#like these are. bad. cults are not a good thing

[hetrosjistin]

No you know what, I thought I was done, but I'm not.

The problem with this shit is that it misses the point of having shit like the crows in Thedas at all.

You can't sanetize stuff and have it have the same impact, it's not just the hollowness, it literally reduces the conflict to a nothing burger.

You know why Dorian is, perhaps, one of my FAVORITE goddamn characters in the entire DA game series?

BECAUSE HE LITERALLY HAS TO GO THROUGH DEPROGRAMMING HIMSELF OF HIS RACIST SLAVER CULTURE! It's not enough that he wants to oppose the Venatori and all that nonsense. It's not enough that in inquistion, he literally went to the part of the world where he's taught they ENSLAVE people like him and burn out their brains if they're not good little obedient pet mages.

He goes there because it's right and that doesn't make him magically a perfect and good person. He's STILL flawed, he STILL has the baggage of his culture, and ADDRESSING IT is a constant fucking undercurrent of his dialogue and interactions throughout the game. How he is both proud of everything his civilization, the oldest extant civilization in the world, and horrified by the excesses of it's bad actors, and as time goes on his REALIZATION of how horrific each and every element of it is.

Like, when the Venatori take over minrathos. It's depicted as something ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE but frankly? That implies things were pretty okay before that!

What would ahve been SO MUCH MORE INSIDEOUS, would have been to show how LITTLE things had changed. Oh, have the burned out ruin of the hide out, have a few ventatori guards standing here and there, but now show how ABANDONED AND CALLOUS they all are. They don't -need- to set up a fucking police state, Tevinter already HAS IT IN PLACE. You don't NEED fucktons of venatori guards around docktown.

But by doing it the way they did they robbed so much of the substance of Tevinter from the game.

Like I'm actually on board with some of the changes. The Broodmother thing about the darkspawn was handled just about as well as it was ever going to be handled in Origins, so them all but abandoning them from the lore as time went on is a smart move IMO. Making significant changes to the dark spawn with the blight is a big deal, and a smart move.

But the draining of life from all the rest is unpardonable.

Have the Lord of Fortune -not give a shit- about other people's culture. It's pretty, it's bling, if it was so important why wasn't it better guarded? Why was it so stealable? Have that be a FLAW in their goddamn thing as FUCKING PIRATES.

Have the found family elements of the Crows, have them have a whole blood debt and true contract society thing. Have us confront the fact that if someone fails a contract their life is FUCKING FORFEIT. Play up the whole idea that found family can be JUST as toxic. Play up the idea that these orphans and street kids taken in by a fucking -assassin cult- effectively are molded to SERVE the interests of the nation as members of the 'family'.

I was -so- incredibly happy with inquisition where they CONTRASTED Blackwall so hard with the order at large. The Grey Wardens are a -death cult- created to fight the APOCALYPSE through wrote tradition and absolutely seething loyalty to the idea that they are the thin line against the darkness.

Play that up, show how god awful the anderfels are scoured of life by the blight and still infested with dark spawn. GIVE THE FIRST WARDEN A NAME AND WHY THE FUCK IS THIS GUY IN FUCKING MINRATHOS?! Play up the ENTIRE IDEA of what's wrong with them and contrast it with -our- experience of wardens from, basically, wardens who never actually underwent the indoctrination process.

Someone else on this hellsite said that the longer you think on veilgaurd instead of playing it, the worse it gets and goddamn is that the truth.

Problematic fiction is good because it coaches us through stories on how to fucking DEAL with actual bad things.

By sanitizing your fiction you rob it of it's ability to -teach- the audience any lessons beyond 'bad people bad'.

Why Fenris could Never Cameo in Dragon Age: The Veilguard

In the run up to Dragon age: The Veilguard, I was almost certain that Fenris would be our main legacy character from previous games. Not only has he been central in the comics released between DAI and DATV, he is an escaped Tevinter slave who's plot revolved around magisters, magic and the structural prejudices surrounding elves in Thedas. Not only that, but he's canonically in Tevinter killing slavers currently so he's geographically in the right place for us to meet him.

