#like that isn't where it seemed like the analogy was going anyways

[true-bluesargent]

crappy 911 episode and then gay week on the odyssey ends with a throuple breakup you're kidding

[ms-demeanor]

Some people on the left are discussing whether the left is kind enough to me. Especially after the results of the election like lots of men of some demographics voting for Trump. Do you have any thoughts on that? Seems more about women should be nicer to men in some people’s opinions. And I am not sure about this discourse

i think that the social atomization that contributes to the radicalization of young men also contributes to, like, tradwifery and the radicalization of young women so I think that people are looking at a deep systemic issue with a shallow lens.

I don't think this is so much an issue of people being "nice" but of spaces making people feel *valued.*

The right-wing space full of toxic masculinity where people call disaffected young men "brother" isn't comforting just because people call you brother, it's because they're framing disaffected young men as valuable members of society who have been dismissed and degraded by the left. It tells them they're important and have worth and are necessary for the future of the world just because of who they are.

Of course they're getting called pussies and cucks and are being bullied in that space, but they're also being told that if they perform a certain standard of masculinity they are the future of their nation/race/species/family/etc. The toxicity of that space isn't something that makes them question their value, or whether or not they're a good person, or if they have something to offer the world. It is something they endure to prove that they are a member of the in-group, and that they belong, and that they do have value and are a good person.

So, there are people dunking on that post because it does kind of read like "i was almost eaten up by the alt right because women weren't nice enough to me" and to an extent i think that it was ungracefully worded. But i also think that it's addressing something that a lot of people feel in a lot of political spaces.

I do not think that whatever the hell we consider "the mainstream left" in America is particularly welcoming to anybody. I think that it very superficially values diversity while not actually valuing people. I think that it says "You are important! And that's why I need you to donate three dollars to my campaign to prevent the Republicans from harming [your identity group]! I am asking for your help as a senator, a mother, and a person who wants to defeat my opponent in two to four years."

I think that what a lot of people are looking for is not acceptance or niceness but is a community and i'm not at all surprised that people feel like they're not getting that from democrats/the mainstream left/whatever.

I mean. My real response to this is:

I don't think that the *actual* issue is that men don't feel welcomed by "the left," I definitely don't think the issue is women being insufficiently nice to men, I think the issue is that all of us are little cogs in a capitalist machine and actually there's very little out there that is saying to anyone "you are worth more than your productivity."

And it turns out that people will put up with huge amounts of abuse if the abuser makes them feel like they belong. People getting sucked into the alt-right pipeline because it is "nice" to them are exactly analogous to people who get sucked into cults because the cult provides community and affirmation and a sense of belonging.

Anyway, I am once again and as always begging people to put together or join any kind of at-least monthly meetup based on your specific interests. Start a radio club. Start a quilting circle. Put together a free store at the park once a month. Literally join a drum circle. Participate in a community garden. Start a walking club with your neighbors. Go to events at the library on weekends.

As a side note: there absolutely are lefty spaces that function by making people feel worthless or feel like bad people. They tend to have high turnover, short lifespans, and explosive fallout. These are shitty spaces and if your participation in a space is primarily motivated by some combination of guilt and self-flagellation, you should leave that space.

[ennn]

Re: “Rio's goal is to kill Agatha so she can be with her forever”

My brother in Christ, if Rio's ultimate goal this series was to kill Agatha we wouldn't have gotten past the first episode.

Okay okay, I get how it can be confusing because Rio literally says she wants to see Agatha dead in episode one and tells Agatha she'll let the Salem Seven (who do want Agatha dead) know where she is.

But it is noteworthy that Rio tells Agatha what she is going to do and when the Salem Seven are expected to arrive. Rio is usually surprisingly fair in how she deals with Agatha.

Rio has always met Agatha at her power level

In episode one, even assuming Agatha was protected by Wanda's spell and Rio couldn't harm her there, once it was broken Rio went "full analog" – to quote Hahn – with her knife, the only magic she used being the wind blasts.

Guys, that's not a serious murder attempt, that's foreplay to them. Violent, bloody, sexy foreplay.

Also Rio has healing powers. That's a thing they have very clearly shown.

To be clear, my read is that Rio can't actually kill anyone before their time ("You can't kill me, it's not allowed") just hurt them really really badly until they maybe choose to die ("I can make you wish you were dead"). Which you could argue equals killing I suppose, just slower.

But this is Agatha Harkness: all she really needs to survive is a bit of time to scheme and manipulate and do her usual girlbossing, gatekeeping, and gaslighting – and I think Rio also knows this. Agatha keeps surprising her, for better and worse.

Yes, Rio gets BIG MAD in episode 8 because Agatha says possibly The Worst Thing to her but the first part of their confrontation is technically physical torture, not murder attempts.

I know it sounds like I'm splitting hairs here but my point is that having Agatha dead isn't Rio's ultimate #1 goal. It's not so clean and easy.

There's something to be said about how the wounds Rio inflicts speak to how Rio sees herself hurt by Agatha emotionally in the relationship i.e. death by a thousand cuts, the severing of her Achilles tendon.

There’s probably something also be said about the relationship a being like Rio has with physical pain. Trees feel pain. Everything living does. Rio mocks Agatha for dulling herself to it using dark magic.

But I digress.

Anyway, note: it's only after Agatha gets magic back that Rio starts throwing magic blasts – and even then she seems to be holding back.

These two are possibly the worst two witches to fight each other directly like this because Agatha can't absorb Rio's magic or she'll die. She has to actively block or avoid all hits. And I bet this isn't something Agatha is used to dealing with considering she had no issues taking Wanda's magic.

And Rio is aware of this because she’s just lobbing quick little green blasts Agatha's way. It's not a torrent of magic like what Agatha is gleefully unleashing.

It's also the Watsonian (in-universe) explanation as to why this fight is so short. Because you literally can't straight up fight Death. Rio is a hard counter to Agatha's special siphoning ability just like how Agatha was a hard counter to Wanda's magic (insert your scissors-paper-stone visual of choice).

Rio doesn't want Agatha dead, she wants Agatha to want her

It's clear that Rio is grieving when Agatha dies. This isn't the outcome she wants. They're also both crying during the kiss it's great.

Rio wants what Agatha specifically tries to deny in the deal Agatha proposes: she wants to keep pursuing Agatha, to keep seeing her, provoking her, to be shocked and surprised by her. To keep loving her but also, to keep hurting her.

