#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

[corseque]

On the scale of 1 (Rise of Skywalker) to 10 (Shadowbringer/Endwalker), where would you place Veilguard?

critical post

I’ve burst into enraged tears like 5 times since I finished it, which is not nearly even close to as many times as Rise of Skywalker, but still 5 times too many. Just the shallowness of the writing, the obviousness, the incredible frustration at the simplicity, the ignoring so much of my favorite character in order to make a stupidly simple plot work, the horrendous time I had trying to ignore Rook’s annoying stupid fuckass pov while just trying to self-insert myself into the end of my favorite fictional character of all time’s story after waiting 10 years. I screamed in frustration that I had to hear the painfully obvious commentary these brand newcomer characters who I did not give a shit about, explaining to me like a toddler how I should feel about revelations I have been writing about for 10 years, especially when what they were saying was stupid as fuck. I cried at the thought of so many cutscenes and so much effort went into stories I found very forgettable and went nowhere, while they were able to only scrounge up like 10 total animated shots reuniting Solas and Lavellan. I mourn that I could not make any decisions in a BioWare game. I mourn Solas’ story so much, and probably will for years. I will never get over the way they talked down to him and never listened to him for even a second, lest they actually have to write a branching path into their game. I hate that the theme was regret but Rook regrets nothing ever so (shrugs) regret doesn’t affect them or mean anything to them. I mourn the loss of the voice and point of view of his people, the ones he was fighting for, the ones who are alive. I mourn that it turns out that he’s just a stupid feral dog who is 100% wrong about everything always and he always has been from the beginning of time. I cried that the game said the answer was that Solas should NOT try to help his people and they never even discussed it as a philosophical question or the ethics of it or anything, or playing as a character so dense they never once even wondered if accidentally freeing the gods killed more people overall than the veil coming down would have. (We avoided this question like the plague, lest we feel less like purely Good Heroes who could talk down to the gods with righteous fury). I mourn that I’m never going to know what would have happened without the Veil. I feel so stupid for thinking that elves or spirits as factions would appear in any capacity with lines and perspectives in this game. I’m so angry at how safe and smoothed over everything in the setting is, and how it felt like the main characters never struggled with anything and have nothing to say. I can’t believe Dragon Age is so shallow and unsatisfying and head-empty. I mourn that the story of Dragon Age is Over to me and I will never play another game.

I’ve also cried a few times at the completely separated and individual imagery and music in the last scene. I’ve cried that my favorite character didn’t die in any world after 10 years of being at death’s door. I’ve cried at the thought of him being a little worm spirit, and that I was right about him the whole time. I cried when activating Felassan’s crystal in the final fight and seeing all the buffs. I cried when I turned the page and realized the default inquisitor was exactly the same as my personal Lavellan, down to hair style, eye color, hair color, vallaslin removed. I cried when I realized Solas thought he should have died as a spirit rather than be born. I cried that the main story Dragon Age has been telling the whole time has been about the reconciliation and freeing of my favorite fictional character. I cried that Solas and Lavellan got married in the end, when I genuinely wasn’t expecting either of them to even be alive. They’re both still alive and in love in every single world. I can’t wrap my head around that.

I have no idea where to put it. It’s a few high highs but some intolerably low fucking lows. It could have been so much worse but the bar is on the fucking floor. I go back and forth between moderate enjoyment to just being so angry. It could have been so much more and I do not know who to bite for it.

I have no idea.

[olderthannetfic]

if you don't mind me sending yet another personal questions on anon... i'm in my mid-20s, single, and pro-abortion because i'd rather fetuses not be born rather than abandoned or died of hunger or stunted from malnutrition. i'm from a third-world country so it's very common here and it's very sad to me. i'm not exactly poor though, more like middle class, i guess?

