#i'm watching the violent murder of people and their culture in real time

[hiro-of-hyrule]

I'm crying about trees again, this time for a slightly different reason (yippee ;-;) You're gonna have to stick with me for this one I gotta give you context. (This is Yiga Clan related trust me)

The Hinoki Cypress is a species of tree known for very sturdy wood with a very straight grain and lovely coloring, and it's the kind of tree a lot of temples in Japan are made out of for these reasons.

The reason that this kind of tree is so strong is because they take a very long time to grow. Most mature trees of this kind are hundreds of years old. This makes the rings on these trees very compact, giving denser wood, making it tougher.

Unfortunately, due to overlogging and the popularity of the wood as a building material, these trees are much less numerous now than they were hundreds of years ago. And we can't just plant them anywhere to restore the old growth that once was. (For obvious reasons but there's more) These trees depend on the old growth in order to grow from seed because they prefer soil that consistently drains and then gets rained on regularly. This makes them dependent on old growth because the extremely old cypress that fall over create the perfect environment for the next generation to grow. New trees will grow in the bark of the old, so it's not hard to find groups of these trees growing in a straight line where an old tree fell.

Which finally brings me to my analogy.

It's one of my headcannons that Master Kohga is basically immortal. If not, he definitely ages much slower than a Hylian. Like these old growth cypress trees, he probably grew up in an environment where he was able to receive support from true Shiekah elders.

And then... the Shiekah's bloody history. Used to build up the kingdom of Hyrule and the royal lineage of Hylia. In order to protect the superiority of the kingdom, it wasn't enough to just leave them be, the Shiekah were made to be an enemy, outcasts. Many of the elders carrying the history of the Shiekah, along with anyone else who dared fight back, were felled. Another sacrifice to build Hyrule's bloody history.

Remnants of those old cypress forests exist today, in a few places. Only about 3 of the original old growth forests are around today, (if I remember correctly) and their numbers continue to decline slowly.

The last factions of the Ancient Shiekah remain, held together by their leaders. Master Kohga and Lady Impa. Most of the people they knew growing up are gone. Everyone they know now is practically youthful, only being alive for less than 100 years. The last elders left to cultivate the next generation. And that generation will likely survive continuing on the same path they fall on.

The Hinoki Cypress is going to haunt this narrative because to me it is such a powerful symbol of the Shiekah and the Yiga, their history, how they've been used by the Kingdom of Hyrule.

And I'm crying about trees again.

[madqueenalanna]

so i'm almost done with my "terror" (show) rewatch and just finished reading "terror" (book) yesterday so let me ramble lowkey about the differences

i do love of course the little character details of the book that couldn't possibly make it into the show. sir john's devotion to his "gentleman" status to the point that he stays dead silent during sex, for one, crozier getting jacked off in a pond for another. the book's meandering pace gave us lots of ship descriptions (agonizing) but also lots of time with even minor characters (peglar for one)

and so because of their respective mediums, i like each ending/portrayal of tuunbaq in its own way. in the book, it's a spirit created by a goddess, forced to wander the frozen north and feast. silna and people like her are psychic, marry other psychics to create their own tribe, their own people. this is not to control tuunbaq but simply to communicate; they leave it offerings, it doesn't kill them. the white men have no way to understand this, and so they trespass and are murdered. crozier leaves his identity behind to join these people, loses his tongue, has children by silna, and feels the honor in this choice. tuunbaq's appearance is ephemeral, difficult to explain, almost incorporeal. it isn't a monster, it's a part of the land in the same way winter is. very spiritual

in the show of course it's much more straightforward. it's a beast that can be injured, can eventually be killed, needs to be bound to a shaman that can control it. silna cuts out her own tongue to follow in her father's footsteps, instead of having lost her tongue as a child in this psychic group. it dies, agonizingly, like so many of the polar bears it resembles, yet another victim of british colonialism. silna is ostracized by her people for its death under her watch. crozier joins the netsilik without her, assimilating culturally if not on this secondary spiritual plane. obviously this makes much more sense to see on screen

the other big change is of course the health of the men. sure they SAY in the show the men are failing, and we see some of them, but the book, agonizingly (good), details every mile they haul sledges, every symptom of scurvy, a few violent deaths from botulism, blanky losing first part of his foot, then half his leg, then several wooden legs break and he calls its quits when the stump is gangrenous. the book is so clear that this takes MONTHS, it feels like months, hickey's mutiny is almost a minor footnote because they were all already almost dead by the time it occurs. the cannibalism is such a last resort that they're all half-dead by that point. it's slow, it's painful, so it all makes more... sense, almost. you FEEL their pain, this slow horrific death, the STARVATION

that said i love the death of fitzjames in the show. he's got scurvy and dies of botulism in the book, but i think it's just scurvy in the show. we see his battle scars, obtained in a colonial venture to asia, re-open and suppurate. in a very real, literal way, his past has come to haunt him, to poison him. he dies on another colonial mission, weakened by his former expeditions eating him alive, destroyed by this land that wants them dead

and from researching this show/book i got linked by some very helpful redditors to some very long articles detailing inuit descriptions of finding hms terror before it sank, so i'm excited to dip into those

[carefulfears]

as someone who hasn’t seen Aquarius (and doesn’t plan to) can you list why it is so awful 🍿

girl i literally do not even know how to discuss it. i had a friend staying over on saturday night and tried to break down all of the plots that happen just in the first 13-episode season and it took me over an hour and i did not remember all of them. there is an insane amount of shit going on. and none of it really makes any sense or connects properly to anything else. my saintlike friend kept going "what does that have to do with charles manson?" "wait, how did that other plot end?" "why did they do that?" and my answers had to be I DON'T KNOW. IT DOESN'T. NO IDEA.

perhaps it would be more successful if it were more focused and didn't take on so much? we'll never know. it is way more difficult to follow than any nbc drama has any right to be, and it is extremely graphic and violent for no real reason? it isn't self-serious enough to require that many rape and murder and assault and dead baby scenes on screen. like. calm down. this is nbc. (actually what i'm watching is the unrated version that dropped on netflix but literally STILL)

the main thing that absolutely baffles me to no end is duchovny's character (i have semi-affectionately mostly-derogatorily nicknamed him "officer police brutality"), the things that we see him do on screen and that are implied he has done in the past tend to err on the side of abhorrent and borderline evil, often no better than what we see the abusers and murderers doing, but we still follow the story through him and are continuously shown his "Good Guy" standing. he's one of the only characters that takes the female cop (claire holt's charmain) seriously, he regularly looks after witnesses/victims, he's kind to the disenfranchised coworkers and spouses in his life. there are several little charming personable tidbits and jokes and endearments.

don't get me wrong- i exist in the context of all that came before me etc etc- and i'm starkly against categorizing characters as "good" or "bad," discussing a character like they're meant to be our best friend rather than a story that's telling us something. i just absolutely cannot figure out what the story is trying to tell us about him. i cannot figure out how we're meant to follow him, and how we're meant to interpret his role in the larger context of the show. in my opinion it would've served the cultural/emotional arc to do without some of the posturing. you don't have to make your central character a Good Guy. we don't have to be constantly brought back to the side of someone who often behaves no better than the villains, to follow their story.

duchovny is great in it, and i find it to be an extremely interesting performance. i love to see him take on the darker material and nuances that he hasn't had a chance to, sometimes he'll have a moment or inflection or mannerism that i've never seen him do before, which is so cool for me. but i do think the role is miscast, if they were trying to tell a story about a character who is of a grim time and is capable of doing inexcusable things, things that trap him in that time. often, duchovny just brings a natural likability. it's what he's been cast for, in the past!! a lot of these quirks, and endearments, and charms, come with his presence or are engineered by him.

which isn't a bad thing, i'm not gonna say "noo david duchovny you have to fix your typecast reputation. people find you too likable. people love to see you too much." but the script would've had to challenge him/that a lot more than it does, to pull the character off.

and if they weren't trying to tell that story, of a man trapped in a dark time doing dark things, i don't know what they were trying to do.

i'm sure there will be some nbcaquarius / sam hodiak shooters who are mad at me to read this but i guess some of y'all got the show and i just did not babes! can't stop watching it tho

[mothman-clarice]

Ok so I watched american psycho for the first time last night and I got a great idea for a cool crossover/thought experiment.

What if Patrick Bateman met Hannibal Lecter?

Quick note: I haven't read the book american psycho but I have done a little research about it. Also I'm aware that theres a lot of debate on whether or not patrick actually kills anybody since he is a very unreliable narrator. For the sake of this analysis we will assume all of his murders are real since I dont feel like opening up that complicated can of worms lol.

So first I'd like to do a little character analysis/compare and contrast with both of them cus I think these characters are very interesting to compare.

Let's see what they have in common first. They both are serial killers and cannibals who are lethally efficient and prolific. They are both very successful with Bateman being a millionaire wall street investor and hannibal being Lithuanian royalty and a successful psychiatrist. They are characterized as having some sort of mental illness/disorder, bateman obviously being a stereotypical psychopath plus possibly antisocial personality disorder and hannibal having several which I cant name off the top of my head. They are both known for having "high class" taste and deeply emerse themselves in fine culture.

Now let's talk about their differences...

While yes they both share one key character trait (being murderers) they are still vastly different in terms of personality and behavior. Let's start with their attitude/tendencies towards murder.

Hannibal may be a prolific vicious murderer but if you look closely enough you will see he actually has some form of moral compass. He never hurts children, only adults over the age of 20. He rarely if ever kills women (at least to my knowledge, I haven't read all the books or seen all the movies) which is very likely rooted in his chivalrous nature. He never kills out of the blue, he always has some reason for it, be it his victim making a rude remark or doing something hannibal finds reprehensible. No matter what, he always has some reasoning behind his killings. So while yes he is a vicious murderer, he does actually have a moral compass if you look hard enough.