About halfway through the game though, it was clear to me: Fenris could never cameo in The Veilguard. Because he'd break it.

How the Veilguard treats Thedas is...odd to me, to say the least. I will be writing another post about how much I adored the expanded big lore in this game (the titans, ancient elves were spirits, where the blight came from etc.) and yet while these large lore expansions worked for me, the actual culture of modern Thedas is entirely softened, its sharp edges filed down until it's a sanitised fantasy world devoid of what made the franchise so vibrant and compelling in the first place.

So let's start with Fenris and slavery. In all three games, the reality of slavery is pushing at the corners of the world. In DAO Loghain allows Tevinter Magisters to enslave elves in order to raise money for his war effort. In DA2 Fenris is fighting to be free from slavers who will not leave him be, let alone the reminders that the city was built by slaves which are everywhere. In DAI one of the two possible mini-bosses is Calpurnia who was a slave, and characters such as Gatt and Dorian both show us how much slavery is tied into Tevinters culture and success.

But DATV the first game actually set in Tevinter where we get to see the famed Minrathous...it's like the game purposefully wants to avoid the issue. I can feel it tilting the camera away to not allow me to see. Slavery is mentioned, but never talked about in depth or as a specifically ELVEN problem in Tevinter. This might have been done to be less problematic, it feels ignored.

We are in DOCK TOWN. We are at the DOCKS. You would think that slaves from all over Thedas who are being smuggled and bought by various groups would be everywhere. You would think that the injustice in dock town would be partly built on the back of ships we've seen in the comics crammed with elves in chains. This is the world Dragon age set up for us. And yet...nothing. zilch. A tiny easily skippable side quest where we free a couple of venatori slaves, but only one of whom is an elf.

None of our Tevinter characters seem to have been influenced by their culture even a little bit when it comes to how they view elves; there is no moment when Neve fucks up and says something prejudiced, no moment when Bellara or Davrin are distrustful of her for being a Tevinter mage.

The same goes for Zevran; a character who epitomised the issues with the crows. The crows have consistently been characterised as very morally dubious assassins who kill for the highest bidder and who buy children on the slave market and torture them as they grow in order to assure that they reach maturity able to withstand torture without giving away a client's name. Zevran is very explicit about the fact that if you fail a contract your life is forefit.

Nobody responds particularly to you if you're an elf. Nobody trusts rook less for it in Tevinter. Nobody treats Rook any differently. Even DAI had better mechanics for this; with nobles in Orlais less likely to trust you as an elf.

Considering one of the main plot points of this game and what makes Solas sympathetic is the fact that he was fighting against the slavery of ancient elves...you'd think the game might want to mirror that in modern Thedas. It might want to show us how characters fighting to end slavery in Tevinter are similar to Solas and how the society Solas fought against was similar to the one that characters we love such as Fenris have fought against in modern Thedas. Maybe we'd want to explore how in a world of slavery like this, how could the answer NOT be to tear it all down? Maybe we should have that option at the end of the game so it really can chose whether we agree with Solas and his plans or not.

Adding Fenris to this game would entirely break the game because Fenris refuses to allow you to look away from this horror. He is a sympathetic character who had to learn to trust mages again because of course he didn't trust them. Of course he didn't. Fenris wouldn't allow the camera to shift focus because he's literally covered in the lyrium scars that show how slaves are used as experiments in Tevinter. Fenris WOULD question Neve on how she feels about elves and slaves. Fenris WOULD have things to say about Lucanis and the crows (let alone the fact Lucanis is an abomonation). So he could never be in this game; he'd drop a bomb on it's carefully constructed blinders to the very society its supposed to be set in.

And yet, in DATV, the crows are presented as...a found family of misfits and orphans? The politician who opposes the crows having absolute power in Antiva is framed as a comically evil idiot who doesn't understand that the crows are ontologically good. Yet...they're NOT. Crows in this game act more like a secret rebel group than an assassin organisation. We see no crow taking contracts with the VERY RICH venatori magisters despite being hired killers. We see crows just refuse to kill people despite having a contract because 'its crueler to leave them alive'. The crows don't feel like the crows here, they feel like a softened version of a cool assassin group who are cool because they wear black and purple.

