#it's condemnable behavior really

[wombywoo]

"smile!" 📸

[grison-in-space]

I really want to think deeply at some point about the ethics of breeding for extreme temperament (eg drive, food motivation -> trainability, tendency to hyperfixation, low energy, high defensive aggression) alongside the ethics of breeding for extreme structure.... from the standpoint of both being informed by neuroscience underlying brain variation and also being doubly neurodivergent, firmly anti - eugenics for humans, and firmly pro-deliberately-selective-breeding for dogs.

It's a landmine of a topic, not least because one of the use cases I would want to examine is an unintended side effect from breeding service dogs, but man what a topic to sit with and have first and second and third and fourth thoughts about in exhaustive detail. like an extremely autistic one-person six-opinion argument.

[dykedvonte]

I find the line "I have to believe our worst moments don't make us monsters." Fascinating because it comes from Anya, and I feel she really proves it the best.

For obvious reasons most people are in the "Anya did nothing wrong" camp and for good reason but there is a single action that I don't think she did well and it was her suicide. Specifically her method.

Realizing that Anya took Curly's painkillers was horrifying to me. As a Nurse I have no doubt that she'd know how terrible dying from overdose is. She had access to a gun which is well known for having a far more instant and far less painful death. And despite everything falling apart around her, knowing how bad Jimmy was, she still left Curly alive.

I don't think I thought about it much like that at first but the longer this game has sat with me the more horrified I am by the action. Curly is man who has been horribly disabled and is completely unable to help himself and he is very much a human being who does not deserve to be anywhere close to that amount of pain. Those painkillers were one that the few things that could give him any amount of relief and Anya took them.

She could have shot herself and left the painkillers for whoever was left to help Curly. She could've shot Curly and then taken the painkillers. She could've shot them both and quickly put an end to their misery, yet she didn't. Anya had a great amount of her agency stripped away from her, to the point that she didn't deem life to be worth it anymore and ended it, right next to a man who couldn't make that choice for himself even if he wanted to.

It is easily her most horrific choice and yet, she's still an angel.

(Please don't take this as Anya slander, I genuinely love her so much. I just find this to be an incredibly interesting thing)

I do subscribe to the idea that Anya realized that Jimmy was hitting Curly when giving him his medicine but didn’t intervene. I also don’t think her taking the pills from Curly as monstrous mainly because (while she knew he suffered worse with out them) she likely also knew they were basically bandaids on a bullet wound.

I have this sort of belief that that statement can only really apply to Jimmy in the inverse. Like some statements in the games aren’t meant to apply to all characters and not in every context of every action they do. It’s the idea that no one should be responsible for Jimmy’s actions but himself but they are forced to by him or the environment. Everyone is experiencing their worst moments but no one is a monster outside of Jimmy due to his inability to take responsibility and how he escalates the severity of the situation through his bad choices. Even then it’s not one moment that makes Jimmy a monster it’s the culmination of every moment that prove his inability to be anything but in this scenario.

With Anya you must remember she did have the code to the gun. Yeah, she could’ve broken it open but who’s to say how easy or how long it would’ve taken. Not to mention, there’s this misconception that she wanted the gun to kill Jimmy which isn’t true. She wanted the gun to defend herself in the case he got aggressive which is an important note of Anya being the only proactive person on the ship vs reactive. Locking the door, knowing there was no way in was likely a duel mercy for them both. A person in his state would die relatively soon without constant care and she has ample time to pass. It’s a hard decision to make for herself and someone else but it was the easiest even if it caused more damage than it was ever meant to cause.

It’s a sort of parallel to how Curly made choices he thought would help Anya and everyone but ultimately doomed them all further. Jimmy got what he wanted in both scenarios of crashing the ship and wanting Anya gone. What happened on the Tulpar will go down as a tragedy if they are ever found, a mystery if not but certainly not in a way that Jimmy wanted. Anya and the pregnancy are effectively gone but he’s still facing the repercussions for it.

There’s this idea that it’s controversial to say that Anya was anything but perfect and while I don’t think she did anything wrong, she certainly didn’t make the best choice in telling Jimmy but that again was because of the situation and environment she was in. We don’t know why she didn’t wait on Curly after their conversation in the cockpit, we know that was the plan and we know Jimmy finding out through her alone was the catalyst to the crash within like the next hour, yet you can’t really blame her. We don’t know why Jimmy came to medical nor what anyone else was doing. It can be considered her one mistake but then again we can’t blame a reasonable action on someone’s unreasonable response.

I think that’s a big aspect a lot of people look over in the characters actions. Most of them are normal, reasonable, human. But the systematic responses to them and Jimmy’s are unreasonably harsh and punishing.