And then there's Patrick Bateman.

Patrick's murderous behavior is completely different from hannibal. He is erratic and random, killing whoever just so happens to be closest whenever he gets the urge. He has compulsions to kill whereas hannibal pretty much has full self control and only kills of his own free will. Patrick never has any clear reasoning for his murders beyond very vague rationalizations which mostly boil down to "they are different from me" or they said something he perceived as a personal insult. Unlike hannibal, bateman has absolutely no moral compass since he completely lacks empathy. He despises anyone who is higher or lower class than him (especially the lower class), he despises women and views them as objects made for his sexual pleasure and nothing else. Women, especially sex workers, are actually his primary targets since he already views them as subhuman and knows he has great power over them physically and often financially. To him humans are tools he uses to achieve his desires. He completely lacks any emotion, even saying his only emotions are greed and disgust.

He is the purest example of the Id you could possibly think of. His brain is controlled by the most base primal instincts: hoard resources to preserve your own survival, fight and kill anyone you see as a threat or as different from you, and have sex as much as possible. His ultimate goal in life is to fit in with the rest of the white cishet male wall street yuppies, his "tribe" if you want to continue with the primitive themes.

In regards to emotion hannibal does very much feel. Yes his perception of emotion may be different from most people but he still absolutely has the capacity to feel sadness, love, joy, and more alongside anger and disgust. He may be violent but he is not devoid of empathy. We all know he falls deeply in love with clarice because he empathizes with her trauma and struggle. He recognizes her frustration with trying to get the male dominated world to notice her capability and strength. He marvels at her brilliance and adores her independence, he loves her, so so much.

What does bateman love? Well he certainly loves money and power. But does he feel that way about anything else? No. The closest thing he feels to love is lust, primal carnal desire. He hates women, he only values them for sex and nothing else. (Sorry to break the essay emerson but I just need to say this. Why didnt this guy just get a fleshlight? A sex doll? Like if you hate women so much but wanna fuck just get a fuckin toy dude, I'm sure they existed in the 1980s 🙄)

Another thing I noticed they differed with is their attitude towards wealth and media. Patrick is obviously obsessed with both. Media permeates every moment of his existence, constantly listening to music every chance he gets, "watching" movies (mostly just playing them as background noise), obsessing over p0rnography, and so much more. His attitude towards porn is especially interesting to me as he doesnt seem to consume it in the way people normally do. The first scene that comes to mind is the one where hes on a phone call with Evelyn while a porn video plays on his tv. He doesnt even look at the screen, he seemingly shows zero interest. Theres nothing near him in the scene that would suggest he was "enjoying" it (tissues, lotion, y'know..). Its like he just put it on as background noise just like he does with movies. He has similar behavior when he brings in the escorts and rambles about music while instructing them to perform for him, despite the fact he spends most of the beginning walking around his apartment not even looking at the women. It's like he has no idea how human sexuality works, he obviously doesnt feel horny given those two examples, it's like he just has sex and looks at porn because it gives him some kind of status or maybe it just gives him something to do. Maybe he does it purely because it seems like something a "normal human" would do.

As for his obsession with wealth, bateman seems to have a similar attitude. He hates going out with people to diners since we know he hates people in general. He seems to only go out with his fellow yuppies to feel like hes part of something. He pretends to get along with them and says anything they like to hear, putting on a character as if he was playing out a fantasy in his head. He expects people to be impressed with his wealth and feels deeply insulted when they're not. He sees wealth as a necessity, he constantly needs to be richer and more extravagant than everyone else. He is the ultimate personification of greed, a gluttonous, jealous dragon whose hoard is never big enough.

As for hannibal? Having been raised in royalty he naturally grew accustomed to lavish living and views it as his normal. He feels most comfortable having gourmet meals regularly, his day clearly planned out with plenty of activities to do, and generally a life full of savoring the finer things and enjoying many of the pleasures of noble life. Unlike patrick who's idea of lavish is hoarding expensive things he doesn't need and parading them around to inflate his ego, hannibal's idea of lavish living is playing piano, watching Shakespeare plays, reading classical literature, admiring fine art both old and new. He has no need for parading around his wealth because it doesnt matter to him.

You see what I mean? Bateman views wealth as a tool to gain status and be part of a community. Hannibal does not really perceive wealth since it has always been a part of his life, he doesnt want more wealth since riches alone dont give him pleasure. To hannibal wealth is simply the norm and something he pays no mind to, whereas patrick is utterly and completely addicted to it.

I feel like I've rambled long enough and pinned down their primary differences. I honestly had a lot of fun writing this! I find both characters incredibly fascinating and I thoroughly enjoyed dissecting them both side by side. I hope you all liked it too of course.

Also, good news! I'm finally starting my week long vacation from work so I'll have a lot more free time to post. So look forward to more activity from me in the future :)

[clare-with-no-i]

hi clare!!!! very random (I’m clearly having a wild NYE), but if you don’t mind, I’m super curious about your opinions re: sarah koenig and true crime journalists. I saw you posted about it a while back on clarewashere (I would have submitted this ask there but that blog didn’t have an ask option!). I have always hated true crime podcasts but I know you’re super educated on the criminal justice system and I would love to hear your perspective

totally feel free to ignore this :) cheers! hope you’re having a lovely NYE!!

hi beloved! thank you for the question! also yeah I have my asks off on that blog because one time someone sent me anon hate on there but didn't realize it was my main and that I'm, yknow, me, which was really hilarious lol. anyway.

soooo god I have myriad problems with the true crime genre. it pretty much does everything possible wrong when dealing with conversations around policing, criminalization, and incarceration, and yes I even mean the 'sensitive' true crime people and not just the YouTubers who do makeup while talking about, like, Ted Bundy or whatever it is they discuss.

true crime as a genre and phenomenon sensationalizes crime, creates an unrealistic culture of fear based on wildly standout incidents of violence, and reinforces false ideas that a) police in this country solve crimes, which they don't, FBI statistics on homicide clearance rate give a (very optimistic!) estimation that about 54% of homicides are being solved per annum; b) kidnapping, murder, other violent crimes are a significant portion of the prison population, which they absolutely are not; c) that white people are just as likely to experience violent crime as people of color, which they aren't at all. the airtime that these incredibly niche, outlying stories get overwhelms real conversations about the carceral state in America (prison gerrymandering! over-policing minority neighborhoods! stop and frisk! civil asset forfeiture!), and they also strengthen this insane mythos that there is a hard line between perpetrators of crime and victims of crime, which, no, there absolutely is not. an overwhelming majority of incarcerated persons have themselves been victims of some form of crime. crime is born from poverty, from underfunded school systems, from homelessness, from lack of healthcare, from feeding drugs into Black communities and then arresting drug users. it is a function of the structural racism and classism that permeate the American reality. it's not just joe criminal waking up one day and grabbing an axe. like yes of course that happens, and it is terrible when it does, but to only report on that/make it a feature of a media subculture is frightening.

and people might say, oh, well, what's the harm? it's just a youtube video!!! but the popularity of narratives like those spread by true crime pods/videos is, and let me make this clear, exactly what tough-on-crime lobbyists and legislators want. how do you think laws like "Three Strikes You're Out" get passed? the popular consciousness gets swept into a moral panic about violent crime and looks to expand the prison system as a means of harm reduction.

and to anticipate another counterpoint: when people are like, but it's spreading awareness!!! ok…awareness of…ongoing police investigations? great. and which investigations in particular? whose stories get told, and whose get ignored? I remember seeing some dumbass take that true crime pods 'spread awareness about domestic violence.' cool. and what structural solutions are we positing? what resources to possible victims are we providing? what funding toward shelters, toward civil legal funds, is being allotted from the earnings? yeah I thought so.

outside of its larger effects on its consumers' understanding of criminalization, true crime is so gross on a human level: these are real people's stories. these are real families of victims who have to watch their loved ones' deaths get discourse-ified and mangled on the internet like it's the latest episode of fucking Game of Thrones. Netflix and other streaming services have created scripted TV shows and films based on real human suffering without ever checking with the families or getting approval. and, honestly, even those scant YouTubers who get families' approvals, I still think it's sketchy as fuck. like, you're still profiting off of this, if not financially, then with it being your entire career just sitting in your house telling the stories of other people's trauma for clicks. yikes?

also, sooo many true crime fanatics are feral weirdos. sorry to say it. there is no goddamn reason why people should be dressing up like Gabby Petito or her murderer for Halloween. there is no reason rando white women should be making "if I go missing" folders with, like, locks of their hair and vials of their spit in them. there is no reason to create conspiracy theories around victims of domestic violence and act like they're actually manipulating the world and/or their abuser. there is no reason that lawyers on fucking TikTok should be making weeks-long series on a domestic abuse trial filled with meme audios and funky freeze-frames. it's weirdo behavior!! I'm not sure at what point we all got desensitized to the idea that people are entitled to privacy and respect when dealing with the objectively hardest times in their lives, but Jesus Christ !!!

to wrap up, my gripe with Sarah Koenig is that she's a hack lmao. Serial not only garbled most of its content wrt the Adnan Sayed trial, but it also stole from Rabia O'Chaudry's investigation of the trial, and left key significant pieces of his bungled defense out. and then SK claimed credit for getting him out of prison. blech. she's also the final boss of all true crime journos because true crime podcasting absolutely took off after Serial, much to my chagrin.

there we have it, this was a dissertation, sorry to anyone who actually reads this, it's such a rant lmao. thank you again for asking <3 as a known haver of opinions it's always a pleasure to be asked about said opinions

[broodpeas]

random thoughts on RHOBH

I'm watching Real Housewives of Beverly Hills again, in between watching other tv shows I didn't wanna watch until I knew I had the time to do so (watched Moon Knight, the best of two worlds: indiana jones and the mummy!). It has been, as usual, an experience to watch a pseudo-reality tv show about wealthy yt women who seem to enjoy tackling each other in the harshest way.

