#it's actually valued. you know. as a treat.

[seiya-starsniper]

Have been wildly oscillating between panic, anger, resentment, shitposting, and despair all day, as is my right as a citizen of the United States of Hell. I have bought much needed treats and I'm checking in on my friends in more precarious positions than myself and feeling angry all over again on their behalf. I am angry at the people who voted for trump, at the people who didn't vote at all because "both sides are bad" and angry at the world in general.

If you didn't vote for whatever reason, congrats, I hope you're pleased with yourself, good luck and let's never speak again. We're never seeing eye to eye on anything and that's fine, I can live with that. Obviously this only applies to US folk, but I'm not in the mood to argue about things with non US people either.

If you did vote and want to give up fighting to save yourself and your loved ones, do it. Living despite everything that's happened is resistance enough. You have fought long enough. You should not have been carrying this burden by yourself and if you are burned out to hell, protect yourself first. However you can, any way you can.

I don't know what it is I'm doing yet but I'm not giving up on doing good in any way I can, no matter how small. I am focusing on my loved ones first and foremost, and on surrounding myself with people who actually share the one core value of change and goodness still being possible, even if they don't share all my other views. I'm tired of the doomsdayers, tired of the defeatists and the pessimists who keep saying nothing is worth fighting for if the solution is not perfect in every way. I want change, I want goodness, and I'm not getting it from people who think I'm an idiot for not having perfect politics and saying the right buzzwords. Enough is enough.

Anyways, I'm tired and cranky but I will be fine. Check in on your trans friends, your disabled friends, your POC friends, and support them however you can. Prioritize your immediate needs above all else and tune out everything else.

[anamericangirl]

Donald Trump Jr attended a Nazi Boat Parade and at no point did he denounce the Nazis.

You know how I know you know no one in the Trump family is a Nazi? Because if they were really Nazis and you really thought they were Nazis you would be singing their praises and wholeheartedly supporting them considering you’re an actual Nazi who cheers on the slaughter and attempted genocide of the Jewish people.

If Hitler was alive today you would be throwing your support behind him and cheering him on much in the same way you support genocidal terrorists because they are the closest thing you can find to Hitler today and since you’re such a fan of his and a disgusting anti-Semite if the trumps were Nazis you would be a Trump supporter.

You are a disingenuous and pathetic troll who has nothing of value to contribute. Nothing you say has any merit and your opinions deserve nothing more than to be dismissed without acknowledgment.

So anyway, back to ignoring your worthless thoughts and deleting every message you send and treating your political opinions like the garbage they are.

[gemmahale]

Here's the thing. I'm in a red state, in a county that went red.

I knew that when I moved out here four years ago. (Yes, it was April 2020 and no, I do not recommend moving during a global pandemic.) I accepted that that would be part of it. I made my peace with it, and I do what I can to mitigate the effects.

I'm not scared for me (minus the bodily autonomy thing since my state now has a 12 week abortion ban, and the general fuckery of facists in power) because tbh, I'm white and cis-het passing.

I'm nonbinary and bisexual. Can't tell any of that unless I tell you, and I don't make it well well known. I use she/her at work, wear skirts and dresses, and respond to Mrs/Ms Gemma or Hale (actually folks use my legal first or last name 😉); though Dr. is preferred if I get the choice.

I fly under the radar as a quirky white woman. I'm relatively "protected."

In the wake of the election results rolling out, I'm apprehensive for:

Kallen, who is white-passing Cherokee and a disabled veteran. I've been party to how he's treated differently than I am - by the same checker at the store not more than 5 minutes apart. He moved out here after I established my career, so he had little to no input of where we moved to (other than "I want to be with you.")

My coworkers who already face harassment for being POC in the community (including foreign exchange students that come to do part of their PhD here because of the proximity to the university system). People have been chased out of their positions here due to the racism they've experienced.

My coworkers who would seek to have an abortion (I'm included in this myself).

The LGBTQ+ community here (remember - I'm not out out).

