#it's just weirdly and bizarrely consistent.

[queenlua]

i need a 404 Media piece to explain how the hell Quora, of all places, became the #1 website for random militant hindutvas to answer questions wholly unrelated to militant hindutva shit with, uh.... militant hindutva shit

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conservatives are fringe outliers - and leftists could learn from them

The Republican Party, a coalition between Big Business farmers and turkeys who’ll vote for Christmas (Red Scare obsessed cowards, apocalyptic white nationalists, religious fanatics, etc) has fallen to its bizarre, violent, noisy radical wing, who are obsessed with policies that are completely irrelevant to the majority of Americans.

As Oliver Willis writes, the views of the radical right — which are also the policies of the GOP — are wildly out of step with the US political view:

https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/conservatives-arent-like-normal-americans

The press likes to frame American politics as “narrowly divided,” but the reality is that Republicans’ electoral victories are due to voter suppression and antimajoritarian institutions (the Senate and Electoral College, etc), not popularity. Democrats consistently outperform the GOP in national races. Dems won majorities in 1992/6, and beat the GOP in 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. The only presidential race the GOP won on popular votes since 1988 was 2004, when GW Bush eked out a plurality (not a majority).

But, as Willis says, Dems “act like it is 1984 and that they are outliers in a nation of Reagan voters,” echoing a stilted media narrative. The GOP’s platform just isn’t popular. Take the groomer panic: 71% of Americans approve of same-sex marriage. The people losing their shit about queer people are a strange, tiny minority.

Every one of the GOP’s tentpole issues is wildly unpopular: expanding access to assault rifles, banning immigration, lowering taxes on the rich, cutting social programs, forcing pregnant people to bear unwanted children, etc. This is true all the way up to the GOP’s coalescing support for Trump as their 2024 candidate. Trump has lost every popular vote he’s ever stood for, and owes his term in the Oval Office to the antimajoritarian Electoral College system, gerrymandering, and massive voter suppression.

Willis correctly points out that Dem leaders are basically “normal” center-right politicians, not radicals. And, unlike their GOP counterparts, politicians like Clinton, Obama and Biden don’t hide their disdain for the radical wing of their party. Even never-Trumper Republicans are afraid of their base. Romney declared himself “severely conservative” and McCain “put scare quotes around ‘health of the mother’ provisions for abortion rights.”

The GOP fringe imposes incredible discipline on their leaders. Take all the nonsense about “woke capitalism”: on the one hand, it’s absurd to call union-busting, tax-dodging, worker-screwing companies “woke” (even if they sell Pride flags for a couple of weeks every year).

But on the other hand? The GOP leadership have actually declared war on the biggest corporations in America, to the point that the WSJ says that “Republicans and Big Business broke up”:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-corporations-donations-pacs-9b5b202b

But America is a two-party system and there are plenty of people who’ll pull the lever for any Republican. This means that when the GOP comes under the control of its swivel-eyed loon wing, the swivel-eyed loons wield power far beyond the number of people who agree with them.

There’s an important lesson there for Dems, whose establishment is volubly proud of its independence from its voters. The Biden administration is a weirdly perfect illustration of this “independence.” The Biden admin is a kind of referee, doling out policies and appointments to its competing wings, without any coherence or consistency.

That’s how you get incredible appointments like Lina Khan at the FTC and Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ Antitrust Division and Rohit Chopra at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureat — the progressive wing of the party bargained for these key appointments and then played their cards very well, getting incredible, hard-charging, hyper-competent fighters in those roles.

Likewise, Jared Bernstein, finally confirmed as Council of Economic Advisers chair after an interminable wrangle:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-06-16-team-biden/

And Julie Su, acting labor secretary, who just delivered a six-year contract to west coast dockworkers with 8–10% raises in the first year, paid retroactively for the year they worked without a contract:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/14/statement-from-president-biden-on-labor-agreement-at-west-coast-ports/

But the Biden admin’s unwillingness to side with one wing of the party also produces catastrophic failures, like the martyrdom of Gigi Sohn, who was subjected to years of vicious personal attacks while awaiting confirmation to the FCC, undefended by the Biden admin, left to twist in the wind until she gave it up as a bad job:

https://doctorow.medium.com/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband-4ce1ffb16dc5

It’s how we get key roles filled by do-nothing seatwarmers like Pete Buttigieg, who has the same sweeping powers that Lina Khan is wielding so deftly at the FTC, but who lacks either the will or the skill to wield those same powers at the Department of Transport:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

By refusing to stand for anything except a fair division of powers among different Democratic Party blocs, the Biden admin ends up undercutting itself. Take right to repair, a centerpiece of the administration’s agenda, subject of a historic executive order and FTC regulation:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Right to Repair fights have been carried out at the state level for years, with the biggest victory coming in Massachusetts, where an automotive R2R ballot initiative won overwhelming support in 2020:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/13/said-no-one-ever/#r2r

But despite the massive support for automotive right to repair in the Bay State, Big Car has managed to delay the implementation of the new law for years, tying up the state in expensive, time-consuming litigation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/26/nixing-the-fix/#r2r

But eventually, even the most expensive delaying tactic fails. Car manufacturers were set to come under the state right to repair rule this month, but they got a last minute reprieve, from Biden’s own National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, who sent urgent letters to every major car manufacturer, telling them to ignore the Massachusetts repair law:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7bbkv/biden-administration-tells-car-companies-to-ignore-right-to-repair-law-people-overwhelmingly-voted-for

The NHTSA repeats the car lobby’s own scare stories about “cybersecurity” that they blitzed to Massachusetts voters in the runup to the ballot initiative:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

The idea that cybersecurity is best maintained by letting powerful corporations gouge you on service and parts is belied by independent experts, like SecuRepairs, who do important work countering the FUD thrown off by the industry (and parroted by Biden’s NHTSA):

https://securepairs.org/

Independent security experts are clear that letting owners of high-tech devices decide who fixes them, what software they run, etc, makes us safer:

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2022/01/letter-to-the-us-senate-judiciary-committee-on-app-stores.html

But here we are: the Biden admin is sabotaging the Biden admin, because the Biden admin isn’t an administration, it’s a system for ensuring proportional representation of different parts of the Democratic Party coalition.