Our pirate group are also sanitised; the Lords of Fortune are good pirates who only steal treasure that's not culturally significant. Theyve clearly read the modern critiques of the British Museum and have decided to explicitly stop anyone levelling similar critiques at them. There is no faction of the Lords of Fortune who aren't like this, no internal arguments about it. Everyone just. Agrees. And is able to accurately tell what a cultural artifact is vs. what treasure that you can have yourself is. Rather than showing us why a pirate stealing cultural artifacts might be bad (like in da2 where such a situation literally causes a coup and a war) it just tells us it's bad. But also pirates are cool so we still want them in our world.

This issue seaps into Thedas and drains it of any of the interesting complexity and ability to SAY anything that this franchise had before this game. It becomes a game about telling and not showing rather than the other way around. The games have ALWAYS asked questions about oppressive structural systems and their interplay with society, religion and culture and how these things can affect even the most well meaning character. Dragon age at its best IS a game about society and how society functions both for and against it's characters and what happens to societies built on cruelty and indifference. The best bad guys dragon age has given us are those who are bad because they embody these systems or have been shaped by them. Our main characters have had to wrestle with questions surrounding how to exist in these systems, fight against them, learn and grow.

Yet every group you come across in DATV is sanitised and cleaned up to the point of being as non problematic as humanly possible. None of our cast of characters have to wrestle with where they came from or the world that shaped them. None of them have to confront their own biases. They start the game perfectly non-problematic and end it that way too.

And this just...isn't what Dragon Age has been in the past. It isn't why I love the franchise. The whole game just felt, in a way, hollow. And this was a CHOICE and it is why the legacy characters are few and far between. Too many dragon age characters are just too...angry and complex for this game. You can feel them pulling their punches on this one. I have to imagine they did this because they didn't want to be criticised or have too much controversy? But I think it honestly goes far too much in the other direction and just makes it bland.

I can't imagine what I say here will be unique, but it is the basis for a LOT of my other thoughts on this game so I wanted to get it out of the way first. The softened Thedas and characters make this game by far the weakest in the franchise.

[weemietime]

https://www.tumblr.com/weemietime/767670429687152640?source=share

I suppose it was easy for me to fall into the Hamasnik trap due to my habit of black and white thinking, which I wish I could blame on my autism, my ocd, or my horrible mental state, but I’m just incredibly stupid lol. But yeah, I was very much a hamasnik myself.

For some reason my mind refused to accept or recognise the nuance of a history that I wasn't even well versed on in the first place. I also think that the constant reductionism presented to me played a part. There’s a lot of reductionism that goes on within the Hamasnik circles, and it goes hand in hand with anti intellectualism. Statements like “this isn’t complex! How can you see these videos of these Palestinian children (videos that I later found out were actually from Syria, but I couldn’t tell, I just ate it up) and think that Israel/Palestine is complex!”

The whole thing of blocking everyone who has a different opinion or ideology (the ideology in question being Zionism, or at least what hamasniks consider to be Zionism) from you and refusing to follow certain news channels because they’ve shown sympathy for those who have a different ideology from you, refusing to read certain books from authors who have expressed empathy for those same people, all of this together effectively creates an echo chamber of the same opinions and views being regurgitated over and over and over again constantly.

Then sprinkle in constant videos of people dying and blood everywhere, videos that you don’t even know where the people are from, whether they be from Gaza, from Syria, Lebanon, or Yemen, but it doesn’t matter because they speak Arabic so it MUST be about the Gazans specifically according to the Hamasnik group you’re apart of, all of these videos you’re being told to constantly watch over and over again because according to the Hamasnik cult you’re in, “if you look away from the violence even ONCE, you’re complicit in genocide! You’re personally responsible for genocide if you look away! The people in Gaza never get a mental health break or comfort so why should you?”

That very same rhetoric is the reason why a lot of you Jewish people can’t find yourself able to escape on fandom spaces and shit like that, the antisemitism you encounter in spaces you thought you were safe in? Yeah it’s because these people are being told that they have to constantly talk about what’s going on in every single space they’re in and that they can’t look away because if they do, they’re considered complicit in the killing of Gazans so they have to let everyone else know the same.

