charity" that made Reagan shit his pants.

speaking of means testing, let's talk about bullshit jobs. there are a TON of pointless, degrading, wasteful jobs in this country. corps playing middlemen to middlemen. endless state and business bureaucracy using hundreds of systems that rarely if ever communicate with one another, putting a huge administrative burden on working people while the rich beneficiaries of this exploitation get to launder their guilt through the public-facing punching bags of customer service representatives. too many people work at the office factory. there are a lot of industries that need to be massively curtailed if not outright destroyed, a fact that intersects with the threat of climate change when you include coal and oil jobs. it's not enough to get rid of these positions, you also have to have a plan for those displaced workers-- hence the job training program i mentioned before. if we actually want to see a transition into a more egalitarian society that doesn't run exclusively on fossil fuels, then there needs to be a pipeline that gives purpose to the people whose lives will inevitably be radically altered by the kinds of changes we're talking about. there's an important thing, actually-- we all need to be prepared for this line of questioning and have a good answer in the back pocket. there is no shift from pure capitalism to even lite democratic socialism that won't hurt some cohort of people that doesn't deserve it. unless you want them to fall in with the fascists, you're gonna want to have a plan for how to integrate them into the world you're trying to build.

here's a wildcard for you. a lot of folks are on that "break up the monopolies" grind these days, and i appreciate the sentiment. i also think we would be vastly better served in the long run by simply nationalizing the monopolies. obviously there are plenty of worthwhile concerns to be had about any usamerican government gaining that kind of control over anything at this precise moment, but we cannot let that impede the horizons of our imaginary. i don't want market reform, i want the abolition of markets. the internet should be a public utility and ISPs should be government institutions. tech needs UNENDING regulation as we are all aware. social media should be public and interoperable. there needs to be a rolling back of internet surveillance. i've been toying with the idea of a Federal Department of Digital Moderation as an intervention on the current fascist radicalization pipeline that is social media, but that raises so many other concerns that i don't have an answer for. mostly i just think that the profit motive needs to be excised from as many sectors of public life as possible, and nationalization is a pretty good way to get there.

affordable housing! lower rents means fewer hours at work to make ends meet means more time to spend with family & community means more chances for more people to participate in civic action. abolish student debt and make college free! and make it illegal for colleges to invest in shit like fucking israel! a more accessible system of higher education means a more educated proletariat. this wouldn't by any stretch automatically lead to a more leftist proletariat, but conservatives have worked very hard to curtail access to higher education and that alone is more than enough reason to push for it. i've really buried the lede here, honestly. to my mind, medicare for all, mass public transit, free education, and national rent control are THE milestones we ought to be aiming for in terms of domestic policy. it is simply impossible to estimate how seismically and immediately these four policies (if applied equitably and without means-testing) could transform civic life in the USA. any systemic social ill you can name has some connection to one of these four ideas. i personally hold prison abolition & police defunding as equally essential, but these are unfortunately a MUCH harder sell for a lot of folks and will require some solidaristic frog-boiling from the likeable progressives/socialists of the world to naturalize the idea. but then, on that front i'm speaking very much outside my lane, and would defer to the wisdom of actual abolition activists in a scenario where we were talking concrete policy.

then there's foreign policy. this post has gone on a long time and i'm not the person to talk about this at length, but: the united states military needs to be defunded, and its outposts across the world removed. to curtail global climate change, the american imperial project must end. our meddling in foreign affairs is directly responsible for the domination of capital, and so long as this and other western states exist as they do, no communist outpost is safe. then there comes the question of reparations. all those billionaires didn't invent their money, they stole it. in quite a lot of cases they stole it from US citizens, but they've stolen far more from the rest of the world. tax the rich at 99% and distribute billions no-strings-attached to african and pacific island nations? other countries deserve a right to self determination without the threat of foreign interference. our nation's wealth doesn't just need to be taxed and redistributed to working class usamericans (particularly black communities), it ought to be redistributed internationally to all the countries we've fucked with over the last century and a half. but that's a pretty late stage pipe dream.

i guess the last thing that i've been thinking a lot about is more esoteric, and certainly difficult to implement. i believe we need to seriously interrogate "progress" as a concept. right now our society is defined by technological advancements as encouraged by a capitalist economy. if you fuck around with old analog tech at all, you've probably said to yourself more than once "they really don't make em like this anymore." i think about that fucking Hot Ones interview with matt damon about how streaming has stabbed the established profit model in the heart, where he says something like "we had a pretty good thing going before they showed up." i think about small museums closing down in the pandemic because they couldn't turn a profit, small local shops closing down for the same reason. constant newness paired with engineered obsolescence. disruption of the equilibrium in order to steal profit. it's easy to argue that socialized healthcare is good because it's actually more cost efficient than private healthcare. but those are the terms set by capitalists. i believe that healthcare and profit-seeking should be mutually exclusive. i believe that some things are a public good, however small --museums, quirky shops, parks, art spaces, open lots, movies, music, theater, whatever-- and that these things should be protected from the market at all costs. the alternative is corporate consolidation of everything, as every piece of local color cannot compete with economies of scale and asphyxiates to death. i refuse to accept the idea that "progress" means throwing away anyone who specialized in the thing being progressed beyond. i refuse to accept the idea that "progress" is linear and exists beyond the purview of morals, values, and ideology, nor indeed that it is inevitable and in any event an unalloyed good.

i believe that it doesn't matter if making higher-quality clothes at greater cost in unionized factories is "less efficient" than fast fashion. all "efficiency" means is spread everything as thin as possible, just enough just on time regardless of context. it's a mask for robber baron bullshit. it's an attempt by the bourgeoisie to naturalize the laws of economics as if they were on the same level as the laws of gravity, and we just can't accept that anymore. there's that meme, "i want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and i’m not kidding." i think we ought to apply that sentiment far more broadly. if we truly believe in the dignity of a self-determined life, then we must agree that some things are above profit, above efficiency, and are worth doing right. i haven't quite nailed down yet how exactly to verbalize this idea in a way that can be easily & quickly understood. but i feel it intensely, and only moreso as time goes on. as we push for these seemingly-impossible policy changes, it's of equal importance that we not lose ourselves to the limitations of the system as it exists under capitalism. to transform the world we must transform ourselves. to save the world we must save ourselves. if we hold a value to be true, then it must be constant and uncompromising. we must agree that our lives are better off when certain things exist even if they aren't efficient or fail to turn a profit, and thus decimate whatever part of us has been raised to believe that efficiency and profit ought ever to enter the equation. of course, in any revolution costs quickly become a huge going concern. there will always be painful compromises in policy along the path, always disappointments and mistakes. no revolution can be perfect. but through all these material challenges, the world that must be needs a place at the table with us. impractical, impossible, unfeasible... necessary.

you will probably not live to see that world, anon, and neither will i. we are all in the long game now, and it can never stop with one good policy, one good politician, one needed win. it's everything or it's nothing. socialism or barbarism. it is this belief which guides me, that no one ought to suffer the indignities i've suffered in my years working for shit wages, struggling to find housing, watching family die from economic abandonment. that there is simply no reason for society to be the way that it is, and that "the world isn't fair" is no excuse when we are the engineers of that "world" in every way that matters.

anyway, those are some of my thoughts on the subject. i hope i haven't made a complete fool of myself here.

[naranjapetrificada]

Waking up with plans to write but instead Having A Think about translating Izzy's concretes to an AU setting, as well as the particular challenges of writing him in the style I have.

Namely: when you're used to writing deep inside a character's head and finding inspiration in imagery, how the fuck are you supposed to handle this guy? How the fuck is a writer like me supposed to be anything but completely laid flat by him between paragraphs?

