#i think that is fundamental to what i feel about this

[despondent-beauty]

This is how jokes work though, Catholicism entirely aside. (Like, I'm anti-religion.) Jokes aren't just random mouth noises. They're always rooted in some sort of perception about the world. Exaggerated, juxtaposed, hypothesized, sure, whatever, but they're still rooted in some actual perception of the world.

Idk, a lot of people think jokes are fundamentally meaningless, but then how would they even understand that it's a joke and not just a random string of sounds?

I guess OP wants the jokes to align with their perception of truth as it relates to what Catholicism is? Which is fine. That's why it's okay to get mad at jokes. They DO make claims about the nature of reality, even if those claims aren't presented surface-level. For instance, a joke where you spin an elaborate take explaining why Earth is actually neither flat nor a globe because it's actually the outside of a dome that hides an Eldritch horror locked away by God, this joke's actual meaning would be that conspiracy theorists need to jump through an asinine number of hoops to believe what they believe -- but they still persist even in the face of the most blatant evidence to the contrary.

Idk, jokes are an artform, and it feels like a lot of people can identify a funny joke but can't produce one worth shit, and then they get offended and confused when you don't like their joke or point out why it's a bad joke. Then they fall back onto the "jokes aren't supposed to make sense" lie.

I don’t care if you make fun of Catholicism as long as it’s accurate! The best humour has its roots in the truth.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic is five

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in SEATTLE TONIGHT (Feb 19) for with DAN SAVAGE, and in TORONTO on SUNDAY (Feb 23) at Another Story Books. More tour dates here.

Five years and two weeks ago, I parted ways with Boing Boing, a website I co-own and wrote for virtually every day for 19 years ago. Two weeks later – five years ago from today – I started my own blog, Pluralistic, which is, therefore, half a decade old, as of today.

I've written an annual rumination on this most years since.

Here's the fourth anniversary post (on blogging as a way to organize thoughts for big, ambitious, synthetic works):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/fore/#synthesis

The third (on writing without analytics):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/drei-drei-drei/#now-we-are-three

The second (on "post own site, share everywhere," AKA "POSSE"):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/19/now-we-are-two/#two-much-posse

I wasn't sure what I would write about today, but I figured it out yesterday, in the car, driving to my book-launch event with Wil Wheaton at LA's Diesel Books (tonight's event is in Seattle, with Dan Savage):

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-with-dan-savage-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1106741957989

I was listening to the always excellent Know Your Enemy podcast, where the hosts were interviewing Chris Hayes:

https://know-your-enemy-1682b684.simplecast.com/episodes/pay-attention-w-chris-hayes-OA3C8ZMp

The occasion was the publication of Hayes's new book, The Sirens' Call, about the way technology interacts with our attention:

https://sirenscallbook.com

The interview was fascinating, and steered clear of moral panic about computers rotting our brains (shades of Socrates' possibly apocryphal statements that reading, rather than memorizing, was destroying young peoples' critical faculties). Instead, Hayes talked about how empty it feels to read an algorithmic feed, how our attention gets caught up by it, sometimes for longer than we planned, and then afterward, we feel like our attention and time were poorly spent. He talked about how reflective experiences – like reading a book with his kid before school – are shattered by pocket-buzzes as news articles came in. And he talked about how satisfying it was to pay protracted attention to something important, and how hard that was.

Listening to Hayes's description, I realized two things: first, he was absolutely right, those are terrible things; and second, I barely experience them (though, when I do, it makes me feel awful). Both of these are intimately bound up with my blogging and social media habits.

15 years ago, I published "Writing in the Age of Distraction," an article about preserving your attention in a digital world so you could get writing done. We live in a very different world, but the advice still holds up:

https://www.locusmag.com/Features/2009/01/cory-doctorow-writing-in-age-of.html

In particular, I advised readers to turn off all their alerts. This is something I've done since before the smartphone era, tracking down the preferences that kept programs like AIM, Apple Mail and Google Reader from popping up an alert when a new item appeared. This is absolutely fundamental and should be non-negotiable. When I heard Hayes describe how his phone buzzes in his pocket whenever there is breaking news, I was actually shocked. Do people really allow their devices to interrupt them on a random reinforcement schedule? I mean, no wonder the internet makes people go crazy. I'm not a big believer in BF Skinner, but I think it's well established that any stimulus that occurs at random intervals is impossible to get used to, and shocks you anew every time it recurs.

Rather than letting myself get pocket-buzzed by the news, I have an RSS reader. You should use an RSS reader, seriously:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise

I periodically check in with my reader to see what stories have been posted. The experience of choosing to look at the news is profoundly different from having the news blasted at you. I still don't always choose wisely – I'm as guilty of scrolling my phone when I could be doing something more ultimately satisfying as anyone else – but the affect of being in charge of when and how I consume current events is the opposite of the feeling of being at the beck-and-call of any fool headline writer who hits "publish."

This is even more important in the age of smartphones. Whenever you install an app, turn off its notifications. If you forget and an app pushes you an update ("Hi, this is the app you used to pay your parking meter that one time! We're having a 2% off sale on parking spots in a different city from the one you're in now and we wanted to make sure you stopped whatever you were doing and found out about it RIGHT NOW!") then turn off notifications for that app. Consider deleting it. Your phone should buzz when you're expecting a call, or an important message.

Note I said important message. I also turn off notifications for most of the apps I use that have a direct-messaging function. I check in with my group chats periodically, but I never get interrupted by friends across town or across the world posting photos of lunch or kvetching about the guy who farted next to them on the subway. I look at those chats when I'm taking a break, not when I'm trying to get stuff done. It's really nice to stay on top of your friends' lives without feeling low-grade resentment for how they interrupted your creative fog with a ganked Tiktok video of a zoomer making fun of a boomer for getting mad at a millennial for quoting Osama bin Laden. There's times when it makes sense to turn on group-chat notifications – like when you're on a group outing and trying to locate one another – but the rest of the time, turn it off.

Now, there are people I need to hear from urgently, who do get to buzz my pockets when something important comes up – people I'm working on a project with, say, or my wife and kid. But I also have all those people trained to send me emails unless it's urgent. You know the norm we have about calling someone out of the blue being kind of gross and rude? That's how you should feel about making someone's pocket buzz, unless it's important. Send those people emails.