The immigrant and POC communities here

And folks beyond my immediate viscinity

A lot of the community operates on a "mind your shit" basis. But I have to look people in the eye with Trump 2024 caps on and answer their questions politely. I have to drive by trucks with religious bumper stickers and greet them and give them scientifically sound information.

I wanted to believe in a world that valued competency and skill; and then I remember: I was the only one that applied to this job in the boondocks, and we've struggled to get positions filled out here. And I know part of it is not because of the low cost of living or lack of proximity to major shopping centers/social options. 🙃

I'm poking around into what local groups I can get into and donate my time to. My job puts me in direct access with food security resources, so that's probably where I'll start. Perhaps tie into the LGBTQ community because I know there's an active group out here. (I want to get more involved in the community anyway.)

I have to swallow this fear I have of being connected to causes while in my position. Yes, my employer is technically neutral ground, but that doesn't mean I have to be. I am allowed to be civically involved, as long as I make it clear when I am working in a work capacity (branded gear, name tag, etc.) and as a private citizen.

I admittedly got spooked when I received a few letters (to my private address, mind you) stating that I was a poor representative of my institution because I didn't maintain my yard like I should when I first started. (It was a whole thing and got escalated up higher than it needed to and yeah. I still have those letters in my office.)

But folks are starting to know me, and I'm starting to know them too. I need to cast this fear I have aside and be true to my values - accessibility, inclusivity, equity, and justice.

[o-uncle-newt]

I think that the thing is that Sayers a) always has SOME kind of a point if you don't take it too far and b) she's such a good and convincing writer that while you're reading, she can basically convince you of anything just by saying it. I noticed this when reading Unpopular Opinions, her book of essays, which are great but which rely a lot on "I am saying this and making it sound true so it is true, you have to trust my Vibes." And guess what, for a bunch of it I absolutely trusted her Vibes, even after I thought about it for a while with the book closed! She's just a fascinating combination of an incredibly clever and often actually wise person who combined that element of herself with weirdly nostalgically conservative politics. Always SUPER fun. (At some point I need to do my Sayers and the Jews essay but I want to do some reading first.)

The thing with Bunter is that I don't think there's much discrepancy there- the relationship between Wimsey and Bunter where Wimsey treats him somewhat like an equal wouldn't be the same if Bunter didn't already go out of his way to treat him as a superior. Wimsey can make the overtures of semi-equality because he knows that they aren't in equal positions- not in the sense of it being false or rubbing it in, but him also being more sensitive to their class differences because he's aware of them. (Incidentally, I was just reading Clouds of Witness and Wimsey stops Bunter before he can accidentally "forget himself" and insult the Duke's intelligence... as though that would be a step TOO far.) Sayers often returns to this well of "when everyone knows their place in society then everyone is happier," with the corollary being that the place of the aristocracy is to be friendly and condescending (in the non-negative connotation) to the common people and servants in a way that shows that they value them and are looking out for them. In Busman's Honeymoon, she basically has Harriet say this outright and appreciatively about Peter slotting into the role of local squire; and Murder Must Advertise, a book that seriously annoys me as I mentioned earlier, has this scene:

“Well,” said Mr. Smayle, “Tallboy always says that Dumbleton is a public school.” “I daresay it is—in the sense that it has a Board of Governors,” said Ingleby, “but it's nothing to be snobbish about.” “What is, if you come to that?” said Bredon. “Look here, Smayle, if only you people could get it out of your heads that these things matter a damn, you'd be a darn sight happier. You probably got a fifty times better education than I ever did.” Mr. Smayle shook his head. “Oh, no,” he said, “I'm not deceiving myself about that, and I'd give anything to have had the same opportunities as you. There's a difference, and I know there's a difference, and I don't mind admitting it. But what I mean is, some people make you feel it and others don't. I don't feel it when I'm talking to either of you, or to Mr. Armstrong or Mr. Hankin, though you've been to Oxford and Cambridge and all that. Perhaps it's just because you've been to Oxford and Cambridge.” He struggled with the problem, embarrassing the other two men by his wistful eyes. “Look here,” said Miss Meteyard, “I know what you mean. But it's just that these two here never think twice about it. They don't have to. And you don't have to, either. But the minute anybody begins to worry about whether he's as good as the next man, then he starts a sort of uneasy snobbish feeling and makes himself offensive.” “I see,” said Mr. Smayle. “Well, of course, Mr. Hankin doesn't have to try and prove that he's better than me, because he is and we both know it.” “Better isn't the right word, Smayle.” “Well, better educated. You know what I mean.” “Don't worry about it,” said Ingleby. “If I were half as good at my job as you are at yours, I should feel superior to everybody in this tom-fool office.” Mr. Smayle shook his head, but appeared comforted. “I do wish they wouldn't start that kind of thing,” said Ingleby when he had gone, “I don't know what to say to them.” “I thought you were a Socialist, Ingleby,” said Bredon, “it oughtn't to embarrass you.” “So I am a Socialist,” said Ingleby, “but I can't stand this stuff about Old Dumbletonians. If everybody had the same State education, these things wouldn't happen.” “If everybody had the same face,” said Bredon, “there'd be no pretty women.”