Because Agatha also hurts her right back. And Agatha knows she has Rio constantly on the emotional backfoot, that Rio – despite centuries of hatred thrown her way – still humours her more often than not and what levers to push.

I don't think this can happen with Agatha dead and gone.

To be fair, we don't know what the rules are in this world's afterlife. The only insight we get into Rio's job is her scene with Alice and that still leaves a lot of things unanswered: Does Rio just escort souls to a destination or does she have more control beyond that, like a domain? Can souls refuse to go with Rio? How do ghosts happen?

I had previously assumed Rio needed to allow it but Schaeffer says that her vision in that moment has Agatha's using an evolved form of the power to take Rio's magic by touch.

And with that, it's telling that it's Agatha who ultimately ensures that she dies (with the "calculated risk" of becoming a ghost), siphoning Rio's death magic energy.

Agatha embraces death, embraces Rio, but she also doesn't – Rio's clever witch got away again.

[isan0rt]

@lightandfellowship re: your tags on this post (just to kind of bring this out to a different post).

I was thinking about making a separate post to expand on those tags anyway because they were a little off topic to the op, but I was like, you know, it's that Xehanort was worse to the Dandelions than Luxu was, yes. But Luxu was supposed to be that callous to the Dandelions in the first place. He was supposed to think of them as tools and to just let whatever fucked up thing was supposed to happen to them just happen. And with anyone else he can, but he can't put his personal feelings aside enough to 'do what needs to be done' for this set of people alone.

But Xehanort can.

And I think that's really interesting when looking at Xehanort as the 'replacement Luxu.' Xehanort who, as observed by another post I don't have immediately to hand, speaks with MoM twice. Xehanort who is chosen by MoM and manipulated into doing his bidding the same way Luxu was, given the same coat and made the heir to Luxu's keyblade, Xehanort who actually is allowed to take action to bring the Keyblade War about and revive the Lost Masters while Luxu is only allowed to watch.

Actually I started this post with a different thesis ('Xehanort is able to put his personal feelings aside and be ruthless even where Luxu fails to follow his role') but writing that paragraph I've changed my mind actually. Because Luxu has basically no agency in this situation, whereas Xehanort does.

Like, both of them are assigned roles by their mentors but Xehanort isn't really given a road map about how to fulfill his role. He's being manipulated, sure, but he's also making choices himself all along. They're choices that are fucked up but he understands they're fucked up and is choosing them anyway because he strongly feels it's necessary for the greater good.

Luxu has been told these things are necessary for the greater good. He's been told what to do. He's been told to just watch and that he can never take action. He doesn't even have the illusion of agency that Xehanort, who is actively choosing to lean into his feeling that destiny is inevitable, does. What is that like, to live hundreds of years never having any sense of agency? For Luxu, helping the Dandelions is fucking up. It's doing what he knows he's not supposed to, what he's been told is against the Plan, but he has no agency and this is his little way of rebelling, even if this is, to us, the 'right' thing to do. There's a question of what actually is 'right' and 'wrong' here and whether Xehanort is a 'better Luxu' than Luxu for choosing to simply follow The Plan.

Also I'm rambling here but putting things together as I go, sorry to also expand on other tags on posts I reblogged from you lol, but like. Luxu also very clearly has Lucifer stuff going on, the same way Xehanort does, down to the name. Xehanort takes on the Satan imagery over time - but it was Luxu's first. And Luxu is the one who actually tried to rebel against his Creator by deviating from his role (only to watch) and intervening with the Union leaders.

The thing about angels is they are not, in Catholic traditions (I can't speak to other denominations) is that they are not supposed to have free will. Free will is for humans; angels only follow The Plan, with no agency or say in the matter. They're messengers and avatars created only to execute the will of God. The Foretellers seem to play this role, if you will, in relation to Master of Masters. He hands them roles to execute the plan he's already designed. If we're, in this analogy, considering Master of Masters to be in the role of 'god', both Ava and Luxu are ultimately fallen angels - they both question the will of their creator, both rebel - but Luxu rebelling was built into the plan. He is Lucifer, and Lucifer rebels, and so he was still allowed to come back to the fold at the end of kh3, having fulfilled his duty even considering his rebellion. He still had no agency in the end, even having done what he thought was exercising it by saving the Union leaders.

Anyway I'm just rambling on at this point and don't really have a conclusion to this but the whole interplay between Luxu and Xehanort, agency and servitude, angels and devils, light and dark, feels really compelling to me.

[kaelleid]

S02E08 Spoilers

Anyway I hated it lol

And this isn't just a "my little guy died" kind of thing. I've thought he was going to die all season; that was not a surprise to me. This is about how tacked on the ending felt.

Izzy spends his dying breaths comforting Ed and telling Ed the crew is his family and loves him. And then Ed immediately leaves the crew to be an innkeeper. Yeah, that was a great and meaningful use of screen time.

If the crew loved Ed and considered him family, I'd really like if they would have showed that instead of just telling us. Because what I saw this season was post-Kraken Ed having one conversation with Fang and that was pretty much it for positive crew interaction. But apparently they love him and they're family, okay.

Also RE: showing and not telling, Ed referring to Izzy as his family. I think I could count the positive interactions between Ed and Izzy across all seasons on Izzy's hoof. They've hardly spoken this season post-Kraken. Where is this coming from? It felt so forced and unearned.

It's frustrating how the scene seems to brush off all of Izzy's development this season, moving away from his toxic relationship with Ed and opening up after surviving a suicide attempt, to spend his last minutes focusing on Ed and saying that he wanted to die.

Anyway forget that, it's wedding time! And now forget that, let's have Ed and Stede run an inn with no prior onscreen discussion! The end!

I got into this fandom because I loved Ed/Stede so much. The potential for cracks in their relationship was there from the start; one of their first conversations together was Ed wanting out of piracy while Stede wanted in. I was really interested to see how this would be resolved, and how they'd move forward together. I don't think the resolution on this front was satisfyingly handled at all. But Ed read a letter and they kissed, so hooray I guess. Why would you ever need to talk anything through and build a solid foundation before living together? It's not like we saw this analog literally go up in flames a few episodes ago.