This isn’t just bad for policy, it’s bad politics, too. It presumes that if some Democratic voters want pizza, and others want hamburgers, that you can please everyone by serving up pizzaburgers. No one wants a pizzaburger:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/narrative-warfare/#giridharadas

The failure to deliver a coherent, muscular vision for a climate-ready, anti-Gilded Age America has left the Democrats vulnerable. Because while the radical proposals of the GOP fringe may not enjoy much support, there are large majorities of Americans who have lost faith in the status quo and are totally uninterested in the Pizzaburger Party.

Nowhere is this better explained than in Naomi Klein’s superb long-form article on RFK Jr’s presidential bid in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/14/ignoring-robert-f-kennedy-jr-not-an-option

Don’t get me wrong, RFK Jr is a Very Bad Politician, for all the reasons that Klein lays out. He’s an anti-vaxxer, a conspiracist, and his support for ending American military aggression, defending human rights, and addressing the climate emergency is laughably thin.

But as Klein points out, RFK Jr is not peddling pizzaburgers. He is tapping into a legitimate rage:

a great many voters are hurting and rightfully angry: about powerful corporations controlling their democracy and profiting off disease and poverty. About endless wars draining national coffers and maiming their kids. About stagnating wages and soaring costs. This is the world — inflamed on every level — that the two-party duopoly has knowingly created.

RFK Jr is campaigning against “the corrupt merger between state and corporate power,” against drug monopolies setting our national health agenda, and polluters capturing environmental regulators.

As Klein says, despite RFK Jr’s willing to say the unsayable, and tap into the yearning among the majority of American voters for something different, he’s not running a campaign rooted in finally telling the American public “the truth.” Rather, “public discourse filled with unsayable and unspeakable subjects is fertile territory for all manner of hucksters positioning themselves as uniquely courageous truth tellers.”

We’ve been here before. Remember Trump campaigning against a “rigged system” and promising to “make America great again?” Remember Clinton’s rejoinder that “America was already great?” It’s hard to imagine a worse response to legitimate outrage — over corporate capture, declining wages and living conditions; and spiraling health, education and shelter costs.

Sure, it was obvious that Trump was a beneficiary of the rigged system, and that he would rig it further, but at least he admitted it was rigged, not “already great.”

The Democratic Party is not in thrall to labor unions, or racial equality activists, or people who care about gender justice or the climate emergency. Unlike the GOP, the Dem establishment has figured out how to keep a grip on power within their own party — at the expense of exercising power in America, even when they hold office.

But unlike culture war nonsense, shared prosperity, fairness, care, and sound environmental policies are very popular in America. Some people have been poisoned against politics altogether and sunk into nihilism, while others have been duped into thinking that America can’t afford to look after its people.

In this regard, winning the American electorate is a macrocosm for the way labor activists win union majorities in the workplaces they organize. In her memoir A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey describes how union organizers contend with everything that progressive politicians must overcome. A union drive takes place in the teeth of unfair laws, on a tilted playing field that allows bosses to gerrymander some workers’ votes and suppress others’ altogether. These bosses have far more resources than the workers, and they spend millions on disinformation campaigns, forcing workers to attend long propaganda sessions on pain of dismissal.

https://doctorow.medium.com/a-collective-bargain-a48925f944fe

But despite all this, labor organizers win union elections and strike votes, and they do so with stupendous majorities — 95% or higher. This is how the most important labor victories of our day were won: the 2019 LA teachers’ strike won everything. Not just higher wages, but consellors in schools, mandatory greenspace for every school in LA, an end to ICE shakedowns of immigrant parents at the school-gate, and immigration law help for students and their families. What’s more, the teachers used their unity, their connection to the community, and their numbers to get out the vote in the next election, winning the marginal seats that delivered 2020’s Democratic Congressional majority.

As I wrote in my review of MacAlevey’s book:

For McAlevey, saving America is just a scaled up version of the union organizer’s day-job. First, we fix the corrupt union, firing its sellout leaders and replacing them with fighters. Then, we organize supermajorities, person-to-person, in a methodical, organized fashion. Then we win votes, using those supermajorities to overpower the dirty tricks that rig the elections against us. Then we stay activated, because winning the vote is just the start of the fight.

It’s a far cry from the Democratic Party consultant’s “data-driven” microtargeting strategy based on eking out tiny, fragile majorities with Facebook ads. That’s a strategy that fails in the face of even a small and disorganized voter-suppression campaign — it it’s doomed in today’s all-out assault on fair elections.

What’s more, the consultants’ microtargeting strategy treats people as if the only thing they have to contribute is casting a ballot every couple years. A sleeping electorate will never win the fights that matter — the fight to save our planet, and to abolish billionaires.

If only the Democratic Party was as scared of its base as the Republicans are of their own.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

[Image ID: The title page of Richard Hofstadter's 'Paranoid Style in American Politics' from the November, 1964 issue of Harper's Magazine. A John Birch Society pin reading 'This is REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY: let's keep it that way' sits atop the page, obscuring the introductory paragraph.]

[onemillionwordsofcrap]

I desperately want to believe this is a troll but it looks like the original tweet got deleted lmao.

Like honestly speaking as someone who has to talk themselves off that ledge every other week or so, if the only load-bearing constant in your life was the weekly corporate-approved, pentagon-funded adventures of generic fuckin blorbo #372 then frankly that whole house of cards was coming down anyways

boy the discourse lifecycle has really shortened; the wga strike started less than 12 hours ago and someone’s already declared it ableist. in all my years on twitter and tumblr that may be the quickest I’ve ever seen someone reach this far to find a way to declare something Problematic.

[ms-scarletwings]

Just wanted to say

for being a member of an aggressively militarized, evil, bug-like, cyborg alien race that is completely incapable of natural reproduction,

Zim is bizarrely…

And I mean weirdly…

Paternal.

Like, there is only one dynamic/circumstance in which I’ve ever seen a softer side of him or a shred of empathy for another creature rear its head and it’s consistent across the show, movie, and comics.