Because I jumped late on this ship, I'm sure later seasons the show tries to mend some of the things they have done so far that they consider to be bad (for example, highlighting in the worst possible way, how an addiction affects not only a personbut that person's family and make everyone a judge of the situation). With each season I wonder...well, basically, I wonder why. And, are people really like this in real life? Because, even if this is a heavily scripted tv show, we still are talking about people and I can't help but wonder if people are really doing things like doubting someone's disease (season 6), domestic abuse (season 1 and season 2), divorce (season 2 and season 3), and the privacy of minor and their right to exist without having a camera shoved in their faces. I wonder why presenting this on television? why making of this entertainment? and how this specific entertainment differentiates from the other ways we consume in pop culture? Ultimately, tv and movies -but especially tv- exploits this and we take it all, even when we think and believe it's done carefully, gracefully, or whatever (always good to ask ourselves what this implies). I think in the past I had writenn about this, but it's still nice to know that I enjoy watching it. I really do. I don't know what witchery this tv show has but it is good, it's so good. And with every season, aware of the "degradation", I still think they can't go far -and then, they do! So far, season 6 started with a man peeping a woman's underskirt and his wife saying it's her fault because she wasn't wearing any underwear! Ah, makes perfect sense!

At the same time, I think too this show is very telling of the upper class of entitled gringas that sometimes do come to this part of the continent and are amazed we have wifi. Which by the way, reminds me to tell to whomever reads this, please let's not find this shocking anymore. It's the year 2023 of our lord Beyoncé who's on tour currently -and giving you so many fashion references I don't think an academic paper will ever be enough-, and we know the condescending ways the gringos exist in the world. RHOBH simply let's you go a little deeper into this, to wonder how in hell did we let things go this far and how great it is because we find amusement. I have always wondered, when the cameras are gone, and they're just them, people living on earth, do they look at themselves and think "this is just a job"? Instead of a version of squid game that violently murders people, maybe this is the real squid game. A very nice one, because I will not stop watching it- must be said, it really doesn't make you a better person to put yourself in the position of judge here.

In any case, it will always be interesting to disssect the Real Housewives franchise from the ethics point of view, and especially from a feminist point of view. Because one could say that yes, tv shows like this makes us abandon all feminist flagpoles and shit, I honestly think this is a too hurried on position. There's a reason why this specific part of television and pop culture is viewed and appreciated by us. For so long gossip and cattiness has been understood as negative and even here, I understand them as negative values. RH has given permission to turn around this, to pose the question why are they bad? if you think carefully, ethics wasn't really built by so-called marginal groups, it was built by men. I mean, what's the first book of ethics I read on my philosophy BA? Aristotle! and Socrates was well, he was difficult, I don't think he'll ever admit how catty and dramatic he was (girl, you died drinking poison instead of escaping, do you think LVP would've done that hell no, she would've made dorit drink the poison!!!). And we all know this, and this isn't the exact place to discuss the implications or consequences this has, but it really does let you think with more attention and detail why these tv shows are considered "trash tv" instead of....culture. I don't think RH is bad tv, I think it's an specific form of entertainment that is so specific to our contemporary times we really have no way to compare it with anything else. This also lets us come close to what it means when a scripted television show starts to meddle with serious stuff, such as addiction, domestic abuse, harassment, and so on and on, and does so with not much care or tact. They just do it, they give it you raw.

But anyway, this was very random, like almost everything I write. Time to get back to work.

[saint-starflicker]

On Internet Aesthetics

The YouTube algorithm recommended me Lily Alexandre's video essay about how internet Aesthetics hurt art. I personally enjoy the aesthetics wiki, and I was interested in an opposing viewpoint (haven't watched any of Alexandre's other vids).

I thought some points were fair, for example the collaborative knowledge of internet teenagers misattributing the contributions from people of color to more hegemonic demographics (claiming that the Afrofuturism aesthetic began with Gene Roddenberry), or Lily Alexandre's concern that aesthetics can be used as lifestyle branding that gets people—influencers, content creators, and consumers alike—more concerned with the appearance of a thing rather than the philosophies or power struggles that make a real life real.

Others I thought were off the mark, for example how a third of contributions to the Aesthetics Wiki make no sense. This doesn't bother me, because I think there's something democratic about that: just pop in something like Night Luxe...which I think can be more like a folkloric being, "beware the Night Luxe"...or Coastal Granny, or the one Alexandre was complaining about that had a photo of a model in unripped skinny jeans "grunge" beside a plate of sushi and just Make It Make Sense(!!) why and how does that earn its own separate Aesthetic page on this Wiki??

Nay, I say it doesn't have to make sense, it's primordial information, pop it into the internet cauldron and find out if it sticks, what that means for it to stick, and what it's doing.

If this overall pattern of Aestheticization is a product of post-quarantine culture, scrolling through our smartphones in isolation, making a suffix -core or a collection of media "my whole personality", losing our souls to how organizational hashtags are used by marketers—as Alexandre argues—then, yeah, that can be a thing to ponder.

But I also don't find, even after watching that 40-minute video essay, that Aestheticization is really a new, different and more harmful thing.

If the message was, "Big Corporations have always done this harmful thing that is adapting in the context of Namecore so beware and here's the plan" then I wouldn't be so disagreeable.

But, for example, Steampunk was a genre before it was an aesthetic, and maybe it was even an aesthetic genre in how some people like stimmy tech and corsets paired with boots. There wasn't some Steampunk Manifesto (that I knew of) that told everybody "The Purpose of Steampunk is to take historical aesthetics to actively criticize the impact of Victorian-era colonialism, sexism, discrimination against mentally ill people, and the exploitation of laborers with the growth of factories at the time...and how nothing has changed in those aspects of society in the past two hundred years, so that's bad, and we're rubbing in how bad and outdated are those unexamined attitudes today, and we're doing that by dressing like people did two hundred years ago".

But that nonexistent manifesto was the purpose and meaning that I found in (or made of) Steampunk.

For somebody else Steampunk is nothing more than Goths that discovered the color brown. I'm not being snobbish, I'm saying I love that angle too and I fully accept that that's also Steampunk.

There are thinkpieces out there about how Dark Academia heralds the accessibility of the markers of class that its aesthetic predecessor of Prepsters used to easily conserve/gatekeep ("What’s Dark about Dark Academia?" article by Ana Quiring), and I personally find themes in Dark Academia media that speak more to the hypocrisy of being classically-educated and "civilized" as in image or reputation...but truly hiding a soul-crushing if not outright fatal violence in the prestigious boarding school gilded cage (abusive father in Dead Poets Society, predatory teacher in The Moth Diaries, and I heard The Secret History has a murder mystery set at a prep school so I think there's an appropriate irony there in how violent the heavily-controlled and image-conscious echelon of society can truly get.)

On the other hand, an art movement like Surrealism historically had a manifesto and a community. Salvador Dali with the melting clocks paintings got kicked out of the club for being an antisemitic fascist, while Jean Cocteau with the special effects black-and-white movies possibly got kicked out of the same club for being definitely gay. But both Dali and Cocteau are still considered surrealists by laypeople such as myself. Because of the similar aesthetic.

I'm into Art Nouveau lately. I don't know what philosophy or power struggles underlie it, I might look into it but right now I just think it looks pretty.

When I write about characters in the 1950s, or think about doing art for 1990s characters, then I think about how the aesthetics shows characterization as well as what they had access to. Lily Alexandre described good old days of culture being localized and image being bought at a local store...but I don't find that there's much difference between those good ol' days versus today with Internet Aesthetics in how young people (really, any people, but these characters are mostly young enough to still depend on their parents) engage with self-definition and self-expression. I might not have been alive in the 1950s, but I can believe a tendency towards a full-on prepster look would have communicated something that an imitation of rockabillies or greasers would not.

I don't find the high school clique tropes from the 1980s through the 2000s to be true to life, either, but there was plenty of (age-appropriate, so I was told) angst and prejudice back in the day based on whether you presented as Emo or BoHo or Prep or Hipster.

I disagree with Alexandre's assertion that those subculture-dividing personal limitations were less harmful only because of it also being limited in scope, because of the limitations of technology at the time. Again, I find that Internet Aesthetics are as democratic as internet access, and I find it for free, I contribute to it for free, so I cannot reason that it's more vulnerable to becoming Namecore Capitalism than aesthetics, subcultures, and genre trends always were.

I was recently years old when I read the sentence "90's grunge is not a fashion style, it's a philosophy" and I thought that was the most pretentious awful sentence—but after a little surface-scratching of the ground, it's true. Grunge was a protest against consumerism. I only remember what it looked like on glossy magazine pages when I was a kid in the 90s.

It's not new, maybe some sides of it is tired (Grunge on fashion magazines) or didn't follow through with its best potential (Steampunk as protest), but I'm not quite at "Grr kids these days with their Namecore and their Dark Nautical Luxe Granny Coastal Wave" or more condescendingly "Kids these days don't know they're being exploited" ... I don't know that there's more marketing exploitation in category hashtags than back in the day that we didn't have those. We still had Aesthetics of varying depth and dilution of meaning, but we just didn't call it Aesthetics. So what's really so bad about it now that somehow wasn't so bad back then?

[akumatizedpuns]

Anti-Arguments and Rebuttals for them

Things to remember:

Antis usually want an easy target. Freelance artists/writers, small businesses, etc.

But it's easier to get angry with a smaller entity than one you know you'll never be able to do anything with/about.