I visit my email in between other tasks and clear out my inbox. If that sounds impossible, I have some suggestions for how to manage it:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/dec/21/keeping-email-address-secret-spambots

Tldr? Get you some mail rules:

add everyone you correspond with to an address book called "people I know"

filter emails from anyone in the "people I know" address book into a high priority inbox, which you just treat as your regular inbox

look at the unfiltered inbox (full of people you've never corresponded with) every day or two and reply to messages that need replying (and those people will thereafter be filtered into the "people I know" inbox)

filter any message containing the world "unsubscribe" into a folder called "mailing lists"

if you're subscribed to mailing lists that you feel you can't leave because it would be impolite, filter them into a folder called "mailing lists" unless the message contains your name (so you can reply promptly if someone mentions you on the list)

The point here is to manage your attention. You decide when you want to get non-urgent communications, and mail-app automation automatically flags the stuff that you are most likely to want to see. For extra credit: adopt a "suspense file" that lets you manage other peoples' emails to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/26/one-weird-trick/#todo

Now, let's talk about algorithmic feeds. Lots of phosphors have been spilled on this subject, and critics of The Algorithm have an unfortunately propensity to buy into the self aggrandizement of soi-dissant evil sorcerer tech bros who claim they can "hack your dopamine loops" by programming an algorithmic feed. I think this is bullshit. Mind-control rays are nonsense, whether they are being promoted by Rasputin or a repentant Prodigal Tech Bro:

https://conversationalist.org/2020/03/05/the-prodigal-techbro/

But I hate algorithmic feeds. To explain why, I should explain how much I love non-algorithmic feeds. I follow a lot of people on several social media services, and I almost never feel the need to look at trending topics, suggested posts, or anything resembling the "For You" feed. Sure, there's times when I want to turn on the ole social TV and see what's on – the digital equivalent of leaving the TV on in a hotel room while I unpack and iron my suit – but those times are rare.

Mostly what I get is a feed of the things that my friends think are noteworthy enough to share. Some of that stuff is "OC" (material they've posted themselves), but the majority of it is stuff they're boosting from the feeds of their friends. Now, I say friend but I don't know the majority of the people I follow. I have a parasocial relationship (these get an undeserved bad rap) with them.

We're "friends" in the sense that I think they have interesting taste. There's people I've followed for more than a decade without exchanging a single explicit communication. I think they're cool, and I repost the cool stuff they post, so the people who follow me can see it. Reposting is a way of collaborating with other people who've opted into sharing their attention-management with you:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/27/probably/

Reposting with a comment? Even better – you're telling people why to pay attention to that thing, or, more importantly, why they can safely ignore it if it's not their thing (what Bruce Sterling memorably calls an "attention conservation notice"). This is why Mastodon's decision not to implement quote-tweeting (over a misplaced squeamishness about "dunk culture") was such a catastrophic own-goal. If you're building a social network without an algorithmic suggestion feed (yay), you absolutely can't afford to block a feature that lets people annotate the material they boost into other people's timelines:

https://fediversereport.com/fediverse-report-104/

Remember how I said the affect of going to read the news is totally different (and infinitely superior) to the affect of having the news pushed to you? Same goes for the difference between getting a feed of things boosted and written by people you've chosen to follow, and getting a feed of things chosen by an algorithm. This is for reasons far more profound than the mere fact that algorithms use poor signals to choose those posts (e.g. "do a lot of people seem to be arguing about this post?").

For me, the problem with algorithmic feeds is the same as the problem with AI art. The point of art is to communicate something, and art consists of thousands of micro-decisions made by someone intending to communicate something, which gives it a richness and a texture that can make art arresting and profound. Prompting an AI to draw you a picture consists of just a few decisions, orders of magnitude fewer communicative acts than are embodied in a human-drawn illustration, even if you refine the image through many subsequent prompts. What you get is something "soulless" – a thing that seems to involve many decisions, but almost all of them were made by a machine that had no communicative intent.

This is the definition of "uncanniness," which is "the seeming of intention without intending anything." Most of the "meaning" in an AI illustration is "meaning that does not stem from organizing intention":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/13/spooky-action-at-a-close-up/#invisible-hand

The same is true of an algorithmic feed. When someone you follow – a person – posts or boosts something into their feed, there is a human intention. It is a communicative act. It can be very communicative, even if it's just a boost, provided the person adds some context with their own commentary or quoting. It can be just a little communicative, too – a momentary thumbpress on the boost button. But either way, to read a feed populated by people, rather than machines, is to be showered with the communicative intent of people whom you have chosen to hear from. Perhaps you chose unwisely and followed someone whose communications are banal or offensive or repetitious. Unfollow them.

Most importantly, follow the people who are followed by the people you follow. If someone whose taste you like pleases or interests you time and again by promoting something by a stranger to your attention, then bring that stranger closer by making them someone you follow, too. Do this, again and again, and build a constellation of people who make you smile or make you think. Just the act of boosting and virtually handling the things those people make and boost gets that stuff into your skin and your thoughts:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/31/divination/

This is the good kind of filter bubble – the bubble of "people who interest me." I'm not saying that it's a sin to read an algorithmic feed, but relying on algorithmic feeds is a recipe for feeling empty, and regretful of your misspent attention. This is true even when the algorithm is good at its job, as with Tiktok, whose whole appeal is to take your hands off the wheel and give total control over to the autopilot. Even when an algorithm makes many good guesses about what you'll like, seeing something you like isn't as nice, as pleasing, as useful, as seeing that same thing as the result of someone else's intention.

And, of course, once you let the app drive, you become a soft target for the cupidity and deceptions of the app's makers. Tiktok, for example, uses its "heating tool" to selectively boost things into your feed – not because they think you'll like it, but because they want to trick the person whose content they're boosting into thinking that Tiktok is a good place to distribute their work through:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

The value of an algorithmic feed – of an intermediated feed – is to help you build your disintermediated, human feed. Find people you like through the algorithm, follow them, then stop letting the algorithm drive.

And the human feed you consume is input for the human feed you create, the stream of communicative acts you commit in order to say to the world, "This is what feels good to spend my attention on. If this makes you feel good, too, then please follow me, and you will sit downstream of my communicative acts, as I sit downstream of the communicative acts of so many others."