recently my coworkers talked about getting married and having children. one of them said "i've seen old people without children and no one takes care of them. also, an old person's happiness is mostly from watching their children grow up. that can never be replaced with anything." it sounds a little bit weird to me, but i'm not sure if it's because i'm single and have never looked up about parenting and children before, so i asked "but isn't it selfish to give life to children because you want someone to take care of you/you don't want to die alone? and aren't there other sources of happiness?" they reiterated that watching your children grow up is a different kind of happiness and that "having someone to take care of you is not the main goal, but it's gained anyways" but the way they said it sounds like it's the main goal to me because they don't state any other goals like "i want a footballer kid" or "i want a kid to take them on trips" or even "to continue the bloodline in the name of evolution". i honestly don't really get it.

i mean, they're free to think whatever they want as long as they don't abandon their children, but it brings me to a dilemma. i'm scared of dying alone and missing out on watching my own children grow up. but also, i don't think i'm ready to have children due to my mental capacity and lack of parenting skills. i'm scared of being selfish; what if my child turns out unhappy and depressed like me? what even is MY main goal? i have so many that i want to do, like travelling around the world, but eventually all my goals will be fulfilled and i'll have spare money, but i'll be less mobile when i grow up, and being pregnant is more dangerous as you grow older.

i'm still single so i think i have time to think about it, but it creeps on me like a ticking timer. since you and some of your readers are older and have probably went through this dilemma, what do you think? what even brought you to the point where you're set on having/not having children?

--

Yes, people are absolute morons about children.

In the context of the US, we have shit health care and a shameful dearth of ways to care for our elderly, disabled, or terminally ill. Most of the work falls to family. It is absolutely true that people with kids have a better shot of reasonable end of life care...

However, that's going to depend on where you live, and you could easily end up estranged from your kids or your kid could get hit by a bus or something. Treating something as major as parenthood as a guarantee of in-home nursing is fucking stupid in any country.

Different kind of happiness, my ass.

I'm happy I managed to have a kid after leaving it pretty late. My baby is delightful. I still don't see how this is that different from a best friend or a hobby. I think a lot of people are just boring and have no idea how to be rabidly passionate about their hobbies. They also have no idea how to build emotional intimacy. If they can't make a bff who'd nurse them through cancer, they probably can't instill those feelings in their kid either.

Most people find conception just fine up through the mid 30s. Late 30s even. I had to do IVF because I waited into my 40s. The pregnancy was still fine. The birth sucked because I didn't yell at the hospital staff forcefully enough or have a good enough advocate with me, but it still turned out okay. The medical part should be a relatively small part of your calculation unless you have reason to think the local medical system will make pregnancy particularly dangerous.

--

For me... I'd always assumed I'd have one. I didn't find the right partner, but I did run out of time. I pictured what my life would look like in five years with a kid. What would we be doing together? And I liked that picture, so I went for it.

One thing that helped a lot was that my mother was perpetually too busy running a business but did genuinely care. She left me alone to pursue my own hobbies a lot and did not hover because she was always doing ten thousand things, including her own stack of hobbies.

Most parenting content is about as pleasant as cleaning out a latrine. It's all full of "Do these seventy-two things every single morning or you're a Bad Mother™" and pretending like kids need your overbearing personality squashing them 24/7.

I like to joke "Well, you have to know which end goes up, and you have to feed them occasionally."

Thousands of years of imperfect people did manage not to drop the baby on its head. We even have vaccines now. You would be fine.

Also, my mother absolutely did drag me around the world when I was little. She got a chance to go visit Indonesia with a gamelan she used to play with when I was four and a half, so off we went. I had to completely change how I ate because it was all random homestays in the mid 80s, and the food they had was the food they had. Mom didn't think twice about this.

The biggest parenting error people make—not just personal happiness error but child emotional health error—is stopping living their lives because kids somehow need some bullshit normie fantasy of staying home forever and doing nothing interesting. You need to make a lot of time to do things with the kid, but those can be the things you actually like, not shit from a canned list of child appropriate activities.

If you are never "selfish", you will only teach your child that they cannot have both a kid of their own and a life.

Children need consistency, but that consistency is you caring about them and being around, not you giving up ever having personal time or interests.