To me, this is kind of the summation of Sayers's whole attitude toward class and education as relayed in the books- if you stay where you're meant to be, you're taught the way of dealing with your class and privilege/lack thereof in life, how you're supposed to relate to others, etc. If you socially climb then you end up in uncharted territory where you're a) not meant to be and b) made to feel out of place, which you then end up pushing onto other people, making them feel uncomfortable.

You can kind of see where she and others who look at it so nostalgically like that are coming from- as depicted/essentialized here, part of Wimsey's privilege also meant responsibility for those beneath him, and part of a more "common" person's commonness meant, or should have meant, a sense of security. While MMA goes a lot into anti-consumerism in a way that's hard to deny, in Unpopular Opinions her essays get a lot more into it as a problem in that it destroyed the normal order of work- where instead of having a hundred shoemakers all (apparently) happily making 10 pairs of shoes a day, you have five shoe factory managers and forty-five miserable and overworked employees making two thousand pairs of shoes a day and fifty people without their "proper job." It's a totally different angle on the issue that rings a bit more false when the ideas of both class essentialism and, as you note, bio-essentialism are removed from the picture.

...And of course that's what makes Parker so interesting! On one level, Sayers clearly doesn't believe in an "aristocracy can only marry aristocracy" kind of a thing because Peter marries Harriet- and in fact there's a through line in the books about Gerald and Helen's marriage being a cousin-inbred disaster with Harriet pointing out in Busman's Honeymoon that the injection of common blood into Parker and Mary's marriage made their kids basically normal. So that's not inconsistent. But it's also so interesting that Parker is himself this innately religious, conservative kind of a guy- in many ways more so than Wimsey, who describes him as a "perfect Victorian"- and he himself, in two separate books, is insistent on highlighting the class lines that exist between him and Mary as a barrier between them, with Wimsey essentially having to give him permission to a) have interest and b) later act on it. Though, of course, in the end he actually DOES act because Wimsey suggests that his indecision is making Mary unhappy... so it really is about love and not permission, I suppose!

What's fascinating to me is that at the end of Strong Poison, when Peter is trying to convince Gerald that Parker's suitable for Mary, he makes the point that Parker will climb the ranks and will likely eventually end up with a title/knighted. Obviously, to a degree that's him trying to speak Gerald and Helen's language, where they REALLY care about that kind of thing. But it does I think speak to something else which is that Wimsey and Parker seem to have become friends because Wimsey saw something in Parker and let him in. And I think that your point about Parker kind of earning his way out of the lower/middle class by being not just smart but dedicated and, in his way, intellectual is very solid. It's made clear that he had a decent grammar school education, works to transcend it while also not being pretentious about it, tries to improve his French, reads religious commentaries, is conservative socially... it's like Sayers is drawing a sketch of someone who isn't trying to climb but is trying to be the best of the kind of person who he innately is, while also having the talent to back it up. And THAT is what makes him worthy of Lady Mary. Because, of course, upon marriage she descends to his level in terms of lifestyle and such (even with all that money behind her for their kids later). He's not trying to climb so he's allowed to.