Now, I’m not saying this lunatic maybe desperately needs a spare smeet or similar thrown his way yesterday ago,

But I’m also not not saying that.

[weezerfan123]

If you have any headcanons for sweet dirt? Like about their futures or relationships

People showing interest in the obscure rarepair I made up over a year ago is something I never could’ve imagined and I appreciate it beyond words, seriously😭💗

ANYWAY yes I think about them all the time and have so much to say about them!!

Scott definitely falls first. Sugar rolls around in dirt and puts makeup on pigs and has violent tendencies and Scott is like WOW. What a woman. When Scott has a crush, he’ll try to play it cool, or even pretend he hates Sugar, but his true feelings are painfully obvious.

If he tries to play it cool, he’ll go out of his way to hang around Sugar, making lame excuses just to be near her. He might start mimicking her interests, like rolling in the dirt alongside her or acting like he’s suddenly into pig makeup. Of course, Sugar’s suspicious, and thinks he’s only hanging around because he wants something/will backstab her eventually. It’s a bad mentality she can’t shake from her pageant days, she’s convinced anyone being nice to her is faking it.

They’d definitely develop a rivalry before they’d become any kind of friends. Wether it’s on the show, at their local county fair— in every universe, these two fight like feral animals. It’s not cutesy stuff like tripping or hair-pulling; Scott will put nails in Sugar’s driveway and Sugar will hit him on the back of the head with a steel pipe. There will be many concussions and broken noses before these two even consider becoming friends.

As their rivalry intensifies, Scott finds himself in a strange predicament. The more they clash, the more he’s drawn to Sugar. Every time she pulls some wild stunt, his respect for her only grows. Sure, she may have just stabbed him in the foot with a rusty pitchfork, but Scott can’t help but admire her strength and determination.

On the flip side, Sugar’s suspicions about Scott’s intentions only deepen as he sticks around. She’s used to people being fake nice, but Scott’s different. He’s not pretending to be sweet; he’s openly antagonistic, and for some reason, that feels more genuine to her. Even though they’re constantly at each other’s throats, Sugar starts noticing the little things—how Scott’s always around, how he never really tries to hurt her too badly, and how, despite everything, he’s weirdly consistent in her life.

Their rivalry becomes the foundation of their bond, and before they know it, they start to rely on each other in odd ways. Scott might complain about Sugar being impossible, but if anyone else messes with her, he’s the first to step in. And while Sugar might talk about how she hates his guts, she’d secretly miss their fights if he ever stopped showing up.

Eventually, the tension between them builds up to a breaking point. Maybe it’s another over-the-top brawl, where they’re both covered in mud and bruises, panting from the effort. In that moment, there’s a pause—just long enough for them to catch each other’s eye and realize that underneath all the chaos, they actually care about each other.

From there, things start to change. Their fights become less about hurting each other and more about pushing each other’s buttons in a way that only they can. It’s still a mess, but now there’s a weird, unspoken understanding between them. They’ll never admit it, but both Scott and Sugar find a certain thrill in their bizarre relationship.

Once they’re in a relationship— however the fuck they figure that out—

Scott’s love language is 100% acts of service. He’ll wake up at 5am to feed the chickens and weed the garden. When Sugar’s like why’d you do that for me Scott says “BECAUSE I FUCKING HATE YOU!!!”

He also brings Sugar home little trinkets, cool rocks, and flowers he finds out and about. He tells her “This reminded me of you FUCKFACE,” and kisses her on the cheek. He can’t give affection without being a little mean to balance it out.

Sugar, instead of getting mad, just beams at him, knowing that Scott’s bark is worse than his bite. She’s used to his rough edges and tough love, and she can see right through Scott’s attempts to hide his feelings. It’s why she likes to smother him with affection, knowing it drives him crazy.

Sugar’s love language is touch. She loves hugging Scott so hard his ribs crack and carrying him around like a sack of potatoes. She likes to kiss him all over his face until he gets embarrassed and shoves her away.

Their relationship is a mix of insults and affection, bruises and hugs, and they wouldn’t have it any other way. AND I LOVE THEM!!!!!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice:

The Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday held a lengthy oversight hearing to badger Attorney General Merrick Garland and push the GOP’s false narrative about President Biden weaponizing the DOJ against Donald Trump. Even though the hearing was conducted in obvious bad faith, it was in some ways successful, at least in the limited sense that Republicans grabbed a lot of headlines and forced Garland to spend a day on the defensive. Virtually every major news outlet it extensive coverage, ranging from the New York Times to MSNBC to Newsmax.

The hearing meant that for at least a day, everyone talked about whether the DOJ is treating Trump unfairly, rather than about, say, whether Trump should step aside from the GOP presidential nomination given his felony convictions, or whether Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito should recuse himself after an insurrectionist flag was flown over his house. Congressional oversight hearings give Congress a chance to focus the national conversation on what members want to talk about. It gives them a chance to pressure executive branch officials to adopt congressional priorities, or to explain and potentially embarrass themselves. In contrast, Democrats in the Senate have been bizarrely reluctant to use hearings to advance their agenda. Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has refused to hold hearings to investigate egregious evidence of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas receiving gifts from far right billionaires, or to demand answers from Alito about his apparent embrace of the insurrection. Instead, he’s posting weak statements on social media meekly calling for right-wing members of the Court to do a better job policing themselves. [...]

Senate Democrats need to get a clue

Democrats have of course decried the House hearings on Garland as nakedly partisan nonsense. Garland himself pushed back forcefully against (baseless) Republican claims that the Justice Department had somehow been behind the successful New York state prosecution of Trump on charges of falsifying business records related to hush money payments. Garland described the claim the Justice Department was involved as a “conspiracy theory” and an “attack on the judicial process itself.”  Forceful rejection of Republican lies is a good thing. But there are limits to playing defense. And Democrats have good reason to launch their own judicial investigations not of the Biden Justice Department, but of the Supreme Court. This year, after an extensive investigation, ProPublica determined that Clarence Thomas has for 20 years received lavish gifts, including vacations and loans, from billionaire Republican donors like Harlan Crow. More recently, the New York Times reported that in the days after the January 6 insurrection, an upside-down flag — a symbol of support for Trump’s coup attempt — was raised over the home of Justice Samuel Alito.