This has gone off in a tangent from what you originally posed but I genuinely think of what might do happened if that confrontation happened with Curly there and away from the cock pit. I assume it’d happen in medical or even utility, hell, an area away from anything sensitive but what if? If the ability to do something awful wasn’t at Jimmy’s finger tips, if there was more than one voice in Curly’s head during that moment, what would’ve changed?

When I look at Anya I see her as having the best responses to anything happening during the events of the game but the environment, systems against her and even the other crew mates to an extent made it so it would inevitably backfire on them and mostly her hard.

[where-our-stories-start]

Hearstopper 2x07: Sorry

[whipplewhippler]

How do you think Sceptile would react if Trip's Serperior suddenly got attracted to Ash's Serperior?

I can see trip's serperior being an issue long before ash's serperior is even a Servine. after Snivy beats him in "A Rival Battle for Club Champ" (I think that's the episode? I'm not too sure?), Trip's Servine is taken with her.

now, trip's servine doesn't really love love her-when he makes passes at her, it's like a "ditch those losers and hang with me and my trainer. you can do s0000o much better" type situation, where he doesn't really care about what's best for Snivy- he mostly just thinks they'll look good together.

Snivy is just glad to be rid of him when ash drops her off at the lab.

if trip should stop by oak's lab (maybe he finds the abundance of Pokémon there to be a really great photo op, you know how he can be). Snivy will immediately be wary of him being there. she'll hang around Sceptile a lot more than usual, which is saying a lot since they're already together frequently throughout the day. Sceptile doesn't understand why at first (not that he's complaining, really.) but then Snivy gestures towards Trip and he's like "oh."

snivy had told Sceptile all about trip's serperior when she had first started getting close with him.

Sceptile definitely detests him from the start and he's sympathetic towards Snivy regarding him. mostly, he's just glad she doesn't have to deal with him anymore.. until she does.

once Snivy undergoes the displeasure of reuniting with trip's serperior, though, he looks her over all lascivious-like and makes lots of backhanded comments to the tune of "wow, even after all this time you're still so small and fragile." (alternatively, if she's a serperior by the time they see each other again, he’d either be all “my goodness, how you’ve changed. and here I thought you’d stay small and pathetic forever.” OR he’d probably be a little more respectful, but not abundantly so.)

Sceptile of course is immediately not a fan. he had heard a lot of not-so-good things about trip's serperior regarding his behavior towards Snivy and he's always quick to keep Snivy far from him to avoid conflict. trip admittedly isn’t fully conscious of why ash’s Sceptile and his serperior have so much tension, but it makes great photo fodder.

trip’s serperior is haughty and incorrigible but that doesn’t really stop Sceptile from giving him a piece of his mind— and he uses a lot of choice words when doing it. serperior is appalled, mostly because few Pokémon have ever taken that tone with him, but he simply shrugs it off and he’s all “I could have any Pokémon I wanted anyway. Snivy should feel lucky I ever took an interest in her. Hmph. Women.” After that exchange with Sceptile, though, he surprisingly chooses to buzz off.

on a lighter not, if ash had been present for this he might have just misinterpreted it as Sceptile and trip’s serperior recognizing each other’s strength and then immediately challenging trip to a battle for old time’s sake!!!

[bitchkay]

Jasper loves flirting with Violet and Violet loves shuting him down

Like a game of cat and mouse, back and forth, push and pull

I dont know if I'm waiting for them to fight or fuck what's going on

[trickstarbrave]

rly sucks they released "the emperor and the paladin" on webtoon bc now i have to regularly see ppl taking potshots at it framing it as "woman abuser SAs her childhood friend and then the rest of the story makes excuses for her" when in reality the bulk of the story is her backstory which is absolutely horrific and shows just how broken she is as a person. she is so traumatized shes entirely irrational or delusional. she hates herself and thinks her boyfriend (THEY WERE IN LOVE PRIOR TO THIS IDK WHY EVERYONE FRAMES IT LIKE HE DOESNT EVEN LIKE HER???) hates her and was leading her on and left her for another woman.

like for perspective the biggest thing that happened to her was her mother was poisoned and then she begged and pleaded to be able to bury her mother properly. so they said they would. and locked her in a room with her mother's corpse for a month. while shes screaming and begging to be let out. along with more shit.

this isnt to say the story doesnt have problematic elements or that i think it was good. it is super fucking rushed at the ending to the point i think it undermines the story, some parts do excuse the shit she is doing to other ppl who dont really deserve it, and i dont think her husband is going to have a very happy life. but this is a story about a deeply psychologically disturbed woman.