Most characters in most stories, even and sometimes especially antagonists and villains, are capable of taking joy in something at some point, even if it's something an audience finds morally or aesthetically or socially repugnant. The simple capacity to enjoy things and imagine past and future times when things have been enjoyed/could later be enjoyed is such a human thing that it's relatable or at least compelling when we see even a loathed villain laugh maniacally or revel in the chance to lay out their plan or swell with "righteous" indignation as they talk or think about the ways the world has wronged them. But how much "joy" (or anything even close to it) do we see Izzy experience or express?

We see him smile a few times (or at least seem amused) I'll grant you, but let's think about those times and what's missing from them. I'm going to focus on season 1 because I don't find his rehabilitation in season 2 to be interesting or compelling enough to translate to this AU.

He seems amused when he's trying to put Lucius "in his place" in s1e5. He smiles creepily during both the "there he is" and "Blackbeard is himself again" moments in s1e10. You can argue that maybe he seems...content during multiple moments where he gets to bark orders and bully people, especially in s2e9 when he gets to briefly play at being a captain. The rare enough moments when we see him doing anything that seems like it's even in the same neighborhood are built around what he does to other people, and about feeling like he has power. But where's the engagement with that?

Is he experiencing enjoyment? Does he bother staying to watch his barked orders carried out? Does he savor his steak more after Fang salts it or does he just keep chewing? Does he relish touching Ed's face or even the way his words make Ed shrink back into himself? What on earth does he feel about seeing his own cause and effect in action? The only thing season 1 Izzy seems to actually like is misery, while also being incapable of truly relishing it. It's a believable phenomenon, but fuck is it miserable for me to write.

And I don't mean like "oh god that character has been through so much and spending time in their head has given me an empathy hangover," because it feels like there's an emptiness to Izzy's season 1 misery. It's a tar pit. It's a black hole that pulls in everything around it, but does so without taking note of its awesome power to do so. It's a character who (at least before season 2) drinks because that's what you do, but not because it tastes good or bad or like anything in particular at all.

In the bit of POV he has in my draft, there's still so, so much sensory detail because I can't write without it. In revision I've tried blunting or inverting those details into things Izzy notices but maybe doesn't extemporize on the way other characters would, or if he does it's to complain. But I'm still not comfortable with doing it or pleased with the results coming from it and I don't know how to get past that right now. It's truly exhausting to be mean and joyless and express zero wonder in the world around you, and while that feels appropriate for the Izzy concretes I'm carrying over to my AU, it's not something I have any idea how to write without drowning in misery myself.

[thatdebaterguy]

Your abortion opinion is dogshit. “Just have safe sex. No child is unwanted” tell me you’re middle class and sheltered and you’ve never done any research without telling me. Childbirth, if you’ve never had any experience with it, is an extremely long, painful, traumatic, and dangerous experience. If a pregnant individual at any point decides they do not want to experience this, they should be allowed to terminate the pregnancy. Are you really going to make a full grown thinking feeling ADULT unwillingly go through +12 hours of agony and potentially a fucking massive surgery while conscious (if you don’t know what a c section is) to prevent the termination of a fucking fetus that doesn’t even know it’s alive and has no capacity to suffer?

“No child is unwanted” you fucking idiot. Is your idea of the worldwide foster system limited to Annie the Musical? Not everyone has a loving family who can accept the child. Foster systems are rife with abuse. Almost nobody who ages out of the foster system has had a good childhood. And that’s only talking about places like North America and Europe. What about places with no nationwide foster system? Do you know about post partum depression?? Do you know about the research done about the mothers that just straight up do not love their babies or their children and regret not aborting them?

Look at me anon. I don’t care if it’s physically impossible for you, thought experiment here, would YOU undergo 9 months of pregnancy symptoms (weak bladder, swollen ankles, morning sickness, baby kicking, etc) and then go through hours of agony followed by a multi-hour cesarean section surgery for which you are conscious. Just to have a baby. Starting right now. I don’t care if you don’t want it I don’t care if you don’t have the money. Right now. “No child is unwanted,” right? Also the baby you have has a 100% chance of being sexually assaulted within the foster care system and becoming a drug addict who dies of an overdose at a young age. Still doing it?

What exactly are you trying to prove? My mother was well into her 40s when I was conceived, I was premature by about 2 weeks, and I was a c-section. She happily reminds me of the pain she went through just to make me exist, but isn't that the miracle of life, of birth, of families? Millions and millions of women go through such hardship and turmoil, 9 months of their lives, to bring life into this world, and will quite frequently then do it AGAIN, and will cherish their children graciously with no regrets. Not everyone has a good family, a good relationship with their mother, not everyone even knows their mother, but they get to experience life, to experience the world, no matter how shitty it gets, they always have a chance at pulling through, reaching happiness, having their own family. Of course it's not as simple as 'just have safe sex' but you see so many abortions are due to those not ready for motherhood yet failing to have protective sex. Personally, I believe if you're willing to have sex, you should be mindful of the consequences, and being horny and immature isn't a plausible excuse for terminating a life. Since my first formulation of an opinion on abortion, I've given it time to think, and have come to somewhat of an idea. Life truly begins once the heartbeat begins within a human child, and conscious existence begins around 25 weeks. The cut-off for abortion should be 25 weeks at latest, as that's when consciousness begins. However, at the development of the heart would also be ideal or acceptable in my eyes.

But of course every family isn't perfect, of course many people don't have a family, I grew up with an absent father who was more invested in booze than my life, I know many people who grew up in foster homes, and sure yes of course it's better to have a supportive family, but growing up adopted or in a foster home doesn't make your chances of a happy life impossible. And every child is wanted. By someone, somewhere. In America alone, there are 2 million couples on the adoption waiting list. Those are 2 million couples who'd greet any child with open loving arms, who'd try their best for that child. Being unwanted by your biological parents is a painful fact that could haunt you for life, but it doesn't negate from the value of life and the countless amazing experiences it has to offer. It just poses a greater challenge for you to overcome, and the greater the risk, the greater the reward. Knowing you've overcome being unwanted by your own family by building your own loving family is genuinely one of the greatest achievements in life, and if you've taken lessons from your parents to better your own parenting skills, to learn from their mistakes, to give someone a father when you didn't have one, then shoutout to you. Shoutout to mothers, to my mother, to single fathers, to loving parents, to orphans, and to those enduring through the hardships of life. We're all proud of you.

[firecrackerhh]

I sometimes wonder if the reason (if not at least one of many reasons) why antis are so against Hazbin Hotel as a show (besides the obvious anti viv bullshit) is because the very concept of redemption is anathema to them.

They do not believe people can change, and thus the entire premise of hazbin, (and frankly helluva too) is something they literally cannot understand. Refuse to understand at the least.

They don’t care about other people, they do not care if their actions in the name of their own twisted form of justice causes undue suffering, they simply want to be seen as a “good person” without putting in any actual effort to be good.

Sure, it’s easy to find a shitty person online and rake them over the coals for things they’ve said or done years ago. Effortless. But it takes real patience, compassion, perhaps slight firmness but certainly no undue cruelty to convince people they need to change, and even then, that’s a personal journey that others can at most try to influence, but they can’t make people change.

And even if the person they’re bitching about does, it’ll never be good enough.

There’s nothing Viv can do to change these peoples minds, nothing we can do. No matter how many apologies she gives they will never accept it. No matter what we say they will never accept that Viv is not fucking Satan incarnate.

Engaging with these people is a waste of time. Always has been. If Viv is so irredeemable to them, they likely look at us the same way.

I wonder what skeletons people like this must hide, anyone who acts holier than thou about being a “better” person while engaging in reprehensible behavior themselves is a rather irritating form of hypocrisy that boggles my mind.