Thomas and Alito have shown clear evidence of corruption and/or bias. The Senate Judiciary Committee is supposed to provide oversight for the judiciary and monitor ethical standards and practices. This seems like a great opportunity to hold hearings on the far right Court and demand accountability. Or so you’d think. Durbin has been weirdly but consistently timid. He has not called Thomas to appear before the Judiciary Committee, claiming that Thomas would just refuse to show up. In the case of Alito, Durbin has called on him to recuse himself from cases involving Trump and the 2020 election — including the Court’s current case on whether Trump has immunity from prosecution from his role in January 6. But Alito has refused to recuse, and Chief Justice John Roberts refuses to meet with Durbin and his committee to discuss the matter. The Court has also failed to adopt even the minimal toothless, unenforceable ethics standards that Durbin has been haplessly pushing for years. So, if Alito and Roberts say they won’t cooperate, is that that?

Of course not. Congress has a lot of power. Durbin could subpoena Alito and Thomas and threaten to hold them in contempt if they don’t appear at hearings, just as the House has threatened to hold Garland in contempt. The spectacle of Supreme Court justices lawlessly rejecting subpoenas to even talk to Congress would in itself be a huge story. It would generate media headlines and bringing pressure to bear on Thomas and Alito to recuse themselves from cases involving Trump. The Senate Judiciary Committee could also subpoena others involved in undermining the integrity of the court. The committee has actually approved subpoenas for Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo, key figures in the Thomas bribery scandal. But Durbin has refused to issue those subpoenas, for unclear reasons. Similarly, the Senate Judiciary Committee could hold hearings on the insurrectionist flags flying outside Alito’s home (yes, there was more than one). Alito claims his wife was responsible for the flags, and he himself had nothing to do with them. The committee could call Alito’s wife, Martha Ann, and ask her to explain why she flew the flag and explain the justice’s involvement. [...]

Why won’t Durbin act?

The advantages of using the power of the Senate, including hearings and subpoenas, is pretty clear. Alito and Thomas have shown themselves to be corrupt, biased, and arrogant. Despite massive conflicts of interest, they refuse to recuse themselves, much less resign. That undermines the integrity of the Court, undermines the rule of law, and threatens the Constitution and democracy itself. If there was ever a case for oversight, this is it. And oversight can be effective. Focusing the media on a huge scandal can lead to more reporting, more revelations, more public pressure, and political gain. The threat of subpoenas, and the exposure of hearings, can force justices to look for ways to defuse criticism — and recusing from cases where they are compromised is a pretty obvious step. Durbin’s sad tactic of just begging the justices to do better has not worked. Why won’t he use the tools he has? It’s unclear; his explanations (like arguing Thomas wouldn’t show up anyway) don’t make a lot of sense. Maybe he’s conflict averse. Maybe he’s leery of undermining the legitimacy of the court. Maybe he’s afraid of GOP backlash.

This Noah Berlatsky column in Public Notice is 100% spot-on: Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin needs to stop acting like a potted plant and start conducting hearings into SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito’s compromised ethics. It is time for the Democrats to play on offense instead of being perpetually on defense.

[pearl-kite]

So back in 2020 I was having A Time, like a lot of people, and in order to ramble a little less and spare folks on tumblr, I opened up a gdoc to use as a journal. I've always wanted to be a journaler, but I've never really been able to stay consistent.

I ended up with close to 80 pages from 2020-2022. I'm weirdly proud of it?

But I decided I don't really want it in google anymore, so I just spent uuuhhhh oops two hours copy/pasting/reformatting it into a scrivener file.

It took so long because I did a kind of cursory reread as I went.

And oof. Things have been rough. But I've kind of forgotten how rough, and it's weirdly encouraging that I have? Like, I knew the '21-'22 winter was rough, but so was a lot of the time around it! But I forgot! Things since have gotten good enough that I've been able to forget, I haven't been stuck ruminating on the horrible this entire time.

And, like, it's going to be like that in the future too. Right now I can feel my depression is deeper than it has been in a while, but look at what I not only survived, but moved past enough to entirely forget. If I'm having a rough time right now, I won't always have a rough time, and in the grand scheme of things I probably won't remember the bad details.

It's just bizarrely encouraging. Rereading all of the depression and mental anguish I waded through has turned strangely inspirational. It feels totally counter intuitive, but I'm going to take it, you know?

[the-owl-tree]

There’s so many toms that I hate because they were shoved into the plot to steal a she-cats story for themselves… it’s SO OBVIOUS when the Erins do this. The she-cats deserve to have just as much of an arc and character depth as the toms do, yet the writing team consistently devolves it’s female cast into accessories for their male counterparts.

Examples:

- Alderheart (blatantly having been written to strip sparkpelt of an arc that so clearly should’ve been her own - ie “the spark that remains” - sparkpelt is then twisted into a xenophobic jerk at the drop of a hat to make alderheart look better than her, when previously she was VERY MUCH in support of SkyClan’s return. What the fuck, Erins??? Sandstorm is also iced for this loser’s manpain.

- Nightheart (basically every she-cat has their personality altered to fit his victim complex, and we all KNOW that Finchlight would’ve been more interesting and deserving of a pov than him. If they kill off spark, finch, or sun to further his angst, I will be so pissed off…

- Tree (violetshine’s character growth, struggles, and arc completely disintegrates with his introduction. in tbc, she’s reduced to your typical background protag mother… while tree remains a major character, and is not only hugely valued by the plot, but also by its characters. violetshine deserved so much better than to be shoved to the sidelines by this random-ass character who was *totally not introduced just to make her into a a generic wife and mother*. that’s not even getting into how stupid the Sisters fiasco is, where ‘waaah tree was oppressed by all the women in his life and kicked out, isn’t he just so tragic and sad???’… good god. that was bizarre

- brambleclaw: probably one of the worst offenders of this, right alongside alderheart. Tawnypelt should’ve gotten his pov, considering her personality in TNP… it seems liked they flipped their stories around just because she’s a she-cat, and they just *had* to make the main protagonist of the arc a tom. very disapointing

- rootspring: bristlefrost’s character arc was absolutley DERAILED by this character, and it’s such a shame. even her most iconic scene, her sacrifice, was primarily focused upon rootspring and his pissbaby manpain. also… needleclaw, anyone? she’s the one who should have the sisters’ abilities, after all, but instead she has none… how does she feel about that? I think exploring that would be much more interesting than ‘whiny loser is upset and feels weird that he can see ghosts in a society that values the ability to see ghosts, gets a girl by being weirdly pushy and not taking ‘no’ for an answer, and goes through extreme manpain after she’s iced to further his development’.