I just re-read Gaudy Night, and it's interesting how it feels very relevant and very dated at the same time. There's so much discussion about a woman's "place" and whether a woman can (or should) still have an intellectual life/job outside her husband if she's married, and it seems like many of the academic women in the story feel on some level that they have to choose one or the other. On the one hand, this debate, again, feels very dated in an era where most women do have jobs regardless of whether they're married or not. On the other hand, women still are frequently expected to put their families before their jobs, while men are usually not; and women are still frequently expected to sacrifice their own careers and interests for the sake of their families, while men are usually not.

The "question" of whether women belong in academia no longer seems to be a question in mainstream culture, but women in academia still don't get the same amount of respect or opportunities as men. And while British and American society no longer demands that unmarried women remain celibate, I think there is still a great deal of discomfort at the idea of women who choose to remain single, and with the idea of voluntary celibacy in general.

It's also interesting that the Senior Members of the college (all women) seem to more or less jump to the conclusion that the college "poltergeist" is expressing some kind of psycho-sexual frustration born of celibacy and academic isolation, when in fact it's someone seeking revenge. It seems like even though these women have been in academia/running the college for decades, they still harbor some insecurity over the legitimacy of their profession and lifestyle.

And then, of course, there are the casual mentions of eugenics and the one woman who thinks execution is wrong and that murderers should be used for scientific experiments instead (because that's more humane somehow??). There's also the instance where one of the porters (who is otherwise very likeable) says that Britain needs "a Hitler" who will put women in their proper place. Interesting times...

Idk, Gaudy Night fascinates me because there's SO MUCH going on in it that even on my second read, I think there's a lot that I'm probably missing. The various philosophical debates in it make me really curious about what Dorothy Sayers' own views were.

[orchid-n-petals]

So I've already shared parts of this on a discord server, but I have to scream about Ketheric Thorm on here as well. Obviously spoilers about the character under the cut! It's a long one.

The entirety of act 2 is about him, right? Jaheira, Shadowheart and numerous other NPCs shit on him for his fickle faith. First Selune, then Shar, then, as we meet him, Myrkul. You hear about his changes of faith on a whim, you hear that he's the person responsible for the shadow curse, he is painted as a villain, plain and simple.

You can figure it out pretty early on that Isobel was resurrected and that she is his daughter; the detail as well that he wants Isobel alive is so on the nose, it gives him away completely but there are still a few questions that remain unanswered, mainly about his faith.

And then you get to the mausoleum and the picture assembles; this entire tragedy, the death of hundreds if not thousands and the complete ruination of a landscape was all, ALL because you had this absolutely wrenched, heartbroken father who had lost everything and nobody answered his grief. He was left woefully alone, the Goddess whose daughter his daughter was involved with did nothing to save Isobel.

Imagine outliving your wife and your daughter. Imagine dedicating your life to fight the Lady of Loss, your Lady of Silver's enemy, and then be left so completely alone and in silence with your grief, with your loss. It's so, so poetic how and why he turned from Selune, and it's so understandable as well; he broke. His spirit completely broke. He couldn't deal with that void of having lost the only two important people in his life, seemingly undeservedly so. He was going mad with this and a lot of his ire was likely targeted at Aylin who, in his eye, represented Selune; she's literally her daughter, after all, and it was implied that even before the deaths of his family, he sort of saw Aylin courting Isobel as Selune taking his daughter from him, despite his service. This relationship was clearly not seen by him as a boon of "giving his daughter to the Moon-maiden".

His ways in the past clearly didn't spare him from tragedy and having to cope with it (which he clearly didn't, he snapped under the weight of his grief). He was clearly angry and unable to do anything, furious and helpless, which is a dangerous combination. A good part of his first change of heart must have been fuelled by a sense of revenge.

But then Shar didn't provide any balm to his aching heart either. If you read his letters in Grymforge and in act 2, he is so focused on enacting the will of Shar because he believes that healing lies in oblivion. Everything would be easier if he could just forget, if the damn world could just forget, if nothing was remembered because without Melodia and Isobel, nothing was worth remembering.