I am no saint, god knows I’m no fucking saint, but I know what’s right and wrong and antis are wrong every. Single. Time. Any evidence they claim to have of Viv’s awful behavior is either nearly a decade old and thus clearly irrelevant given the people who vouch for her in the present, doctored discord messages (which even if they were real, shows no dates, so we have no idea how old those are to begin with) or the ‘evidence’ is so flimsy that if a lawyer looked at it he would say you’re wasting his time.

I think these people don’t like Viv’s shows because they are morally incompatible with it. They do not believe in redemption. They believe once you’ve fucked up in life, that’s it, no second chances.

I fear what they must think of our current prison population. I fear what they might say.

These people have no moral high ground whatsoever.

They dare to talk shit about the fandom, Viv, anyone else associated with the show, pretending that they’re saying what they’re saying in the name of justice, as if attacking people with their past when they have clearly changed and made apologies is in any way a justifiable thing to do.

They don’t have to like Viv, they really don’t, but calling her irredeemable, calling us irredeemable, is fucking bullshit.

None of us are irredeemable.

The fucking conceit. The fucking gall. The fucking balls on these people.

Everyone has the capacity to make good and bad choices in this life. Yes, many people don’t make the best choices, but that doesn’t mean that they should be stoned to death for the most minor of offenses. For shit that’s long been in the past and apologized for.

I’m not going to say I think very highly of humanity as a whole, I’m a fucking misanthrope through-and-through, but I don’t think we’re incapable of being good, or doing good things, we just…choose not to, a lot of the time.

I also do not deny that there are some crimes so horrible that redemption isn’t even on the table, nowhere near it. But I feel like antis treat every perceived fault of Viv as some most grievous sin that must be met with full penance by…doing what exactly?

Apologize? Again, they won’t accept it.

Donate to charities or causes? She gets shit on for it, say she’s “flaunting her wealth.”

Get off the internet entirely? In an anti’s wet dreams maybe.

Her very existence makes them so mad. It would be funny if it wasn’t so fucking pathetic.

These people twist her words in every way imaginable to make her look like some horrible person undeserving of her success, without realizing they make themselves look far worse than her by several measures.

They claim she’s racist and queerphobic, but if anything acting as if BIPOC and queer people shouldn’t ever be shown doing awful things because “bad queer/ BIPOC rep” or whatever I think is just as racist and queerphobic. Minorities are human beings, and as such they are just as capable of being shitty. I already made a post about this before, so I’ll keep this paragraph short.

They claim she’s abusive to her coworkers when it seems the one person bitching about it has no problem putting other past co workers under the bus for their personal gain. Antis claim she’s abusive while engaging in downright emotionally abusive behavior (I know that sounds kinda dramatic but I’m making a point) themselves as they shit on us for the stupidest reason imaginable: liking a cartoon.

They cry about ableism while ignoring their own.

Not that I’m all that offended if I’m honest, it’s just more evidence that antis aren’t any better than the people they bitch about.

I could go on about this for a while but you get the point.

I repeat, these people have no moral high ground whatsoever.

Frankly, as much as it bothers me that they leak patreon shit and whatnot, many fans are actively warning against them, and I think the idea of someone actively choosing to give money to someone they hate just so they have more content to shit on is fucking pathetic and getting upset about it is exactly what they want.

They want you to be just as miserable as they are. They just want to suck all the fun out of this fandom, I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, these people are tar pits, trying to drown us in their muck. It’s pathetic and sad. No use in having sympathy, they don’t deserve any.

It’s funny how antis scream and cry about how awful we are as they ignore their own sins and mistakes, hypocrites.

If anything, their behavior is far more irredeemable than Viv’s has ever been.

I wonder when they will realize that, if they ever do. I can only hope some of them grow the fuck up and realize what the fuck they’ve done. If the ensuing guilt eats them alive, I can’t say I have pity for them.

Wonder how many of us would accept their apologies, if they chose to make one.

Alright it’s almost 7 am I gotta get to bed. Peace.

🔥🧨~Firecracker out~🧨🔥

[twinkle-art]

since you talked about sho's relationship with toichiro after the last comic, I'm curious about your takes on serizawa's relationship with him now (if you want to share)

ohhhhhhh boy do i ever have takes on what was going on there. for everyone's sake i'm just going to try to keep it to what my reading of the actual text is so. this is. that

the most surface-level observation that i think needs to be made here is that serizawa OBVIOUSLY adored him. he thought extremely highly of him and valued his words accordingly. 

i get why people tend to gloss over this part but. it’s incredibly overt and i think it does his character a disservice to ignore that he was both victimized by touichirou and complicit in a lot of what he did. he had his reservations and doubts about claw’s intentions from the beginning on account of Having A Moral Compass, so the number one thing that kept him in line was that touichirou had him completely wrapped around his finger. notably, it wasn’t through threat or overt coercion, but because he preyed on his desperation to feel seen and needed.

(a slightly more nuanced take on this facet of their dynamic is that while fear WAS a relevant component, i really, really don’t think serizawa was ever made to be scared of touichirou in the context of his capacity for violence prior to wd arc, and think that would’ve been counterintuitive to the particular way he went about manipulating him. he WAS, however, scared of returning to his life as a shut-in, and since he didn’t see any options for himself besides that and his dependency on him, it was in touichirou’s best interest to allow that fear to fester)

and.. at the risk of sounding like i’m playing devil’s advocate.. it makes COMPLETE sense to me that serizawa would feel this way. fifteen years is an incredibly long time to be isolated and have god knows how many people all resoundingly fail to help you. like. no shit he’s willing to ignore the sinister undertones of the only person who was able to save him from that fate, the first person who ever made him feel like he wasn’t alone. it’s easy for us as an external audience to go well, obviously that guy was the fucking worst, what redeeming qualities would serizawa even cling onto, but having that profound of a material effect on his life really can’t be understated imo. i think it’s completely natural and normal that on some level, he’d still feel a level of gratitude* to him for that, despite rationally knowing it wasn’t for his benefit. 

*idk how many of you are familiar with the fanbook blurb that states what i always assumed was the intended subtext more overtly. i actually translated the page it’s from myself, if you’re interested in that. i promise i’m not lying for fun on the internet i’m sure this information is available somewhere else by now

or to say all of that in much simpler terms: he loved this guy the way you’d love a meal that kept you from starving to death, even if it was poisoned

(fig. a– girl what the hell is this)

(as an aside: i don’t necessarily disagree with anyone who focuses on reading discomfort into serizawa’s interactions with him but… as i said before i simply don’t think that renders the constant stream of admiration for him irrelevant)

now, obviously this is muddied by the fact that these feelings were born of truly heinous manipulation, but it’s also just observably true that they spend nearly all their shared screentime with serizawa fawning over him and hanging onto his every word. 

it’s because he felt this way that i think the role he adopted under his guidance stuck to the point where he took it with him when he left claw. like, he fully internalized this idea of being The Muscle as a perfectly normal way to express that he cares for, and feels an obligation to, certain people in his life. so while obviously it goes without saying that his relationship to spirits and such (or reigen specifically, if that’s what you’re in the mood for) is so much more fulfilling and respectful and real, you can still see that learned behavior present. i don’t think that’s a bad thing inherently, like, of course you want to protect people you care about, but i do find it……….interesting lol

but this has all been about how serizawa feels about touichirou, because obviously that’s way more important to him than the other way around. how touichirou feels about serizawa i think requires a lot more extrapolation and personal interpretation of the themes he’s here to deliver. personally, my stance can be summarized with two statements: 

on some level, he took serizawa’s betrayal personally despite claiming to be above human connection, because this series is committed to the truth that no one actually is

telling serizawa to let him go and learn his lesson because he never cared about him anyways, after all the violence/grevious child abuse/openly admitted exploitation/that whole mad king-esque breakdown still wasn’t enough to permanently sever his attachment, was the first and only kindness he ever showed him

(fig. b– the manga omission i’ll be saddest about forever rip spare battery scene you’ll always be famous)

(sorry i keep making asides. but referring to the umbrella that he presented him with under the guise of it being a necessary tool as his weapon the second it’s turned on him is an incredible way to make him show his hand)

in conclusion mp100 is Oops All Parallels all the way down so you see echoes of these themes all over the place. it’s just that this is a strong contender for the most horribly mangled manifestation of a way someone can come to care for someone else in this entire story

[dailyanarchistposts]

I identify as an autonomist leftist largely based on personal experience. Autonomist can be used somewhat synonymously with anarchist — I use the term because peoples’ conception of anarchy usually = total chaos, which more often than not derails any further conversation about it.