There are a lot of people who are purposefully antisemitic, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t me excusing anyone. I’m just saying that a number of these people genuinely believe that they’re doing something for the greater good by constantly being antisemitic. They don’t consider themselves antisemitic because the echo chamber they’re in has convinced them that Jewish people aren’t experiencing anything, that Jewish people are fine. That it’s the “big bad” that they’re hurting, not the Jews. It’s the “big and scary Zionists!” At least that’s what happened in my case. Constantly told that if I took a break even once, the blood of the Gazans, the blood of every. single. person in Gaza, would be on my own two hands.

You might not believe me, but when you’ve trapped a person in an echo chamber like that, it’s very easy to convince them that an entire country is evil, that every single Israeli is wicked and corrupt and should die and that anyone who expresses an ounce of empathy for them is a “Zionist” and should die as well.

You could’ve told me anything a few months ago. Absolutely anything bad about Israelis and I would’ve believed you. Because I’d scroll social media and see videos of children dying, people being beaten, buildings being destroyed, everything. Then I’d scroll some more and see videos of Israelis doing everyday things, videos of people having fun, videos of people eating, etc, and I found it so unfair that they (according to hamasnik rhetoric) were living in absolute peace while Palestinians are dying right next to them. Then I’d scroll some more and see videos of the IDF (I actually don’t even know if the videos were even of the IDF or not, but as I said, you could’ve told me anything and I’d have believed you. I genuinely believed that it was the IDF) shooting people, beating people, etc. And I was told to look at these videos everyday, every hour, every minute, every second. A lot of the Hamasnik mouthpieces take advantage of the average westerner’s inability to understand Arabic or Hebrew, so there’s a lot of mistranslated videos of Israelis saying they want every Arab dead, a lot of mistranslated Al Jazeera videos of people in Amsterdam for example, saying “يهودي قذر" (dirty Jew) with the wrong captions on and then us non Arabic speaking cult trapped people are none the wiser to what that means because we refuse to engage with any sources that won’t fit our narrative, because we’re complicit in death if we step outside the narrative.

I don’t believe that Zionists should die, but I did. I don’t believe that the hostages should suffer, but I did. I truly believed the worst of things, and perpetuated horrible antisemitism, because I genuinely believed that I was doing good. I found myself justifying unspeakable acts, and saying unspeakable things, things that I would have whole heartedly condemned prior, because I genuinely thought I was doing something right. For example, prior to me falling into that cultish trap, I would’ve wholeheartedly condemned saying a slur coined by David fucking Duke. But after? As I said, I was doing and saying unspeakable things.

I would watch videos from Hamasniks everyday, perpetuate antisemitism everyday, go to sleep and dream about that stuff, and wake up and do it all again, first thing in the morning. A vicious cycle.

And unknowingly somewhere else around the world, some Jewish or Israeli person would wake up, witness antisemitism everyday, witness people wishing the worst upon the hostages, the Jews, the Israelis, the Zionists, everyday, go to sleep terrified for what’s happening to their people, and wake up and see it all again first thing in the morning. Another vicious cycle.

I wish I had a better answer for you, I do. An answer that’s more digestible and less disturbing. I wish I could undo everything that I’ve said and done to the people I’ve hurt whether that be in real life or online. I truly am sorry, and I wish that an apology would fix everything, but it won’t. I wish that all the pain I inflicted on all the Jewish people and Israeli people could be taken away and that I would feel that pain tenfold.

If it’s any consolation or solace, I hate myself more than any of you combined. There is nobody who hates me more than me at this current moment in time and I absolutely do deserve every ounce of pain inflicted upon me, whether it be mental or physical. If you wish death upon me, just know that I do agree with you, but unfortunately previous attempts have failed.

I deleted all of my old posts from that period of time to avoid people getting hurt by them anymore, but I think I’ve done too much damage for me to be a good ally, so I just say nothing now, but I truly do wish the best for all of you and I wish that all of this would stop and that the hostages will be found, hopefully alive.

