#impurity culture

[campgender]

Whenever a player safewords, this is an occasion for mutual support. We understand that nobody safewords from a happy place, and that all of our egos feel frail and kind of runty when we need to back out of a scene. It is completely unethical to respond with scorn or ridicule to a person who has safeworded: S/M is not a competition, we are not playing against each other.

As tops, we have noticed that if we are having a good time and our bottom safewords, our initial feelings may not be happy. Whaddaya mean you don't like that? I do all this work and you don't appreciate it? I'm hot for being in control and you want me to stop? We have felt real anger and felt challenged in our top role... and, on a deeper level, we have felt put down, hurt and rejected. It is okay to have these feelings. It is not okay to act on them. Take three deep breaths and everybody start taking care of each other.

Sometimes bottoms get so deeply engaged in a scene that they fail to safeword, or forget, or so profoundly believe in the fantasy that it doesn't occur to them: many of the techniques we play with, like interrogation, function in the real world to undermine volition. Dossie remembers a scene in which a top offered her a choice of something or other: "I felt very confused. Some distant part of me vaguely remembered having made choices, but the response from my state of consciousness at that time was, Choose? I am not a thing that chooses." So then what is the top's responsibility?

If a bottom does not safeword and you don't pick up on what's going on, and this will happen if you play long enough and well enough, there is no blame. However, it is still your responsibility to monitor for physical safety as best you can. As ethical tops we make a commitment to never knowingly harm our bottoms. To this end we check in regularly to make sure that things are going the way we think they are, and we constantly monitor the physical and emotional safety of our bottoms. If a bottom is beyond safewording, and you as the top feel unsure about how far you should go, it is your responsibility to slow down or stop the scene and get into communication with the bottom to make sure you have informed consent. If you have to bring the bottom back into reality to do this, please remember that you helped get them into that altered state in the first place, so presumably you can help get them back there again as soon as you are sure of what's going on.

And just because someone safeworded doesn't mean that the scene has to be over. There may be times when the problem that brought either of you to safeword is so overwhelming that carrying on doesn't feel like the right thing right now - but most often we find that after we've dealt with whatever the difficulty is, we're still terrifically turned on, with the added bonus of a shared intimacy.

from The New Topping Book (2003) by Dossie Easton & Janet W. Hardy

(note: the authors use ‘top’ & ‘bottom’ in the historical S/M sense, meaning ‘person performing the act’ & ‘person receiving the act’; the act in question is not necessarily penetration.)

[tiredyke]

every time queer discourse surges on this site everyone is so quick to jump to “it was actually the evil lesbians who divided us” because y’all heard the term “political lesbian” and never bothered to figure out what that meant

[luc1ferian]

So I read "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson and I

[bewires]

oppenheimer criticisms I haven't seen but think would be fair:

-choice to have 90% of florence pugh's screentime being "hysterical topless woman"

-movie does not pass bechdel test at all; otoh it is a historical biopic representing the life of a man to whose field of study very few women had access at the time and the movie makes a point to show those women gaining access. like. it's not a movie about women at all, and I doubt I will see nolan make such a movie ever, but beyond florence pugh's character there are some good and nuanced moments in there especially with emily blunt but also with minor characters

-early sequences of tortured baby oppenheimer dreaming the beauty of physics are very overwrought

-choice to not shoot on location in germany (look this one is just for me I have been to all the places oppenheimer studied (I am not a theoretical physics fangirl but I know several) and the only place they chose not to actually film in person is göttingen which I take personal offense at)

-they cast matthias schweighöfer in a hollywood movie. no excuses for that one tbh.

oppenheimer criticisms I have seen and think are unfair

-"nolan can't make a good war movie" bc he will not make an intersectional war movie. potentially accurate in re dunkirk, which I didn't see bc I don't like war movies, but in this case he did not make a war movie, he made a historical biopic. the war is relevant, obviously, but the movie is not at all about the battlefield or the front, it is about the life of a physicist, and yes, it's not very intersectional.