There was such an odd juxtaposition of spoon-feeding the audience with flashbacks to explain what was going on for obvious things, and then also expecting the audience to do all the legwork for important relationships. What's the relationship between Jim and Oluwande? What made Stede finally decide to leave piracy behind for Ed in S2E8 vs S2E7? Why, according to an interview, is Frenchie apparently captain now instead of Zheng Yi Sao or Oluwande? We're not going to write those conversations, figure it out yourself.

Also, Blackbeard the genius, and Zheng Yi Sao who conquered China's seas, apparently can't come up with a plan better than "Wear uniforms and then walk around with a hostage, whose gun we will not be taking." It just felt so meaningless.

The thing that really gets to me the most is how much I loved S2E1-7. I had some lingering issues, but they didn't bother me because I had faith they'd be resolved (at least, resolved to some extent, given a 3 season arc). And then the last 15 minutes of this episode destroyed that notion. I thought the writing was poor and inconsistent, and it threw everything before it into a completely different light. The things that I was waiting to be built upon were never actually in the blueprints. The cracks in the foundation were covered up with bubblegum. It didn't have good bones.

[fallenrain40]

i know being aro and ace are separate things. but i feel for me, in some ways, me being ace seems to mix with my aro identity a lot. like, I'm sure I've said this many times before, but I see myself mostly as aroace as it's own, single unique identity rather than just "aro + ace", just like how red + blue is, yes, technically purple, but purple isn't "red-blue". it's purple, it is it's own color. and saying something is "red and blue", usually never means it's purple. it means that it's red and blue separately. this is how i see being aroace. some aroaces = purple. (those who see our identity as it's own thing, separate from just aromantic and asexual; while those two are what created it, it is something else once combined.) some aroaces = red and blue. (those who their identity aromantic + asexual, separately. this does make sense to me, I just don't personally totally feel this way.) and then ofc, there's people who see it in either way during different situations. also, because I am really liking this analogy, I want to use it a bit further. let's say aro is red and ace is blue. for someone who views their aroaceness as seperate, a greyromantic person may be light red + blue. for someone who views their aroaceness as a single identity, a greyromantic ace may be a more bluish-purple, since the red is less strong. this can also explain why it can (sometimes) be easier for someone who views their orientations as separate to figure out where they are on the spectrum. if you just have red and blue, you can just... see which color is brighter or if both are the same. however it can be harder in different lightings (say, under a red colored light, the red would look brighter than the blue, or just brighter than it really is) but ultimately, it's fairly clear. if you have purple, to actually figure out how much blue and red make up the color, you have to pull up the color values. you have to put your orientation in a perspective you wouldn't normally EVER see it in- (aka, looking at them separately) to figure it out. and, on top of that, lighting can also screw with it. so you could think you have it, then have to go and reevaluate later.

ANYWAYS i hope yall liked lil my mini essay here.

[bi-hop]

my thoughts on rgu ep 5

god, there's... a lot to unpack with this one! holy shit! where do I even get started... I guess just at the beginning like a normal person, but wow-

so we start off with Juri and Mickey fencing, which. I dunno if the show explained them as fencers before, but it makes sense. I like how close the two of them seem to be, even outside of the student council context. there was that whole library scene last episode of course and now this. Juri's insistence that his sword is not for battle seems important... but we'll get to that later, I guess

dear God please stop flashing back to his sister <- this will not stop

Utena being like "oh are y'all having a romantic moment" is so funny to me. the denial... Anthy isn't going to do anything, bro, she's engaged to you?

anyway we're back to Anthy playing the piano for everyone... and we're back to Mickey's backstory

I will say despite the clear importance Mickey places on music and therefore on how his relationship with his sister was destroyed once she quit playing the piano, it's HILARIOUS to me that his tragic backstory is... he convinced his little sister to do a concert with him and then got measles. okay.

^ LMAO HE SAID ALL THAT AND THEN ANTHY'S JUST STIMMING TO THE METRONOME

okay jokes aside it's also obvious to me why Utena is more invested in this story and Mickey's feelings towards Anthy than Anthy is. Anthy is fully devoted to being the Rose Bride and what that entails - devotion to whoever wins her in a duel. Right now, that's Utena. so why would she engage with and acknowledge Mickey's crush right now

"It's ridiculous to make a girl someone's bride because of a duel! I can't forgive a system that deprives someone of their personal freedom!" Finally!!!!!!! We finally get Utena fully articulating her issues with the Utena-sama and engagement spiel beyond the more surface level denials of "I am a girl who must be interested in boys because I am a girl" and "this is just weird" from a few episodes ago

My GF: ... okay so the student council saying that egg shit is just their Team Rocket motto-

MICKEY... You can't just plagiarize Utena's words and alter them to solely be focused on Anthy, that's not how this works-

Also, I know the student council is like... an apocalypse cult or whatever, but could you really disband it just because some random kid said so? Like isn't Mickey 13 or something. where is the head of the school in all this?!?

... WAIT WHAT THAT'S HIS SISTER.

[The camera cuts to me gagging as I am forced to process the implication that Touga pursued Mickey's sister out of... retaliation? An assertion of control over Mickey? To instill a reaction to 'fight for' what he wants and owns, but those things being girls in a more conceptual sense than anything true and real?]

And here we go... Anthy's likes again exist, obviously. She likes animals, she likes playing the piano, she presumably likes being in the greenhouse. But her desires are always secondary to her existence as the Rose Bride. what her fiancé wants matters more. If Utena were to beat her, she'd tolerate it, as we've already seen with Saionji. If Utena were to demand she stop talking to Mickey, she'd probably do so immediately. If Utena were to say she needed to stop playing the piano, she'd do it. And of course Mickey feels so attached and entitled and threatened after the Touga shit that he's like "well, I gotta duel Utena now". UGH!

Everything is Touga's fault- /j

There is clearly something being said as well in the way in which Touga's words are repeated and re-animated, focusing heavily on his exposed chest, but I don't really want to think about the ins and outs of that right now. [The camera zooms in on me shaking my head pensively.]

Utena def feels betrayed after all of that, though. SHE WAS ROCKING WITH YOU!!! SHE WAS ROOTING FOR YOU!

I can't quite word this, but the shadow girls' pirate spiel is clearly relevant. I just can't fully word why right now. I guess the analogy is that Mickey is so beloved for everything - smarts, piano, fencing, student council stuff - but he can't ever possess what he truly wants, which seems to be... I don't know, actually. The shining thing is how he words it, but maybe he's just looking for someone to inspire and support him? And he words it in this idealized way because no one in this fucking school is healthy or normal-

"I think being seated at the piano suited you much more." I AGREE! (And so does Juri... hm...)