however because its on webtoon which has such a large audience of mostly teenagers and young adults who dont give a shit abt thinking abt things they just see her being horrible and go "this comic glorifies abuse!!! because there is abuse in it and shes the main character!!!" which is a really dumb argument to make.

my point with this is really this badly written dark series abt an abuse victim going on to be an abuser due to how fucked up she is psychologically rly shouldnt have ended up on webtoon

[lntrusiveknock]

all the indignity in your youth i’ll curse and condemn you to be remembered,, i’ll hold it against your best selves, i’ll hold you to an unreachable standard, i’ll name your worst moments the truest version of you, no matter how far you try to escape from it

[icewindandboringhorror]

finally settling once and for all... with the evidence laid out plainly.. which of these brother boys is more stinkys ,,,

[firedragon1321]

The Bible is weird. I hate canon. But the fanfiction is top-tier. Paradise Lost and The Inferno are not canon and this makes me very sad. Malacoda? Just an OC. "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven?" Rawer line than anything canon could ever dream up.

Canon almost had it with The Book of Revelation, but dropped the ball with the whole "Jesus chooses who goes to heaven or hell forever". Like, isn't hell already forever? And all the bad people are already there??? Lazy stupid writing. They should make fans write this shit.

[reitziluz]

sometimes in discussions about consent and safer spaces and such, i am left wondering how the assumption came to be that it is possible to be completely sober with perfect mental acuity while undergoing a fundamentally ecstatic experience.

or if their definition of mental acuity allows anyone other than neurotypical abled people the ability to consent.

or don't they ever just wanna go apeshit

[rat-rosemary]

Tbh dre made tweets before the long one like the very passive aggressive "great minds think alike or something" and saying he was going to fight q (inb4 "IT WAS A JOKE" if q not saying shit was enabling drama I think that also counts as enabling drama lmao)

The thing is, those tweets were so clearly Dream trying his best to dismiss the hate and trying to make both his fans and Quackity fans calm down, specially since the norm with dtkq at the time were light hearted jabs like that

(Actually, honestly considering all that happen I think Dream was taking it very well? I mean, yeah it would of course have been better if they had talked it out and figured out how to do these two servers that were similar without stepping on each other toes, but if there were people showing up at mine and my friends house and a person who I thought was my friend suddenly started ignoring me I would react much much worse then just making some light hearted jabs at them on twt)

Edit: wait actually what does "inb4" mean

[isekyaaa]

Reading Novel Updates spoiler forums makes me so sad bc you see how bland and boring some people are in that they only want to read novels with perfect male leads that treat the main character with 100% politically correct and Twitter feminist approved respect. Flawed men are morally reprehensible in their eyes and are deserving of judgment and death.

[elodieunderglass]

Kids also don’t have a huge amount of experience in anything, and it’s a parent’s job to teach them. This sounds incredibly obvious, doesn’t it?

Before a family Christmas celebration, when all five of us happened to be lounging around together, I announced we were playing PRESENT PRACTICE. I wrapped a toy frying pan in a muslin cloth and handed it to a child, who unwrapped it and mimed amazement. The older children and their father were all awarded points for their simulated appreciation and the baby got points just for learning to unwrap something. On the second pass we all leveled up to making a grateful comment in reaction to the particular gift, such as “this will go in my collection of frying pans” and “now I can cook one very small egg.”

For the six year old, I very seriously presented the important and tricky case study of unwrapping a large exciting box to find a single pair of socks. The child suggested a reaction of “this is great, how surprising! But,” their face changing to seriousness and the tone of giving the giftee useful feedback for the future, “I’m not very interested in socks.” They explained the utility of passing on this feedback. So, this being present practice, I received this reaction with the grace and thoughtful attention of an award-winning director, and we discussed how we would leave that part out for our more sensitive audiences.

The children also traditionally give small cheap or handmade presents to their family members. Each parent takes each child secretly in hand to prepare a present for the other parent. The six-year-old also has access to the PTA school shop, where the PTA purchase small shitty items (scented candles, bars of soap, cheap socks) and sell them to the schoolkids for £1.50 each, and wrap them on the spot. The 6-year-old carefully squeezes the value from the £10 we give them for this purpose, and squirrels away their mysterious bag of wrapped gifts like it’s a state secret. The three year old is given “pocket money,” and taken shopping. There is now emotional investment in giving; we whisper together quietly about how much people will like the gift. The three year old frequently whispers hotly into my ear about the item they chose for their grandmother (a tissue cover, lmao). The children, therefore, watch adults carefully when their own offerings are unwrapped and admired. When they see us reacting with amazement and gratitude to their gifts, it maps that pathway and lights it up. It also teaches pretty early on that giving is actually supposed to be rewarding, and is a more reliable source of cheer - as you can always control the feeling giving, while getting is tiresomely at the whim of an external giver, isn’t it? And it reinforces that a certain degree of social performance is expected.