The more communicative the feeds you emit are, the more reward you will reap. First, because interrogating your own attention – "why was this thing interesting?" – is a clarifying and mnemonic act, that lets you get more back from the attention you pay. And second, because the more you communicate about those attentive insights, the more people you will find who are truly Your People, a community that goes beyond "I follow this stranger" and gets into the realm of "this stranger and I are on the same side in a world of great peril and worry":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

Which brings me back to this blog and my fifth bloggaversary. Because a blog is a feed, but one that is far heavier on communications than a stream of boosted posts. Five years into this iteration of my blogging life (and 24 years into my blogging life overall), blogging remains one of the most powerful, clarifying and uplifting parts of my day.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/19/gimme-five/#jeffty

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

i cant really tell if yuu's involvement in ace's character is more for fanservice reasons or because they really did play a part in his character development.

like in nbc we have malleus choosing to focus on finishing the task at hand as quickly as possible so that they can then find the prefect rather than drop everything there at that moment and prioritizing finding yuu. (iirc) and compared to that we have ace who does put a lot of emphasis on finding yuu especially when no one seems to remember it during the halloween event it feels very traditionally fanservice-y ? and i cant really tell where the line is drawn for ace anymore. and you did mention a lot of other points in another post that you made esp with ace's dream recently dropping and the fact that hes the only guy whos dream yuu was actively involved in idk its a little confusing for me i hope im making sense TT no shade to the shippers im just a little slow in comprehending it all bvbvsjdj

your posts are always really neutral and accurate it just helps to clear up a lot of my confusions and questions i have when playing so thank you for your hard work!

[Referencing this post; you might also find this related post useful in the discussion of Ace and Yuu's relationship!]

DISCLAIMER: I do not mean to invalidate or detract from Ace x Yuu or Malleus x Yuu shippers or anyone who may interpret their relationship as romantic. You should ship what you like and have fun doing it. My reply aims to be more objective, but that should NOT impede on your enjoyment or whatever it is you choose to ship.

iufipaerasfeao Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad you find my posts helpful. I try my best to be objective when it comes to analyzing the story and characters, but there's no true way for someone to be completely neutral. There are definitely times when I have an aside to insert my two cents on a situation or I get super heated about a particular topic. Hopefully I still leave enough space for everyone to come to their own conclusions.

I think it's both fanservice and because Yuu actually plays a big part in Ace's character development? Like, it's technically fanservice but it does not feel egregious because it fits Ace’s teasing nature and Ace's bond with Yuu has been established from the start. He was the first student we met at NRC and we spend so much time with him since then; there's no way Yuu wouldn't have had an impact on him, especially when book 7 is now paralleling the two as people with insecurities about being weak/unable to do anything + not contributing enough and Yuu encouraging him when he finally gets his UM.

I commonly see people joking about Malleus having "missed the meeting about Twst not being a dating sim" and holding him up as "the main love interest". (And to be clear, Twst isn't a dating sim, nor do all Twst fans see the characters romantically; I am only speaking about this in a romantic lens in the context of this post.) However, I think there's a very strong case to be made for Ace as well. The thing is, I also feel that Malleus and Ace fundamentally appeal to two different groups of yumejoshi. Malleus is the tall, dark, and mysterious type you can "fix", the type of guy that would burn the world down for you. Ace is the teasing and approachable boy-next-door that has your back and supports you even when the entire world is against you. This is also evident in the ways they're set up in the main story; Malleus is introduced in a way that encourages much more "filling in of the gaps" due to how little he actually shows up in front of Yuu in the main story. It gives the player a lot of space to imagine what their relationship with him is like because there isn't a ton of interactions in canon to go off of. Meanwhile, Ace has many more canonized interactions with Yuu (eating lunch, doing homework, watching movies, playing video games, etc.), so the effort of thinking about what they actually do over the course of their relationship is already done for you. There is an established friendship and connection with Ace, but you barely see Malleus enough to truly have a strong impact on him or to change him. Does that make sense?

IADUPADF9A9FSBdb I do find it sort of funny that Malleus is basically like, "Oh, something unexpected happened (ie Yuu is missing). We'd better solve this." Not really showing much emotion about them being gone in Nightmare. (Malleus only gets annoyed when Leona begins to take charge; he is not mad at the fact that Yuu is gone.) Meanwhile Yuu is missing in Endless Halloween Night and Ace is the FIRST person to excuse himself to check Ramshackle for them.

If you consult the fandom and the fandom alone, you'd think the situation would be reversed. Edit: Malleus does have his moments of intimacy with Yuu (which I won’t be getting into here because then I fear this post would veer into shipping wars), but the English speaking Twst fandom has a VERY strong bias for Malleus x Yuu. Because of that, there is a tendency to misinterpret or misattribute every little thing that Malleus says and does to support the idea that "Yuu is his most important person". (For example, even though Malleus provides no reaction at all when Skully kisses the back of Yuu's hand, many Malleus fans claimed that he would be very jealous or would harm Skully for doing such a thing. In another Halloween event, Glorious Masquerade, people believed he was angry at Rollo for harming Yuu even though this was not the case; the event states that he was mad because the invitation he had been extended was a fake one.)

It is because of thinking like this that a lot of English speakers genuinely believed Malleus would OB in book 7 in a desperate attempt to prevent Yuu from returning to their original world. Misinterpretations, headcanons, misattributions, and personal projections were conflated with canon, leading to many people to believe that Malleus was closer with Yuu than they actually are. Instead, Malleus ended up OBing because he feared Lilia leaving and he barely even considers Yuu after he OBs. And, ironically, Ace is the character whose dream prominently features Yuu and a scenario in which Yuu doesn't have to leave them forever. It was always Ace that we had a strong relationship with, not Malleus.

Ace is often overlooked even though he has far more canon interactions with Yuu in the main story. I think this could maybe to chalked up to a combination of him being "boring" compared to the literal DARK FAE OP CROWN PRINCE M. Draconia over there and the fact that so many of those "gaps" are already filled by the main story. There's less room for imagination because the game has already defined what Ace and Yuu's relationship entails. Malleus is just so much more appealing when it comes to intrigue and mysteriousness. When you look at it objectively though... Yuu only meets Malleus face-to-face like 5-6 times for brief conversations. (Edit: I’m not counting voice lines because those are arguably directed at the player, not Yuu, to endear the character to you and/or all characters get similar voice line fanservice. The canonicity is questionable since the same familiarity in voice lines is not carried over to the main story.) 5-6 times… That's not nearly long enough to make a huge impact or change in his life (unless you as the player extrapolate and imagine more Malleus and Yuu interactions outside of the ones we see in the main story). At best, I think you could say Malleus is glad he can have a special little friend who doesn't know of his name and status? He doesn't really change because of that relationship though. Malleus doesn't even show up until book 2. But Ace has literally been there since the beginning, canonically spends tons of his free time with Yuu, and has been through several near-life experiences with them (several OBs). He has the chance to bond with Yuu. Malleus does not. (He has given Yuu advice once, sent them a card once, and reassembled a stage for them once; all other interactions in the main story are short talks.)