I was first introduced to Philippine nationalism when I was younger, but I’ve moved away from primarily nationalist political spaces because of constant authenticity checks, essentialism, and erasure of indigenous peoples under state-enforced identity. I also was looking for ways to speak — and resist — in more intersectional terms.

I’m a brown queer femme. I’m anti-imperialist, anti-state, anti-patriarchy, prison abolitionist. I’m for third world liberation and joint struggle. I’m 1.5 generation — all of these things mean that I am constantly building my home in the margins.

I understand anarchism as a collective means of living/a form of relationship that strives to be explicitly non-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian in its decision-making processes.

Principles that I stick to are non-hierarchical collectivism — which basically means that anyone can and should be able to plug in based on their abilities and capacity. I’m about accessibility in organizing — especially around disability and chronic illness. I’m not down with strict leadership models that sacrifice those at the very bottom in order to “advance” the revolution.

For me, anarchism involves a commitment to combat and challenge all forms of oppression, an integration of communal care practices and mutual aid + mutual investment, and creating spaces for people to be their full selves (in a way that isn’t violent towards others) without fear, shame, or threat to their existence.

My understanding is based a lot less on dead white guy theory and very heavily on what type of organizing can include the parts of who I am. The single biggest reason I began identifying as an autonomist is because it made the most sense for me in terms of how I organize and build with people. Anarchism + abolition are really about dismantling all fucked up hierarchies and systems of oppression, which means I can talk about all the parts of myself (sick brown queer femme) without having to stick to what “the party” dictates.

I try not to make “real organizers are/do [x thing]” statements because I don’t necessarily see a division between Organizers (with a capital O) and everyone else. It feels like the same hierarchical distinction made between Leaders and followers, and it also feels low-key ableist to imply that some people stand at the forefront while everyone else just takes orders.

I’m also really over the idea of leftist martyrdom “for the masses” — as if we aren’t also part of the people trying to get free, trying to have livable lives. None of us are exceptional or superhuman. We have no obligation to run ourselves into the ground and self-sacrifice for the sake of a movement that isn’t mutually invested in our own survival.

[ieatadoptmepets]

I meant to make this forever ago but here are my gay titan headcanons for pride month

Dick Grayson

The man is definitely bi. Growing up with bruce, he never got a chance for any kind of meaningful relationship and wasn't like other kids with internet access (or however that worked, I mean he's around my mom's age and her generation all had like flip phones in highschool or whatever) or "the talk" or really anything pertaining to sexuality. And instead of not realizing it until adulthood, he kinda just took it as it's completely normal because he never saw anything special about it. Bruce was always supportive of any pride marches going on which made him feel safe but they always had this mutual understanding that didn't make anything need to be said out loud

He may look sexy as fuck all the time but it's all a show, he's so asexual. I've always kinda took this as canon even though nothing like that was mentioned or shown, and he slept with kori pretty early on but nevermind that. He's not out to anyone because he didn't know asexuality was a thing, but more on that later with another character I headcanon as ace :-)

When he does figure it out though he comes out publicity rather quickly and the internet goes wild, leaving his teammates to find out through twitter

Conner being the sweet guy he is congratulates him

Koriand'r

On Tamaran, no one is really aware of sexuality as a society, but just that a princess needs her prince and things like that (I don't know much about Tamaran, I could be wrong in canon but this is headcanon) but they do have the capacity for sexuality. Kori comes to earth and discovers human sexuality and doesn't really understand any of it and tries to figure out what she is but comes to the conclusion that it's VERY confusing but by god does she love dick grayson

Gar Logan

He's very much pansexual. He's always struggled with coming out to people, half of him thinking 'it's so obvious but they never said anything so they must be homophobic but deal with me for titans business' and 'they think I'm straight and I should come out' but rachel helps him, they are mspec solidarity

He comes out officially to the public during pride month which causes the rest of the titans to come out and make their statements which makes the world go crazy

He comes out to the team by donning a bunch of pan pride merch and hanging up a flag in his room and eventually they take notice and ask what it's about he makes a big show out of it and kori makes him a pan colored cake with the help of rachel because he was so excited about it

When he and rachel officially room together, they fold their pride flags in half to combine them on the wall

He is also asexual. I don't get sexual attraction so almost everyone is asexual. Like me he doesn't get the hype around it so he doesn't make a big deal about it like his pansexuality. He comes out because jason makes a joke about him and rachel now sharing a room and he just goes "huh? oh, no, me and rachel don't do that. I'm asexual :D" thus prompting dick to talk to gar in private and explain to him, and he doesn't show it but he's very excited and goes to tell kori

Rachel Roth

She is so bi without a doubt. When she comes out with the titans, people give her a lot of shit for being in a committed relationship with a man while being bi but she responds to all public backlash just getting increasingly more obnoxious with it. Think like aggressively chaotic videos in response to trolls to Lady Gaga songs and hanging pride flags from the tower every June

Jason Todd

Look at this man and tell me he's not bi. You can't. I know I've headcanoned like everyone as bi but that's because I'm projecting

He gets a boyfriend and thinks he's keeping it a secret but he's really bad at it

He acts like he's going out with a girl but has no idea how to act with a guy, so he asks the titans very obvious advice that just gets worse the more he tries to cover it up

Bruce knows it from the start pretty much because he's always acted like a tool who only cared about showing off everything batman and titan related when he dated girls but he actually appears genuine, so it must mean he's gay

One evening he tells the titans he's going on a date and rachel goes "with your boyfriend?"

Then they convince him to take his date to the tower to meet them which ends up being the best date he's ever been on

Conner Kent

At first he has no concept of sexuality because he starts out when he broke out of the lab with the emotional mind of a toddler

As he "grows up" he learns more about sexuality it kinda confuses him and finds he's unlabeled

Sexuality is hella confusing for him because all his pre existing knowledge comes from Clark Kent and Lex Luther and it's not like he inherited their sexuality and he never got to grow up and experience life

He's one of the titans who isn't exactly out about their sexuality, but that's because he doesn't label himself and currently that's only a concern to komand'r

His girlfriend is unlabeled too for the same reasons as kori and Conner has the biggest himbo bi wife energy despite being the smartest human-ish alive

I kinda gave everyone the same headcanons but please reblog with your headcanons I'd love to see them <3

[bl00dngh0uls]

I just wanted to ask. Why change the name of the fall to the descent? Imagine being so petty that the story you and another person created was so good that instead of making another one because it's that great you just fill in their character and rename everything. It's super copy righted if you ask me. You tried breaking her and her boyfriend up. Then called her multiple times and stepped over her boundaries yet you say it was her who you were scared if you missed a call. She tried helping you and cared for you yet you have the audacity to call it otherwise when you can't talk it out with her or for her to defend herself? I had to make a tumblr just to message you as you took off the anonymous. Those people had no right to say kill yourself and most of those other comments but it's also not right for you to create the same exact story as she put so much time into it. The character your girlfriend made is the exact same as hers was with golden wings just a different name and different hair color. The picture below is something she drew awhile back. Her family said the same thing about you that you were bad news yet she defended you and kept allowing you to come back into her life with open arms. Obviously you two cared about eachother and I hope you could at least talk because you made something beautiful together and now it's just used as a petty trophy. You two aren't bad for eachother you just have bad communication skills. If you block me that's fine but I just had to say I truly loved the fall and it's amazing what you two made.