Okay, so obviously Mickey loses. Obviously the new duel song is great. But I am continuing to think about how Mickey is both right and wrong here. He's able to intuit that Anthy is not happy over the dueling system, though she'll never let on to that. but he incorrectly assumes that Anthy will support him because 'I'M the one thinking of her best interests', conveniently forgetting that Anthy will always support the person she's engaged to. Who is Utena, not him at the moment. and of course the shock of that makes him lose. Then again though, maybe I'm falling into the trap too like him and assuming she's unhappy... lmao who knows

The reveal that Mickey's sister was actually shit at the piano and he just didn't notice (and neither did the guy who had a crush on her)... something is going on there about idolization! Something! I wish I was like ten percent smarter today, it's slipping through my fingertips

Anyway, good episode, made me sick to my stomach in some parts! Excited for Anthy being put on trial for attempted murder next episode-

[temperamentalaquarius]

any thoughts on batman: black mirror? i really enjoyed it (as a non-batfamily fan) but i'm wondering if there is a difference of opinion with people who are actually acquainted with the context behind black mirror, i guess. which parts did you find the strongest + which parts did you find the weakest?

anyways, im a huge fan of your comics-posting (which is both, in the best way, entertaining and insightful). have a great day!

Ahhh thank u!! I'm glad I'm not the only one having fun 😁!!!

Thank you so much for sending this, I loved the dick!bats era and I liked The Black Mirror!!

I thought it was a decent Dick story, and I loved that it had Babs and Tim as the supporting cast. It was good to see them back(mostly) in their 90s early 2000s element.

I thought that the A plot was better than the serial killer B plot-; it had a lot of personal connection for Dick without being about the Graysons and orcas(which are some of the most vicious and borderline cruel predators that terrify me to my core and it was really cool to see them get some use)- even if I didn't find the ending super satisfying.

I thought James was interesting, and his story was more linear but the addition of the Joker into the situation was kind of just...messy and not entirely necessary? It kind of killed it for me. Idk I might just have Joker fatigue. I did like the coloring and a good portion of the art better in that part of the story, tho. I thought the mood they set was really cool and a little scary.

My high points were all (unsurprisingly) character based:

I loved the way Tim saving Dick from his own shit here

Kinda paralleled this scene in NW 96

But more mature. Watching them go from Dick mentoring Tim to them having a much more balanced relationship where Tim can fully have Dick's back has always been super satisfying and seeing it making a come back after their little fallout was cool

I also like the attention paid to the differences in Bruce and Dick's philosophy (specifically here:

) and the difficulty that Batman presents Dick because of it. Part of the appeal of Dick being Batman is the reluctance and the chunk of flesh it takes out of him and I think this story really got the tone of that right. He's making mistakes that he wouldn't normally, he's not sleeping; you can really tell that everything is getting to him. He feels like the walls are closing in on him with no way out (sometimes literally) and it makes the whole story kind of..weary? It's as much man vs man as it is man vs self. Love that many of the action sequences in the book happen in enclosed places that have an unstoppable deadly force converging on him with no way out and how that emphasizes the theme

OH and my absolute favorite analogy for the mindset that dick operates w/ is in this book

And how that works with his parents rules for survival

There's like... a debate on whether Dick plans or if he acts on instinct and I like the way that this breaks it down to: yes, he's planning from the start and if it seems like he isn't it's because that's what he wants you to think- but he understands that leaving space to bob and weave is a part of that process. Ultimate planner that is liable to start behaving erratically as fuck at any moment is such a fun look

Favorite fight was probably the horror forward snap at the auction, with honorarable mentions going to Dick v.s the compactor, Dick v.s. the orca, and of course Dick v.s. The bends

Worst was by far this one:

There is no way he should've been able to waltz into Babs' hideout without her knowing I'm so sorry it's just not realistic, like, that's Barbara Gordon???

[but-the-library-of-alexandria]

This might be controversial but I'm saying it anyway: we need to stop blaming healthcare staff for poor care even when it seems like it's genuinely their fault, because despite what it seems, 90% of the time when doctors dismiss you, nurses are rude to you, and professionals 'don't know enough' about your conditions - these things are caused by systemic issues and not personal failures. They do care, they've just been broken by the system and unfortunately - despite their best effort and then some - they don't have endless patience and smiles left in them.

Let's use an analogy more people will relate to: say you work in a restaurant. Your manager has, for some reason, booked the restaurant out at double capacity. There are people who booked weeks in advance queuing for their tables, and there are walk-ins, too; not just people looking for a nice time, but road-tripping families with hungry kids who can't find anywhere to eat, people who have been sent here because the place they booked at unexpectedly had to close. They're hungry and many are in a bad mood.

If you're good at you job, I'm sure you could manage - despite the stress and vitriol - to handle things in a friendly and apologetic way. I'm sure you'd be able to politely turn people away with recommendations on alternative places to go, apologise when you were late with meals, and still do your best to refill cups and take payments with a smile.

Imagine your manager starting booking at double-capacity every single day.

Imagine watching this become standard practice throughout the city, then the region, then the country. Nobody has anywhere else to go. Let's pretend most of these people have no kitchens and can't cook at home; you are the only source of food for these people, and they need to eat. Every day you spend 10 hours dealing with hundreds of people sobbing, fainting, wasting away in front of you, but you still only have 30 tables and 4 line cooks. Every day you go home knowing you managed to get some people fed, but others are still waiting. You had to go home knowing they might be dead by tomorrow, but if you didn't leave, you might be.

How long do you think you could stay kind? Keep smiling? Keep empathising? All of these people, you know, have every right to eat. They need it. They come here because it's where people come for food. It's your job to feed them. But how long do you think it would take for you to start feeling like people are entitled, when they raise a hand and ask for more water? They're thirsty, and they've waiting a long time. They deserve that water. But do you not think that in your head you'd be screaming, you're thirsty? I haven't had a drink in 8 hours! there's a line out the door of people collapsing from dehyrdration! You're lucky to even have a seat! Do you not think that when someone came to you and said, please, do you have a seat, I haven't eaten all day and my stomach hurts, that you would think about the chaos inside - the chaos they can't see, the starving masses they can't see, the dying and dead they can't see - and tell them to go home and deal with it? How much sympathy could you have, knowing you had barely enough food today to keep everyone in the building alive, and people are complaining that it isn't enough? You know it isn't, but all you have.