Present Practice is a fun game to play so the kids do it to each other. It’s a funny trick to play on a parent, too. You can hand a parent something hilarious, like a potato wrapped in toilet paper, and see them try to do a Level 3 reception on it (“this will be my favorite ever potato,” I say mistily, “how did you guess what was in my heart?”)

For high-pressure present-opening situations, you can just sit back and watch, really. Even when I had to let them open USA-grandparent Christmas presents over Zoom AT the house of the British Grandparents. The children spontaneously decided to receive presents in the guise of angels. I was giving the kids wild thumbsups from behind the camera as they warmly enthused over the sentiments in the cards before even looking at the gift.

Does it sound artificial? Well, they have fun, and they’re kind, and they love giving and receiving. They’re nice and well behaved - and people love to give them presents. It’s all social performance! and you’re expecting super high-level software to run on Kid Hardware, which is like trying to program Plant Pathology 101 onto a border collie! Kind of an unfair expectation on the framework, mate!

I’d suggest the first port of call is literally - teaching kids how to get presents.

"Look at this video of a child disappointed at their expensive gift! Children are so spoiled these days!"

That's cool. So, why did their parents upload their small child being upset online? In a public video, shared to the entire video? Why did they even save the recording?

Like. The kid in that scenario could be saying the most entitled nonsense in the world, and if their parents post it online to be publicly shamed, I'd still support the kid 100%. Thinking your child's life is a toy to exploit freely for #content is "spoiled"; when faced with mommy vlogers, kids should be demanding three PS5s and a new Bugatti, and we should be applauding them for it

[shidoukanae]

Chapter 75 and 76 have been so funny for male lead characters suddenly spouting red flag lines.

Paris's is expected because the narrative has always been honest about how he's got a screw loose but seeing the 2nd lead syndrome guy pining hopelessly after Lyla seemingly imply he was trying to make her unhappy with his presence is ???? huh????

like im aware my very loose translations are probably scuffed as fuck and there's room for further interpretation but man is this manga a ride lmao. It never feels like a chapter is wasted and that there's always something more to be learned about this world, its story, and its characters. And it means every chapter is never a letdown because there's always SOMETHING happening and it makes me !!! to see

[wilwheaton]

In a long essay about the televised incident, Wheaton makes a lot of salient, emotionally vulnerable points about his reaction to David’s stunt, tying it in to memories of parental abuse he suffered as a kid—pointing out, among other things, that, within the agreed-upon fiction that we all adhere to pretty fervently around all things Muppet or Muppet-related, Elmo is a child. Writing, Wheaton notes that “Elmo is an avatar for children all over the world. Children who are too small to understand Elmo is a puppet will know that a man attacked someone they love for no reason, and that will frighten and confuse them.”

Wil Wheaton condemns Larry David for his Elmo-based violence

This story is a week old, and has blown up today. The right wing smoothbrains are out in force, doing their usual thing, until they get distracted by the existence of a successful woman somewhere in the world and have to go rage against that.

I don’t know why this is happening today. I don’t know why right wing clout chasing incels have decided to make this their Thing today. It’s all very confusing, especially a week after the fact.

But I want to put something here that I added to my post on Facebook, that those dudes (it’s always dudes whose entire personality is “MONSTER ENERGY DRINKS!”) need to hear but won’t understand:

A lot of us who had the same visceral reaction to a grown man putting his hands on a child (Elmo is 4 years old) in anger, without consent, and then laughing about it all share an experience that you should be grateful you don't share with us. And when you say your shitty little toxic and cruel thing, when you reduce the whole thing to a puppet and a joke, you're doing to us what the adults around us did when we were kids. And it hurts all over again. Are you really someone who wants to hurt another person simply because you can? Maybe take the impulse to be a jerk and redirect it into being grateful you have no idea why this is so upsetting to so many of us.

Larry David put his hands on another performer, without consent, in a segment he was not part of. That, alone, is not okay. It is not EVER okay. The fact that so many people don’t get that, or are deliberately choosing NOT to get that, is telling.

But as I said, Elmo is a child, and he is a friend to children, so all the kids whose parents were watching the Today Show with them, because Elmo was on to talk about sharing big feelings and caring for your mental health, got to watch this man storm into a set, and angrily attack Elmo.

That’s indefensible behavior, and calling me names doesn’t change that.