It makes a lot of sense that Ace would be the one "touched" by Yuu's influence, whether you see it as romantic or platonic. Both he and Malleus (and all the other characters, really) get their moments of fanservice--but very few characters' development is directly impacted by Yuu's presence. Yuu might be there for most of the main story, but they actually get only a few moments to engage with the other boys in the cast to the point of actually changing them. It feels like the changes that occur are more often the result of the other boys (Trey standing up to Riddle and holding his hand afterwards, Epel and Deuce bonding on the beach, the twins telling Azul he's lame but also being the first to check up on him following the OB, Idia finalizing his farewells with Ortho, etc.) Ace just so happens to be an exception to that, as Yuu very clearly plays a big role in his development.

[the-modern-typewriter]

Can you please write something where the villain has to take care of the hero’s wounds. Thanks! I absolutely love your writing!

"Don't bloody touch me."

"Your wounds will get infected without the right care."

"Then get one of your lackeys to do it," the hero snapped. "But you - you -" Their throat tightened. Maybe because there were no words to describe the villain, the thing that had once been their friend. Maybe because there were too many words, and they all crowded the hero's windpipe, making it difficult to breathe.

The villain considered them, head tilting, still clutching the first aid kit in their hands.

The hero let out a breath between gritted teeth, tugging at the chains holding their wrists useless above their head.

The villain gave an unreadable sort of hum, then stepped forward with the first aid kit anyway. They knelt. It felt like getting kicked in the jugular.

"If you headbutt me," the villain said, "you'll just get even more restrained. You won't like it. It will set off your claustrophobia."

"Then don't touch me. Don't - why - don't act as if you give a crap."

"Of course I do." The villain took a pair of scissors out first, cutting away the hero's trousers so that they couldn't get at the ruined skin on their leg. Their hands were terribly gentle as they cleaned the cut. "I mean, I also need you alive. But. You know."

"If you gave a crap about me you wouldn't do this. Any of this."

"Ah, love. You're mistaking care with being my first priority," the villain said. "You are, as ever and always, my third."

The hero scoffed, bitterly. Stupid tears threatened to well in their eyes and they jerked their head away, glad, at least, for the sting of disinfectant as an excuse.

They knew the exact list without asking.

The villain's grand plans. Their power.

The villain's life.

The hero's life.

As ever. As bloody always.

The villain glanced up, unerringly finding the hurt.

"I say mistaken," the villain kept their voice light, their hands busy. "It's closer to you thinking it doesn't count, right? If you're not everything?"

The hero's jaw clenched. The tears rolled down, as they knew the tears would, if the villain insisted on touching them with those familiar hands. They were so different, and yet they smelled the same up close, same body wash and shampoo or whatever as they'd always had. Amber. Their touch was the same, precise and dangerous and oh so careful. The hero would know it anywhere. Because, well...

You were everything to me.

It was the fundamental, rotting, entirely infected truth of their relationship.

"What would that team of yours think if they knew you only do what you do to - what? Spite your ex? Get them back?" the villain asked. They moved from disinfectant to the needle and thread.

"You killed people! You need to be stopped. It's not - it's never enough for you! All the power and it's never going to be enough for you, is it? You're a monster."

"And you still want me." The villain smiled at them, blandly. "Worst thing that ever happened to you. That I ever did to you. Is love a thing one does to another, like violence, do you think?"

"You disgust me."

"Mm. Would you like to bite down on something before I give you stitches? Or do you want to take this as an opportunity to work on biting your tongue?"

"I'm not going to stop."

"Of course not. That would require moving on."

The hero snarled, feeling feral, feeling animal. Feeling like they hated that the villain had reduced them to that. All blood, and exposed nerves and bones sticking out where they shouldn't be.

The thread went in and out, in and out.

"Pressure on the wound," the villain said, softly. Then they shoved their hands down hard enough to make the hero whimper, make them writhe. The villain watched. They held on a beat longer than needed, capturing a pained gasp with a press of lips. A nip of teeth. It couldn't really be called a kiss. "You think I'd ever, ever, let my lackeys put their hands on you? You're mine."

Then it was gone, and the hands were gone, and the villain deftly did their bandages as the hero slumped. Clammy with cold sweat.

"And I will always give you the right care you need." The villain straightened, they loomed, looking down at the hero. "Get some rest. It's good to see you again."

They left with the hero still swearing at their back.

[jackaxed]

The responses to this are really bumming me out. Even within the queer community people are having a hard time understanding that masculinity is also a performance, and the very fact that masculinity is seen as more neutral and anodyne is part of what gives it the cultural power it has. Just like whiteness is the assumed neutral viewpoint in most media, and everything outside of it is considered a "special interest" piece ("it's a Race Piece, and we're just not looking for a Race Piece"), masculinity is assumed to be some fundamental function of life which everything else is outside of or in opposition to. But, of course, it is not that. It is just another defined role within society with tightly regulated scripts of performance, one which has been given political prominence in order to advance patriarchal agendas.

And because it's the 'baseline' then apparently it has to be "boring", and many of you seem to think that it can't be queered, or that queer masculinity doesn't have the same revoltionary potential as queer femininity or even queer androgyny. Also, don't get me started on "it's not as revolutionary to see a woman wearing pants". Like, 1) drag king performance so clearly goes far beyond that, 2) people are still shitty about "women wearing pants" and continuously have been shitty to anyone perceived as a woman who performs masculinity, especially when it goes beyond the bounds of cishet tolerability, amd 3) it feels very telling that people are saying "masculinity is so boring" and the only example they can think of is a eurocentric stereotype of a guy wearing a business suit, like that encapsulates an entire globe's worth of culture and ethnicity-linked forms of masculine performance and expression. And even then, you're going to act like a drag king queering eurocentric masculinity-- the form of masculinity most frequently advertised to and forced upon the residents of colonial and/or colonized nations-- somehow doesn't count as a radical rejection of gender roles or a reclamation of masculine expression and power?