Honestly, I find it a little ridiculous to have made a tumblr just to message me about this. It’s very adolescent, and I couldn’t imagine being so invested in something that wasn’t your business to go out of your way to message a grown ass adult about why they would place their character in a new story.

Though it doesn’t matter in any capacity, I completely trashed The Fall. Changed the name because same concept, except we’re starting over. New story, new characters, new ideas.

Imagine being told to kill yourself, being absolutely bombarded with messages all through the night, waking up to that bullshit. No fucking wonder I turned off my goddamn anons LMAO are you actually kidding me.

And another reason to not put your nose so far into others affairs, is because you actually have no idea who I am. You don’t know anything about me other than what you’ve been told. I shouldn’t have to come and defend myself for the hurt I’ve endured.

I kept hoping she’d change, as one does in an abusive relationship, and it never happened. Receiving messages from all different people over this, trying to be guilted for breaking something off that was making me mentally, and physically ill. I was so stressed everyday. Getting called aaalll throughout my day to hear her be angry about her job, be angry about people she worked with, be angry about other people succeeding in life, being angry with herself for not doing more, constantly talking about how stressed her piece of shit boyfriend makes her. How he never fucking does anything around their apartment, how he makes her feel shitty for wearing anything ‘revealing’ (oh gods forbid, wouldn’t want to look like a whore, which I was also pretty tired of her internalized, projected slut shaming), how she can’t ever do anything without him ruining it. How he’s made friends leave her life because THEY hated him.

Nothing I said seemed to appease any of these things, because how could it?? You get out of your life what you put into it, and all of that angry, jealous, immature energy she served kept her trapped. I don’t think she ever wants to actually change, she just wants to be pitied, and to be seen as someone who gives and gives and gives, but never talks about all of the mental energy she takes from others. When you’re so locked into the delusions you’ve created for yourself to justify feeling like shit and not doing a fucking thing about it, life can get pretty shitty for you. That’s what’s happening for her.

I don’t have a squeaky clean record of mental health, but I at least care enough about myself to work on things I need to. Not sit in denial, and tell people that they disgust you for bringing up that you may have some fucking issues. Just the fact that she couldn’t accept that we are no longer speaking, and will not be anymore, shows that fucking SOMETHING needs to be worked on. People that don’t care would just let you live in your own little world where you’re the epitome of mentally healthy. Well NEWS FLASH, nobody is.

Thinking she’s excluded from people struggling with mental health is laughable. Maybe if she decides to hop off her high horse, someday she can make healthy connections with others. I’m done being a dumping ground for all her bullshit, and then being absolutely TORN APART VERBALLY for having anything to say that isn’t rolling over, and accepting that I’m somehow always the only problem. Fuck that.

So, now that I’ve wasted my time, and you’ve quite obviously wasted yours, let’s just stop all of this.

If I receive anymore asks from you, I won’t be responding to them, and I will be blocking you, because I’m done. I’m ready to move on from this.

[muzzleroars]

I like to think that what partially motivated Lucifer to finally snap and Rebell against hell was him actually meeting and talking to Adam and Eve and realizing "Holy fuck I dont want them nor their future gens to be tortured forever" and seeing them grow, change and learn as well as having a choice in who they wish to be (smth angels cant really do) and maybe just maybe the hypothetical that if everyone in heaven, both angels and humans are immortal they'll all eventually land in hell to be tortured forever (considering eternity is a long time and a long time to accidentally Slip up)

i definitely think the human issue is primarily what drove his dissent, and i think the idea is supported well enough by the testament alluding to lucifer's fall. initially, of course, he was thrilled by god's new design - "we will make man in our image" is a pretty intriguing pitch, but lucifer's questions quickly began to rise to the surface as that idea took shape. a creature made in god's image, taken to mean that human beings will be boundlessly inventive and have the capacity to create endlessly, something the angels don't have, means they will have a world just BURSTING with new ideas and more to love. however, humans will be restricted, beings of flesh that have a much smaller scope of awareness and limited senses, but that isn't necessarily a terrible thing - they will live in their own world of peace, a beautiful garden made for all their generations to grow in. something goes wrong though, something feels off to him when he begins to understand how curious they will be, how they will learn and how they will be self-governing - they will truly possess themselves as god does and in ways he did not impart to his angels. yet humans were to be tested, and if they were fail then their lives become ruinous, they bring pain, disease, violence, and untold burdens into the world as their punishment, until death takes them in the short lives they have. they will be subject to all evil, a design cruel enough in itself, but hell put the nail in the coffin for him.

because he is left with the how. how can beings so small, born without any knowledge or inclination and living for just a few short years, in a world filled with evil, confusion, and anxiety, be expected to hold god's laws in perfection? it planted a growing seed of misgiving in him, of doubt in god's goodness - a place of eternal torment for what would be, in most people, a small life of mistakes. it shook lucifer's love....because his love burns for all of god's creation now too. he couldn't bear to see these humans tortured beyond all time and it's true too that it made him fear for all of them. could hell house them all? could heaven be emptied? could god, in all his power and all his growing need to be obeyed and adored beyond what his creations even seem capable of giving, cast them all out and simply make new children that he thinks could satisfy his demands? because humanity feels an awful lot like god wants something else from what he has, beings of pure free will that will love him endlessly because his angels just aren't enough. nothing is enough. and i think that thought sparks his unease to the point of rebellion. nothing is enough for god. he looks upon heaven, he sees the seraphim like himself that are wholly devoted to singing praises all day and all night in god's presence, he sees the archangels made to hold up and exalt his throne, he sees an expansive kingdom full of worship by all who inhabit it...and god wants more. will he keep creating to this end, over and over, beings made out of nothing and then soon enough cast off into the pit? cycles of endless torture, for all time. it was a heavy, harrowing thought, so ghoulish it seemed unthinkable, yet hell was there, and humans would be condemned to it if they "failed".

if he did meet adam and eve in any way, that if would be erased and hell's usage would become a certainty. not because he finds evil in them, but because they are curious, they want to learn and they like to share with one another. they have god's essential spark in them, yet he denies them the fundamental knowledge of good and evil knowing full well their divine nature and the intelligence he gave them. what's worse is that it seems likely in this scenario that the serpent in the garden is likely from god as well - while traditional christian belief holds that the devil tempted them, the serpent, canonically, has no identity (satan is HIGHLY unlikely given genesis's age besides) and so...adam and eve obeyed, yet god decided to push them again. he gave his orders, they listened, but it wasn't enough. i like the idea that maybe lucifer finally broke when god sent that serpent, when he saw that no matter how humans obeyed, they would be tested until he found a way to make them fail. because they hadn't touched that fruit. they took god's word and did good, despite all their contrary nature. it just furthers the fear that they are all destined for a fate of damnation, that god will push and push and push until his creations fail him, that whatever goodness he has is being devoured by something within him that lucifer is sure he cannot fathom.

yet i think, even until the end, lucifer believed he could sway god's mind. he is the satan, the adversary, part of his role meant to question and now, to accuse. so maybe he was meant to call this cruelty for what it is, maybe he was meant to condemn hell as an institution...at least, maybe he can change this before it goes too far. yet even if he had any anxiety about what punishment this might incur, his stand had to be taken for humanity and for the host of heaven, lest they be subject to the same tests and wrath. unfortunately, lucifer would find out god's brutality is unending when one dares threaten to remove an ounce of their adoration for him.