Can you image going home, opening up your phone, and seeing an internet full of people talking about how mean you are, talking about their bad experience, saying if they hate serving me so much, why do the job? Would you think of quitting? Would you think of quitting, knowing they wouldn't replace you, and then think of all the people who would be getting one less drink, one less seat at the table, think of the colleagues who'd get one less break, ten more tables to wait?

The point is, you have a right to good healthcare, and the staff trying to give it to you are just as upset that they can't. Try to have some empathy. Your health issue is probably the only one you've dealt with today; the doctor that's telling you it's probably not a big deal has probably just seen ten people with a worse problems, and that doesn't make yours matter less, but she's been given 8 hours to help 100 people and you can't blame her for lacking patience when she knows her next ten minutes could save or doom a life. The nurse that rolled his eyes when you said you were in pain has seen so much pain today. He's jaded, broken, traumatised, a shadow of the genuinely good and caring person his is at his heart. Do you think you would be kind, patient, taking your time, empathising with everyone, if you'd been through the kind of abuse and trauma they have? No offence but some of y'all can't even be kind to people talking about their problems online without telling them to stfu until palestine is free

Please can we stop blaming each other. I know how easy it is to blame the person in front of you, especially when they're rude or dismissive and when you're suffering. I'm not saying it's okay or that you should be okay with it, and I'm not claiming that there are no genuine bad eggs in medicine, but let's not have patients blaming staff and staff blaming patients. Give people grace. Let's support each other in our shared suffering instead of lashing out. The healthcare system is abusing all of us. Stand together. Support the strikes. Empathise.

(note: I am England-based, this is about the NHS but could apply to many healthcare providers. I am also not a healthcare worker, but have friends who are, so that's the peek I've had behind the curtain)

[baeddel]

is boymoding crossdressing? many such questions

it's interesting right? because in one respect i want to say, as a woman, when i wear female clothes, it is obviously not crossdressing. however, if you insist on this most of the uses of the term 'crossdressing' that have ever been said become impossible to understand. these are perhaps no more than two observations of the same phenomenon: the shallow, abstract, somewhat fictional system of gender which we learn and the deeply acquired sense of gender which often disagrees with how things should be. since i'm thinking about language all the time recently i want to make an analogy on that basis, perhaps between grammar and acquired language—after all most native speakers think they speak their own language a bit wrong and will often say, 'i say x, but you're supposed to say y...' we are capable of accomodating multiple points of view in this way.

and trans-, as in transgender, means exactly the same thing as cross-, as in crossdressing, anyway.

however isn't there something about 'going back', backpassing, using your deadname, and so forth, which feels very like a kind of crossdressing? once i settled on calling myself a trans woman i stopped doing a lot of things i used to do—wearing a lot of makeup and jewellery for example—even when i was not hiding who i was for safety reasons, because they no longer had any satisfaction for me. because i had to recloset in real life i stopped wearing my female clothes, and i had male clothes that i wore unhappily. but i then acquired a special, third set of clothes, which i would wear only in situations which were (to use what is i suppose now medical terminology) gender-affirming, such as calls with my trans friends, which were also menswear, for the reason that i was trying to do more of a masc or butch presentation. now i don't really do that, but it's something that i feel became quite common throughout the 2010s up to now, and i wonder if or how it existed previously, at least it seems common online, which is that transfems, when around other transfems, want to appear more boyish or masculine, and passing is not interesting and might even be a bit shameful. especially among girls who are my age and have been in the scene for a while. and which you might interpret as a kind of specifically in-group form of crossdressing proper to a situation where camabs wearing women's clothing is expected rather than surprising. i have known some trans men who look and behave femininely for similar reasons but i don't know enough to say it's the same phenomena. anyway it reminds me of something that Jackson Crawford, an Old Norse youtuber guy, talked about, which is that where he lives in the South in the US when he was younger you would have to take off your stetson hat when you went in a diner because that was the decorum, and if you were sitting in a diner with your hat on it was seen as extremely rude. but today if you go in a diner guys like that are all wearing their stetson hats, and he says it's because there's a change in the signficiance of the hat, and what became most important was signalling your group affiliation to the out-group rather than the in-group signalling of your knowledge of proper decorum. well maybe there is something like that, we have developed at least in some contexts a situation where in-group signalling is more important, because when you were younger the kind of expectations you were chafing against were enforced by mom and dad, while today they are enforced by WPATH.

[blortch]

UGH! Once again, Mike "Both sides" Stoklasa not recognizing that there isn't an equivalency to right-wing conservatives who do not want representation, and progressives who do. He is either a secret conservative who doesn't want to piss off progressives, or really that stupid that he really thinks there is a equivalent both sides argument. The internet right wing conservative trolls far out weigh any troll like behavior on the left. The left mainly just say they want more diversity, and the right does not want that. There is no middle ground in discrimination. I applaud Rich for mainly keeping out of it, and/or leaning more to the left on the issue.

When I first was watching the video, I thought Mike's stance would be what he said in a previous star wars video about andor, where he listed off the different star wars shows on disney+, and he basically said there is so much star wars out there now, that each show has its own audience. His example was that there is a star wars show for babies, another for adults, like 'Andor'. I really thought he'd say something like "this show 'the acolyte' is a show for the left... who cares about the internet outrage... [and that the people complaining about diversity on the show should] just get over it and watch one of the other million star wars shows." Not give this mealy mouthed, both sidesism bullshit where by not denouncing it you're giving it oxygen.

More and more Mike shows his true colors. Like how he kept editing Rich. He literally cut off Rich's very valid, very coherent point about Ghostbusters and Robocop, I surmise because he did not want Rich to seem smarter. And idk, just the way he kept editing Rich seemed more vindictive than normal. Like yes he's done that alot, but Idk, it felt way more personal, maybe because Rich was not completely backing his both sidesism crap.

Sorry. Rant over. I had to complain to someone. Would love your always reasoned take on it.

I apologize for at first thinking this was a copypasta jaksjdfkj I haven't gotten a long ask in a good while. anyway. I feel like I Have to watch the video now even tho I wasn't intending to do so. We shall see. So for now bear in mind that I'm going off of your ask alone for my reply.