- crowfeather: I don’t have any qualms with early crowPAW, but what I DO have an issue with is just how much feathertail’s death is twisted to revolve around *him*, when, in reality, it should’ve focused on Feathertail herself, as well as her brother. FeatherCrow was just awful in general though… especially considering that her name is only invoked later on as an excuse for crowfeather to be an abuser, implying that he’s justified in hurting his wife and son, as well as leafpool and her kits, ‘because manpain’.

real & true, it sucks seeing how many mollies in the series will have really interesting stories and potential conflicts then have the writing team choose whatever supports the main dude around them. more i think about tree the more annoyed i am that it wasn't violet, the big prophecy kitten who had survived the kin and would have more reason to want to keep the clans from tearing each other's throats out. the mediator role is a dumb one (i say with my mediator oc) but it would have been nice if it was actually a character who we followed who got the position instead of "my mommy is mean to me :(" rando dude who just shows up.

[chibishortdeath]

I got a new sketchbook since I filled one recently :3c. Shout out to suddenly getting a ton of energy and drawing bizarre fanart at 1 am 💀💀💀.

I’m putting the more violent ones under a cut even if the post is already tw tagged because of the subject matter being a bit dark d(^^ ).

Along with explanations for all of them of course!

⚠️tw for self harm and burning past this point⚠️

First one (before the cut) is just some pose practice. Simon’s just sitting, all sad and mopey. There’s also a little chibi doodle of him in the bottom corner and a little pose armature in the top corner for a pose I didn’t even end up drawing whoops lol. I feel like I drew his face a little differently than I usually do in this one :O. Idk how that happened lol.

This one is to show the differences in anatomy between each game! The curse takes a lot out of him, poor guy, so he’s a bit less jacked than usual 😔. Well, more specifically he doesn’t have as much of a layer of protective fat anymore. And he’s also very tired :(. But yeah, this is just a reference I’ll look back at to keep this detail consistent! I was going to put scar reference on it too, but I completely forgot and eh it mighta made it kinda hard to make out anyway d(- - ).

I drew this side profile of Simon while watching a video talking about lost media stuff. I think the image I based it on was something Saki Sanobashi related, idk I just liked the vibes of the hair being blown back by wind and got inspired :). And yes I know that Saki is probably a hoax 💀💀💀💀💀, I didn’t have much interest in it tho tbh, besides just hoping something lost gets found in general. Lost media videos are honestly great for putting on as background noise when drawing :)

Simon is totally me when I have a crisis and cover my face with my hands, but make sure one eye is visible and miraculously out of shadow for dramatic effect!!!

Ok spookier stuff time, first of the below the cut drawings. This one is based on how sometimes vampires are depicted as being able to drain someone from long distances or beyond the grave. Dracula is mean, and Simon is suffering from the curse, the usual. Augh I actually need to do things cause I keep thinking of a cool scene of Simon having a weird Dracula nightmare and then waking up to see it wasn’t a dream, and that’s tropey as hell, but it’s spooky!!! Do you see my vision?

This is a depiction of like what happens with a game over or something :O. Like an absolute worst possible outcome: Simon dies and Dracula is unsealed and fully regenerated. I basically just took is Simon’s Quest design and then rehydrated it and tada, Dracula is no longer a skeleton— He ends up looking way more like Vlad the Impaler in this outfit hmmm. Also, unrelated, but a friend of mine mistook Dracula for Jesus in this drawing 💀💀💀.

Oh boy, edgy depictions of uh a lot of not being very kind to yourself themes. Idk how else to describe this one other than ya know when you get really mad at your past self for making a mistake or the wrong decision that you could’ve only known about in hindsight? Also in part the fear of actually becoming a vampire at the end of all of this? And I guess a bit of feeling like it’s your own fault, you’re the one that keeps shooting yourself in the foot, but I feel like he’d also attribute getting hit by Dracula in the first place as his fault too… hmm just a lot of very sad things going on, this one was definitely a later 1 am time drawing, maybe 1:40 or something. I think what I draw at night is further proof to not trust you when you’re tired; I get weirdly existential at night and then it’s totally fine in the morning. Simon! Just sleep! Stop overthinking!!! You’ll be ok!!!

This one I debated putting up at all cause it’s graphic and not finished (TwT ;). But it was a rare drawing of Simon smiling that didn’t look uncanny, which is kinda ironic because Simon this is not the time to be smiling—! That is also wayyy too far for just the Dracula ritual, you really only need a tiny amount to open the seal, but I’ll cut him some slack cause he is a bit at wits end by this point. I’d say maybe he’s smiling because he thinks he finally won, but tbh I thought of it more like when things are just so bad you start laughing. Like Dracula just rose from the altar and the morbid irony of it all is just so absurd, the irony that you did everything right and fought tooth and nail (Dracula’s to be exact lol) to stop it and here it is happening anyway. I wanna give this guy a weighted blanket and a bowl of warm soup—

These last two are based on what could’ve happened to him. The Grey ending is pretty much usually considered the “worst”, but they’re all nearly interchangeable, especially in the Japanese version. For example: the western release really makes the Blue ending seem like he died and didn’t kill Dracula, but it’s a lot more that he just died doing it in the original, which is to say that it’s kinda like the Grey ending just with a different eulogy— Anyway, the Grey ending is the only one that doesn’t show Simon at Dracula’s grave, so I’ve always taken it as he didn’t make it out of the castle basement. And well, setting Dracula on fire is a pretty common way to kill him so uh um, R.I.P. I’ve got a couple ideas for alternate comic endings to say the least. I might honestly just depict all of them and leave it entirely up to the reader which one happened because it doesn’t change much— Though this also has me thinking of how him surviving would work now. The curse would definitely have left some lasting effects, you don’t just magically stop having been rotted, sleep deprived, and whatever else it did. Idk I picture him being like Renfield levels of lost it afterwards if that makes sense… that could also be a pretty solid explanation for why his story isn’t told correctly and the cycle repeats with Maxim later; it’d be a pretty traumatic thing to talk about tbh. Ok but yappersvile over, next doodle 💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