A lot of antis just deeply enjoy the thrill of witch hunting. If you pay attention, you'll notice a lot of them engage in cancel culture and make memes about the topics they call themselves taking a stand for or against.

Antis will almost always use a strawman argument. Most things on this list will consist of these sorts of arguments.

1. Fiction affects reality.

The funniest and most ridiculous thing about this argument to me is that it always comes out of nowhere. No one ever says anything that implies this isn't the case, yet antis seem to think everyone except themselves are woefully unaware of this fact.

If fiction didn't affect reality, then people wouldn't use fiction to work through trauma. Obviously, fiction does affect reality.

But I somehow doubt you'll ever come across an anti who wants to ban all violence and/or disturbing content in media. No one wants Fortnite, GTA, Mortal Kombat or Call of Duty to be taken off the shelves forever. No one wants Tokyo Ghoul, Attack on Titan, Death Note or Dragon Ball to never be available to watch again. Yet all contain negative content. Negative content that is consumed by kids daily.

If an anti was really concerned about fiction and the fact that it can affect reality, they would be tackling these bigger problems. Some of these games and a lot of violent or disturbing media in general have been linked to real life attacks. There are so many more.

But I'm not gonna end my argument there and just say, 'Since antis are okay with this wrong thing, then they should be okay with that wrong thing.'

No. At the end of the day, it comes down to the person. Educate children on safe ways to consume media. If someone shipping two cousins together somehow influences a person in the real world to do something terrible, then there's something wrong with that person.

If an SA victim is dressed a certain way and get's SA'd would you blame the SA victim for how they were dressed or the perpetrator? You also have to realise that by placing the blame on fiction, you're enabling similar behavior.

Because too many times throughout history we've seen a murderer get the 'benefit of the doubt' because they were inspired by some form of media. That's no excuse.

2. If you read/write something you must condone it.

Okay, lets say I'm writing a story wherein the protagonist is assassinating a Hitler-like character or entity. The character describes their murder as though they are completely happy about it. Everyone in the story continue on with incredible lives, something that would not have been possible if not for the murder.

Let me first ask, what do you think about this? Do you hate or at the very least disagree with the way the murder was glorified/romanticized because you think that murder is reprehensible no matter what? Or do you think some form or semblance justice was served?

Neither is wrong or right. Not in fiction. Objectivity would come more into play if this were a real situation, though.

But just because I, the author, decided to write it from the character's prespective doesn't mean I condone murder. That didn't mean that I didn't get to acquire any insight on the possible prespective of the character. But even if I did, I could flat-footedly disagree regardless.

I don't feel as though I can explain this. It's something you have to understand. But I'll post this link and hope you can put at least some of the pieces together, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoralityTropes

3. It's okay to harass someone because shipping something that problematic is just wrong.

The point is, no one in fiction is sentinent, except for in our minds. Morality is much more flexible.

It throws me that animals are sentinent, yet we'll know this and eat them regardless. We're hard-pressed to value animals above people, let alone put them on remotely similar levels.

But somehow their is a group of people out there who are condone harassing or threatening people because a completely non-sentinent being is being hurt from their prespective. Really??

Humans go by a general consensus. That we won't put animals above humans. Yet, we're willing to put invisible, fictional entities above humans? This sounds eerily similar to radical cult/religous groups. The only difference is that antis (hopefully) know for sure that a fictional characters aren't real. Most religious people at least have an excuse, even if it's a terrible one.

4. Aging up Characters is wrong

The most unbelieveable argument, but I'll bite. It's not. It's not pedophilia. By Google definitions, pedophilia is a sexual attraction toward children. A pedophile is someone who is sexually attracted to children.

This is not pedophilia. Characters have been aged up in media ever since media has existed. You are not sexualizing a child by aging them up, even if said drawing is suggestive.

When you incorrectly use this term, you make it harder for real victims to be believed, you trivialize the struggles that actual victims have/are going through. If it's weird and suspicious to you, then fine.

5. All proshippers are pedophiles/condone pedophilia.

Firstly, please stop saying this as a lot of proshippers are minors. You are further spewing misinfo on what a pedophile is toward someone who is still developing and may meet an actual pedophile but aren't able to properly identify them because some stranger in line kept insisting an artist who aged up a character is one. Minors are very easily influeneced by the internet. Being harassed does more damage than shipping something they will likely grow out of.

And those who are not minors usually are survivors of CSA/SA and cope with their trauma through drawing or writing certain content. They get to rewrite or redraw what happened to them and give themselves a better ending.

You don't have the right to tell them how to cope. Fiction is supposed to be a safe space, thus, why it is a medium recommended by therapists and has been for centuries. This shit has literally been researched.

Secondly, adult proshippers usually have something along the lines of 'Minors DNI' on their pages. I notice that even antis who post explicit/NSFW content don't, though. Which is ironic.

And the 'not all victims cope this way so they don't have to cope this way' argument is valid.

6. Well, I wouldn't attack them if they weren't public with it.

That's no excuse. You have entirely too much time on your hands, first off. Be hateful towards a person who actually deserves that hate.

Secondly, as long as they have proper warnings on their page, it's their shit. You can't tell them what to do with it.

Lastly, I've never met a proshipper that forced an anti to interact with them or their content. I've never met a proshipper who can somehow resist being blocked by the complete stranger who happened to stumble across their page.

Generally speaking, I don't believe in the 'don't like, don't interact' thing. Not with video games. Or TV. Or social media. You have the right. But when it's another human being, I highly doubt that's something that can't be accomplished.

This also sounds weirdly familiar to the, "Well, if gay people weren't throwing it in my face, I wouldn't have anything to say about them!" Antis are oddly authoritarian.

In Conclusion:

There's no excuse to harass anyone over fiction. And if someone has a very difficult time seperating fiction from reality, I highly recommend therapy in all brutal honesty.

Nothing will ever make telling a suicidal person to kill or hurt themselves okay.

Nothing will ever make falsely telling a survivor that they are their abuser or like their abuser okay.

If I tell Charlie Brown to kill himself right now it won't matter.

If I tell a real person to kill themselves, my words can and just might have real, lasting, effects.

If I tell Percy Jackson to kill himself he'll be okay and we know this without question.

If I tell a real person to kill themselves because they told me they ship Percy with Hera or whoever the fuck, theirs no way of knowing. And if you're fine with that - if you even so much as defend that - then maybe you should engage in something less hateful.

How about worshipping a flying spaghetti monster (since you may as well be)?

[seraphtrevs]

Angsting over how all the salamancas seem to on some level understand that how Hector raised them hurt them but still feel duty bound to care for him.

Tuco is the most obvious but the twins seem to have some level of... maybe not a grudge, but disillusionment with how their uncle fucked them up. They only interact with him when nobody else can do it for them, case in point the hospital scene. Lalo is the only one who never shows a drop of discontent but surely he must think about it sometimes, if not in regards to his own childhood but his cousins'.

Honestly I get them because it IS very hard to acknowledge you were wronged as a child, and it must be infinitely worse for them because of the family-centric culture they grew up in. I volunteer to be their therapist I charge no fee.

I'm not sure how much the Salamanca boys understand that Hector hurt them (which he absolutely did) because they view his abuse as something that made them strong, and even special. The flashback scene with Hector and the twins in brba is so disturbing because we can see that they were once normal little boys. By the time they're grown, those little boys have become completely desensitized to violence, from watching it done to others but also having it done to themselves. It's really stomach-turning to imagine how Hector was able to turn normal children into what they became. When Hector is in the coma, they have nothing to say, not necessarily because they have any conscious recognition of the abuse they suffered, but because Hector took their voices from them in order to turn them into the weapons.

But Hector justifies his abuse as teaching them a lesson about how special it is to be a Salamanca, and that's something that they felt keenly too. Yes, he was hurting them, but only to teach them to be strong (at least, that's how they were taught to see it). The trauma they experienced as children binds them tightly together, so the abuse and the love are two sides of the same coin, impossible to separate.

I've always been curious about how old Lalo was when Hector murdered the professor. Probably not a child, but the way he tells the story seems like it was something foundational to his character, so maybe he was a teenager, or else a very young man. It's interesting that the victim was a professor, and Lalo views Hector as 'teaching the teacher,' but the professor wasn't the one he was teaching - Lalo was Hector's real student. Again, the violence and the love are tangled together, but Lalo seems to be on much more equal footing with Hector than the twins or Tuco, who Hector clearly views as a fuck-up and a disappointment.

My headcanons for Lalo's mom are for funsies, but I do think that he was exempt from the same level of abuse that Tuco and the twins suffered, possibly due to his mother's intervention. It's why he's so much more functional than his cousins and also why his relationship with Hector is better. I also think that even though the twins and Tuco are more violent, Lalo's actually the one who's more of a natural born killer due to his low empathy. Hector didn't have to break Lalo because he was already inclined that way.

That being said...I don't think that Lalo was necessarily destined to be violent from birth because his violence is mostly used as a means to an end and not something he engages in for pleasure. If he wasn't a son of the cartel, he might be a CEO somewhere, cheerfully ruining people's lives to enrich the shareholders. It's just that violence isn't something he naturally recoils from, the way most people do, which makes him an ideal cartel operative

[proship-ghost]

Debunking more anti ideas because I'm bored and they're so bad.

Part 1:

[⚠️ Trigger warning for abuse, sexual assault, violent crimes, mentions of CSEM, Incest, Rape and Grooming⚠️]

Again, we start with this idea that all proshippers ship age gap and or find shotas and lolis sexually appealing - they do not. Therapists have said MULTIPLE times proshipping is fine as a coping mechanism ( it's to let characters thrive in ways you cannot). Stop spreading blatant misinformation because you don't like the facts. Many proshippers that I know don't even use it as a coping mechanism - they just don't believe in harassment over 1's and 0's.