I am really getting sick of seeing the fight against cishet patriarchy turned into this blanket anti-masculine rhetoric that positions masculine queer people as inherently non-radical, like queer masculinity is not itself a radical rejection of patriarchal norms. This is not to say that queer people cannot perpetuate patriarchal forms of power, that we do not have problems with femininity-bashing and misogyny and transmisogyny within this community, because we absolutely do! But what is it with so many queer people trying to recreate Gender Essentialism, But For Queer People This Time where masculinity is boring and trite and utterly potential-less and femininity is divine and Other and therefore the only potential avenue for radical action. It's weird gender essentialist shit that fetishizes and Otherizes femininity while demonizing masculine expression. "Masculinity is base and boring and radically inert" is bordering TERF shit and anti-butch shit. I don't know why we've always got to raise up one side in favor over the other instead of recognizing the value of each other's identities and walking into the future hand-in-hand.

I think one of the reasons drag kings aren’t as popular as drag queens, aside from the fact that straight women don’t like us, is that people are uncomfortable acknowledging masculinity as a performance. Like we as a society know that femininity is a performance, with its own costumes and rules. Masculinity is also a performance, and nothing makes that more clear than someone making an exaggeration of it

[aventurineswife]

Eldritch ask back lol

I've just been thinking about how Castorice would respond to the situation following Aglaea ordering the Creators death.

I can absolutely see Castorice being the most "ok" with the Creator among the Heirs, maybe even relieved. Sure she is cautious, because they could be a threat that Amphoreus can't deal with. But the thought that there is someone, something, out there that can exist next to her without being affected might warp her mind.

Finally there is someone she can touch, someone that she doesn't have to fear that her curse could end them. She could finally have a companion that wouldn't, couldn't, leave her.

Maybe she tries to hide how she feels from Aglaea (for all the good that does) and the other Heirs in fear that she might be seen as a traitor, especially if Aglaea reveals what exactly she went through and saw when she connected to the Creator.

Maybe Castorice falls in love with the Creator, maybe she becomes a believer and shifts her beliefs to align more with the Trailblazer's and Dan Heng's.

Aglaea and Mydei are most likely the most opposed to this. Aglaea for obvious reasons and Mydei for the fact that if he is aware that all of his struggles, all of his deaths and victories were likely predetermined and that the Creator knows the future. If he isn't, he is still weary but not to the extent that he's resenting the Creator.

Phainon and Tribbie would probably be in the middle. Happy that Castorice has found someone immune to her curse, but also concerned for the future of Amphoreus.

Regardless, Castorice has an obsession that she sinks her claws deep into and will not let go so easily.

(Bonus just witnessing Herta and Castorice fighting over who's the Creators favorite)

Oh, this is deliciously tragic and compelling. Castorice, the untouchable, finally finding someone she can touch—or rather, someone who can’t be touched by her curse. The idea that she isn't a threat to them, that her presence doesn’t bring ruin, is probably so intoxicating that she can’t let go of it, even if she knows she should.

And then you add in the politics of the Heirs? The schisms this would cause? Beautiful.

At first, she’s wary. The Creator is an unknown, something outside of fate, and she has spent too long knowing that everything she touches is doomed to destruction.

But then? She realizes.

The Creator doesn’t die.

They don’t wither under her touch. They don’t recoil in fear. They don’t change at all—because what is her curse to something beyond the very concept of mortality?

It’s liberating.

For the first time in her life, she can stand next to someone without worrying about what her existence means for them. She can get close—closer than she ever has before. And the more she does, the more obsessed she becomes.

At first, it’s just a fascination. Then, it turns into loyalty. Then, it turns into devotion—one that she doesn’t know how to justify to the others.

Aglaea hates this.

After what she saw—what she felt—she can’t understand how anyone could love the Creator. To her, they are terrifying, unknowable, fundamentally wrong. When Castorice defends them, when she stands against her in even the smallest way, Aglaea sees it as a betrayal.

Mydei, meanwhile, is caught in his own existential horror. If the Creator knew all along, if his victories and deaths were predetermined, then what was the point of any of it?

If he doesn’t know, he’s still wary. The Creator might be the first being in existence that he truly cannot account for, that his plans mean nothing against—and that terrifies him.

Phainon and Tribbie are caught in the middle. They see how much the Creator’s presence means to Castorice, but they can’t ignore what Aglaea went through, nor the possible ramifications of their presence in Amphoreus. Are they a god? A mistake? A force beyond all reckoning?

And then there’s Herta...

Castorice has never had anyone like this before. She will not let them go.

Herta has never seen something so fascinating. She will not let them go.

The two of them end up in a cold war of devotion, constantly trying to one-up each other, trying to prove themselves to the Creator.

Herta, who seeks understanding. Who wants to reach that moment of clarity again, to witness the Creator in all their incomprehensible glory. She views the Creator as a puzzle, an experiment, the ultimate mystery to solve.

Castorice, who seeks connection. Who doesn’t need to understand them, who only needs to know that she can be with them. To her, the Creator isn’t an experiment. They are salvation.

Maybe it’s subtle at first, little gestures—Herta constantly finding new ways to study the Creator, Castorice always positioning herself closest to them. But then it escalates.

Herta designs tests, experiments, ways to push the limits of what the Creator can do.

Castorice intervenes, refusing to let anyone treat them like an experiment.

Herta points out how absurd it is to “worship” something you don’t understand.

Castorice argues that Herta only seeks knowledge because she’s too afraid to embrace the truth.

It gets to a point where, if the Creator so much as looks at one of them for a second too long, the other one immediately tries to reassert their importance.

Herta: “Well, of course, they acknowledge me. I am, after all, the most brilliant mind in the universe.”

Castorice: “They acknowledge me because I am worthy. Unlike you.”

Meanwhile, the Creator? They are completely indifferent to the conflict. Or maybe they deliberately allow it to continue, simply because they find it amusing.

The most heartbreaking part of this? Castorice, in her obsession, is still alone.

The Creator does not return her devotion, not in the way she might wish. They can’t—not because they are cruel, but because they are so much more than what she thinks they are.

And yet, she won’t stop reaching for them.

She’s found the one thing she can touch, the one thing she can’t destroy. She’s found relief from her curse. And even if it fractures her bonds with the other Heirs, even if it makes her an outcast among her people, she won’t let go.