Aside from the burnt doodle that’s uh same explanation as the above (R.I.P.), the other two are just a little head angle and expression practice and one tiny one towards the top that’s Dracula being all spooky ghost vampire, but I didn’t like how it was looking and gave up on it 💀💀💀. It’s very hard to draw a vampire attacking someone and not have it look kinda awkward or unreadable. Tbh I struggle putting two characters in one image anyway because I have to draw the anatomy lines for both of them and they end up getting really hard to tell apart when one is behind another, one character suddenly isn’t proportional compared to the other, or you find out one of them isn’t tall enough for the pose you had in mind (>~< ). So anyway Dracula was accidentally way too short all of a sudden and I couldn’t figure out how to draw his torso without making a completely incomprehensible blob behind Simon oof.

Okie, it’s lunch time, bye :3!

[monarchisms]

dogbark, in both concept and execution, is just so interesting to me. i think the trailer they uploaded before they started making content regularly was a bad way to showcase their ideas of what they wanted to make for the channel, precisely because those ideas weren't solidified yet. and honestly, i believe the trailer becomes a bit worse the more the crew finds their footing in more recent content

personally, the trailer generally represents dogbark (and parts of achievement hunter before it ended, rip) with its weaker qualities. overly edited with jumpcuts and some louder, goofy-ass sound effects sprinkled in that makes it harder to focus on the video itself. outside that video, everything else on the channel that has someone saying a curse word is inexplicably bleeped out on their site and youtube. with the channel being newer, i don't know if they have a specific target audience in mind, since those that came from AH have long adapted to their crude humor, but they may not vibe with what dogbark does because it feels more childish in comparison. it's like watching someone go through an identity crisis with how the group don't know what they want to be lol

i stuck around beyond the initial video because i know these guys are funny, having watched AH for almost 9 years up until everything with matt went down. i think their chemistry is strongest with live action videos that have little to nothing to do with improv sketch comedy. i'm more than happy that they're seemingly focusing on that more in the last month. the gameplay videos also get better over time, but that's a given, seeing that that's what their previous jobs were. the dogbark boys aren't strangers to improv, with or without video games as a jumping off point. the problem is that they seem to be so inexperienced with this type of comedy they spent so much of the channel trailer focusing on

like, the improv content is the one thing that's stayed more or less the same since day 1, imo. the green screen improv videos i have found myself enjoying thoroughly are the ones that aren't exclusively michael, trevor, alfredo, and/or joe, weirdly enough. any other friend/rt employee with any combination of the dogbark boys feels more natural to me since they can explore more unique scenarios and have some new, fun dynamics to explore. with just the db crew themselves, it has the same energy as a high school improv group who just started taking classes. it's most likely fun to be a part of, but not necessarily fun to watch at a consistent rate

i wish i had more positive things to say about their other content that i do enjoy for a fairer opinion. however, the stuff i want to see more of like their podcast beyond episode 1 is first-exclusive (why???), which is bizarre for a new channel, but there's nothing i can do about it. that's why i come here to complain <3

[neon-jackal]

Why The Twist In CoC is umm uhhh umm

Each underland chronicles book gets it's own big twist, all with varying levels of quality, but today I want to focus on the twist in Code of Claw, and why (in my humble opinion) it doesn't really work. I actually really like Code of Claw, it's my second favorite in the series behind MoS, but this is by far my least favorite part of it, and probably my least favorite part of the whole series. So why is it so... not good?

First, let's talk about what makes a twist work. I think this really comes down to 4 main factors

Does it make in-universe sense? Pretty self explanatory. It's always good to keep writing consistent with the world building & lore of the series.

Does it fit with the characterization? Beyond it making logical sense, does it fit with the writing of the story? Is it foreshadowed at all? Does it feel like something the character(s) would do? Essentially, does the audience buy it?

Does it further/change the story? Also pretty self explanatory. A twist should have impacts on future event in the series, or re-frame previous events in a new way.

Does it work with the stories' themes? This is especially important for a series like TUC. This is a series with some strong messages, so it's important not to undercut them.

Now let's look at the big twist in CoC. For any who've forgotten, the reveal in this book is that Sandwiches' prophecies are fake. Ripred tells Gregor he doesn't believe in them 5 seconds before the final battle, and Gregor decides he's probably right. So how does this do as a twist?

Does it make in-universe sense? Hard no. Sure, the prophecies can be vague, and a lot of things can be left up to interpretation, but they describe way too many things way too accurately to just be coincidence. You're telling me that a super rare plague starts going around, and they need the help of the one guy that does all the stuff, and the cure for the plague is developed in it's place of origin, and Sandwich just got a lucky guess predicting all of that to a tee? Fuck off. This just feels like such a bizarre and rushed thing to throw into the series, and it feels like something that was thought of well after most of the other books had been written.

Does it fit with the characterization? Not really. CoC establishes that Sandwich isn't a great dude, so him faking a bunch of prophecies does feel believable for him, but like I said before, all the other books treat their prophecies as legit, so this feels kinda out of place. It also feels weirdly cynical? Gregor makes tangible progress on his quests, and sees really sacrifice too, and CoC is essentially saying "all of that was for nothing". Again, this ties into my personal belief that the other 4 books weren't written with this in mind.

Does it further/change the story? Again, no, not really. Even if you do buy the twist, all of the other quests were successful, so like, what's the point? It does set up Gregor surviving the final battle, but I feel like there just would've been much better ways of doing that.

Does it work with the stories' themes? Actually, kinda, yeah. It ties into Regalia's shady government and the ways they keep order, and fits the 'forced into a destiny you don't want' thing Gregor and Bane have going on. The whole "Sandwich can't be a prophet, he's evil!" thing the book tries to do is pretty dumb though, and I feel like there were so many more interesting ideas the book could've done with this.