Nobody is "idolizing" their trauma. MOST proshippers put a warning for the content they post- it's your own fault going into tags that have triggering content and getting triggered by it. I have triggers from my trauma- block the tags and people who post it- it's just that simple.

In fiction, there are no illegal themes because fiction cannot be illegal. (Also, don't you self ship with Creepypasta characters- who are murderers- are you condoning murdering people?) Again, incorrect definitions to further push your point. Proshipping is Pro- For shipping meaning people are allowed to ship what they want, that doesn't mean we can't be made uncomfortable by them but I'm not going to send death threats for opinions on fiction.

No. You're just simply outright wrong. Many proshippers are victims and CAN use fiction to cope but, some simply do it for the hell of it- they're not condoning it in real life because they can make that distinction.

Part 2:

Their "sources" for fiction affecting reality

Now let's start with the more "easy" to debunk things.

About half of these are literal children responding to animated movies they've watched. Are you seriously telling me that you think that's a valid source? Literal children not understanding a distinction - you do realize that hurts your case correct?

People who commit crimes are going to commit crimes anyways- regardless of watching a show/movie or reading a novel- they may influence HOW these crimes are committed but that's not at all the CAUSE for it.

Later in the post they claim porn has the same affect:

Pornographic content is not to be taken as reality and most have a disclaimer saying "this is like every case of acting do not replicate this at home". It's people's own fault for looking at dramatized content then assuming that's how it works. That's certainly not the contents fault- but the people who skip through to the "good stuff".

It's sad to see so many people fall immediately into this rabbit hole of purity culture and pro-censorship over half truths and then start whole heartedly defending it.

TLDR; An antis "proof" as to why proshipping is bad is a mixture of using incorrect definitions, poor taste sources and just outright misinformation.

[zooophagous]

what would you say is the worst film you've ever watched? not one that's so bad it's fun to watch again and again, but one that you deeply regret ever wasting time on.

The last movie in the conjuring series. I'm a horror junkie, I like goofy schlock and stuff as much as the next horror junkie. I roll my eyes and tolerate the "based on a true story" drek that comes oozing out the tube.

But something about this particular film just left me so angry.

Backstory- this movie follows the story of a man who murdered his landlord in a violent fit, and tried to claim innocence under the idea he was possessed by a demon at the time of the killing. Notable public nuisances and famous pop culture psychics, Ed and Lorraine Warren (the people who had Annabelle the Doll in a glass case in their little museum) injected themselves into the case and got it national attention.

The long short of it is, the guy was convincted, eventually got out and went on to marry his girlfriend who he was seeing at the time of the murder.

Now, with that backstory you probably have an idea of why this film pissed me off. We have a pair of charlatans who are so desperate for attention they decided to stick their noses into an actual violent murder, and we have a young woman who fell in love with a violent man who actually murdered someone in a rage and she wasn't even able to leave him when he was physically in prison for killing a man.

And this is paraded around like a warm and fuzzy feel good ending in which Ed and Lorraine are heroes who saved this poor victimized murderer from some nebulous Satanic witch (because the Satanic panic wasn't bullshit you guys the spooky witches are REAL and they'll get your kids if you let them play dungeons and dragons)

And the worst part is that the murder actually happened so we're cheerfully woobifying someone who actually killed someone in a fit of rage and tried to cover their ass by blaming the devil.

I fucking hate that film. I fucking hate what it stands for and I'm glad the Warren's are too dead to profit off it.

And it wasn't even good.

[princeescaluswords]

Read a ~wonderful~ fic with all the fanon born tropes we've come to love: Left Hand, ~shades of gray~, "Scott sees world in black and white", Marin is "not to be trusted" and "barely a druid" whatever that means lol, Stiles is "more of a kitsune than Kira" says Noshiko who literally has her power ripped out of her by Stiles, and more I'm forgetting probably. But it's funny, especially the "Left Hand" concept that was never a thing in the show but was fabricated to excuse Peter's selfishness and viciousness.

Have you read George Orwell?  He was extraordinarily critical of extreme right political thought -- fascism -- and extreme left political thought -- totalitarianism. The moment I read this ask, I thought about his quote, written from the perspective of the villain in his book 1984:

“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” 

What has this to do with Teen Wolf?  Apparently, plenty.     

The quote interacts with its story, and one of the reasons that Scott McCall is among my favorite fictional characters, by showing how Scott McCall subverts this concept completely.   Is Scott capable of doing terrible things?  Absolutely.  But when forced to by circumstance, he does them for a definite and beneficial end.  He doesn’t prepare to do bad things in order to maintain his own status.  Every time people complained that “Scott is so weak for an alpha!” I smiled because that’s the point. In a crisis, his first thought isn’t -- how do I use my status, physical strength, and mystical skills to perpetuate my and my pack’s advantages and my own authority?  His first thought is -- who is hurting?

Which is why his first profound statement in Season 6 was “They don’t need us.”

Fandom experiences a thrill of projecting onto characters.  Nothing wrong with that at all!  That’s the reason those characters were made in the first place.   But I have to question parts of a fandom who derive a thrill from celebrating those who manipulate, torture, enslave, and kill others and do so by creating elaborate justifications for that thrill.  

Peter wasn’t the Left Hand.  It was never even hinted at in the story.  He knew things and had useful competencies, but so did Deaton.  Only Deaton never looked straight at the camera and said, “I want what I’ve always wanted --power.” and his actions backed up his benevolence.  Peter wasn’t the Left Hand because Talia didn’t need a Left Hand, Derek didn’t need a Left Hand (he needed a pack member he could trust), and Scott didn’t need a Left Hand.  The concept of the Left Hand is fandom’s way of not only justifying Peter’s past actions, but a way to celebrate someone who would do terrible things like manipulate his newly-found daughter to get that power and respond to her anger with a snide quip in order to gain power and keep it.

“Shades of gray” is nothing more than utilitarianism run amuck.  It’s a con artist’s scam, a way to get others to agree that “what you need is more important than what anyone else needs, so use any means available to get what you want.”  It’s a blank check to excuse any act as long as you can paint someone as the enemy.  It’s vulgar selfishness in sunglasses and a raincoat.  

Strangely enough -- No, not strangely enough, absolutely and completely in tune with the greater culture -- when freed of personal responsibility for their desires by the self-serving mantra of ‘fiction =/= reality,’ this always takes the form of white men being superior, hurting, or even killing minorities, women, and -- most especially -- women of color.  

Compare fandom’s reaction to Peter Hale and to Marin Morrell.  Compare fandom’s reaction to Derek Hale and to Marin Morrell.  Compare fandom’s reaction to Stiles Stilinski and Marin Morrell.  The show made it clear that Marin was playing a dangerous game to keep the worst impulses of the Alpha Pack in check (they talk about this in scene after scene, that she’s risking her life to stop them from the inside), but somehow this makes her untrustworthy and unlikable.  Peter Hale can use Lydia Martin as a get-out-of-death free card, Derek Hale can recruit children to fight a war, Stiles can lie and break the law with impunity, but Marin acting in ‘shades of grey’ to keep the Alpha Pack’s body count to a minimum is completely disqualifying her for protection or regard.

Now, on one hand, Peter can be celebrated for avenging his family from their brutal murder by killing his niece, almost killing his nephew, torturing teenagers, and killing his allies and innocent bystanders because of the pain and torment of experiencing his family burning alive.  On the other hand, Noshiko Yukimura watched her neighbors die due to the venality of the people who imprisoned them unfairly, experienced being gunned down while watching soldiers gun down unarmed civilians, know her love died screaming in indescribable agony, and she, barely able to move, uses the only power she has left to get revenge, but she deserves her power to be ripped away from her.

You see at the base it’s about us vs. them.  Parts of fandom saw hot white guys who can cry about their problems while other people are dying and they said -- hey, that’s me!  So they select these people as theirs, or us, and all the other as them -- which tend to be minorities, women, and, most especially women of color -- and celebrate them taking whatever power or actions necessary to achieve victory ... forever.

Even though Peter’s self-serving attempt to paint Scott as a black-and-white thinker was supposed to be seen through as the manipulation it was by the audience, it gave people who wanted the hot, evil white guys to win a means to disparage their primary opponent.  Because the fundamental aspect of Scott’s heroism is that he sees everyone -- even people he doesn’t like, such as Peter -- as deserving of the same chances.   He doesn’t value himself or his pack above others in a violent free-for-all that is one step above the law of the jungle.  You can see their disdain when they interpret Scott’s beliefs as neglecting Stiles or being stubborn towards Derek or never understanding Peter.  

They know that Scott doesn’t hold his purity above the good of others, because they constantly condemn him for it.  In Code Breaker, in Master Plan, in The Overlooked, in Echo House, in Orphaned, in Ouroboros, in Apotheosis, in The Werewolves of London, we see him do things he doesn’t like, he doesn’t want to do, things that are utilitarian, to save others.   Their real complaint isn’t that he won’t do what’s necessary, it’s that he does what’s necessary for everyone and not exclusively for their hot white male favorites.

A friend of mine argued that an audience member only has a certain number of characters they can feel empathy for at any one time.  They are most likely correct.  That’s why we have morality.   A lot of us believe that everyone has the right to life and freedom even if we, personally, don’t care about them.  Teen Wolf stated that the most legitimate form of power is that which is used to the benefit of all others, not just the holder of the power and his close friends.  That the object of power is making the world a better place.   Parts of fandom just don’t get that.

[catcatb0y]

Also the casual guilt trip is great, btw. You're definitely making your point about trying to NOT traumatize someone while openly peeling into someone's anxiety and making them feel responsible for your past actions.