[beautifulgiants]

Josh Hartnett: 'People genuinely thought I'd been thrust on them'

Ryan Gilbey

Twenty years ago he was one of the world’s hottest young actors, before he retreated – and ended up in Surrey. He explains why he had to leave Hollywood – and what he knew about Harvey Weinstein

Fri 23 Oct 2020 06.00 BST

Source :

Josh Hartnett is sitting at home in Surrey, thinking about the time he was asked to play Superman. “I had this idea that because he lives in this world where he can’t touch anything without it flying across the room, he has become almost afraid of himself and his own power. He doesn’t know how to be Superman any more. He’s so afraid, he has become almost neutered by the experience of living on Earth, where he can blow things up just by looking at them.”

The studio demurred – “They didn’t really want a fear-based character at the centre of their movie,” he says wryly – and Hartnett walked away. But his Superman concept now feels like a metaphor for what was happening at the time in his own life, as he became increasingly overwhelmed, even horrified, by his status and the hysteria that surrounded it. Twenty years ago, the hottest young male actors in Hollywood were Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck – and Hartnett. Michael Bay, who directed him in Pearl Harbor, put it bluntly: “He’s going to be fucking huge.” The actor grimaces at the mention of that. “Huge was never something I aspired to,” he says.

Back then, he seemed like a pretty kid who had got in over his head. Now 42, he has acquired the squinting, quizzical handsomeness of Richard Gere. He and his wife, the British actor Tamsin Egerton, moved to Surrey with their two young children to be closer to her parents, he explains. “And then, of course, coronavirus ...” In other words, they’re not going anywhere. So he has time to talk and a new film to talk about: the factually based thriller Target Number One, which is better than any of its plucked-from-a-hat titles (it has also been known as Gut Instinct and Most Wanted) might suggest.

This is partly due to the dazzling Antoine Olivier Pilon, star of Xavier Dolan’s psychodrama Mommy. He plays a real-life petty drug dealer who was sentenced to life in a Thai jail after being set up by Canadian police. Hartnett is solid in the less showy, meat-and-potatoes role of the journalist Victor Malarek, who fought to expose the truth. In this capacity, he gets to perform the time-honoured All the President’s Men routine of storming into his editor’s office, tossing a newspaper on the desk and demanding to know where the hell his story is.

Hartnett does his homework. On The Virgin Suicides, it wasn’t enough to play what the director Sofia Coppola had written; he also raked over his character, a dreamy high-school stud, with Jeffrey Eugenides, who wrote the original novel. On Brian De Palma’s film noir The Black Dahlia, Hartnett trained as a boxer for several months, simply because his character, a cop, used to be one. Naturally he met with the real Malarek before playing him. Why? “I wanted to see if he was full of shit.”

Malarek, he explains, has been accused by his critics of putting himself at the forefront of his own stories. “Ultimately, Victor is a humble man, but he does think of himself as someone who stands up for people in vulnerable positions. He likes to insert himself into a situation, though in my opinion what he’s really doing is putting himself in the line of fire. In a way, he almost downplays his own contribution.” Malarek has said that he had no idea who Hartnett was. As someone who has spent the last 15 years or so running from fame, this must have pleased him. “I didn’t assume he’d know me,” he says. “My interest in going to meet him was not to have flowers laid at my feet.” So he didn’t take along a signed Pearl Harbor poster? “I should have done. That would have been a great introduction. ‘Hi, I used to be somebody …’”

Quite. At the end of the 90s, Hartnett was everywhere. He starred in back-to-back horror hits – the aliens-in-high-school romp The Faculty and the sequel-cum-reboot Halloween H20 – and resembled a walking shampoo commercial in The Virgin Suicides, where he sashayed in slow-motion to the sound of Magic Man by Heart.

“It’s a little bit heartbreaking to see all that time has passed,” he says. “I was a child. I was 19. The Virgin Suicides felt like a group of friends all pulling together. I think I’m still looking for that experience whenever I make a film.”

The Faculty and Halloween H20 were produced by Dimension, the horror arm of Miramax, making Hartnett part of the Weinstein brothers’ stable of talent. “I was a kid who they felt they should invest in, but I didn’t spend a ton of time with them,” he says. “We had a sort of antagonistic relationship because the contract I signed for those first two films guaranteed me to be a part of, like, five more or something. They’re called contract extensions. I was told at the time that nobody ever uses them, but then I guess I became popular and they decided to, um, exercise that right. What they did a few times was to jump on other projects I was working on already and become co-producers.” These included O a modern-day Othello with Hartnett impressively coiled as the Iago figure, and the comic thriller Lucky Number Slevin, in which he seemed to be poking fun at his own image by spending the first half-hour scampering around in nothing but a towel.

He shifts uneasily when I ask whether he was surprised by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein. “There are all sorts of rumours about guys like that which permeate the business and you think, ‘That’s awful.’ The casting couch was a thing people joked about when I was first in the industry, so it was an open secret that this business is a little bit fucked up.”

When he was offered Pearl Harbor, his instinct was to turn it down. “I didn’t necessarily want things to change that much,” he says. “I was happy with the amount of fame I had and the types of roles I was getting. At the same time, I asked myself: ‘Am I just afraid that by doing Pearl Harbor, I’m going to enter a new category of film-making that I might not be ready for?’ I ultimately chose to do it because turning it down would’ve been based on fear. Then it defined me, which means I was right to fear it.”

His co-stars didn’t have it easy either. Kate Beckinsale was told to work out (“I just didn’t understand why a 1940s nurse would do that,” she said) while Affleck was ordered to get new teeth. “Well, they are great teeth,” Hartnett says. “I was asked to work out, too. But you know, I could have used it. I was 165lb wet. I was a really skinny kid.”

As well as his own misgivings about the project, there was the heightened press attention, including a splashy Vanity Fair interview with him from the set of Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down. “Oh, that was an awful piece,” he shudders. “Was there even a quote from me in it, or was it just everyone talking about how hot I was? People got a chip on their shoulder about me after that. They genuinely thought I’d been thrust on them. It was a very weird time.”

It was around then that he plotted his calculated retreat. After Superman, there were reports that he had also turned down Batman; in fact, he didn’t get any closer to that part than a conversation with Christopher Nolan. But the perception of him in Hollywood began to change. “They looked at me as someone who had bitten the hand that fed me. It wasn’t that. I wasn’t doing it to be recalcitrant or a rebel. People wanted to create a brand around me that was going to be accessible and well-liked, but I didn’t respond to the idea of playing the same character over and over, so I branched out. I tried to find smaller films I could be part of and, in the process, I burned my bridges at the studios because I wasn’t participating. Our goals weren’t the same.”

He has put his movies where his mouth is, working with idiosyncratic directors such as Tran Anh Hung on the thriller I Come With the Rain and Atsuko Hirayanagi on the comedy Oh, Lucy. Nor is he averse to the mainstream: he will next be seen alongside Jason Statham in Guy Ritchie’s Wrath of Man. But it’s a measure of how unusual it is for a star to withdraw so early in his career that by the time Hartnett made The Black Dahlia in 2006, GQ magazine was already referring to it as his comeback.

“I’m happy to be done with that era and to be making films that are more personal to me,” he says. “Directors are coming to me to play characters as opposed to versions of a hero I played in a movie once.”

He is nothing if not conscientious. A few days after our Zoom conversation, he phones me because something has been bothering him: he doesn’t feel he made his feelings about Weinstein clear. This time, he puts it as plainly as he can. “I wasn’t surprised he was a creep,” he says. “But I guess I was surprised at the extent of his creepiness.” He’s concerned, too, about what comes next. “The shameless seem to be finding it easy to make a comeback. Louis CK has been pretty shameless. Harvey Weinstein, if he had the tiniest bit of daylight in there, would find a way to get back in. Those are situations that freak me out.” But there are, he says, visible changes taking place. “Different things are expected of the way people act on set. There’s an open line of communication now for anyone who feels they’re being harassed. And there’s less of the so-called locker-room humour that people used to hide behind.”