Now let's compare this to arguably the best twist in the series, in CotW. Does it make in-universe sense? Absolutely. It fits into the prophecy perfectly. Does if fit with the characterization? Fuck yeah! The Regalians are evil bitches, so this is 100% in character for them. Solovet especially works so well as an evil-CIA type figure. It expands really well on her talk of wanting to 'punish' the rats in PoB. Does it further/change the story? Yes on both counts! Not only does it completely re-frame the entirety of CotW, it also sets up the humans' general shittyness, which we already kinda see in PoB, but really kicks into high gear in CoC. Does it work with the stories' themes? My guy. It IS the stories' themes! It so perfectly encapsulates the gray morality and overall pointlessness of war, the shady actions of government behind the scenes, and everything else these books are trying to say, and it gets expanded on even more in the next 2 books.

Wow this post post kinda got out of hand uhh if you're still reading this thank you for listening to my ramblings and point out anything I missed in the notes. If you think I'm wrong about anything, feel free to start a giant argument in the comments.

TL;DR: CoC is very good but the twist in it is not great and CotW does it much better.

[presidentalpaca]

the trend of people, all along the range of establishment dems to leftists, to call for trump to be replaced are so bizarre to me. like, yeah, i get the sentiment. we hate trump. he's a fascist and a liar and dangerous to democracy and yes, yes, yes agreed. but he is a WEAK candidate for the republican party.

up until this point we've had essentially a race to the bottom. biden should've sweeped trump, as an incumbent who did have some decent policies in motion, but he's a corpse who stans isnotreal and has an increasingly reactionary approach to immigration (this is something we NEED to push kamala on, btw). he also has historically low approval ratings, which has never rlly spelled out good news for incumbents.

well, okay, biden sucks, so trump should we sweeping him. well... sort of. trump, unlike biden, has a strong base of support. he has people who will only vote for him, while biden supporters are essentially just dem party supporters. the thing is though - much of his supporter base historically does not vote consistently. many of them don't believe in organized goverment at all, so they may not vote based on that.

but aside from that element, the bigger focus is the moderates. the people like my personal grandparents. white, wealthy, from the suburbs, lutheran, stans ronald reagan (named their boxer reagan). and trump freaks them out! they want normalcy. they want order. they're plenty racist, but they don't want an insurrection.

moderate voters are the ones you absolutely need to bag, regardless of party, and at the moment the dems (depending on how they move forward) could have a major advantage now that biden's out. they have a cop vs a criminal; a goofy laughbox vs a violent menace; a woman who connects with her stepchildren and seems happy with her husband vs the guy who called his own daughter hot and had the rnc commentators gossiping about his marriage. this is not a reflection of what matters to me personally, but rather of what generally matters to american voters. this dynamic is flimsy, because it takes work to push a narrative, and the dems have roughly a month til their convention, three til election day. they can push kamala and promote enticing policies, as long as they actually push kamala and promote enticing policies.

in addition, trump weirdly had a terrible pick for vp. jd vance is supposed to help trump's ticket appear less establishment, more in connection with the rust belt, but vance has been sucking up to the dems and pushing down his appalachian community for years.

and trump has maxed out on name recognition. it's pretty difficult for someone to not have a decently solid opinion on someone who has already been president for four years. red voters who know they don't like him - primarily moderates - can't really be all that psyched to vote him back into office.

now why, WHY, would we encourage the republican party to swap the trump-vance ticket for someone more competent, not so unruly and impolite? someone who can feign common decency, who can more effectively pretend to be better than they are?

please don't get sucked up in the "no you!" push, because (imo) that's all it is. it's just seeing the dems fuck up, be called out, then seeing the reps do the same thing, and wanting to call it out to get even. i don't think that's the move right now.

i think the move is to take the coconut pill for few months or so, pretend to get along, hope the dems do their part for once, and come jan 21st, we can go full throttle pushing kamala to fix everything.

oh, and vote august 6th!! multiple progressive state reps are up for re-election (shout out cori bush), as well as local reps and ballot measures. november 5th matters, but the next big one is only 2 weeks from today!

[coraniaid]

I think that "Buffy's friends and family often treat her very badly and say or do things to her that -- if they were real people -- would be pretty difficult or even impossible to defend" is a valid claim in as far as it goes. You can definitely find examples of Willow and Xander and Giles and Joyce acting in ways that I really don't think sit easily with the idea that the show wants us to believe that they care about her and have strong positive connections with her. I do think, pretty strongly, that that latter reading is the way the show wants to (and should) be understood, but I also think that it's worth acknowledging that often (either because of poor or hurried writing or because the show is prioritizing plot or metaphor over consistent characterisation) that the individual episode-to-epsidode writing is sometimes in tension with that.

Willow does frequently try to push Buffy into new romantic relationships she's not ready for instead of letting Buffy recover from her latest heartbreak; she did unilaterally decide to restore Angel's soul despite Buffy very much not asking for it or expecting it; she did push Buffy into getting a job while staying at her house rent-free; she did try to 'fix' Buffy's depression in Season 6 by using magic on her without her consent.

Xander does often talk to or about Buffy in ways that are weirdly possessive or judgemental (not just in Dead Man's Party and Into The Woods either, though those are perhaps the worst offenders); he did lie to her about Willow's attempts to restore Angel's soul; he does more generally often behave in ways that make me question why Buffy or Willow would want to be his friend at all (especially in Season 2).

Giles does have a habit of trying to control Buffy's personal life, often in deeply hypocrtical ways (for example, according to Giles Buffy can't even tell her mother about being the Slayer, let alone boys she's dating, and in fact she probably shouldn't be dating at all; but of course Giles can tell the first pretty girl he meets that Buffy is the Slayer with no problems); he did willingly participate in a conspiracy to drug her and rob her of her powers; he did abandon her and flee the country at the time she needed him most.

Joyce is worryingly quick to believe the worst of Buffy in the early seasons; she does react terribly when Buffy finally tells her about being a Slayer, and it's pretty clear she spends Season 3 at least still wishing Buffy wasn't one. (I think the Normal Again retcon that she had Buffy sent to 'a clinic' the first time she told her about vampires is almost impossible to square with the rest of the show, but yes, technically the show claims this happened as well.)