And that's just what it is.

In the past, you made a mistake, as bad as it has affected you, there's nothing that WE or anyone else can do about it.

If you really want to help kids, first things first guilt tripling randos on the internet will not help for shit. You just look like an ass.

Start a Discord server or a blog that talks about different labels, warning kids about the types of content they might see. (I.e. like saying that incest means people are painting familial bonds in a romantic/sexual light, saying that (x,y,z) kinks are about:, and this might upset or potentially trigger someone who reacts badly to (similar situations). Inform the people about the choices they are making.

Being pro ao3 and talking about/circulating tag culture. As much as people who claim to be protecting the children hate to admit it, ao3 is one of the BEST libraries when it comes to this stuff. Everything in the fic is clearly laid out and labeled before hand, not to mention that little 'proceed' button when it pulls up 'this may contain adult content, do you still wish to proceed?' that is CONSENT. From there onwards, you have consented to seeing content that is not meant for younger/easily squicked or triggered people.

I mean, take Tumblr for example. Before the porn ban, people would clearly label their nsfw content, so that anyone who didn't want to see it could filter them out. After the ban, guess what? There's still adult content, but now you stumble upon it like a pothole on your biking path, throwing you violently off of your vehicle- or at least making your ride unsteady.

See the above: purges never work. They don't. They never have and they never will. Purges have never been "about the children" they have been about control and censorship- typically to silence minorities and marginalized groups.

Talk about and circulate red flags and warning signs. If you were hurt by a person or persons using adult content (I'm assuming this is about fics, since, let's be real, most of these conversations are), blame the people, not the tools they used.

Knives can be used to cook tasty things or they could be used for murder. Talk about warning signs that perpetuate this cycle of harm- in both fic (for example, scenarios where two characters are heading to a bedroom together might imply some,,, "fun times;" fics that have or include sex workers or an openly traumatized character have a higher chance of containing some form of manipulation and/or assault; or just straight up warn people about how (X) by (Y) contains untagged content that's not suitable for (these types) of audiences) and in conversation (such as: if an adult calls (a minor) things like sexy/makes sex jokes/frequently talks about sexual content while KNOWING that they are talking to a minor, that's a RED FLAG; adults (or 'other minors') coercing (a minor) into reading/writing/drawing sexual content, especially saying things like "you're mature enough, it doesn't matter," "age is just a number," "everyone's doing it," that's another big RED FLAG; adults asking (a minor) to frequently send pics of themself, especially asking for provocative or risky pictures, please for fucks sake leave).

If anyone, at all, is pressuring you or someone else into reading/writing/drawing/watching adult content, get them out of your life. If they tell you that it's okay or that everyone does it, they're lying to you and that's not okay. Enforce your boundaries and stick with them.

If you are the one going out and looking for adult content, no offense bud, whatever you find is completely on you. If something starts to head in a direction that makes you uncomfortable, leave. If you feel like you weren't properly warned, you can politely ask the person to put up a warning, but know that you're not entitled to anything. If someone repeatedly or frequently makes content that makes you uncomfortable, unfollow or block them (hell, if they make a single peice that makes you uncomfortable, block them).

If you're on manga/anime sites and you feel like the summary didn't warn people well enough, leave a comment under the summary or the first chapter/episode (you can do this with fics, too, if the creator left some content untagged, drop it into the comment section on the first chapter. Not everybody reads them, but some people do.)

For fucks sake, don't guilt trip people.

First things first, if you can't make a point without weaponizing your past experiences or guilting someone into agreeing with you, your point isn't that strong. Second things second, that!!! Is literally!! Weaponized constantly by the people you want to condemn. People that use tools to do bad things often use guilt and peer pressure to coerce others into doing what they want.

Guilt tripping is harmful to victims- some of which are the children you claim you want to protect! You're literally just making them easier targets for actual bad people, because they're more likely to take things at face value and not question the intent of the people who try to get them to do things!

Giving kids safe spaces to explore and understand content will always be more helpful than banning all """bad""" content. Not to mention! Banning such content Does Not Actually Work. Ever. In most cases, not only will people try and seek it out more, it will be easier for people who do weaponize such things to hold it against their victims. (I can also bring up how ""bad"" content is not definable across an even board, like claiming that kids are "to young to know if they're gay" (or too young to see gay content), but they're old enough to know if they're straight (or see straight content).

Teach kids the difference between reality and fiction as well as thoughts versus actions.

Sexual fantasies are not always sexual desires. Enjoying something in fiction does not always equal enjoying said thing in real life.

Teaching kids to separate themselves from the content they consume is vastly important when it comes to preventing trauma. For example, my first exposure to the LGBT community was the BL manga community, which, if you don't know, is unfortunately a bit of a toxic cesspit. A lot of the stories cover content that is rapey, borderline fetishistic, and has heavy power dynamics. The biggest reason for that is because the depiction if the female body in Japan is (or at the very least was for a long time) frowned upon, so they project themselves and their sexual or romantic desires onto two gay men (when your misogyny is so strong it wheels around to being gay lmao).

This is not at all a representation of how they view gay men or gay relationships. Not the author, nor the (assumedly) cishet ladies in the comment section. ((Of course, if that is the ONLY exposure you receive to a certain thing or trope, it does shape your view of said thing at least a little- which is why it's even more important to teach the boundaries between fiction and reality)). However, to me it was. I grew up thinking that was how I (was supposed to) view gay relationships, that what I read was an accurate depiction of them. As of such, when I started to question my sexuality and gender orientation, I got extremely self conscious and hyper aware of sexuality, developing sexual based triggers and being hyper aware of my body.

The creator of those stories? They did not write them for me. They did not tell me or force me to read them. It is not their fault that I, a transmasc nonbinary person, found their depiction of (people similar to me) to be harmful to me, specifically.

Over my younger years, I became more and more averting, shying more and more away from sexualized content. It is not the fault of the creators that as young and impressionable as I was, I happened to find their content- a lot! I found soooo much (cis)gay content written by people that were cishet women. Do I wish they wouldn't? Yeah, kinda, honestly. But is it my place to demand they stop? Absolutely not.

Recognize what led to you seeking out the content that made you uncomfortable. Instead of targeting the creators who did not write their shit for you, break down WHY you thought it was appropriate to search for or to indulge in content that was meant for adults when you were... well (assumingly) not an adult. Target THAT instead.

Was it peer pressure?

Curiosity?

The drive to be more "like an adult" despite still being a child?

Because you didn't understand the warnings?

People use fiction to test out things that they would, could, or shouldn't do in real life. This can be problematic content, questionable content, or even pure wholesome content that they just aren't personally into.

There is an easily definable buffer between things they want and things they want to explore. For me, my trauma came from not being able to recognize that buffer. For me, my trauma came from repeated overexposure.

It's not THEIR fault that I never learned to define the two. It's not THEIR fault that I had unrestricted internet access. It's not THEIR fault that I ignored their warnings or proceeded to consume more and more content until it hurt me. That was on me, buddy. That was on my guardians who never took the time to warn me about the types of things I'd see online. That was on my older brother who (while he didn't necessarily /mean/ to) encouraged me to seek out that sort of (sexualized) content.

If I had understood that fantasies (whether written/drawn or just thought about) were not the same as wants/actions, it would have saved me from a lot of discomfort/dysphoria that I feel towards myself, because I had only ever been presented with people whose fantasies matched their wants and thus assumed that was the case for all creators.

Helping kids become 'not like me' is teaching them that thoughts are not actions and fantasies are not desires. Helping kids become 'not like me' is teaching them to limit their exposure to the things they consume, especially and specifically to have a life and an information source outside of media. Helping kids become 'not like me' is teaching them to cut people cut of their lives, to not put so much weight on trying to enjoy things in the same way that other people enjoy things (stay out of comment sections or fandoms, to block or unfollow people that make you uncomfortable, and to not put so much weight on finding people who have the same interests as I do, but rather to find people who think the way I do, and introduce them to the things I like).

What is NOT helping kids be 'not like me' is condemning people, especially people who might not be cis or het, for writing non cishet material that I don't agree with. What is NOT helping kids 'not be like me' is using my past experiences to demonize writers/creators or other fans for being different than I am. What is NOT helping kids be 'not like me' is weaponizing my emotions and my past experiences.

Creators don't write shit for you. They write shit that you happen to stumble upon. If you really want to protect people from falling into traumatic rabbit holes, teach them the difference between fiction and reality, teach them to recognize tags that could be harmful, and for fucks sake stop guilt tripping people.

Me being traumatized and not wanting that to happen to other kids makes me a bad person now :)) I’m disgusting :)) and horrible :)) and it’s my fault that happened :)) and everybody hates me more now :)) cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool.

You are not horrible. And I do not hate you. It is not your fault that it happened. But things that are marked as adult very clearly are not for kids, and if you read it anyway it is on the people who should have been supervising you and did not intervene, or, assuming that you were old enough to know what ‘adult content’ means and chose to engage with stuff produced by adult fans for adult fans, on you for ignoring the warnings.

If a ten year old child goes to a library right now, and walks to the romance section and pulls down a book, that child’s guardians are responsible for saying “Hey now that is not for you.” If that same child comes back at thirteen and, knowing there is content in that book that adults do not want them to read, furtively hides away from guardian’s eyes and reads it anyway, that is not the fault of the library for having that book, or the author for writing it.

I am very sorry you’ve been hurt. But adults are going to produce content for adults, and if you ignore the guidelines set in place to keep kids out of that content, then that’s not the fault of the adults who wrote the stuff.