I think your assumption in how they would handle the Acolyte was a completely fair assumption to make so I'm surprised as you are from hearing Mike handle it differently this time.

You've touched upon something pretty interesting which is the editing perspective of them and I personally haven't noticed much of a discernible pattern in editing except for the occasional mike-making-fun-of-jay-in-editing or making fun of himself, so what you say of Mike editing anyone but himself kinda poorly is something I've heard claimed before that he does to Jay too. If this is true the fact that we, from our perspective, very rarely see Jay disagree as well as for Rich kinda takes an interesting turn doesn't it ? My point has often been, "well they work alongside him for a reason, they must agree with Mike on quite a lot" but this hints towards that maybe they aren't quite as uniform in perspective as one might assume from what we've seen and that it's a manufactured truth that we've been shown - but this is safe to assume either way by the sheer fact that the video has been edited and Jay and Mike themselves have said numerous times about how powerful editing is in terms of making things go numerous ways.

Pattern-wise in editing, in the past few years Jay has long been in charge of editing HITB and the Re:Views that have him in it + somebody that isn't Mike. Mike takes over "special episodes", to bring a recent example: the Death of Movie theaters video, or movies he deems important/decisive for their channel and analogous to Jay, his "own" Re:Views, while they alternate with editing BOTW more or less (cough whenever a BOTW is said to come out soon and Mike's editing cough you can count on it taking longer cough). Though as I've mentioned before, they supposedly check the other's edit before letting it air, I imagine this in videos where they both appear.

Now. This doesn't quite support the theory that Mike's this over-controlling maniac that pushes his own agenda more than Jay's or Rich's views through videos, though to perceive such a sentiment whenever he takes charge of editing could possibly imply that he, in other ways, does not allow opposing views from them. Admittedly, I can't quite paint this sinisterly because he Will take charge as the sole owner of the company (somehow for years I used to believe Jay co-owns RLM but wherever you look, Mike is listed as the ONLY owner) and of course he'd want his videos to reflect what he thinks and I mean, I can't think of many people off the top of my head that would cede on their views on important matters or would allow opposition without rebuttal, so to expect this from Mike wouldn't be fair. Though to us, who don't share his views and the topic of the Acolyte seems quite trivial compared to other matters, it seems like an overbearing, uninformed asshole move haha. I imagine in his eyes he justifies it as him being the director and him enforcing his vision.

As for the Acolyte to call it leftist media is hmmmm it feels a bit dirty and slimy to say that about a Disney product lols. I heard Andor brought up some super interesting points to analyze from that lens, which I find super baffling, that "pandering to the leftists" has become a Thing at all. When I read that the controversy was from casting Abigail Thorne (among other stuff) I realized how overt the Move was to do this. I guess with somewhat of a tendency to virtue signal through fandom nowadays it became profitable by accident? I wonder how long it shall last if so. But maybe that's putting on my cynical thinking cap too much instead of surmising as you said, leftists or people branded anti-right-wing/conservative for existing simply want media that shares their views or represents them to discuss and have fun with.

And finally. Super flattered that you'd think of my takes as "always reasoned", I try to take my time and think about what I'm putting out there so to see my efforts being acknowledged warms my heart.

[joannerowling]

On the issue with James, I do think this is one area where the books aren’t ageless and have to be read in the context of an English school in the 70s written by an author in the 90s. Because by today’s standards, James is less of your garden variety ‘boys will be boys’ type bully and more of an actual sociopath well past the age of criminal responsibility who by 16 had committed one public sexual assault and was an accessory to attempted murder who backed out last second. But I don’t think that’s at all what Jo meant to convey.

Let me guess. Snape fan? :P

Look, my issue with this discourse has always been that only James seems to get so much flack for his most morally ambiguous actions. I mean, Hermione disfigured a girl her age with zits spelling "sneak" because she'd given the DA members out to Umbridge. Harry nearly gored Malfoy to death by using an unknown spell he knew was meant "for enemies". Yet, i've never seen anyone hating on James that would go as hard against these other characters.

On your first point: James wasn't an accessory to attempted murder who backed out last second. Sirius was the one who tricked Snape and nearly got him killed (which would have made Lupin an accessory to murder). James acted to stop it as soon as he realised what Sirius had done. His reasons for doing so remain obscure - Snape thinks he wanted to save his own skin because he would have been blamed alongside Sirius, but that's Snape's interpretation, not exactly the most unbiased source.

Next: i ressent people misusing the term "sexual assault" to describe what James does in Snape's worst memory (a take that, btw, i've only seen upheld as if it were common knowledge by Americans, or very "Americanised" fans). The definition of sexual assault is "unwanted sexual contact", and in the UK especially it pretty much means "rape without penetration". I do think Jo meant for it to be taken seriously (its parallel with the Muggles's treatment by Death Eaters in GoF is clear), only people didn't really at the time. Still. James humiliated Snape, i'd say what he did qualifies as sexual harrassment, and he's rightfully painted as the bad guy in that episode, but he didn't sexually assault Snape.

Also, because we only have that one scene to work with, everyone seems to forget the larger context, namely: Snape created that spell. Judging by the way Death Eaters were still using it 15+ years later, i imagine James wasn't the first nor the last in his generation to use it against another student. I always saw it as a bit analogous to those dangerous/humiliating games that suddenly become trendy with high schoolers until someone gets hurt enough for adults to intervene. I'm comforted in that interpretation by the fact that Snape implies James didn't even know HE was the one to invent the spell, suggesting it started as a thing Snape showed to other Slytherins to gain some social cred, which then spread to the whole school.

Anyways, if that makes James a sociopath, then Hogwarts must have been chock-full of them in the 70s, starting with Snape himself. Maybe the point isn't that Snape or James (or Sirius) are sociopaths, but that imminent war tends to turn people more prone to violence and less likely to abide by moral principles, or consider their designated enemies's humanity. I have no doubt that James morally justified himself and his actions by the fact that Snape belonged to the "bad crowd" of Voldemort's future recruits. Even though we readers know enough about Snape to be able to tell that he was never seriously convinced by Pure Blood superiority.

[therealvinelle]

I think the cullens are all older than computers, so... who is actually good at them and who uses computers like a grandpa?