[sharpth1ng]

when stu was dating tatum (because billy told him to) did he actually like/“love” her in a romantic way ?(ik love is a strong word) because in debaser/wom he talks about how he actually liked her and all of their friends and kinda how he misses(?) all of them.

is this like strictly platonic and sexual? do you think he liked her sexually(well because they fucked so that might be a stupid question😭) like obviously he loves billy and they have a deeper relationship than anyone with anything and if he did like anyone else it’s definitely not the same as him and billy’s relationship, but is he like billy in the way that he couldn’t have a “meaningful relationship” with someone other than billy?

SORRY FOR RAMBLING ITS LIKE 1:00 AND IM REREADING DEBASER

Stu is really complicated in terms of the way he values other people, but no, he didn't meaningfully love Tatum. If she had lived long enough to threaten his and Billy's plan then he wouldn't be remembering her in a nostalgic way.

Stu is different from Billy in that he's significantly more social, he craves social interaction, so while he doesn't really value people in a normal way he does want and enjoy having friends. I don't think he really considered what the effect of killing all of his friends would be, he was so high on Billy and the idea of being together after that he wasn't really prepared to lose a bunch of social stimulation all at once. In that way he does miss people like Tatum and Randy. They were fun to him, he enjoyed their presence in his life, but he also sees them as disposable in a way that Billy isn't.

I do think that Stu has the capacity for affection and attraction to more people than Billy is, he'd probably be (unethically) non-monogamous in a world where Billy doesn't exist. Realistically I think Stu has done a lot of cheating, like he'd be dating Casey and hooking up with some random other girl at a party when she's not there. The only person he's ever been emotionally faithful to is Billy, so in that way yeah, I don't think he could have a meaningful relationship with someone else, but I do think the relationships he would have would be a little more substantial, and could at least have the potential of being a bit healthier.

In contrast to Billy, I think Stu would have more of an ability to deepen relationships over time and there's people like Leslie he's attached to in a different way. I don't necessarily think that deepening happens a lot of the time though, because he often behaves in ways that make people less willing to let him get closer.

Stu's most well-adjusted non-Billy romantic future would be something like solo-poly where he wouldn't have any primary partners, but that's really hopeful lmao. Even if he got there eventually he would still spend a good chunk of his life just being a serial cheater. He'd be the kind of guy who just wouldn't really take you seriously when you find out he's cheating. He'd be like "Aw shit, sucks you feel that way but this situation is kinda harsh now so I'm gonna dip. No hard feelings!"

I think there's some chance of him meeting people who would have the patience to teach him that there are ways to have less exclusive relationships without being such an asshole about it. But realistically even the version of him sort of trying to do it right is mostly doing that because its annoying when people are always mad at you all the time, and he's still going to be a dick about things. Other people's emotions just don't affect him as much as Billy's do, so he's often pretty emotionally insensitive.

To get back to Tatum, Stu genuinely liked her personality, found it fun to hang out with her, and yeah, was sexually attracted to her. Sex isn't always romantic, some people can genuinely just enjoy having sex as a fun activity with friends. It's fun to do the feel-good activity with people you like and I think that's how it was for Stu, and Tatum as well to an extent. Because I think Tatum was also significantly more attached to Sidney than to Stu.

The thing is that there are parts of Stu that he just wouldn't know how to share with someone other than Billy, and part of the reason he can share them with Billy is because they grew up together. Stu's very aware that he has urges and thoughts that would get him put on an FBI watchlist, things that would alienate most of the people in his life if they knew.

Billy grew up developing the same urges with him. They've been escalating together for years, and if Billy wasn't around Stu likely would have been doing it on his own. If he did have someone else I think that relationship would be a lot more like the 'peer-pressure' relationship that some people think he and Billy had. It would have been someone Stu manipulated into killing with him, because Stu fundamentally doesn't want to be alone.

At the end of the day, the events of Debaser are a learning experience for Stu. No, he doesn't value Tatum the way he does Billy, he wasn't romantically attracted to her, but a non-Billy friendship is something that did bring value to his life.

In a cynical way I think women in his life have been willing to do emotional labor that men haven't because yk, toxic masculinity and gender roles. As a result I think he really does like having a close friendship with women like Tatum and Tammy, and he doesn't need the sexual aspect he had with Tatum for it to be worthwhile for him. While he would trade that friendship for Billy, he would much rather be allowed to have both.