-the effects of the a-bomb on the people of japan are not given due diligence. I understand people disagreeing about this but I have also seen several posts of people going "I won't watch this but I bet it doesn't" and uh. I think it does. I think every moment in this movie after the trinity test is entirely about oppenheimer realizing the impact of his research and it is shown several times, excruciatingly, how aware he is of what the effects of the a-bomb were. we do not see the bomb, nor do we see japan, because again, it is a historical biopic about this one dude and he wasn't there. this is also the first time I have seen a mainstream hollywood movie make repeat and pointed note of the fact that in a military sense the use of a-bombs in japan was not necessary.

-movie is pro-war/glorifies the a-bomb/glorifies oppenheimer. I think the strongest case you can make is that it glorifies the a-bomb because movie splosions are cool. but I also think the movie's biggest strength is its ambiguity. whose fault is it there was an a-bomb? is it oppenheimer's? he sure thinks so! is it einstein's? he sure thinks so at least indirectly! is it the american government's? they sure think so and they're proud of it (all of these according to the various chracters of this movie). is it a good thing they developed the a-bomb? several characters have several differing opinions on this! oppenheimer himself seems very divided and unsure by the end of the movie and cannot make a judgment call. in the end (much like with cillian murphy's other iconic character who wears a hat cough cough) if people walk out of this movie as fans of the character or his actions imo that's on them and not on the authorship of the movie

[fullmetal-scar-simping]

"We tend to read fma with a Western lens, so critiquing its use of the military and genocide ignores the Japanese perspective," sorry but you can't cultural relativism your way out of imperialism, genocide, and pro-military nationalism.

Newsflash: Japan was an imperialist power! Japanese nationalism is a thing! Numerous genocides have been committed and excused/denied by Japan! Japan having suffered imperialism from the USA does not mean that people are now magically immune to pro-imperialism propaganda and historical revisionism, and it isn't absent from Japanese pop media. In fact, much like American mass media it is often highly prevalent in both overt and insidious/seemingly innocuous ways.

Be honest about the imperialist themes of the stories you like or stfu!

[nympho-scene-boy]

[poligraf]

One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

[campgender]

Jacqueline looked confused. Then she laughed till tears streamed down her cheeks. “Honey,” she’d start, but she was laughing too hard to continue. “Honey. You can’t learn to fuck from reading Popular Mechanics. That isn’t what makes a butch a good lover.”

This was exactly what I needed to know! “Well, what does make a butch a good lover?” I asked, trying to sound like the answer didn’t mean all that much to me.

Her face softened. “That’s kinda hard to explain. I guess being a good lover means respecting a femme. It means listening to her body. And even if the sex gets a little rough, or whatever, that it’s what she wants too, and inside you’re still coming from a gentle place. Does that make sense?”

It did not. It was less information than I wanted. It turned out, however, to be the information I needed. It just took thinking about it for the rest of my life.

Jacqueline took the rubber cock from my hands. Had I been holding it all this time? She placed it carefully on my thigh. My body temperature rose. She began to touch it gently, like it was something really beautiful.

“You know, you could make a woman feel real good with this thing. Maybe better than she ever felt in her life.” She stopped stroking the dildo. “Or you could really hurt her, and remind her of all the ways she’s ever been hurt in her life. You got to think about that every time you strap this on. Then you’ll be a good lover.”

I waited, hoping there was more. There was not. Jackie got up and puttered around the kitchen. I went to bed. I tried to memorize every word that had been said to me before I fell asleep.

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (pg 28-29)

[waywardsalt]

i. get the vibe that the more mainstream zelda fans are allergic to the idea of liking characters who like. do bad things

[angelsdean]

ok but fad diet paleo sam tho

[mishkakagehishka]

Opening the comment section on an intercultural wedding and thinking what fucking year did i stumble into

[musclesandhammering]

This but also: even people with reprehensible traits usually also have good traits- creativity, artistic talent, intelligence, social awareness on certain topics, humour, situational kindness, etc- and acknowledging that you like certain things about someone while also condemning them overall is a healthy thing to do. Refusing to acknowledge the good in a bad person perpetuates the “this person can’t be a [murderer/rapist/racist/abuser/etc], I’ve always known them as a great guy!” attitude.