But the frequent follow-up claim of ".... and therefore Buffy should ignore these people in favor of Angel/Faith/Spike" (well, let's be honest, it's normally Faith or Spike, at least on the bits of Tumblr I see) is simply bizarre. The unspoken justification here has to be "because unlike her so-called friends, these characters would never hurt her or treat her badly", and that just ... isn't supported by canon at all?

I mean, what are we saying here? "Sometimes, Willow pushes Buffy into romantic relationships too early: this is very bad so, instead of being friends with Willow, Buffy should spend time with the people who canonically sexually assualted her?" "Xander sometimes lies to Buffy and gives her bad advice, so instead of hanging out with Xander anymore she should spend time with the people who worked with her enemies to literally try to end the world"? "Giles is sometimes very blunt about telling Buffy she won't be able to have the normal life she wants, so she should spend time with people who tell her she's not even fully human"? "Joyce once told Buffy she shouldn't come back home if she left without permission, so instead Buffy would be better off with people who once chained her up and threatened to torture and kill her"?

"Every bad thing a character I don't like does is canon and should be interpreted in the worst light possible, but sometimes (in fact: surprisingly often) the evil writers slander my favorite and pretend they did bad, out of character things that they would never do in my fanfics and we should not accept that this happened"?

Just a deeply unserious position to take.

[maletofujoshi]

like seriously whats wrong with her its awesome

i think its like. ok so like i think the account is jokes. but im not sure.

like consider this one. completely alien and bizarre thing to say (especially given the context of the chaserisms) and honestly kinda bad. I don't think you get a post like this if ur a trans woman running a parody account. there's a seriousness to it. regardless though the particulars of her posting come from a strange value system- "trans" (used as a noun?) over everything else in a way all subjects can be related back to "trans". This paired with like the particular manner of speech is. maybe regrettably kinda hilarious. It reminds me a bit of @/the-gentleman-who-wants-to-fuck(did that account change urls? wtf) but with the aesthetic fixation on business exchanged for one for "trans". the chaser side of it is also...

absurd. like, bad, but weirdly particular enough that its still Mostly Funny imo. like the "t4t is like Incest" thing is. its like t4t is the walled garden for her and she wants it to rot. presumably so there will be more available "trans". which is funny, so she remains an incredible poster.

also this tweet also. just pointing it out because it highlights to halimedeisms. the promotion of "trans woman" as like, a special highly valuable existence, and. referring to having a penis as "having one". (part of the charm of the account is i think in realizing the non standard highly self consistent language use.) what's wrong with her? idk she's figured out literally the perfect method to have tgirls constantly in her replies. in her perspective shes probably winning. but like maybe she should get normal about it instead. that'd probably be better for her and others in the long run. but i do also selfishly want her to keep posting like this forever and to never change a single thing about her belief system because god.

in the words of a reply on a screenshot of her i posted, "she's annoying". but she is winning at posting

[cursed-40k-thoughts]

Rereading the malus darkblade series at the tender time of 4 in the morning with my glasses that have far too weak of a prescription, squinting at my laptop screen, which is open to a very dubious website that keeps trying to shame me into buying pills that will make my dick grow six inches overnight, and I must say. Old warhammer books just went all out didnt they. Things happen in this series and you just kinda go "woah thats fucked up" and they just keep occuring and youre like "woah that's fucked up 😀" and then you continue to read and lo and behold it's still fucked up but you're weirdly entranced by this fucked up little man and his daemon, just like the 45+ year old milfs in your area are interested in you.

You’re totally right. The older WHF books managed to walk a fairly consistent balance between goofy and fucked up that was bizarrely captivating.

As an aside, I fully recommend the Thanquol series. It features Skaven being at once the most awful and amusing people.

[silent-partner-412]

I’m baffled by the S supports in Engage. (spoilers for a few of them below)

I save scummed to see six of them: Fogado, Diamant, Alcryst, Seadall, Pandreo, and Ivy as the token straight one to see the difference. The way these conversations were written were… bizarre, to say the least. I guess to start, of the ones I read that were reported to be blatantly romantic, the only ones that actually felt as romantic as the ones from 3H were Pandreo and Seadall, weirdly enough. I actually really enjoyed how both of those were written and were great moments for all characters involved. Shockingly, I thought the conversations for Diamant and Ivy were very tame (especially Diamant’s), which I was not expecting at all considering how popular those two characters are (and also the fact that gender doesn’t impact things basically at all). I was honestly a bit disappointed by both of them, I thought Ivy would go apeshit based on her C-A supports, and everybody seems to think Diamant is like the prime boyfriend of this game, but they were both just kinda whatever to me.

Alcryst’s was actually great, mostly because I thought it was a great capstone for him as a character. I really loved seeing his character growth as I watched more of his B and A supports and this was probably his best moment for that yet. It wasn’t explicitly romantic by any means but it was certainly not hard to read it that way which I really liked. I wish they would’ve made it more explicit but either way this one wasn’t too bad.

Then we have Fogado, who… jesus. This support, the way it was voiced and the way it was written (mostly) came off romantically to me. The problem is… it was obviously censored. Somehow, this conversation was localized so that Fogado wants Alear to be his special “ally” for the rest of time, which… I think speaks for itself in terms of how awkward that sounds. If they were trying to censor it for whatever reason they did a really bad job because it still sounded like a confession of love, but the word they chose just made it sound stupid as hell lol. I have no idea why they did it this way, and it’s especially disappointing cuz he’s my favorite character and I was planning on going for him as my end game.

The whole thing is… weird. It’s been reported that a lot of them were censored/changed for one reason or another, and you can really tell that’s what they were going for with Fogado’s specifically. But even then, Diamant’s was reported to be explicitly romantic, which I definitely didn’t see it when I read through his. It seems like this was just a weirdly localized mechanic honestly, I wish they would’ve just bit the bullet and made all of them (minus the small children of course) explicitly romantic if only for the sake of consistency, cuz at it is it’s just weird.