Then came Myrkul. Literally the only god who was not only able, but WILLING to give back his daughter to him. Imagine spending your all, EVERYTHING you have to serve two gods who would not give a single shit about the greatest suffering in your life. You were basically nothing, your loyalty didn't matter for shit, everything that was taken from you amounted to no recognition whatsoever: you should simply cope and seethe. Your grief will not simply go unanswered (which is not inherently antagonising) but ignored.

And then comes this supposedly evil entity who can alleviate your pain just like that, snap of a finger and it's a done deal.

I am so serious when I say that I believe Ketheric's main incentive was to extend Aylin's immortality to Isobel as well. You can read in her diary that she feels a taint after having came back, and there are things not even Selune can cleanse, but at this point, Ketheric doesn't care about Selune, vengeance is secondary if not tertiary, he's done that war during his Shar years and what did it give him? Literally nothing.

He doesn't even care about the fact that Isobel is still her cleric. He cares about the single most important fact: Isobel is back. Life is worth living again, there is something for him, and it was not Selune or Shar who gave it to him but Myrkul, and for this singular gift, he would raze the world for the Lord of Bones. Like people can clown on him for being disloyal but the man has the loyalty of a dog bonded to its owner.

He is powerful and is willing to go to insane lengths for crumbs. What is raising a single life for a god? Nothing. It has happened and it will happen again. But Ketheric will go to the ends of the earth to serve the single god who actually listened to him. The one god who didn't ignore him.

He knows that what he does is not the morally upright thing! He is so insanely self-aware that allying with Orin and Gortash and doing this entire plot with them only to then betray them is morally reprehensible at the best of times, he knows that people hate him, etc-etc. He was a Selunite at one point and he's not stupid. He just doesn't care; it could be literal Asmodeus and he wouldn't care as long as he got what he wanted, no matter the price.

He is probably the only one from the three of the chosen who has complete clarity over his situation, he almost sways (if you pass the check during his confrontation), he is not an inherently evil man blinded by power.

But he is inherently loyal to those deserving, and as of the story's standing, completely broken by his grief. In his eyes, at this point, the only one deserving loyalty is the one who actually listened to him. Isobel lives. It doesn't matter that she hates him, that his entire life has fallen apart, that literally nothing else that is good has come of it, because Isobel lives.

I don't think he regrets a single thing. His consciousness might tear at him at the end, but I believe he would do everything over again, exactly as he did, because in the end, his daughter was brought back. Because what would a grieving, broken parent give to bring back their child? Everything. Absolutely everything. And it's such a simply given answer, no second thoughts, no doubts.

Nobody can tell me that this man is fickle. Nobody. This man was willing to burn the world to the ground, create a Boudica destruction layer all by himself for the one single thing he wanted. For any God that would listen.

I don't know, I just have a lot of thoughts about his character.

[dukeofthomas]

why does every reconciliation fic go like this

[sunsetzer]

On one hand, I want a final fantasy 6 remake, because the game is criminally underrated and the amount of fan content (which is all absolutely fantastic btw) is Not Enough for my neurodivergent, hyperfixating brain.

On the other hand, that would inevitably encourage more people to join the fandom, which would be great, except it seems these days the bigger a fandom gets the more toxic it becomes, and I really like what we have going on over here in our little corner. We all just love the game and its characters and nobody fights about who should and shouldn't date who or who you shouldn't like because they're ~problematique~. Nobody's trying to make one ship morally better than another, nobody's calling anyone names or threatening to doxx people who don't agree with their opinions. It's so peaceful and I love that for us. We're just vibing. Moisturized. Unbothered. In our lane. Flourishing.

[the-marshals-wife]

fathers that don't treat their daughters like burdens are so cool. i wish they were real.