Im also sorry for rambling 😭 but there you go

[jheselbraum]

Do you think the GF fandom tends to wobbify Stan a lot more than Ford?

Oh absolutely. And part of it is standard fandom projection, you know? Which is fine, it's whatever. People do it to Ford a lot, too. No biggie. People do it because they see themselves in Stan and that's fine, it just gets in the way of more serious thematic discussion, though back in the day it was a Lot worse people were a lot less chill about the whole thing to the point where if you so much as dared to point out that Stan is a criminal without the qualifiers that he's a criminal because he had no familial support as he was maturing into an adult and was homeless so he kind of had to in order to get by, you'd get fucking demolished.

And like, it's because a lot of people relate to having shitty parents and being told by teachers that they're not smart enough and being homeless or at least really fucking poor. Like, it's just kind of something that happens with fandom, you know? And it's fine, mostly, fandom is a sandbox and a lot of these people are projecting so they can work through real world shit that's happening in their lives (you guys have no idea how many unposted "Ford has some kind of mystery chronic illness that's just absolutely wreaking havoc on his daily life" fics I wrote after I got diagnosed). And it's not like there's zero justification for it, Stan's a very sympathetic character in the show canonically, despite his status as a wanted criminal (presumably internationally), and a bit of a softie at times.

The problem is when the fanon woobification is used in place of actual textual evidence when people try to have serious discussions about the canon material and not your fanfic where Stan is just. Just real sad about his brother, why won't he thank him? He's sad!

This chart from @itsabouttimex2 explains the cycle very succinctly.

Like, I'd argue that Stan isn't even the most woobified character in Gravity Falls by volume (that honor goes to Fiddleford to be honest) but he's the character whose woobification is the most visible and has the most capacity to grind any serious discussion about anything even slightly negative that happened to Stan or, god forbid, was caused by Stan to a halt. Again, this problem has gotten better over the years, despite the fandom's recent "relapse" for lack of a better term, but (and I say this knowing exactly who I was in 2017) sometimes in order to talk about something you like in a fan context, you have to take a step back and remind yourself of who these characters actually are and what the text of a work is actually trying to say. Like, "death of the author" as a way to interpret a work is incredibly popular in fandom at large, not just in Gravity Falls, and it has its merits, but I feel like it's gone from "the meaning of the text is not derived from the author's intention, but the reader's interpretation" to "the meaning of the text is not derived from the text, but the reader"

"Sometimes the curtains are just blue" has already been used to justify completely abandoning the idea of critically analyzing a work (to the point where many reading this will see the word "critical" and assume that I'm talking about literally criticizing something and not analyzing a work to determine its meaning, its purpose, and effectiveness at conveying those two things) and some people will take that a step further and go "Sometimes the curtains are red, because red is better than blue. Sometimes morally."

I didn't expect to go off to yes or no question like that, it just kind of happened. I don't know, I prefer discussions about this show where I don't have to step over a dozen people who think I'm talking about the version of Stanley Pines that lives in their head and always Responds Correctly to whatever personal issue they might have.

[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.

[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~🧨🔥

[kohakhearts]

spare blorbo thoughts? blorbo thoughts tonight my liege?

this ask is SO old i'm sorry, i had to really think about what blorbo thoughts i HAVEN'T shared yet jdgfhjdk

so anyway, tonight i will be defending my thesis that satogou are kind of awful for each other and we are not capitalizing on their toxicity enough.

the obvious divide with them is in how they approach relationships. goh has a messed up idea of what friendship actually entails, and i'm guessing in his head relationships are relatively transactional. you have to give something to get something, and because he feels so inadequate, he doesn't put him in a position where he freely accepts what he sees as charity, because he doesn't believe in his capacity to return it. it's why he can safely accept being chloe's friend as long as he doesn't actually call her his friend. it's why he accepts ash as his friend, as if he is doing ash a favour, but then rejects him when he begins to see ash's drive to help others - because that's a threat to their friendship, which up until that point had been based on mutual interests and capabilities (after all, they were both crazy enough to jump on a lugia).