My apologies for writing a whole Bible in your asks, I truly didn’t mean to.

TLDR - reductionism and anti-intellectualism combined with trapping yourself in an echo chamber of regurgitated rhetoric and constantly regurgitating said rhetoric is a quick way to find yourself dabbling in extremism.

To avoid falling into a trap such as this, avoid generalisations of races, ethnic groups, and the like, look for nuance, try hear people out even when you don’t understand them, instead of blocking them (this is in reference to me blocking every single person who opposed my hamasnik ideology at the time. You should probably block hamasniks, they tend to harass Jewish people a lot), and remember that if someone tells you that a whole war isn’t complex, they’re lying. It absolutely is.

I hope you've been able to see the other responses your other ask has gotten as well! Truly, you aren't someone who I hate. Personally, I do forgive you. Other people may not, and that's their right. But I know first-hand what it's like to be radicalized and to not only commit to extreme rhetoric but also extreme actions. I've learned to have compassion for myself, and I hope that with time you will undergo a similar process.

Someone else said it, "you can't hate yourself into being a better person." All of us, as beings, grow with love and kindness. War is hard it's horrific, and hellish. You're constantly exposed to this violent imagery, this extreme rhetoric, and your whole friend groups are getting in on it. I understand exactly how it happens, and I do have sympathy for it.

To me, the most important part of your story isn't the worst shit you've ever done. It's this part. The part where you learn how to be better, and so you do better, and reach out across the divides and bridge those gaps that have formed. That is a very human story.

[magpie-come-east]

1 + 16 + 17 for the ask game!

16) You can't understand why everyone likes this thing...

IF MESSMER HAS 0 HATERS THEN THAT MEANS I'M DEAD!!!!

Jk (kinda). I do genuinely like his character's place in the Shadow Lands canon. But I don't really understand his explosive popularity. Like Tarnished/Messmer is going to overtake the top ship on AO3 (Tarnished/Morgott my beloved) any day now. He wins just about every Demigod based poll I've seen of late. I'm genuinely not being edgy or contrary here, but I don't see it.

The fandom is very based and sexy for drawing this hideous man weepily draped on beautiful women's laps as if he were a woman beholding Christ in a Renaissance painting. Meanwhile I feel like the only one that can see all the grannies and babies and sisters and husbands skewered through their assholes and set on fire every 10 feet by the world's most racist shrike.

Maybe I'm just bitter because the love Messmer gets comes at the expense of the hornsent. I'm so attached to them and their conflict and their culture. Their lore is some of the coolest in the game and the fandom has just swept it entirely aside because heaven forbid the genocide Messmer helmed gets addressed at any point while he gets fixed/saved/healed/pegged.

1) The Character Everyone Gets Wrong

Mohg and Miquella are holding hands.

I dunno man. The asinine Mohg and Miquella drama has made me pull away from this fandom a lot in the past few months.

Obviously there's a lot of wiggle room in characterizing both of them! A villainous Mohg is canon compatible as is a Mohg that suffered more under Miquella's charm. Miquella can be a naive figure doing his best or a more manipulative power player. There are wide margins here! But not wide enough for this fandom! I'm still so... baffled and bummed out FromSoft handed us Mohg fans a canonical sympathetic angle to his story on a silver platter and so many Mohggers slapped it to the ground in a tantrum because it wasn't good enough. Because I guess Mohg victimizing Miquella was hot and cool but Mohg being victimized in turn is despicable and traumatic? Whatever.

To fandom, Mohg is either a silly, campy, gay uncle goofball drinking bloody marys and getting manicures from Varre or an irredeemable rapist that deserved every bad thing that ever happened to him. Or- third option- he was the secret hero of the Lands Between, as virtuous and honorable as they come before that wretched Miquella ruined his life!

He's the Bad Guy of Elden Ring. He's Miquella's victim that did no wrong. He's the obnoxious comic relief because people don't want to touch on any of his unsavory aspects.

Like fuck me, he's none of these things. He is a powerful, charismatic cult leader with a devastatingly tragic past. He is worthy of sympathy and dignity, but he was also the literal vassal of an Outer God of blood and pain. I wish his character was treated with more depth. I wish his pain was given weight and his rough edges weren't violently sanded away.