Because the alternative? The idea of being alone again?

That’s something she cannot bear.

[thegingerwrites]

I just picked up Mike Chen's Brotherhood and while I'm only a few chapters in (and have been a little disappointed so far) I did have a couple of obikin thoughts

The book takes place immediately after Anakin's knighting and though it seems like a few weeks have passed since aotc, he hasn't really had a chance to be with Obi-Wan or Padme. Anakin and Obi-Wan are almost actively avoiding each other but Anakin and Padme get a chance to go on one of their first dates: he takes her on a speeder joyride and she pays for access to one of Coruscant's illicit street racing lanes. She's clearly taking an interest in one of his interests, it's very sweet even though they both should have known it would be something of a bad idea. 

Anakin has a great time. He's speeding through narrow passages and tight corners, he pulls into a vertical dive the way he does with Obi-Wan in aotc. Padme screams and laughs, and at the end tells him, that was exhilarating and I never want to do it again.

I think the parallel to the chase scene in aotc really got to me. Like Obi-Wan also verbally hates Anakin's driving but he is always going to get back into the cockpit with him. Part of that is obligation, they have a job to do, they were master and padawan, his feelings are not going to get in the way of the task at hand. But on another level, I feel like this cute little scene also speaks to the fact that Padme can't keep up with Anakin when it comes to his abilities, his connection to the Force, his intensity. Later they go to a market in the lower levels and Padme starts talking about the life prospects for the people that live there and then stops herself because she knows Anakin is just humoring her. There are parts of him that she is never going to be able to understand and while the trying is romantic, they both have to ignore fundamental parts of themselves in order to be together. 

I guess what I'm saying is that Obi-Wan can't exactly keep up with Anakin either. He drives too fast, he has too much power, he feels too much, but Obi-Wan is always going to get back into the cockpit with him. He is always going to try. 

You know, until he doesn't.

[reddthekingg]

maybe its just me but I dont really like the way some people take about mikes feelings towards will, mainly in fan fiction or some posts here. let me explain.

I think its arguably implicitly canon that will is aware of his feelings for mike and has been for a very long time. maybe only in season 3/4 he realised the severity of his feelings and how deeply in love with mike he is.

mike is a completely different case in my opinion. he suffers from comphet (in my opinion, I will FOREVER be a comphet mine truther) and is blatantly in denial for any potential feelings towards will or other men.

consider this and the time period. the 80s, especially during the height of the AIDs crisis, was not a very forgiving time for queer people. that is why mikes realisation of his feelings for will always have to be taken with a grain of salt.

in some fanfics that I read, mike realises hes in love with will, and acts on it immediately. no qualms with his sexuality, barely any consideration of social pressures and how frowned upon being queer was at that time, nothing. I see this in the way some people speak about mikes feelings regarding will in the show, too.

its not inherently a bad things, its just something that always irks me when I see it, because in my opinion, mike still isnt wholly aware of what his feelings towards will mean. the season 3 ending was him realising something was ''wrong'' with him in the context of his feelings for el, not necessarily that hes gay.

will may have accepted his feelings towards mike, even if he still things theyre ''wrong'', but mike is not as willing to make that journey. even if he is aware something about the way he feels towards will is different than everyone else, it will take him a hot second to figure out that his feelings aren't platonic and to be okay enough with it that something will happen between them. I really dont think mike currently understands that hes in love with will.

sorry for the lengthy yap its just something that gets on my nerves and (at least in my eyes) diminishes the writing of byler a bit. homophobia is a real thing and it is a fundamental aspect of bylers story and I really dont like when its effects are overlooked

[roach-works]

first of all intellectually disabled people have every right to demand autonomy, respect, and self-determination. it's their life and they should have the first and last say in what they do with it. one of the most fundamental rights all humans must be afforded is the right to do things that other people don't like.

secondly, being trans isn't even an "intellectual" matter. i didn't intellectually achieve being trans after attending trans college and majoring in being trans and graduating with honors to be trans. i didn't sit down with my trans lawer or my trans life coach or my trans therapist and intelligently pick out changing my assigned gender at birth based on how smart and well-considered this life strategy would be for me over the rest of my career of having a gender.

like, one day i dressed up as a guy for halloween, looked at myself in the mirror, and experienced such a terrifying and primal surge of mourning for the person i wasn't that i put all those feelings in a box and spend the next several years using all my intelligence to NOT think about it anymore.

that didn't work, either.

what worked was giving myself permission to be the person i wanted to be, and betting that this unreasoning, wordless, ferocious part of myself knew better than all the rest of the smarts i had piled on top, and then i went and pursued transition regardless of all the intelligent reasons there were to not even try it.

being trans isn't a matter of intelligence or education. it's a matter of self determination. and everyone in the world has that right.

from @.mprnews on Instagram.

Not sure how many of y'all saw this, but the combined misogyny-ableism-transphobia was off the charts. I am glad that he did get his top surgery, has support, and that its pursuing it's goals to advocate for other disabled + trans people.

[squidhominid]

Luigi Mangione and the theory of the Great Man

Luigi Mangione. So much has been said about Luigi Mangione. But I think people fundamentally don't understand the place he inhabits, nor the place they inhabit by worshipping him.

Luigi Mangione was not a leftist revolutionary. He was not striking out against class struggle. He was a child of privilege, striking out against systems he felt disillusioned by. He was a Rationalist, who believed in AI, and believed in the potential for AI to shepherd us into a new age.

But something changed.

Maybe it was the Unabomber Manifesto. Maybe it was something else. But something changed within him that made him reject, if not AI, the way it was being used. He still held onto the general idea of technology as a savior, hence the 3D printed gun. But he saw what he thought was a Great Force, AI, being warped by the healthcare industry into a means to harm, a means to reject claims en masse, and THAT was why he claimed 'Delay Deny Depose', because he saw a Great Evil using what he thought was a Great Good for its own ends.

Was he rejecting Rationalism entirely, or just the way AI was being 'misused'? I don't know if we'll find out. But he, decidedly, was no leftist revolutionary. And yet.

And yet.

The main thing Mangione achieved is giving people a convenient savior figure that they could look to rather than themselves engaging in any meaningful action. People see him as a physical embodiment of class struggle, even though that is decidedly not why he did what he did. He's been given the mantle of a sort of leftist messiah, ill as it may fit.