the biggest reason i think he'd have this mindset is because of how we see him with horace in his childhood flashbacks. he helps horace through the forest. the next day, he brings him lunch. they make a promise. horace doesn't uphold it. so goh feels he has given something and gotten nothing, and decides then that it's safer just to not give at all. his mindset changes because ash doesn't have that belief, and he just kind of...gives people everything, asks for nothing in return, and then...fucks off, lol

ash sees friendships in a completely different way. distance and time don't take away from the value of his friendships. memories make his friendships fonder. but he wasn't always like that, either. at the end of the johto arc, he has a hard time letting go too. even at the end of dp you can see how hard it is for him to say good-bye. but the memories of his friends and all they've been through together are lessons he carries with him, and he carries them well! he just...doesn't talk about them much.

so their disconnect would come i think in that, without ash around to remind him, i don't think goh would have an easy time accepting that they're still friends. it's been too long; nothing's been given or taken. do they even know each other anymore? even if they still talk, it wouldn't be the same. but the only thing worse than going back to how he was before he met ash would be being clingy, so i don't think he'd take the initative to start journeying with ash again or something. and because ash doesn't understand his view, he would probably never offer unless they just happened to cross paths. but i think by that point, goh would be resistant, and then it would be a whole "we're through" situation all over again.

i think they're the kind of bad for each other that is actually kind of good for each other, though. if that makes sense lmao. like they're on opposites ends of the same emotional spectrum, and both extremes are kind of not super healthy or conducive to maintaining friendships in the long-term. in order to maintain their own relationship, they would have to find a healthy middle area, which i think kind of happens during the course of jn and shows in how thematically their good-bye feels very different than some of the other departures in the series.

not sure if this makes any sense but basically they're "attachment issues" in opposite directions lmao. avoidant x abandonment issues. and i'd love to see that explored more in ways that aren't just a venue for inevitable hurt/comfort fluff, and especially in a way that doesn't excuse the fact that goh can be a jerk when he feels his relationships are threatened - because he can be, and i would love to see more how that can cause conflict between him and ash, rather than how it would lead to them having to break up and make up, yknow??

[1425fivefive]

every day I wake up and I tell myself: today is the day I am going to be normal about learned behavior. and every day I am wrong.

like I can’t stop thinking about how LB lando draws a comparison between the way charles treated him and the way he’s treating oscar here:

…filming marketing videos, it’s almost impossible to believe that this Oscar and the Oscar in Lando’s driver room after races are the same person.

Lando realizes that’s probably how Charles feels about him. Like the Lando he sees on race weekends and the Lando he fucked are two different people.

It’s a relief, to finally know how it feels.

and here:

Lando felt like nothing more than something for Charles to use. The human equivalent of a stress ball.

But if Oscar wants to show up every weekend and let Lando use him like a toy…

but like. the difference between the two relationships is so crystal clear from the very beginning and one of the ways i love that this is shown is through sex.

Because charles seems to enjoy demeaning/humiliating lando in bed because he knows lando hates it:

Lando hated when Charles did that. Called Lando a “good boy” in this slightly mocking tone, like he knew exactly how much it set Lando’s teeth on edge and didn’t care, maybe even enjoyed it.

and:

Lando felt powerful, for a moment, but Charles ruined it when he murmured, “Such a good boy, Lando,” his voice amused and mocking.

Lando jerked back like he’d been slapped. “Fuck off.”

Charles just laughed, clearly pleased with himself…

whereas lando only seems to enjoy being mean in bed once he realizes how much oscar loves it.

Lando knows he’s crossed a line the second the words leave his mouth, his stomach doing that awful twisty thing it does whenever he says some stupid shit without thinking.

He’s about to apologize when he notices that Oscar doesn’t look—offended, exactly. His cheeks are flushed, clearly humiliated by Lando’s words, but his eyes are dark, lips parted. It’s almost indistinguishable from the look Oscar gets after Lando’s come in his mouth.