[dog-day-morning]

THIS AIN'T LEGAL

Have you ever heard of absolute immunity? Federal officers who violate the Civil Rights of American citizens in an attempt to do harm with recorded video evidence of the violation in action or officers who willingly falsify a police report of a violent attack in order to frame the victim while the antagonist sits before a judge and jury perjuring herself with alligator tears before an all white jury with her blonde locks, and blue eyes, damn devil, and goes free while an innocent child spends 17 months behind bars. To say that Amerikkka is unjust is an understatement. Too many times Black people are dragged into a court that's already biased, having to face a judge, and jury who may have a vested financial interest in the private prison industry, but let's be real. The school to prison pipeline is not a myth, it's a bloody bruise on the face of Lady Liberty. Liberty, and justice for all never applied to the indigenous people of Amerikkka or any of the ADOS, and FBA citizens whose roots are entrenched in the Earth bleeding from a wound the wicked do not want to heal. The above mentioned scenarios actually happened to one of your own Amerikkka, and a child from the Middle East. It's funny that Amerikkkans appear to want peace seemingly always, but you're forever raising hell outside of your jurisdiction? Joe Biden is deporting Haitian refugees out of the country ASAP, while transporting inland, and giving amnesty to Afghan refugees, and South Americans even so far as to offer them free secondary education, and housing. The culture of Amerikkka is against a Black man ever rising up to experience the American Dream in a Taliban like Aristocracy or Totalitarian society that started centuries before Biden became president. He's not the answer to our problems nor is he the root of the issue. Amerikkka is a canker sore, and a blight that impedes the progression of a once dominant, but humble people. No one needs to preach of racial superiority and use terror tactics in order to justify a calloused approach to validate this viral disease that affects everyone with a modicum of common sense, decency, and compassion. Amerikkka was a Nation before Amerigo Vespucci set foot on these shores. Alkebulan was inhabited by some of the most brilliant minds, and still is before Scipio Africanus named the dark continent after himself, an albino. Ohhh the irony, and moral hypocrisy. Timbuktu, and the city of Alexandria were well established kingdoms in Alkebulan where Greek, and Roman scholars went to gather much needed knowledge because they were dumb as hell. Egypt is a mystery that none can determine for now. When the prophecy is fulfilled by the Father whom the Prophet Joel spoke thereof He would pour His Spirit down upon all flesh, the truth will set you and I free. And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. What's impeding us from this prophetic word? Keep your thoughts to yourself. That's a luxury I haven't had since the age of stupid. Not wanting to call you out on the sins of your fathers, but you are just like him. I hope, and pray the Father fulfills His will in time before our hearts wax cold, too late. Amerikkka’s public enemy will not be our Black sons or daughters that are trying to follow the rules of man whose lawlessness has revealed itself to be an entire race of people. You create the laws, and break them leaving everyone with a bad taste in their mouth except those who profit from our pain. Chris Rock said this years ago. “The white man is the only one who profits from everyone's pain, especially a Black man’s.” you see how they treat us, and you have no inclination of what your future will hold for your people in the aftermath of the Zombie Apocalypse. I hate this form of pop culture rhetoric. There will be souls inhabiting these bodies that were once dead, and decomposing. God will deliver the dead from the sea, and He will deliver the dead from death, and hell.

Isaiah 26:17-21

17 Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been in thy sight, O Lord.

18 We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen.

19 Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.

20 Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.

21 For, behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain..

When our Lord Christ Jesus does this work how do you think those who've hated, and betrayed us for a season of sin will react in the oncoming horror set before mankind? God has placed us on the Earth for a purpose, not to suffer. I can't put the blame on Joe Biden or those who came before him for what this nation or planet has done, and is doing to us; psych!!! The God of our fathers will judge you according to your works which has wrought death and destruction. The wrath, and judgment Joe Biden, trump, and their people will incur, and experience is worse than any Stephen King novel or Jordan Peele, and M. Night Shyamalan movies can induce in your alleged, fragile psyche. I've told Jacob, and warned the gentiles of God's incoming judgment, but no ones willing to heed the words of an idiot savant. I'm guilty of many things by way of my woeful condition. I'm compelled to elaborate these truths to you as they become relevant at a particular hour. Watch out for your young children who may be a pain, but they're innocent, and they're yours. The world sees us as prey, a potential payoff for an organ harvest, and fodder for the wickedly unjust. This woman that they have been searching for these last 5 or so days in a National Park has this Nation all a buzz. Who is she? Do you know how many women of Jacob go missing everyday without any press from the media? We can blame them, but are they at fault? Hell yeah!!! Continue to read. Our people have been limited by those who control the information, the social media platforms, infighting within our own tried Black media organizations that have blessed us over the years who are left open to attack by oppressive censorship that purposely restricts what they can, and cannot reveal to the Black masses. I was amazed to find out in 2017 that Coretta Scott King, and her family successfully sued the US government over the assassination of MLK Jr.; that was in 1999. The Atlanta Black Star might have covered the litigation process, but I didn't hear a peep from anyone I knew or even hear about it on any news media platform, especially from the major media news networks. That's how they've Silenced the Lamb with threats, and bullying tactics. We've come too far to go back to Egypt. The only time I wanna hear mention of going to Egypt is if my Church takes a sabbatical to the Motherland, and my Apostle takes the trip with us to seek the truths that have been denied us. Reference Joel 2:28. Those who stay committed to this ministry will see beyond the veil. If you placed all of your faith in me or Apostle Johnson you have overlooked the reasons God led you to this Church, Elders, Evangelists, Prophetesses, Deacons, Ministers, and the entire Church family. He nor I can do anything without the will of the Father, and I’m stuck on dufus. Get yo tail back to Church ASAP!!! We place our faith in men who have let us down many times. Apostle has done much for me, but Jesus has done everything. God will do a good work in all of us. I want every man, woman, and child in this ministry to reap what they have sown; don't leave. When the sky turns black, and the heavens roll back, peeling back the clouds, that's when you will see or hear the Son of God coming for His faithful. Apostle has taught us of the temporal mental mindset many times. Evidently it’s true as many of us have forgotten his teachings. My mind went off on a tangent, excuse me, where was I ? BET is owned by Jews, who used to own us. They run the entertainment industry that Buck breaks our men, and you wouldn't believe what they do to black women, and children who are all looking for a way to display their talents in order to get wealth, and their name up in lights. Leroy has the talent, all Mr. Epstein can offer you is a bogus contract that rips you off in the end leaving you po, broke, and lonely with a busted a-hole. Those who beat the system at their own game wind up 6 feet deep. Why do you think they murdered Michael Jackson, Prince, Sam Cooke, and James Brown? Michael owned half of SONY BMI. Prince owned all of his Masters that his

siblings sold for pennies on the dollar. Sam was going to start his own label, and brother James who had a label, but the IRS falsely audited him several times forcing him to sell his label keeping Soul Brother number 1 from becoming the first billionaire recording artist decades before JZ did. THIS AINT LEGAL. All that glitters isn't gold people. Ask Mr. Goldberg who runs several porn studios in Silicone Valley California. They run the majority of that particular industry as well as recording, movie and TV production studios while controlling the financial institutions. The majority heads of the Department of the Treasury including the current, Janet Yellen have been Jewish. Not trying to be a dissenter, but someone’s getting screwed. It's the middle class, and our fat, Black… ? William Randolph Hearst made the movie Reefer Madness which was a propaganda film not because hemp was a gateway drug to other crap, hell a pack of cigarettes has killed more people than ten thousand blunts. Smoke a blunt, and 30 minutes later you wanna eat. Smoke crack, and 30 minutes later you're sucking d**k. Hemp can be used in a vast amount of ways that would’ve crippled Mr. Hearst’s other industries. You can use it as fabric for clothes that's stronger, and more durable than cotton. The hemp plant had more useful potential than the soybean, and peanut combined!!! Marijuana isn't a drug at all, it's an herb. The Egyptians used it to cure many ailments including cancer. If I were still on Instagram Mark Suckerberg would personally shut my page down himself… again. That's why I no longer use white run social media websites. Mr. Hearst's only interest in getting the government to make hemp illegal was to keep his financial, investment interests ever increasing. In the end it turned out to do more harm than good. Now that the government has managed to tax the herb, they've made it legal. Why in the hell are Black men, and women still serving draconian, archaic prison sentences for minor marijuana drug offenses that don't make sense to a mongoloid retard?!! Like I said: “THIS AINT LEGAL.” Babylon the Damned will fall on its pancaked derriere soon enough. Pray to God the Zombie Apocalypse runs right past your abode or get some pads from your son's football uniform in order to appease the dead in Christ who may want a ham sandwich or your daughter Becky. This too shall pass. Try lamb's blood? The closer I get to death or that visitation with someone I've been wanting to see for a long time because I can't see, the more these things come back to my remembrance. This is enough for today. Whatever God reveals to me in the next few days hopefully I’ll relate some of that information to you. I thank those for judging me as a simp, punk b**ch, p**sy a** n**gah, punk a** n**gah, sorry a** n**gah, faggot, and everything you project or judge according to your flesh. I have no secrets so what am I trying to hide? Get your house in order Jeff, your life may be required of you, and ya boy in the wheelchair. Still someone else's identity Yippie Yai Kai Yay mother!@#$%& 9/21/2021

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

The Problem with MSM

So I honestly don't have many followers. I'm also prone to going on tangents. And most of my posts are rooted in politics. Not by choice mind you. I was not the one that decided literally everything in existence is political. I'm also not the one that created the view points that want everything to be political. TL;DR At the bottom.

To start off however, I need you to understand the process of radicalization.

Find someone who feels discontent with how a situation is, or how their life is

Tell this person that what's happening to them is not their fault

Place the blame for this person's problems on a certain group (political group, racial group, religious group, etc.)

Talk to the person like you know how they feel, "drop your guard" and tell them "problems you've had that were not your fault" blaming that same group

Show them that they are either a victim or oppressed in some way, shape, or form.