Was he ever harassed as a young actor? “The last thing I want to do is come across like … You know, I’ve been in situations where I’ve been uncomfortable with my boss’s behaviour but I’m not gonna say …” He changes tack. “That’s not my experience and it’s not my place to claim that. It makes me feel icky to try to do so.”

He also tells me that he went back to that Vanity Fair article and realised it wasn’t so bad after all. “It’s just that it happened at a time when I wasn’t that famous, and it seemed to already be asking whether I should be or not. I felt like: ‘Oh my God! I’m not the tallest poppy yet – don’t cut me down!’ I was being compared to Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts and that’s insane. It was a set-up-to-fail moment.” He gives a sigh. “It was actually an interesting look at the nature of fame. If only it wasn’t about me.”

[the-bjd-community-confess]

TW: Sexualization of (fictional) minors discussion/CSA mentions

Mod: Batch post 2 to help people avoid the topic if needed.

1. Idc, people who don’t dress and photograph YOSDs like children are creepy af. If you’re dressing your YOSD in lingerie that’s weird as hell and gross.

~Anonymous

2. "child sex sells" what the fuck is wrong with you? shut the fuck up. touch grass. see light. no the hell it does not. can you be fucking normal for five goddamn minutes? god just delete tumblr and get the fuck away from this and all other hobbies you are the worst sort of human being and i hope you get the help you desperately need because you are seeing child abuse in everything and that, i promise you, is a freakass problem to have. why are you like this???

~Anonymous

3. did NOT want to read the vomitous take of "ch*ld s*x sells" on the doll blog today!!!

~Anonymous

4. fandoms full of """child abuse"""

hi mod it's me again, i'm sorry in advance but this fucking topic makes me actually furious and as long as the most sheltered infants on earth continue to submit brain-dead takes on this subject, i'm going to keep showing up in your dms. CW for discussion of actual abuse, hard subjects in general, etc.

(i would put the read more here) [Mod: I hope you don't mind this format instead Anon, this confession deserves its own post but I want to shield readers from the topic if possible with the batchposting 💜]

ok but that's just it, as a fucking csa survivor, most of the "fandoms full of CSA" literally! have none of that! whatsoever! in any capacity! you shitty godforsaken little heathens call sfw romance between two fictional teenagers in a tv show incest-coded, you call grown ass-adults in animated works "child-coded" and justify that as the same as goddamn ABUSE OF REAL LIFE HUMAN BEINGS, and you doxx creators and send them death threats and clog up report lines for real life actual human victims about your fictional bullshit. you are the worst and i want you and anyone who reads this and feels offended by this description to know that you are helping no one and annoying everyone.

do you know what real victims are victimized by? not fiction. not any fiction. not inanimate objects! literally write a story about fictional children being victimized for the plot, and it will not hurt me. if it hurts you, fair! stop reading it. go outside. your Personal Discomfort is not you being abused. learn the fucking difference perhaps! it will not make me... do you have any idea how hard it is to talk about this without getting so extremely goddamn personal? do you have any idea how much it sucks to have to have this discussion over and over and over? do you realize that roughly 10 years ago everyone with a braincell agreed on this point and it's only the last decade that people have been so radicalized to think that wrongthink is real? no, of course not, because most of the people who believe that fiction and reality are 1:1 in how one affects the other have no practical experience with any of the subjects upon which they have the audacity to speak.

listen. i am not going to go into my upbringing. i am not going to tell you what it was like to be raised in a household like mine where actual abuse was genuinely normalized. all i will say is that i was raised in a culture where this sort of abuse was normal and certain types of relationships between adults and minors were considered... sanctioned by the powers that be. are you picking up what i'm laying down? do not talk to me about your good intentions. the fucking argument that fictional content, drawings and toys and all that other inconsequential shit, that it's tantamount to a crime? buddy. bestie! amigo! compadre! that's the same logic that was used to make sure my upbringing was as sheltered and controlled as possible so that the "corrupting influences" of the outside world didn't give us the "wrong ideas". like i truly don't know how you did it but you've reinvented the toxic mindset i grew up hearing! and you are completely blind to it. boggles my fucking brain.

i just want to shake the people who say this shit with a straight face. "wow so violent op maybe you're the toxic one" yeah boy i'm toxic i've been in therapy for most of my life and will continue to be until i am dead. the fucking DRAWING CARTOON PORN IS INDOCTRINATING MINORS WRITING StORIES WHERE BAD THINGS HAPPEN IS THE SAME AS HARMING A REAL HUMAN crowd are just the same religious wrongthink crowd with a more recent birth-year and a rainbow hat. "anyone can say anything online i don't believe you" cool i don't give a shit. how do you want me to prove it, doxxing myself? you wanna see the fucking recordings anon? think before you speak. first time for everything.

i like this hobby. i enjoy my dumb little dolls and their stupid little faces, i enjoy the peace in changing their style and redoing their faceups, i enjoy being able to represent a diversity of appearances, identities, to make everyone queer and slutty because i'm making up for the lost time in my life where that was not on the table for me. i do Not fucking relish seeing the braindead anti arguments creeping into this hobby and shitting up another thing that myself and other survivors would like to enjoy in peace and quiet.

so let me tell you, from the bottom of my heart, even though no one who needs to hear it will bother to listen to the words of a survivor because it goes against your superiority complex against those nasty fiction enjoyers:

shut the fuck up.

sincerely, god, everyone, and especially survivors of CSA and other abuse against minors.

~Anonymous

[opinated-user]

Catching up on stuff I missed and that whole debacle with Batman’s food just doesn’t make reasonable sense no matter what way you slice. Why do you need to show a receipt for buying cat food? Does this person not know what a receipt is for? It’s mainly for being eligible to return an item if it wasn’t satisfactory to your tastes, but you can’t just do that with food, because you have to have ruined the packaging in some way in order to use it. No store is going to take back a cereal box someone opened up because the cereal turned out to be stale. You keep receipts for shit like buying clothes in case the clothes might not fit, which is actually what happened to me a few weeks ago when buying new jeans so there’s an example right there.

And second, this has to assume that Courtney wouldn’t, you know, feed her cat, like she said she was going to. What kind of person would just intentionally starve their cat, if they weren’t already abusive to their pets? The fact that she considered pawning off her laptop, which is going to have long term consequences in any capacity, just to feed the poor guy shows she clearly was really to take the long term hit just so she doesn’t have to lose her cat.

And third, how the fuck does this relate to Lily using money that was supposed to go to Mikala (not sure if that’s spelled right) immigration fees to buy a new desk. This is a giant stretch to put those on the same levels of seriousness. I can reasonably understand that Courtney’s current situation could mean that she can use some of the money meant for cat food to buy other things, since I can reasonably assume that her Ko-fi was made for that purpose, and Courtney’s character means she would probably be upfront if that’s something that happened, and good on her for doing that anyways, she seems to be tight on money as is. Meanwhile, Lily committed actual fraud. I’m not sure if this could count as charity fraud, but even someone like me, with no law experience, clearly knows taking money meant for something big and spending it on something else is legally questionable.

