#life shouldn't be this hard

[bisan-is-trying]

"Consistency is key!" I whisper to myself while avoiding sticking to something likei it's the plague

[roach-works]

ok im waffling on about fallout instead of having breakfast but i saw a criticism of how the prisoners were treated that's stuck with me.

spoilers!

so i think the criticism wasn't incorrect, per se: it condemned the way the show portrayed the vault dweller's naive intention to rehabilitate their murderous captives. it found fault with a common, and horrible, message that tv shows like to say, which is that carcerial violence and even the death penalty is the only effective way to deal with criminals, who are a fundamentally Bad category of human. im sick of that message too! but i think that wasn't what was going on here, actually.

so like, the vault dwellers had only ever experienced violent loss the once, and didn't really know how to cope other than denial and repression of the ordeal. but they were all hopeful and enthusiastic that their prisoners, the invaders that came to kill them all and take their stuff, could be eventually welcomed into the community as their comrades. the champions of this cause were nebbishy dorks and painfully out of touch academics. this is pretty normal for how prison reformers are portrayed, if extremely fucking annoying for those of us who ARE in favor of prison reform.

but so of course when the son of the former overseer, Norm, speaks up and suggests killing the prisoners, because why should they share resources with invaders who explicitly wanted to keep hurting them? why should they show mercy to their attackers? everyone is appalled by this suggestion. because they had to reinvent the whole concept of vengeance right then and there, because grudges and cycles of violence are anathema to a bottle society like theirs. they have been raised all their lives to forgive and forget and now, put to the test, they're recommitting to this ethos: get along, let the past go, look towards the future, believe the best of everyone.

but the prisoners die, anyway. the prisoners are killed with rat poison. and the thing is that Norm who suggested it didn't do it himself. and the prison guard who's blamed for it, even though she privately agreed with Norm that the prisoners are dangerous and unforgiveable, she didn't do it either. it's not a moment of triumphant, cathartic vengeance and it doesn't prove that there's no way to negotiate with terrorists and invaders but kill them like vermin because that's not what the message is meant to be.

the message is that norm stands there in the middle of these inconvenient prisoners, these corpses dressed in his own people's uniforms, and he looks at the new overseer. and he knows that she killed them, and she knows that he knows. she wanted him to know. this is her message and he's reading her loud and clear. and he doesn't look like a guy who's just been backed up by authority, who's just been validated in his desire for the ultimate control over those who have wronged him.

he's scared and pale and the music is ominous as fuck. and he's inside the cell, he's directly in the middle of it.

because what just happened is that he realized his entire society is being held prisoner, and the overseer is the one with the rat poison. and that he doesn't know, anymore, what freedom and safety and justice actually mean, just that he doesn't have them and he doesn't know where to find them.

that's what that scene meant. not that rehabilitative justice is a pathetic delusion of people who have no idea how to make hard choices.

but that before you advocate for killing prisoners, you might want to see how big that prison is, first.

and which side of the bars you're standing on.

[magnusbae]

This weapon is your life.

[celestialwife]

it genuinely makes me so sad to see people always being like "I know [media] is bad" "it's pretty mid but I love it" "I know it's stupid but it's so fun" or whatever other synonym they can think of like babes!! you do not have to be self deprecating about your passions!! you need not be ironic about what makes you genuinely happy!!!!! unlearn shame!!! stop making excuses!!! for what brings you joy!!!

[carrottyshark]

Drawing Rainy Themed Minigrams per day to get back on track using a randomizer 🎉 Missed first day so I'm posting 2 today. It's HELL to draw chibis even now and moreso trying to stick with a theme/pattern so that's what I'm trying to work on

Fun fact I've never felt so entertained about a randomizer until now especially because Fuuta won by a few pixels against Yuno

[tommarvoloriddlesdiary]

Tom, sloshed and whispering: Don’t tell Harry I’m in love with him.

Harry, the person Tom’s whispering to: …trust me, I won’t.

[dylanobrienisbatman]

As someone who doesn't want kids, Cristina Yang means so much to me. She fights so hard to get people to understand that she just doesn't want kids and that that's a thing, that it's okay, that it's perfectly normal, but that if one day she changes her mind, that's okay too. As someone who has had that conversation a thousand times, hearing her passionately defend this choice that she has made for herself will always be so important to me.

[wikiangela]

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[theragnarokd]

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[extra-somethin-somethin]

hey so do you think wtv keiko had to deal with growing up with yusuke could be considered a type of parentification

[good-to-drive]

I'm sick of coming of age movies where the protagonist has his first romantic love I want more coming of age movies like Stand By Me (1986) where the protagonist finds his first dead body

[yashley]

no but it's hilarious to me that imogen herself has been parroted how terrible liliana is, how she knows she’s a bad guy, how she knows she needs to bring her down, and yet still they're like "i mean have you ever thought that your mom is evil and irredeemable????" lmao

[applejongho]

:/

[worldendercharles]

never fails to drive me wild the way that Yami Marik is almost exactly to Marik what Marik is to Atem

[parachutingkitten]

Can I just pause for a moment to comment on the insanity of "Oh, but ninjago is a fictional location, so like, it doesn't matter if the representation is accurate, cuz it's not real!"

[ivy-saurs]

god i can't stand how short the weekends are