Slowly start swaying their views further to the extreme, by showing them other instances of "others who are being attacked or are victims" of said group.

Promptly but softly oppose any "differing views" with warped information or flat out lies

Get them to start going to events and taking to others that have already been radicalized

Have you and another radicalized individual, keep track of this person and say you support them and their issues

Sit back and watch

Now this is a rough lost but more or less the bare bones basics of radicalizing other people. Though in some cases it takes more steps and in some others it takes less. So what does this have to do with MSM (Mainstream Media)? Quite a few things in modern day actually.

The job of MSM is to get you information, as fast as humanly possible. This however was not the first goal priority in the past. In the past, the first priority was to cover a story as factually as the could, and look for more information keeping people constantly updated. Here we get to our first real problem for Media today. Technology. The Advent of modern technology has been both a blessing and a curse in this regard. And of course I'm talking about the internet in its current form. The internet being the very center of information distribution in 2019. And it has been for almost 12 years now.

So what did this change? Basically everything we know today. "Old wives tales" are now a Google search away. Feeling sick? WebMD says you have Cancer. Looking for the next hour story? Check CNN's Twitter account. The Internet brought us a great, many things. But it has taken away just as many. MSM has had to slowly move operations into social media in order to try and stay relevant. This because many people have unplugged, and have gone full digital. The only real exceptions being places of business. And with the world at your finger tips at the clock of a button, being factual has lost its relevance. Not to mention that as far back as 2013-2014 activists started working for MSM companies. Most notably progressive activists. This causes many problems we currently see today. Below is an example of what a headline used to look like, and what most headlines look like now:

Normal headline: Shooting in Birmingham leaves 3 dead and several injured during city wide festival.

Headline now: White, Trump supporter, Nazi, KKK, skin head, punches 2 people in hate crime.

See the difference? The first headline shows the basic facts and dives into known details during the article. Often they'd avoid opinions all together. The second one one the other hand, blatantly discloses anything that could generate clicks. Why? Because true or not, outrage sells. So over the past several years, MSM has been slowly radicalizing us. But they do this on a bipartisan level.

Are you black? The cops will kill you, and the white man is evil. Can't find a job? Racism. Are you a woman? Then you're unhappy because "rape culture". Do you regret having sex with that guy? Well guess what? He actually raped you without you realizing. Are you white? You're evil. Are you strait? You're a monster and should give all your money to gay people. Are you a man? You are responsible for every rape ever committed. You're also a pedophile and violent. Are you a strait white man? Oh boy you won the jackpot because you're basically Hitler.

See my point here? MSM spends most of it's time trying to rage bait you into clicking their articles. And in doing so we've gotten so lazy as a country that half the time, we don't even read past the headlines. And MSM knows this. They don't care if you read what they write. They are just radicalizing you so they can keep feeding you outrage. Because the more often they do it, the more often you will click it, skim all of 3 lines and then hop on Twitter and talk about how outraged you are. Sure, we are just as to blame for letting it happen to us, but most of us used to have at least some trust in the media. But after SEVERAL severely awfully false hit pieces that were headline news for almost months, many of us have started staying away from MSM.

What incidents might I be talking about?

Covington Catholic controversy (Almost every media outlet took a 7 second clip and ran with it. Turns out, there was a full 2hr video out there, and the Native American man, whom CNN interviewed, lied his ass off. Most media also chose to ignore the VERY beginning of the video which showcased a group called The Black Hebrew Israelites. These individuals, called Trump a homosexual, called the Native Americans there "Uncle Tomahawk", and said Gay people should not have rights. THESE CATHOLIC STUDENTS, were appalled by this statement. But what did we see in the media? "Racist Maga hat kid threatens and blocks the path of a Poor innocent Native American man."

Duke Lacrosse. Years after these kids were crucified by the Media and many others, the girl actually came out saying it never happened. You know who reported on this? Next to no one.

Ferguson. Now as controversial as this one is, the media took and RAN with it. What followed after the skewed coverage was a cult like gathering that led to phrases like, "hands up don't shoot" and "oink oink, bang bang". But Obama had the issue federally investigated. Both witnesses and the coroner report said basically the same thing. That he was aggressively wrestling with the cop trying to take his gun. But, it's too late. Now all cops are evil, and Democrat politicians are quoting it like it happened yesterday, and claiming the cop guilty. Why? Because MSM already got what they needed. They radicalized the individuals they wanted, people who will come back to them for, "facts".

And what does all of this boil down to? A video that made me write this out.

2 things need to be said here. 1. The "manifesto" as it were, was actually debunked to have been uploaded by the shooter, by the site admin himself. As well as several other sources. 2. If, by some chance the manifesto was real, and he had someone upload it for him, he mentions several liberal talking points, like universal basic income, saving the environment, among other left policies.

But this brings me back to both the beginning and to this story. Assuming for a moment, the manifesto was his. How did this happen? Most of you might just jump and say, "RACIST NAZIS", or something slightly more colorful. But here is the thing. MSM is partly responsible for all of this. Assuming the conspiracy that the CIA or FBI is responsible is false, I agree with the YouTuber in the picture. I believe that if you belittle and berate someone enough over time, you can cause them to do extreme things. I mean look at this site. Look at Twitter. Look at MSM. "White people bad", "white people are evil" "K*LL all whites" "white privilege", "fuck men", "male tears", "man spreading", "mansplaining", "Yes all men". All of this. This is popular. This is a trend. And it's unacceptable. Because frankly, it's basically bullying someone into a corner. Personally? I've been told by a few companies that are scared of social justice warriors and the online hate mob, that their company is actively not hiring white individuals. And I wish, REALLY WISH, I was making that up.

Is it any wonder, that people who go to the internet as an escape end up in a low point in their lives and then decide to do something awful? And it's the same with school shootings too. The news puts out, the name, ethnicity, how tall they are, and their entire life story, for weeks at a time. And now for much longer, because they support the desire to ban guns. So they need these things to happen more often. So the glorify the shooter, and keep talking about him/them for months. But here is where the story gets fun.

Columbine's shooting, was actually supposed to be a bombing. The kids who did it? Not the "school losers" the media talked about. The trench coat club? They were not even apart of it. More info on that here. As well as other places on Google.

More or less This video covers what the media got wrong in their rush to cover everything. What they did not intend on, was making these two boys heros to those bullied in school. Mostly boys, who are torn down and told they aren't enough, that they don't matter, they are isolated, bullied, harassed. So they look for someone who stood up to their bullies. What they were given, was a sociopath who manipulated a suicidal boy into helping him commit mass murder. Almost all of MSM were quick to say they were bullied into it. What's worse however, is Parkland. The Parkland 5, (the students whom MSM propped up for months) one of them came out admitting, that she bullied the guy who shot up the school. Said he was weird and that she needed to do it. This is one of the teens the media has PROPPED UP, saying we should listen to their infinite wisdom. A girl who is probably half responsible for the shooting.

Start paying attention. Start doing research. And for the love of all that is holy, STOP BULLYING PEOPLE! I don't care what your narrative is, or what it means. IE:

White people are human

Black people are human

Hispanic people are human

Gay people are human

Strait people are human

Women are human

Men are human

Stop normalizing anything to the contrary. Because when you do, you become part of the problem.

TL;DR The media only cares about themselves and clicks. They don't care who they radicalize, so long as you keep giving them traffic. Which for them is money. Do your research, look into things, and don't bully people. I'm looking at you progressives.

[iron-sunrise]

12-14 years of angry suburban white boys stewing in a rotting, extremely entitled and violent, crypto fascist to outright fascist internet culture-cult with nobody doing a fucking goddamned thing about it because [white] boys will be boys and here we are. This is far from the first or last straw (considering women/poc/trans people are harmed far more and exponentially, often LETHALLY) but its nigh time folks really started paying attention and doing their homework about why we are here.

We're still suffering the immense consequences of this shit to the point they've managed to tip the political atmosphere fully into isolationist autharitorianism run amok (note TIP not transform. Important distinction) with Incels, white supremacists and more mass shooting and murdering and, still, -STILL-, we're barely struggling away from the narrative of isolated incidents of poor, troubled white youth who're "challenged" rather than radicalized.

Reddit, 4chan, Ki/wi/farms and more don't need to just be taken to task, they need to be toppled. Thats just one thing that needs to be done. And after that these lazy and privilege-blind fuckrakes that refused to moderate and titrate the flow of shit on MMOs, streaming sites and so on should be charged as far as I'm concerned. I've been studying/immersed/a proxy to these shitty subcultures the entire time. Watching it happen in real time, wanting to pull my hair out because nobody was doing anything but encouraging it and punishing the people being harmed.

Watching it twist into the ultimate monstrosity has been a horrible experience and it all could have been stopped if people didn't fall for the "Free speech means specifically, these racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic toxic lemmings cannot be touched but anyone upsetting them gets the hammer. Otherwise our game/site/stream wouldn't be as popular and lucrative". Make no mistake, the admins and mods and sysops need their backs against the wall. This shit was CULTIVATED, whether directly or indirectly.

The REAL dangerous IdPol (hate that word) is White toxic masculinity/White male identity politics. Because, basically, that's where you get Fascism. And these bitches farmed it like a crop. I guarantee the little collection of edgy turds who did this don't give a shit about gun rights or the NRA-- Hogg is just another visible SJW who needs to pay the price and/or die in their eyes, so this mess is justified.

So this happened. And let’s be clear: SWATting is not a “prank.” It is attempted fucking murder. The reason you call SWAT instead of like 30 pizza places is because you want cops with itchy trigger fingers pointing guns at your target.

SOMEONE TRIED TO MURDER A PARKLAND ACTIVIST TODAY.