[seaweedstarshine]

Sometimes I think of Amy Pond, who grew up being called mad by those who wielded the word as a tool of exclusion and shame —

Amy Pond, who though forced into the hands of four psychiatrists, still clung to that which they called madness until those systems which elevate psychosocial conformity above humanity stripped it from her —

Amy Pond, whose imaginary friend reappeared for a single hour after twelve years and reignited that faith before disappearing for two more years —

Amy Pond, who spent those those two years under the same implicit threat ingrained in her through psychiatric violence, and thus began to believe the man who stopped the invasion was “just a madman with a box,” only for him to agree, and to also call her “mad, impossible Amy Pond,” reframing madness as non-negative for the first time in her life —

Amy Pond, who ignored the disembodied voice of her imaginary friend even as she ran away with him for real, who still lived each day with the traumatic internalization of deviancy dictated upon her by the psychiatric-industrial complex that shaped her from childhood —

Amy Pond, who wouldn't acknowledge the Doctor's voice, such that it took an Angel in her eye that was literally killing her to ensure she couldn't reality check herself —

Amy Pond, who stood before a room which muttered about “the psychiatrists we brought her to,” and though afraid, escaped their rigid parameters of acceptable existence.

[emeryleewho]

The difference between a good plot twist and cheap shock value is in the *depth*. It's in the *characters*. A good plot twist should be evident even from a Wikipedia article. You should be able to read it out like a monotone robot and still see how clever and brilliant it is. It is a divine fact. Shock value relies on twisting your audience's emotion to get a reaction. It tries to treat disgust or horror as inherently valuable, worthwhile story techniques. But the second you zoom out, you recount the ending to a friend, you take a moment to actually think about where it comes from, it's *empty*, and even if it scars your audience enough to stay with them for a while, it's like the Boogeyman. Once you shine some light on it, you realize how empty and pathetic it is and it fades away. If you want to be a great writer, stop relying on shock value and learn how to write a plot twist!!!

[babacontainsmultitudes]

[just venting a bit into the void you understand you understand 😌] Lately I've been feeling very caught between "I have a lot of thoughts on Sparrow and Normal and all that with the ending and teen talk and feel like I need to get them out and voice them for my own piece of mind and resolution" and "I am lacking the strength and energy to actually sit down and write it all out and kind of really just want to fully move on to other things (AUs, fics, anything else)" but my brain can't seem to commit to either and that's quite frustrating cause it's just left me very restless. *Sigh*. Idk! Just needed to complain about that a bit ig, it's silly but this is what has been ailing me as of late.

[todayisafridaynight]

tw // suicide

on twitter some ppl were talking about THAT jo scene from iw again and someone commented fucking "you know he was thinking about using that gun on himself" and im not sane anymore !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! added something something his faith in ichi kept him hopeful enough in the moment but then when he went to jail oh. ohhh !!!!!!!!!!!

nooo cause if That Jo Scene is the flashback scene with hoshino's death that really had to be SUUUCH a low point if not top five lowest points for him i wanted to throw up watching that <- replays it in my brain constantly

[good-to-drive]

It would be insane if we weaponized mommy issues against men the way we weaponize daddy issues against women. Any time a man criticizes a woman we go “awww poor little baby boy didn't have a mommy who loved him” and all of his beliefs become embarrassing and he has to exit in shame. Like. Don’t fucking do that, but it would be absolutely insane if people did that.

[zvaigzdelasas]

"AI can make art without human interaction because at the end of the day, it does exactly what humans do with art - break each new piece of art down to the quantifiable basis vectors that you've implicitly constructed about 'art in general' and then faithfully reproduce a new observation of that 'art in general' by smoothly interpolating between observed instantiations of those basis vectors.

You know, like how humans do"

[tvckerwash]

hmmm I'm thinking about wash's stance on the training accident and I think it would be so funny if he gave maine a lecture about it afterwards

[ickypuppi3]

it’s so weird to me how they insert billy as this character who everyone’s attracted to and, from what the audience is lead to believe, is pretty popular, how they give him the best, most iconic introduction etc etc but then also try to spin the narrative that he’s unlikeable, how he’s ‘just a terrible person’ (in the duffer brothers words) and a villain akin to henry bowers

and it’s wild how that also goes with the way billy’s treated in the show too because in both scenarios it’s like- it’s fine to sexualise and objectify him but god forbid you like him, find him interesting or relatable or even feel any sympathy for him