Everybody is a mixed bag and we have to be able to recognise that for genuine accountability to come easier.

to pretend that horrible people cannot make good art is another way to conflate beauty and talent with integrity and morality. the works of monsters are best examined with knowledge of the author in mind but art is not inherently reflective. human beings are creative, and habitual liars- it'd be stupid to pretend art must always be a portrait of its creator

[mrtheinsatiable]

Lmao what the fuck

[rhaenys-queenofkhyrulzz]

One bad thing about living in a Muslim household is that you know exactly when your parents just had sex 💀💀💀

[variousqueerthings]

"When people talk about gender-affirming surgery using words like “mutilation,” that's not very nice. Is that how you think about people who've had surgery for other things? It's a disgust reaction, and I do not take disgust into account as a legitimate point of discourse. I don't have to entertain it and I'm not going to. It's a waste of everybody's time, it's knee-jerk, it's not grounded in reality, and it's not useful. And it's a squeamishness about medical intervention. I think the idea of making legislative or cultural decisions in and around [that] is laughable. Your squeamishness is not what the world turns on; it doesn't matter."

Liv Hewson in Teen Vogue

Disgust has absolutely no ethical weight. If you are basing your ethical positions on the emotion of disgust you should stop, it is entirely unjustified and leads to a huge amount of harm.

[val-of-the-north]

The "Hornsent deserved it" sentiments make me lose my goddamn mind

Short answer: No they didn't.

Long answer: Oh my gooooooooooood can we NOT do this shit, please???

There are two underlying sentiments to this line of thinking.

The Hornsent hurt Marika's people, thus Marika did nothing wrong, therefore they deserved to die badly

The Hornsent hurt Marika's people + Midra and some others, Marika is still evil, but the Hornsent deserved to be destroyed

Both may even come to the extreme of "Messmer wasn't cruel enough" or some other nonsense in the same vein.

-

Number 1

To tackle number one, we need to remember a little thing called Elden Ring's base game. The Hornsent's jar ritual is undoubtedly abhorrent, that much is true. But I urge you to remember the things that happened during Marika's reign. She:

Murdered all of the Fire Giants but one, subjecting him to a fate similar to hers but worse, forced into labor confined on the mountain among the remains of his people and culture. She mocked him, to boot. All of this because they might have burnt the Erdtree.

Enslaved the Misbegotten from birth "or worse" because their species just so happened to have made contact with the Crucible.

Rewarded her own loyal Crucible Knights with scorn because of it too, as they didn't fit her current society that they fought to establish.

Made sure the Albinaurics were seen as lesser just because they were graceless, which influenced the way they were treated. She even had her Inquisition, run by Rykard, torture them in needlessly cruel manners, as they appear to be their main victims.

Just in general, she allowed Rykard to run a sadistic Inquisition to torture heretics to the Golden Order in the first place, and she saw nothing wrong with it or their practices.

She entombed the entire Great Caravan over a false rumor, which is the sole reason why the Flame of Frenzy was even a problem during her reign. This has also scarred the remainder of their people greatly.

Made the lives of all Omen a living hell either by cutting their horns just as they were born which often kills them, hunting them down in as cruel a way as possible by using their trauma and body parts against them, or throwing them in a sewer to fester with evil spirits hidden from view. She also used to shackle them, including her two children, just to make extra sure they wouldn't crawl out.

Shunned anyone who saw a vision of the Erdtree burning, regardless of who it was, and chased them away from their homes.

Literally allowed the belief that shorter people are somehow lesser, for apparently no reason at all (her most random discrimination decision tbh). This forces them to band together and take up honorless jobs just to get by, and in turn, people start to spread rumors of their inhuman practices, which are likely all untrue.

Had people literally work as slaves for the nobility just by virtue of "being born into obscurity", whatever that means. As well as other accounts of slavery like the Fallen Hawks (likely tied to the defeated soldiers of ancient Stormveil).

Likely endorsed viewing anyone without Grace as inferior beings, which includes the Tarnished that only exist because she divested them of it. She has done nothing to ease their discrimination (despite potentially seeing them as a future asset of sorts), as even the members of the Crusade are more than ready to kill us, like Fire Knight Queelign.

All of this was done in service to HER religion and order. Killing all the Fire Giants and burying the Nomadic Merchants alive? Oh, they could have ruined her age with those pesky flames of theirs.

Systematically oppressing Omen, Misbegotten, Albinaurics and the likes? Oh, they are impure creatures, unlike her people, blessed with the Grace of Gold, elevated from the rest. (Which is the exact same line of thinking as the Hornsent and their horns for crying out loud).