If anything, Oscar looks—turned on.

Lando’s knocked sideways by it. It’s just—normally people like Lando despite his capacity to be a bit of a twat. But Oscar seems to, like, get off on it or something. Seems to like when Lando’s a dickhead.

I mean before this scene it’s heavily implied that this isn’t what lando is normally like in bed. it's only after this scene that he starts leaning into the mild degradation when they hook up and the first few times it’s kind of unintentional:

Seeing it, Lando gets the absurd impulse to call Oscar a good boy. Lando’s never called anyone that before in his life.

and

He means it as a joke, sort of, but Oscar’s breath catches, eyes dark and desperate when they meet Lando’s.

and

But the idea of Oscar not touching himself because Lando told him to, when Lando hadn’t even meant anything by it, had just been trying not to fuck up whatever was going on between them in his driver room.

and then he does start doing it more intentionally, cause now he knows oscar goes absolutely crazy for it!!

anyway you've talked a lot about the importance of parallels in LB and i'm just so! obsessed! with how the parallels between lando and charles - especially during sex - just highlight how different the two relationships are, even though lando spends 60 000 words trying to convince himself that oscar is to him what he was to charles.

so i'm already losing my mind over this and then!? I got to the end?! and read this!?

Oscar hums. “Yeah, I—I figured, honestly.” He pauses again. “Do you still—”

“No,” Lando says firmly, pulling back and meeting Oscar’s gaze. “No, Osc, it was—it was nothing like this.”

and I just wanted to scream and cry and clap because yes you sweet stupid baby angel boy you’re exactly right it was never anything like this.

anyway I just love this fic so so much and I think you’re such an incredibly talented writer thank you so much for putting this out into the world <3

...

also if I have in any way misunderstood/misinterpreted any of the snippets I have included here please!! feel free to correct me!!

ANON I AM IN LOVE WITH YOU. this is literally the best ask of all time, and i've been holding off on responding to it because i wasn't sure how to make the ask shorter on the dash. BUT I DON'T CARE BECAUSE IT'S SO LOVELY AND OUGHHHH. like YES it's all about how lando and the reader think these relationships mirror each other, only to realize they're not the same at all. it's all about lando trying to consciously and unconsciously emulate charles but never really being able to. and then that scene late in the fic between charles and lando at daniel's birthday party is just all about lando realizing how empty it is to live the way charles lives, where you're never letting yourself feel things deeply. like lando really does feel it in the deep heart's core and he isn't capable of anything else, and that's why he and charles can never be the same. the whole fic is about lando letting himself want and the juxtaposition of charles who can never let himself want fully

and oscar's also not lando! oscar actually does stand up for himself when lando is a dick to him after silverstone, and i think lando probably never would've done that with charles. at the end of the day, oscar and lando just are not and could never be lando and charles

mwah mwah mwah kissing your big brain, thank you for sending this, it made me fall in love with my fic all over again 💕

[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.

[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.

[asharaks]

CRITICALLY UNACCLAIMED FAR CRY 5 MENTION???? how many letters in asharaks ATE!! it’s nice to see another fc5 lover in the wild. the grip that game has on me (it could be so good if it was good could be so ) if you ever feel like talking about it i would love to hear any thought you have 💛

i’m gonna be 100% honest with you boss i read this message and was like To Be Honest i think this one’s beyond redemption — the far cry games are fundamentally about killing people in increasingly horrifying ways and numbers, for such deserving crimes as: being Drugged; being Brainwashed; being Foreign; and being Over There. far cry 5 is a muddled mess of a game without a clear message or storyline, and clearly exists for ubisoft to show off their super sick combat mechanics, WHICH, it must be said, are super sick. i love you wingsuit.

then i thought. hey ash. aren’t you right neow in the process of writing a far cry 5 fic in which faith survives. isn’t it a core tenet of your playthroughs that faith survives. and the answer to that is a resounding Yes.