Well, the thing is being bad at computers isn't really about age. I'll try to tdlr, but my five cents on why computers are so difficult to some people and particularly those of older generations are that it's mainly due to two factors:

The inmates are running the asylum, or: computers aren't actually that intuitive

An issue I often see when I see someone fail to properly interact with a computer is that what they think should happen isn't what happens, or that what they want to do next isn't what the system allows them to do next. This isn't necessarily their failing, their logic can be flawless, it's just that the computer doesn't work like that. Now the user is unable to accomplish their task, they feel they've failed, and from there you get frustration and a sense of difficulty. If this happens often enough, which if often will if the person never learns computer logic (for lack of a better term), the person ends up throwing their hands in the air and concluding they're bad at computers.

(An example of what I mean by computer logic: different browsers, devices, and accounts works tend to confuse people. "I'm logged into my mail, why is it making me log in again?" - person who was logged in on Safari but tried to access their mail through Chrome. It's the same computer, and what's a browser? Add the fact they're logged into their mail on phone and that works just fine for extra confusion points.)

Considering how the purpose of computers is to make our lives simpler I consider this a failing on the computer's end, not the humans. Is it a problem they can necessarily help, no, but part of the problem is that the people designing and implementing computer systems are people who, for lack of a better term, think computer logic is perfectly reasonable (hence "the inmates are running the asylum" (reading material)). That, and figuring out how to make X thing user friendly (and something users actually want to use) is... so hard, you've no idea how hard it can be.

Obviously this is issue is a complicated one and computers being what they are you're never going to be able to make them work the way humans wish they would (it would be nice if your computer intuitively knew it was you and there was no such thing as accounts, good luck implementing that), my point isn't really why computers are the way they are. It's that humans think a certain way, computers another, and for some people it's going to be very difficult to come around to understanding the computer's way of doing things. They'll memorise the steps required to accomplish a given task, or master specific systems because they're familiar. Introduce an update where suddenly everything's changed, however, or have them run into a problem when accomplishing a familiar task, and they struggle.

Defeatism and failure to diagnose the problem

I'll be much briefer here than above and I did touch on it already, but in essence: so many of the people I know who struggle with computers have A: decided that computers are difficult and they're not going to get it right anyway so why try, and/or B: internalised the memorise-the-steps method to the point where that's how they interact with computers, always. Time to learn how to check your new email, aight, guess I'll out which buttons to click.

After all, computers are such strange beasts that in order to get anything right you need to memorise exactly what you need to do, or it'll never work and you'll be stuck at some login page forever.

That, and some people seem to straight up find computers intimidating, "I'll stick to analog." Oh, and let's not forget the "I know how to accomplish the tasks I need to so I'm alright.", an approach that's all well and good until you encounter a problem you have no idea how to go about solving.

(I'll admit I'm basing this point entirely on computer illiterate family members and armchair thinky thoughts.)

Conclusion

It's my understanding that older generations struggle more obviously (word choice here: it tends to be more obvious with older people, younger people do not automatically understand what they’re doing) with computers not because they're being stupid, but because of their logical approach. They never really get the gist of how to interact with computers and get stuck in these weird vicious loops, "I'm not going to learn anything/I know what I need so why try for more". Why it’s so much harder for older generations, I don’t have a good or succinct answer but the two things I’ve listed seem to me to be the main obstacles they contend with.

With that in mind, onto your actual question.

Would the Cullens be able to learn computers, or: who is able to adapt and avoid getting stuck in vicious cycles:

Alice adapts fairly well, since she can see ahead of time which button to click. Because of this she never actually has to learn why things work the way they do, but everyone thinks she's a computer whiz all the same.

Bella gets a new computer now that she's a Cullen. It's really fast and there's no longer half a million pop ups when she uses the internet, Bella concludes becoming a vampire even made her better at computers.

Carlisle is forced to use computers from the 80's onwards as they enter American workplaces. He has had to learn how to use more unspeakably horrid workplace systems than he cares to remember, it's all a blur. He's not going to be glued to the home computer either, it's... nice, and he probably should learn how to navigate the internet better, but he knows how to find the things he's interested in and is happy with that.

Edward would have to learn computers as a matter of pride once they became ubiquitous in households. I can see him taking a programming class just so he can flaunt sexy words like "terminal" and "homebrew" to his very impressed family.

Emmett I think would make a few cursory attempts to navigate computers when they became accessible to normal households, only to find them pretty lame. He'll be outside if the nerds need him.

Esme gets stupidly good at software for architects and interior designers, and can navigate the web to find and share various recipes and household tips with perfect ease. She keeps this to herself because ordering things online for her while she claps in amazement makes Edward so proud of himself.

Jasper I think would be of the same opinion as Carlisle, computers are nice and he knows how to get what he wants, no real interest beyond that. At least, no immediate "wow, computers!! I'm gonna spend so many hours on the internet!!" enthusiasm coming from that direction.

Renesmee has no idea how computers work, zero. However, she's young so everyone including Bella assume she must be a whiz. Renesmee is not a whiz.

Rosalie has studied far too much STEM to be able to escape programming. If anybody in the Cullen family can actually code it's going to be her, though Alice thinks she's useless because jeeze Rose, you can create graphs of balls falling from various heights but not a single pretty website, while Edward hurries to throw in that he knows programming too, you know. Check out this class.

[worldwright]

some thoughts about. well. started with "all vampires are gay" (funny joke) but then I thought about my recent re:Dracula binge and. like maybe actually??? Like there's an argument that vampires, from the start, incorporated homosexuality (as an added layer of "evil" from Bram Stoker).

I've seen some posts about how Jonathan plays out a lot of traditionally feminine gothic horror roles during his imprisonment by Dracula, and smarter people than me have dissected how vampirism -- and Dracula specifically -- powerfully analogize a controlling, abusive relationship. (i.e., Dracula cutting Jonathan off from his loved ones, controlling where he can go, pretending that he's free to go but "the world outside is so much more dangerous, won't you stay a bit longer", etc).

This analogy would stand up just fine if Jonathan were a woman, and maybe even have been stronger considering Stoker's obvious attitudes towards the "purity" of women. Putting aside the plot difficulties of getting a ~delicate white woman~ far enough into the world to end up at Castle Dracula, of course.

yes of course it has to be a white woman we're going whole hog on the -isms here

The choice to make the victim be a man puts a whole new twist on the analogy. I suppose part of it could be that Stoker assumed most of his readers would be men, and wanted to make sure there was more of a connection there. Another reason could be that, with men having more power and freedom than women in the society he was writing from, it just makes Dracula look even more cunning and powerful.