Then there's Miquella. Who, fandom has decided, is either a horrible manipulative monster or a literal infant with no agency. It's tragic how illiterate this fandom is regarding Miquella. Claiming everything that doesn't corroborate the Messiah figure they invented in their head is a retcon or bad writing. Claiming that Miquella gave up on Malenia when that is straight up not true at all. Claiming that Miquella trying to lay Godwyn to rest meant he wanted to marry him all along. Claiming that Miquella is literally charming half the cast into doing his bidding just to make him more evil. Claiming Miquella would have been better off as Mohg's hapless victim rather than the richly nuanced and tragic character with his own faults and goals that FromSoft wrote him to be.

The hard pill for ER fandom to swallow is that Mohg and Miquella are just like all the other Demigods: flawed but compelling in their tragedy

[mysticaltora8276]

Yes, the Sith are based on Nazis.

“Freedom“ you mean the freedom to kill anybody who doesn’t conform to what they want? That’s who the Sith are.

“Empowerment.“ I’m sorry since when is basically empowering themselves to the detriment of others OK? That’s not empowerment that’s being selfish. That’s what they are. And they follow the Nazi ideology to a T. Eugenics? Oh yeah, they were on it. Allowing themselves to be swayed by power for the pursuit of power not to help anybody else but for their own personal interests? Oh yeah, that’s them.

And by the way, your earlier session which you erased because it was just dumb. Palpatine is not based off of Donald Trump. Palpatine was based off of Richard Nixon. This is something that anybody who with any sort of knowledge of Star Wars should know. Again, if you’re going to make an assumption, at least do your research instead of Using ignorant comments.

I like the idea of the acolyte because it did show a different point of view, but the thing of it is that you forget the acolyte is not the good guy. You can still have a villain protagonist and that’s OK. But the acolyte Osha is not the good guy. She murdered people. So did her sister. They are not good people, but that’s OK. You can have despicable protagonists there’s nothing wrong with that but they’re not supposed to be in the right. Considering the fact that Osha is going down the path of the dark side. You know the path in which they basically say “screw anybody else that isn’t me.”

Also, the Jedi aren’t real nice in that series. It shows the fault of a few Jedi. Nowhere is the order criticized, except for an ignorant senator who has no clue what he’s talking about. Because I can assure you in the movies they make a clear. “compassion or what I like to call selfless loveis something the Jedi teach. So you might say we are encouraged to love.” That’s a direct quote for the movies. The Jedi are not some sort of hateful cult. Also, I think it’s funny that you’re OK with the Sith who caused genocide after genocide. Have no regrets about it. These aren’t people with a “different point of view.“ These are people diametrically opposed to good. And even the one Sith Lord that they tried to make out as a “good guy“ was more or less an invention told to a pathological liar by a pathological liar.

Again, you can like bad guys and that’s fine. But don’t pretend that their ideology has any merit because again these are the bad guys and we’re not supposed to follow their example. Even the acolyte started to lean towards the fact that maybe just may be following the guy who says that he wants to murder people because that’s his “freedom” isn’t a good guy. And it’s not someone you should be following.

The Sith are Nazis and it's never been subtle

This one ended up being really long. I spliced in some images when I could to break it up easier.

One of the things that causes the most friction in the world is the idea of morality. I know, that's the most water is wet statement ever said but I think people really miss just how much the nuance of morality goes over people's heads. Subjective, objective, relative, from a baseline we understand that there are different types of morality but I don't think people really grasp how much a persons personal morality can be wildly different to any another given person's, especially among people who share spaces like fandoms. Morality is shaped by personal experiences, there are personal experiences that are 99% ubiquitous among humanity like "Pain" that form the basis of everyone's moral compass, then there are the major cultural touchstones that no matter what your morality will be affected by, religion, nation, race, all that what have you. Everyone has an opinion on the Christian Church and that opinion is informed by your morals. People who have been abused by members of a church will have a very different view of the morality of a religion compared to people who have been raised Catholic compared to someone who was raised agnostic compared to someone raised agnostic and is queer compared to someone who has been raised Catholic and is queer compared to someone who has been raised Catholic and is queer and is also rich and so on and so forth you get it.