Firstly, pardon my digression but I feel this is burying the lede; he's through-and-through a child of privilege, who acted the way he did out of disillusionment. This, itself, is meaningful because it means the system is eating itself. But that's a very different thing from him being a leftist.

But secondly, and more importantly, it's people shifting the burden of responsibility. Pardon the reference, but I can't help but think of the intro to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker:

This boy, who traveled through time to save the land, was known as the Hero of Time. The boy's tale was passed down through generations until it became legend... But then, a day came when a fell wind began to blow across the kingdom. The great evil that all thought had been forever sealed away by the hero once again crept forth from the depths of the earth, eager to resume its dark designs. The people believed that the Hero of Time would again come to save them... But the hero did not appear. Faced by an onslaught of evil, the people could do nothing but appeal to the Gods. In their last hour, as doom drew nigh, they left their future in the hands of fate.

I can't help but think of The Protomen, and their rock opera:

They looked to me once Now they turn to you Do you understand now? Do you see that the truth is They don't want to change this? They don't want a hero! They just want a martyr A statue to raise I've given everything I can There are no heroes left in man So it begins! No matter which one of us lives The ground we're standing on will crack and blow away And you will fight But when you fight, you'll fight alone And in the end you'll see there was no other way I've been here before. I've stood where you stand They called me their hero, The Hero of Man But why should we save them When they stand for nothing? If they deserve life, let them stand for themselves

I can't help but look at the situation with Luigi Mangione and think that these passages are speaking to a deeper truth here. The majority of people don't want to fix the system, they want someone to fix the system for them.

They speak of a coming civil war, they speak of glorious revolution, but they don't want to, themselves, be responsible for it, either because they're scared to put their lives in danger, or they can't square the circle that it might require them to violate their own morals in the name of a greater moral cause. They look to decisive figures to do it for them, ironically what they want is an Übermensch to fight the Nazis.

The United States is facing what is essentially an authoritarian coup. If you actually look into how Trump created DOGE, what it was legally supposed to be, what it is instead doing, and what rights Musk even has within government, there is no other word for what it is except a bald-faced coup, and people want a Great Man to stop it. But the only way we stop it is by stopping it. Each and every one of us doing what we individually can. Fundamentally what's going on is people wanting to use fascist theory to fight fascist theory, and that's just not going to work.

The American experiment is founded on the idea of Great Men doing Great Things. Ranging from George Washington and the Founding Fathers, to how the American education system boils all of Civil Rights down to a whitewashed caricature of Martin Luther King Jr., leaving out all the parts that point towards socialism and broader class struggle. But Luigi Mangione is no Great Man, and he will not save us from Trump. No-one will save us from Trump but ourselves.

Friends, do what you can. Do everything you can. Find each other, build networks, and do what you can together. Because together we may be able to affect change. But only once we let go of saviors and Great Men, because no Great Man will be there to save you when the chips are down.

It was, after all, the idea of the Great Man that got us into this mess. The idea that an Übermensch will arrive to Fix America is, indeed, the idea that Trump and Musk are playing upon to begin with, to justify their coup.

As Trump put it, quoting Napoleon Bonaparte, "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law".

And you cannot, you mustn't, counter fascism with fascism. All that will do, is get you right back where we started.

[ghostinthetumbchine]

“mirdania was there to symbolise us and what would happen to us for "romanticising" the eye boy” —> would like to note this is a fundamentally misogynistic take. It is literally just another iteration of “women who experience violence had it coming” lmao and it’s incredible that people who consider themselves to be “progressives” don’t have the guts to unpack their own internalised bullshit. “I’m Not Like Those Other stupid vapid Girls who are hot for the bad guy (and will therefore get what they deserve!” — what a truly enlightening take that definitely uplifts and empathises with other women. If you’re answering this ask please feel free to tag this in the TROP tag btw because some people in this fandom need to consider for real how much they respect other actual women (as opposed to fictional women lmao) and come to grips with the fact that “romanticising a fictional male villain” will NEVER, not in a million years, warrant the sort of blatant contempt and mockery thrown at female viewers on a regular basis. When your arguments sound exactly like the openly misogynistic lorebros then you may want to consider the idea you don’t like other women as much as you think you do.

Oh I'm absolutely posting this because you worded what i just insinuated very succintly.

And i'll add that the gender make up and how focused they are on male characters and m/m relationships of that particular group of posters also interests me. It is telling that they present themselves as the woke ones but simultanously talk over and about women in fandom this way, even if maybe some of them are women too.. me and another friend of mine on here got recently blocked for simply pointing out that the hayes code and puritian ideas which impacts the way creators build stories to this day also had very rigid views on how and what kind of heterosexual relationships were allowed on screen - in ways that subscribed to western, patriarchal agendas and usually, you guessed it, impacted and harmed or restricted the women most.

Its one thing, already sad but one i can respect, when people on here don't even want to have discussion on how women are either shut down on their perception and fantasies, mocked and humiliated or straight up victim blamed for real life events for indulging in them.. but it's another for being at our throats for it every time you get an excuse to.

And mind you, in real life i have not touched a man further than one kiss that made me go "nope". I am very queer, in ways i have not myself fully untangled at almost 30. And yet i don't have an issue with interacting with and understanding and respecting this side of the fandom. So it is a skill issue.

[stormyrainyday]

apologies this is far from a coherent shower thought but i think it's time we like. decided to detach our identity a bit from the things we do. it's fine to just read. you don't have to be a reader. it's fine to just game. you don't have to be a gamer. you can be those things but i feel like in a quest to find ourselves and open our hearts, especially to others online (because i know, the first thing we do when on a new platform is say hi im [name] i like these things we should talk, i know, i do, my pinned post is literally that), i feel like we forget that we are more than the things we do and even the things we love. we, to borrow words from slay the princess, contain it in our multitudes.

it's a sentiment i've felt for a long time as someone who has been on the internet and in fandom spaces for a good decade now, and like. i find when we hold these things so close that they become us, we become too defensive over them. how many minor fandom disagreements spiral into threats, name calling, doxxing even? i find, especially younger users in fan spaces, tend to take even small differences of opinion and take them personally. saw someone blow up and call people awful names over believing only one person could top in a genshin ship. another left a server i was in because they disliked a popular character, and other (respectfully), decided to share why they did like her. i get that things like rejection sensitivity are a thing, but i think this failure to recognize the self as an entity apart from the things you do and the thoughts you have definitely contribute to this. phenomenon i suppose.