SO: my far cry 5 beautiful vision. first, as mentioned above, faith lives. we find out more about her, about the position of Faith Seed; her terror of joseph is explored, her past as a heroin addict, the transition from rachel jessop to faith seed. the scared girl who was groomed by these men into their weird fucked up babydoll toy, the feminine face of the apocalypse — why do the brothers need a Faith, why do they need to seemingly recruit vulnerable women into this position of simultaneous power and dependence? is rachel jessop still in there, and what would it take to bring her home? so, we keep faith; instead of gunning her down, we save her, we bring her out of the bliss and into a place where she is — if not safe, because no one here is safe — at least advocated for, looked after, part of a community.

second: the deputy. i love my dep; i am at all times rotating them in my mind palace. but i would give them more intentionality: this person is a sheriff’s deputy with a capacity for incredible violence, who doesn’t bat an eyelid at being told to gun down local citizens en masse. ten minutes into the game, you’re hurling dynamite from a moving car while driving down the road. i’d lean hard into the nonverbal protagonist aspect, make ‘em more fucked up: more nightmares, more depersonalisation. why are they so vulnerable to the cult’s brainwashing? well, that’s because they’re already fucked in the head; their boundaries are eroded to nothing almost right away, their capacity to see other humans as people, their us-vs-them mentality: i want to see all of this explored properly, with more personal quests, more ambient dialogue, more to root the deputy as a person who lived in this town before it all went to shit and to explain why their first instinct in any situation is murder. also how they do that thing with their bones (break every single one then get up and walk it off).

if i was doing a serious rewrite of the game, i’d want to see, more than anything, more focus. i want to see thematic resonance, the bones of which are there but completely missed in the original. the ideas about pack mentality, about depersonalisation, dehumanisation, weaponisation — all those good -ations — with the deputy, with the thousands of same-faced enemies in the same outfits with the same hair. i’d make that more intentional, too: make it clear that the deputy is not right in the head, that these people they’re gunning down are a product of their own worldview. maybe half of them aren’t even real; by the time jacob gets done fucking with you, who knows! lean into that sense of heavy paranoia, the gaslighting, the impossibility of knowing who’s a friend and who’s an enemy: i’d make it much much harder to tell where reality ends and the deputy’s bloodlust begins, give the player more consequences for killing civilians and non-combatants, and a lot more fucked up dream/bliss sequences.

also, let the deputy experience feelings about the way they’re used. they’re turned into a weapon, put through incredible torture, brainwashing, abuse: they’re drugged, tattooed, flayed, exploded, set on fire, made to kill their friends. all of this should take a toll, and i want to see more of that. make it harder to tell enemies from a distance, slap friendly npc’s faces on some of those hundreds of bodies you mow down: lean into the horror of it all, emphasise the scale of the violence that the deputy commits. acknowledge that the deputy does all this because they’re told to, not because they choose to: they’re made into a weapon of war, and turned against people who used to be their townspeople, who they should have protected. and yes, as a cop that’s a tenuous thread but let’s be real ubisoft aren’t doing acab here.

the themes i personally see most clearly in fc5 are like… yeah the depersonalisation of it all. the dehumanisation. jacob’s brainwashing literally has you fighting faceless opponents, people with bags over their heads; more of that, even outside the red rooms, even outside the bliss: eliminate any sense of safety or control, any faith you might have in your perception of reality.

also, in an ideal world, the companions would have more depth and development, and more personal quest stuff; at the risk of turning this action game into a story based rpg, i think it would have benefited from having more relationship mechanics. not romance, but, like… companions react to the things you do. i shouldn’t be able to shoot a civilian in the head and have my companions shrug it off. the plot of the game itself is pretty weak, but frankly, no-one’s here for the plot: i don’t really have much i’d change there, except the absolute bastard of a final battle with joseph — i don’t hate the endings, but they don’t have much resonance for me, as the culmination of a game that was largely about exploration and doing mass murder in inventive ways. i think the deputy should die at the end, is my hot take; that guy needs to be put down like a sick dog.

i'd keep the seed brothers being psychosexually obsessed w you, bc otherwise what are we even doing here; i still think you should get to kill them, ideally with your bare hands, just to make it gayer and hotter.

[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.

[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.”