"Oh but the Hornsent stuffed her people into jars" yeah, and I am not arguing the contrary! It was a cruel, deranged practice, born of simple superstition that their victims would be reborn as "good people". But Marika's answer if you don't fit her vision of the world is to either get rid of you and your people through extermination, by literally hounding you from your rightful home, or by enslaving you.

Both sides are genuinely awful... but there's only one side that people are justifying, and it sure as hell isn't the Hornsent.

Marika's backstory is meant to make her less a god, which is all we have ever known her to be before the DLC, and more a human, which is what she once was. It gives her complexity as a character, it's meant to be the catalyst from which we learn why she took the path that she took. It is absolutely not meant to make us go "holy shit guys, Marika was the good guy all along???", because what she brought upon this world through her burning desire for vengeance has ruined it irreparably, and ruined the lives of most of the creatures who inhabit it.

This includes her ruthless, honorless, pointless Crusade against the Hornsent. Sure, it was her own son that started it, but it was for her sake. It was her who allowed him to wage it, he had her full support... until the thing turned to such a slaughter-fest that even she could not associate with it anymore due to how appalling it all was. And what better way to do that than to seal her own son away to wage war endlessly? And not just because his actions made her look bad, but also for the same crippling fear and prejudice that saw her kill all Fire Giants but one and scar the Great Caravan.

Gratuitous violence across the board, and for what?

(I want to make it absolutely clear that I don't mean you can't like Marika now. In fact, I'd say the DLC made her much more of an interesting character to me as well. I just cannot fathom seeing the entirety of Elden Ring and coming out thinking "wow Marika was the good guy" because she isn't. Heck, coming out thinking that she'd be disgusted with what her grandson Godrick is doing with grafting as if she isn't the queen of having zero empathy for those who are graceless or aren't her family, which the Tarnished he grafts are neither. She'd probably be very proud if anything. Marika is a monster. She became one the moment she obtained godhood, because no milestone would quell her. She did all the wrongs, so take this whole section as a refresher in case you had forgotten)

-

Number 2

Now, to tackle number 2... this one seemingly has more nuance, but falls for the tried and true pitfall of "the many must pay for the crimes of the few" which is exactly where it rots and collapses onto itself.

Apparently, because of the perpetrators of the Jar Rituals, ALL Hornsent, INDISCRIMINATELY, deserve to be destroyed. They all, each and every single one, deserve the Crusade and the absolute pointless ruin that it brought them. From the children, to the ones who were friends with people with no horns, to the ones who found their own practices grotesque, to the ones that weren't even tied to the Tower's religion and were just simply living their lives.

They ALL, EQUALLY deserve to be burned, to have their cities destroyed, to have their lives ruined. All of them. Ok.

Number 2 works with the assumption that the Hornsent are some sort of hive mind. Some sort of all-encompassing religious order who believes in their superiority. But that's just the Tower's religion. Hornsent are a people. And people are individuals, with their own opinions, their own lives. In fact, from the perspective of the average Hornsent citizen, they were attacked out of nowhere as they were living in peace, which likely means they weren't even at war with Marika before this event.

People also have the assumption that all of the Hornsent were benefiting from their society, which is blatantly false. In fact, outside the treatment of the Shamans, the people that we know the Hornsent have hurt the most are their fellow Hornsent. We know of quite a few of them suffering at the hands of their kin BECAUSE of their religious and cultural practices.

Being Hornsent isn't a "free from mistreatment" card. If anything, the large Gaols where they were imprisoned were built specifically to house them. The main prisoners we find in large numbers are commoners, the same types as the ones scavenging the ruins of their ravaged towns. They are often seen eating maggots off the floor and cowering in fear. All of them were Hornsent too, locked away for who knows what crime. Could have been big and important, small and insignificant, or even just a failure to do something properly (there's precedent), point is, it's clear the Hornsent weren't having a good time in there.

The jar rituals were used mainly as punishment for the imprisoned Hornsent themselves, as a way to have them become "good people". This was just as horrifying for the Hornsent prisoners as it was for the Shamans I assume. Look how terrified this Hornsent seemed at the prospect of sharing that fate. This is the reason why they chopped up Shamans in the first place, as ritual ingredients for a punishment meant primarily for their kin.