Morality is not a binary thing, and it's not a nine point grid either D&D, it's more like one of those circle charts that Jojo Stands get ranked on. You know the ones that always seem to show up in anime? I don't know what they're called. Except instead of a circle it's more like a ball, and everyone has this horrible looking 3D balls covered in bumps and spikes and dips and holes.

Why am I opening this ramble with a ramble about morality and religion? Because I'm on tumblr. When I decide I want to ramble about something I read the tags and see what the vibe is, see what people are saying about things. I'm not part of the "Fandom", I don't know the discourses, I see that there's Anti-Jedi and Pro-Jedi and "Stanikins" and all of these different labels and battlelines, and then I read about how people on either side are feeling attacked and harassed by people on other sides. I have no idea how real this is, I have no idea what kind of minefield I'm about to walk into. I'm just rambling about my thoughts and feelings about Star Wars because I like it and I'm a little extra aware that this one is going to ruffle feathers.

Because people are fuckin' worked up about Jedi. There are people who are making it part of their identity that they are anti-Jedi. And it's been happening for years, decades even. Because the experiences and trends of nerd culture has been pushing against systems and religion since I was a baby. Nerds being obnoxious atheists and smugly telling people "God isn't real" was basically the norm when I was a teenager, and before I was born nerds were dealing with being called evil and satanic. Nothing I'm rambling about here is new, in fact using D&D as a touchstone I think the current trend for nerddom's interaction with religion is ambivalence, despite faith and divine power being such an important part of D&D, there's basically zero interaction with divinities in 5e, and when there is it's hostile and has an asterisk against it. I'll do a ramble about this one day too

But the Jedi stuff is interesting to me, because there's a lot of directions people come at for it.

There's people who argue against just Jedi because they're a religion. There's people who argue the Jedi are slavers or kidnap children. People think Jedi are super beings who lord over everyone with their power. People think the Jedi force people to suppress their emotions and personhood. There are people who think Jedi are moral supremacists who silence and kill anyone who thinks about the Force differently from them.

I have some "Pro-Jedi" arguments to make but I'll save them for a different ramble, because this one's supposed to be about another group of people.

The people who think, from their point of view, the Jedi are evil.

The reason I rambled on so much about people being Anti-Jedi is because very often, these people end up being Pro-Sith. It's an obvious leap, if the Jedi are the problem then the people opposed to the Jedi might have the right idea. If your issue with the Jedi is that they disallow "Attachment", then here's the Sith who are all about Attachment. If your issue with the Jedi is that they suppress their emotions then here's the Sith who are always tapping into their emotions. There is an immediate appeal there.

Then there's the Sith Code, let's give it a read.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.

Pretty sweet, Passion is pretty positive, breaking chains and freedom. I can get behind that. The rest of Sith Philosophy is pretty swell too. It's about improvement through conflict. Your struggles make you stronger, makes you better, removes your shackles and lets you be free, but also recognizes that you will have to do whatever it takes to do so. The Jedi seek to wipe out the dark knowledge you attain, so you must sequester yourself and hide when you must hide, and strike when you must strike. It's stance could be summed up as something like... "The sacred mission of a Sith is to preserve the Sith Order's most valuable elements as you raise yourself to a dominant position, and all who do not are chaff."

There are people who are really into this. Like, really, really into this. They talk about how they apply this mentality to their real life. They describe themselves as Sith. There are also people who are only kind of into this, they think about positive Sith characters and make headcanons about the good things Sith do.

I need to stress, for those people, that what I am about to say is not hyperbole. I will provide sources.

The Sith Code and Philosophy is Nazi Propaganda. It is literally lifted from Mein Kampf. That quote I used to sum it up is a paraphrased quote from Britannica.com. That's Hitler.

The Sith Code was invented to be in opposition to the Jedi Code, its purpose is to twist a preexisting code to make you think the alternative isn't so bad and it uses codephrases to do so.