it's genuinely slay the princess that has given me the vocabulary to express and understand this thing i was already thinking. i think, though we are not gods, it's important to understand that we are not things so easily defined. we consist of our thoughts, our actions, our perceptions, our beliefs, and more. even the outside world's perception of us reflects some part of our nature. but not all of it. it's impossible to define oneself in one, two, three words or even an essay.

because like we don't exist in a vacuum. part of our existence is defined in our interactions with others. but not all. never all. there is no one who can truly know you, and we cannot truly know ourselves. our principles bend to the whims of circumstance no matter what we tell ourselves otherwise, so we can't decide what we are or what we would be in a situation for sure, ever. and that's not a bad thing, but if we can't ever truly know ourselves, then how can we assign such great importance to something as superficial as the things we enjoy sometimes?

we are both a constant and the capacity to change. and to take just a handful of things and call it your identity, even subconsciously, is a disservice to the self. in an effort to be seen we break ourselves down into easy (i hate to say it but) marketable pieces.

take being a reader for example. it has always felt like vague slang for booksmart, thoughtful, likely quiet and introverted as well, just as much as it means "i like to read books". theres an aesthetic to it involved, and a whole subculture. do you write in your books? do you keep them museum-fresh quality? do you read smut or classics or high fantasy or satire and what does it say about you? if you say audiobooks aren't real literature, are you signalling to others about quality and sophistication, or are you a pretentious asshole, and ableist to boot? these connotations assigned to such an otherwise benign thing about someone are i think are reflective of the construct of identity and perception. i could go on about it in a way that's more coherent but i, a student, have other things to do right now.

(does being a student make me intelligent? does it impress you to know i study medicine? what if i told you i average Cs in my classes? what if i told you i dislike patient care? what if i told you i'm not here for the money OR to make the world a better place, and that i'm here purely to serve my curiosities about the way the body functions and to absolve my obsessive need to understand just what are we? does this change what you think of me? does it matter? what if you knew the guilt i felt for seeing so much suffering, but still hating patient care enough to worry endlessly about being stuck in it as a career? am i better for it? but i have not acted on this guilt. it is a mere feeling that only i know. knew. is it different now that i've confessed it? does it matter? does any of it change who i am, fundamentally? or am i a thing detached from it all? or. as i like to believe. is it both? your shifting perceptions of me and the way i change shape and form (so much like our beloved princess in slay the princess) in your eyes, they make up me just as much as the soul or the self or whatever other philosophical name you assign to it. at the end of the day, isn't the most important thing that i am just me? both devoid of and constituted of the sum of my parts? what is found in the spaces between my cells? impulses and chemicals. is that me? is it all me? can i ever really know it? and why, why, why define it at all?)

[anghraine]

It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.

If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.

Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.

I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.

There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"—and there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits them—but one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.

This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.

Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.

Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.

And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.

And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."

[dukeofthomas]

I find the fact that the confrontation at the end of UTRH is often summarized as Jason asking Bruce to kill the Joker for him fascinating.

Because that's not what happened.

Jason holds a gun up to Joker's head, gives Bruce another, and tells him that if Bruce doesn't do something (shoot Jason), he will kill Joker.

Jason doesn't give the gun to Bruce so that he would shoot Joker. He isn't expecting Bruce to pull the trigger on the clown. He's asking Bruce to do nothing. To be inactive. Because that will still be a choice, and despite having done nothing, everybody clearly agrees that Bruce would still, at least in part, be responsible for Joker's death.

...And to me, this moment is a kind of- microcosm, of the rest of Jason's point. Because after being captured and carted off to Arkham, the villain will escape again, and will kill more people. The only way to truly prevent that from happening would be to kill them; Bruce refuses to do so, and I respect his right to choose such a thing for himself, but it is still a choice, and if we agree that Bruce's inaction during the confrontation would leave him at least partly responsible for the Joker's death, then we must also agree that his inaction in permanently preventing the Rogues from killing more people means he is also, partly, responsible for all of those deaths.

[knifearo]

i hate the concept of platonic and romantic as a binary i hate the concept of platonic and romantic as a sliding scale of "less" to "more" i hate the concept of platonic and romantic as the only two options i hate the concept of platonic and romantic as significantly different things i hate the concept of platonic and romantic as all encompassing i hate the concept of platonic and romantic as the two halves of a shallow concept of love that doesn't actually encompass anything at all i think we need to overhaul every popular conception about "types" of love so we can talk about things that are real and true for once

[nyxelestia]

I'm thinking of that old Tumblr post about how some people use respect to mean both "treat like a human" and "treat like an authority". I feel like that semantic nuance is cropping up here, too. A lot of people think "humanizing" meaning "making someone sympathetic" -- and combine that with an environment where "sympathy with intentions" often precedes "accepting the consequences", it's very easy to see why so many people see "humanize" and think that means "make the person sympathetic and embrace their actions and ideology." To people who did assume that: that is NOT what most of us are talking about on this Tumblr post. At the end of the day, every monstrous human in history was still a human, just as much as you and I. There is no fundamental separation between us and them. There is no tragic backstory that can justify or excuse their actions, but neither is their any monstrosity that came into existence independent of the contexts they occurred in. And as long as you try to paint them as inhuman monsters, you are blinding yourself to the budding potential monsters growing around you (and inside of us all), and you are playing right into their hands. After all, how are we to stop potential monsters from starting if we're convinced that our friends, our families, our communities, and ourselves are "too human" to become them?

I thought it was fairly normal to feel empathy for bad people.

I thought it was common, even.

But after my Elon/Grimes post... now I'm wondering if I was mistaken about that.

I wrote a post about Trump being traumatized after his assassination attempt and a post about his poor adaptation to aging. I expressed sympathy for him in both cases. But I still maintain my white hot hatred of him and wish for him to face consequences.

Elon was abused by his father. Some of the stories are incredibly tragic. Hearing those stories triggers an involuntary response in my emotional systems that I can't stop no matter how much I despise present-day Elon. I also wonder if that abuse never occurred maybe we wouldn't be dealing with this current clusterfuck.

I have never held so much anger towards a single person as I do my brother. But I also see him as a victim of abuse. I know he was once a really good person and he was slowly corrupted. I feel sorry for him. I mourn the amazing person he used to be. And I still love him.

But that doesn't make me any less angry.