And there were more Hornsent who suffered because of the leading ideology. Curseblades were once shunned because they failed to become tutelary deities, and so they were thrown in the Jar Gaols. They were only let out so they could use their expertise and flowing movements to defend their homeland when Messmer invaded, otherwise they'd be rotting with the Innard Shamans and the other Hornsent prisoners the way Labirith is.

It's also worth pointing out that Midra's Mense was filled with Hornsent attendants who sided with their sagely master regardless of his lack of horns and what the Inquisition believed of him. If we were to operate with reasoning number 2, they too would deserve to be murdered in the Crusade because they just so happened to be Hornsent. Because ALL Hornsent deserve extermination for what happened to the Shamans.

And we also know that the Hornsent can find what happens in Bonny Village revolting. In fact, we know that from someone who was born and raised there.

This sounds nothing like someone who thought any of that was ok. So who is to say other Hornsent weren't like this too, especially those who DIDN'T live in Bonny Village? Those who risked being stuffed into those same jars themselves? We make waaaay too many assumptions about an entire race, and that in itself is foolish enough.

If there's someone to blame, it's the Tower's Inquisition. They are the religious order that governs the Hornsent. They have all the power in their society... and yet, would you look at that? Enir-Ilim, their sanctum, the one place where those calling the shots reside, is completely untouched. And what about Bonny, the most structurally fine Hornsent settlement, when you'd expect it to be a black stain of char by now. But nope, no sign of Messmer activity and the Greater Potentates are just running around naked, doing their thing as usual.

The Crusade isn't even a good tool of vengeance, the only ones suffering are the civilians who were likely the ones with a higher risk of ritual jar punishment anyway. If this isn't proof enough that the Crusade is a completely petty, useless revenge war that accomplishes nothing I don't know what else to say. I'll just leave with what the people taking part in it were taking pride in doing.

These are people who, without a shadow of a doubt, would have chopped up most of the oppressed groups described earlier and stuffed them into jars if Marika had told them to do so. (Heck, something like this was being done to the Albinaurics already, as we have seen previously...)

They have zero moral superiority, their deranged zealotry is the only reason they act in the first place. Not to mention that they have no connection to Marika's struggles or past, nor were they informed of them I bet. It's likely only Messmer truly knows the reason for the Crusade, and that's only because he is her child and shoulders all the blame onto himself.

"Those stripped of the Grace of Gold shall all meet death" is LITERALLY their motto. Do you really think they stopped at the Hornsent? They were just their main target, but judging by the way all of Messmer's soldiers, including Queelign and the other Fire Knights, and even HE HIMSELF, attack us on sight for the simple fact we are Tarnished and lack Grace in our eyes, I have no doubt in my mind these people were just rounding up and killing anyone who didn't conform with the Golden Order.

THESE are the people who should be allowed to play judge, jury and executioner with the entire Hornsent race. And people will genuinely, with a straight face, tell you "That's right".

-

To conclude... I think I actually hate reasoning 2 more than reasoning 1 lol, despite not liking either at all. At least 1 is understandable. Marika is a very interesting character, one that we have known for a few years now. We have an attachment to her, heck, sentiments of her being some sort of misunderstood/rebellious figure were already there before the DLC. In that regard, I understand the emotional response, even though I still think it's a wrong mindset to have. I have at least some hope that it is purely in the realm of fiction because it's a beloved character, nothing more...

Reasoning 2, on the other hand, attempts to be nuanced, or at least pretends to be. In reality, all it peddles is the "an eye for an eye" mentality which is much too common irl as well. Not only that, but it deals in monoliths. All people belonging to a group or race are equally responsible for stuff they didn't even commit, stuff that could have even harmed them, because their leaders decided to commit crimes against another set of people. And don't get me wrong, there will be even commoners from that group or race that will agree with and celebrate that bad deed, but just as many will not, but will be either scared, powerless, already being punished for speaking up through physical violence or elaborate shunning, or currently protesting and doing something to hopefully ignite a change.

But that reasoning only exists to perpetuate cycles; of war, violence, and hate for the most part. And sadly, this mindset is very prevalent, a lot of people fail to see the issue with wanton violence as long as it's to stroke that lust for vengeance. And vengeance is a theme that Elden Ring criticizes multiple times in a row, even beyond the obvious horror of the Crusade.