However, from a third perspective, it could be another layer of "heresy" or "transgression" that Dracula was filling the traditionally feminine role of trapped victim with a man. The historical homophobic belief that gay men would tempt or trap others into their sexuality may have been another application of the metaphor Stoker was creating.

Anyway, I don't know enough about Edwardian attitudes towards gay people to draw any solid parallels. It just seems that all of us on the modern front can see pretty clearly that Dracula wants Jonathan in the type of intimate relationship where he can most easily abuse him, and we can see that a lot of those overtures are, as the kids say, gay af.

All this isn't to say that ALL vampires in all vampire media emulate 1800s English homophobic stereotypes of course. Vampire media has evolved to cover a lot of ground. Just interesting to me that, from the start, vampires were always gay.

[rotationalsymmetry]

Sorry for not offering my reactions in the moment, I got too immersed in the story to want to post about it. Golden enclave spoilers to (almost) end of ch 15.

I am morbidly thrilled that the thing casually mentioned once at the start of A Deadly Education came back around and it turns out that the entire senior class getting wiped out by malificers was either entirely made up or more complicated than that. So evil. Ay.

And that thing where at first we were presented with Orion as shining conventional hero and El as trying hard to not be a conventional villain, as it seems like the entire world expects her to be, and it turns out it's the other way around, Orion was created from unspeakable acts and El was the balance to that.

It's a lot to take in. And it also doesn't change the fact that El's childhood (which she's still in, she's 17, she's presumably turning 18 in December or so) sucked.

And...I wasn't sure how the prophesy thing was going to be handled, but "this is the only way she didn't get you" works as well as anything I guess. It's not even about "you had to suffer so that you didn't die", it's "you had to suffer because otherwise it would have been unspeakably bad for the world." Oof. I mean, it's horrible, but at least it's consistent in tone with the rest of the series. (Also this is one of the points where the book seems strongly in dialog with Harry Potter to me. I do like her mother's love protecting her because her mother lived more than Harry's mother's love protecting him through her death.) (there is a similar..."this sucks for me but it's for the greater good and I wasn't given a choice but also I'm choosing this anyways.) (side note, JKR very much did not invent the concept of the magical school, there other magical schools in fiction before that including a wizard school in a wizard of earthsea. The idea that wizards have to study to become wizards is kind of baked into the wizard archetype. There's also non-wizard fantasy schools: Talia goes to school in the Arrows of the Queen trilogy, and Song of the Lioness Quartet has some kind of extended training thing iirc. It's not a huge stretch to put a school into fantasy stories aimed at an audience that is going to school. Anyways I think the scholomance is in dialog with Harry Potter but I think it would be a stretch to say it's like, primarily bouncing off of it or anything.) (appropriately, there's no quidditch analog.)

I completely forgot what I was talking about.

Anyways. I probably feel more pleased with myself than I should be that I saw the "destroying a maw-mouth destroys the enclave" thing coming.

I really hope someone is letting El's mum know what's going on, because again, I'm pretty sure El isn't.

And I do enjoy that El went to Maharashtra, she was so sure she'd beaten the prophesy and so ready to rub her great grandmother's face in it. Intense dramatic irony.

[disquiet-dream]

I do think Cairngorm is a very interesting character. I really like them- I just wish Ichikawa was more clear on if the switch was really honest or if they just got manipulated by Aechmea. I always thought it was more of manipulation as I felt like the prince just put on gender roles so that Cairn (or Welegato at this point) would be more like a “wife”.

I think so especially since gems don’t have concept of gender…AT ALL. I don’t think Wele is really trans if it’s not even really a thing in their society and if I remember correctly they still used their old pronouns (I could be wrong tho). I think it’s a weird switch from how the hnk fandom knowing how manipulative Aechmea is doesn’t really question that much if what happened to Welegato was actually controlled by him or something.

But honestly- i really love seeing different takes on this character since I love them a lot- so I’m happy to see anyone talking about them, wether I agree with them or not. You don’t have to answer to this hjshshsj.

Hmm

(Overly long response incoming. I talk too much)

Well, I do think it being ambiguous is the intent, and there definitely is room for Aechmea being manipulative and the gender stuff being part of that

But!

So far in this story I've erred on the side of characters being less sinister than they could be, and tbh I think that's been accurate. Kongou was ultimately as good as he seemed, Aechmea was revealed to basically be a bodhisattva (forgoing his own chance at eternal rest to spend thousands of years trying to help those who would be left behind), etc.

It's like... It feels like there's a consistent theme of people hurting others not out of malice or even necessarily selfishness, but out of a want to do something good. Kongou wanted to build a paradise for the gems, Aechmea wanted all the damned souls to get rest, Phos wanted... a lot of things, but none of them particularly bad.

And all of them caused so much suffering with those pure wishes

So basically tl;dr it feels more thematically consistent if he was genuinely trying to help, at least to me.

And for the gender stuff like, I think the moon chapters are very aware of the fact that the gems do not have gender, and Werregat (that's what my translation uses at least) being so feminine is very much an outlier.

(there's even the bit around the wedding where what's his face calls Phos a woman and then goes "well, that's not right" and Phos is just kind of confused)

And like, the easy analogy from their situation to a trans person's, the big shifts in presentation, them being the gem who wants to change their body most, them being the one gem that gets a new name, on top of the direct gender stuff

feels like it's supposed to be a kind of transition, or at least choosing to adopt a gender when they previously had none. Which is to say, the gems don't have gender... but the Lunarians do, and on being introduced to the concept Werregat seemingly embraced it.

(and as for pronouns, that's complicated b/c in Japanese you can easily just avoid using gendered pronouns at all, and I assume that the text just continued to do that even after Cairn became Princess and such. so like, less continuing to use whatever pronouns and more continuing to not use them.

with that said like. eh. even if it were originally english, pronouns don't have to change, things are complicated. even when I say Werregat is trans I don't strictly mean they're literally a human trans woman so much as there is Gender going on, and it's feminine when it usually isn't.

also like, the rare occasions the language demands you do use gendered pronouns the gems tend to lean male (like Bort calling Dia "nii-san" and not "nee-san"), and again, it's just hard not to take Werregat being so feminine as a reversal of that.)

anyway, I don't know how much this makes sense but. yeag. 👍