THERE WAS AN ENTIRE CONTROVERSY LATELY WITH THE COMPLETIONIST HAVING DONE EXACTLY THAT, WHY DID NO ONE QUESTION THIS

Sorry if this is long-winded and redundant at this point, but I saw that whole thing when catching up on the LO drama and I just needed to vent my whole frustrations with that.

i have to thank you, anon, for putting everything i have felt about that particular situation so succinctly. after everything was said and done, i have a strong feeling that sparky was behind those messages. just like i'm almost sure that he was behind all the "apparently" messages that LO is getting with archived links of our posts. why? because that's exactly how he used to talk to me just to hear my response. the only times we talked at all was when he wanted to bring some new thing that LO had said or done. that without even bringing up he confessed to Brittany he just likes to stir the pot to see what happens. that's his way to try to sympathize with you, to show you that he is on your side. "i bring you all this stuff that you can use against the people you dislike, so that must mean that i'm good in your eyes, right? only a friendly person would do that!" nevermind that even back then, i'd find weird the frequency with which he did it because... sometimes he'd share completely innocent and small messages from LO and i'd have genuinely no idea of how to respond because they were completely useless to prove anything. that's the exact same thing he is doing with LO, but he has upgraded now to just completely lie or intentionally misrepresent everything to self that distorted version back to LO. LO's being played like a fiddle, just like he played all of us for a while until he revealed his true colors. i have no doubt in my mind that only an individual acting in bad faith would seriously try to take me trying to talk about LO scamming her audience, literally going out of their way to copy my words, spamming me with multiple messages even after i blocked their IP by using a VPN, as somehow Courtney being the one to scam everyone because she didn't show the receipts for cat food. but of course that LO only cares about having something, anything, against the sibling that is dennouncing her, so she won't bother to use reason, logic or even check if the allegations are true before just publish them for her audience to stick only with whatever she tells them. they already believe that a 6 year old can be blamed for the abuse perpetrated by an adult after all!

[runthepockets]

Someone reblogged a post on my dash a while ago that said "I don't listen to Ethel Cain's music cus I don't respect straight trans women" and it pissed me off so bad I blocked OP and it still bothers me every now and then. I'm not an Ethel Cain fan and I think anyone is entitled to dislike an artist for any reason (I don't like MCR cus white people talk about them too fucking much, for example), but remarks like that just feel so...visceral and targeted and cruel, often for no reason? You don't respect straight trans women specifically? Why? What is this attitude that straight women are any less at risk of violence or cruelty or vulnerability than any other demographic of women, especially other trans women? How is upholding this idea that a woman is a waste if she fucks dudes & blaming her for "putting herself in violent situations" because she made the "foolish" decision of trusting and loving men progressive in any capacity? It's crazy how much misogyny you can get away with as long as you slap "cis" or "straight" or "white" in front of "women".

Maybe this is bold and fringe to say, but I feel like a lot of hostility toward straight trans people can be boiled down to "cranky cus you can't fuck us, huh?", because why else would you be making weird, targeted remarks about trans women who write music about fucking dudes instead of other girls? People say it's cus we're entitled, self hating assimilationists, but ime this is far from the truth? Every straight trans person I've met has more or less kept to themselves, even the shittier ones. I've also known trans women irl who routinely shit on straight trans girls for no reason other than it's the easiest way to be mean to other women without getting called out, and had other trans guys be icey and cold and dismissive of me irl for being a straight trans dude, like once I was off the table for them as a potential date n fuck prospect suddenly I had nothing of value to say. Like why else are we living in your minds rent free like this, and why are you taking such extreme measures just to ensure we know you don't wanna be around us and don't like us? If it's not weird psychosexual stuff, it's some weird "I'm projecting my trauma with cishets onto you cus you don't have the same amount of patriarchal privilege to back you when I do it" shit, and that's equally as stupid and unproductive and shitty.

Sometimes I really think some trans people are under this idea that we're all supposed to exist for each other and exclusively each other 24/7, and idg how that mindset is any less harmful than cis people expecting us to exist solely for them. It's the same uncomfortable, cagey, judgy environment with the same air of entitlement and circumstantial acceptance either way.

[a-s-levynn]

OKAY, LET'S GET UNCOMFY ! Feel free to ignore as many, (or all!)as you want. 21 / 30 / 62 / 77 /83

Thank you,

I'll put this under a cut because there will be mention of a suicide attempt, mention of drug addiction, implied death, adult themes and just in general sensitive stuff.

Either proceed with caution or just simply skip it, you are not missing out on anything.

21. Have you ever had to hurt anyone emotionally?

This one is interesting because the question implies that it was intentional and no other option but to hurt the person. I think i only had one of these. I mean did hurt people but not exactly because i had to.. So when a friend of mine called me in the middle of the night i had to actually bully her out of suicide. Which was a desperste last resort because i had no idea what to do. Nothing i said seemed to work so in the end i opted for a low blow and started talking shit about the only person she would have been sad to leave alone. The vague idea was that if i can piss her off enough, her mind will be directed away from the razor in her hand. To this day i cannot fathom it actually worked.

30. Who have you never forgiven? Why?

I could say may father but that would not be entirely true true. I mean i wouldn't say i forgave him but i don't hold a grudge against him anymore.

I could say the local dealer who was the reason a friend of mine got hooked and eventually OD-d. But i know why he was dealing and i can hardly hold it agains him.

But i can say myself. Me not being kind to myself in genral, is not attention or sympathy garnering. I genuinly been awful as fuck to a number of people. And not all can be written off as being simply "young and stupid" even if a few years has passed since. But things were said, stuff happend, connections destroyed and there is no going back. I know having resentment towards myself is not changing any of that, but it helps me stay grounded in a way.

62. Do you wish you could start tomorrow with a clean slate? Why/why not?

As a tought exercise i'd entertain the idea of a clean slate but if i'm honest.. I would not start over. As much as the shitty parts sucked and how many fuckups i made along the way, without them i would not be who i am today. And i know i say i don't really like myself but it is who i am. I wouldn't want to change that, because i don't know how to be anything else. It wouldn't be me. Besides, starting over when i'm just starting to accept all my flaws and shortcomings and admit that i am human at the end of the day would feel like cheap way out.

77. What’s your kink?

This is a funky one for me because i really don't have a healthy relationship with sex at all. But i don't think i have any unusual kinks. Tho i am also a control freak and not in a cute way when it comes to it. And that has some build in innate need for control and all. So that's definitely there..

83. Do you like when people guess how you’re feeling?

It depends but i'm not really fond of preconcieved assumptions when you have the choice to just.. ask. I'm not completely sure why but people jut always assume i'm programmed to be negative, dismissive, nitpicky and in general passive aggressive about everything which is just not true. I might be a complete fuckup of a wet cat in human disguise in general but that doesn't mean i don't care. People tend to forget that i'm basically an excited plankton floating around in awe of the world, if we consider the actual capacity of my brainpower on a daily basis.

[ladylingua]

I think one of the very worst things about the modern day internet experience is the lack of privacy

by which I mean both this whole thing where apparently large groups of people think nothing of the idea of filming a stranger without their knowledge and posting it online to capitalize off of them secretly, and not only do they think that’s perfectly fine but often they expect the stranger should be grateful to have been chosen to go viral and have what they thought was a relatively private moment (or at least a fleeting public moment) be consumed and dissected by millions online without consent

but also the way that because the internet is such a small place and is basically consists of like 3 social media sites + Wikipedia these days and it can feel like the only place for so many people, conversations that would be appropriate to be had in person get out online and the fact that they’re public makes them grotesque

as an example- like I absolutely get why it’s funny to roast the wealthy people who thought it was a good idea to go on a poorly designed submarine to visit the graveyard of other wealthy people- but do people not realize that the friends and family members of the crew can also see you making jokes about how their loved ones are for sure dead, these people who are anxiously awaiting news while fully aware their loved ones are on borrowed time if they’re still alive, knowing chances for rescue are slim and any survivors are sitting there watching the oxygen deplete for three more days, it’s fucking gut wrenching to consider

those people shouldn’t have to be on the same internet as people sharing memes and talking about how stupid everyone on the sub is. It happens constantly with so many tragedies and awful events, things I just think are much funnier when shared in a group text thread that will never actually be seen by anyone who would be devastated by them, or said to a group at brunch and then will float into the ether never to resurface. Specifically said to people who know you and your capacity for empathy and care towards others, and can weigh that context into how they assess the larger point you’re making in a joking way