Passion, Strength, Victory, Chains, being Free, these are words that we have presubscribed meanings for, but what do they mean in the Sith Code? What IS Passion? What IS Strength? What IS Victory?

Most people I interact with see Passion as Love, passionate, exciting love, the exact thing the Jedi reject. But that can't be it, where's Palpatine's love? Where's Maul's? Where's Vader's?

Passion is obsession. The kind of obsession that will lead you to burning everything down if you don't get what you want. It's not letting anything stand between you and your goal, even if that thing is your goal itself.

Let's break the code down here.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion. We start with the obvious twist on the Jedi code, an immediate refutation of the Jedi's first line. It stands in opposition.

Through passion, I gain strength. We've already done Passion, it's a nice little dressing up of "Being a raging psycho"

Through strength, I gain power. Strength is often intermingled with power, but it's often spoken of interchangably with being able to set aside morals. The Sith isn't an amoral monster who just killed a bunch of kids, he's just STRONG enough to do what needed to be done

Through power, I gain victory. Power isn't a code word. Power is Power, Power is what it's all about and there's no hiding it. In the Sith way the only thing that matters is that you are powerful enough to kill your rivals and stand on top.

Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me. I think the notions of breaking chains and being Free is the cleverest part of the Sith Code's propaganda kit. It's still seeing use in The Acolyte and it's still convincing people that the Sith are right, even when the guy who's calling for freedom mercs a child then and there.

The Sith are not misunderstood heroes. They're Nazis. They're facist might makes right would be autocrats trying to convince you they're right so you'll validate them and prove them right.

Sith Philosophy is self defeating. Following the Sith Code means you need to define yourself on your conflict, meaning your conflict can never end. For all its claims of being free and breaking chains you can never be free of what drives you or you will lose the strength it gives you. To break your chains you need to hold onto them tight, and you can never let them go.

[h50europe]

BUCK/TOMMY—I thought watching this scene was cringe-worthy—not the acting, but what was said. Reading it feels worse, if this is even possible. Who came up with Buck's text? Imagine someone would write that crap in a fanfic... I mean, who would not run away given such an awful "declaration of love." And Tommy's text does the rest. No, please, no. This is not a conversation two adults in their right mind would have after spending 6 months together almost every day. This is a minion talking to its cult leader. *GAG*

Look, I-I think one of the reasons that I am so comfortable with you is-is 'cause you're so comfortable with you.

I wasn't always that way.

I know, I-I do. And honestly, it... It just makes me admire you more. I want you to move in with me. I want you to move in with me. I-I'm ready to... take the next step, and I'm not saying let's get married or engaged, even though we would have the right, thanks to the brave people who came before, including you. All I'm saying is, why be apart when we can be together?

Evan, that is so sweet. But I can't move in with you.

And why not? Because... I know how this ends.

Uh, wh-what's that supposed to mean?

Look, Evan... you're an incredible guy. Big-hearted. Hot as hell. Funny. Impulsive. But what you're feeling right now is... is new. And it's exciting, and... it feels like forever. But you're still figuring yourself out. And that's good.

What are you saying?

I'm saying no matter how bad I wanted to be... I'm not your last. I'm your first.

Well, hey, they-they can be the same thing.

But they usually aren't. If I were to move in with you, you wouldn't mean to, you wouldn't plan for it... but you'd end up breaking my heart. And I... I don't think that... I could deal with that. I should go.

Wait, wait, wait, hey, hey, um... Wait, d-did you just break up with me?

Yeah. I guess I did. Believe me, I didn't see it coming, either. Should've known that parking spot was too good to be true. I'll see you around, Buck.

[allwormdiet]

Parasite 10.1

Welcome back Taylor, missed you, glad we come back to immediately find you waist-deep in moral sketchiness.

Never let it be said that Wildbow doesn't know how to establish a scene. You can feel the desperation and despair in the mounting heat and filth of the city streets, and of course Taylor's power means she can clock that better than a lot of other parahumans.

There's something very sad about the fact that Angelica is the last dog standing from the original three, and that even then she's still fucked up from the damage Fog did.

And of course Rachel probably puts a lot of blame for that on having saved Taylor's scrawny ass at the cost of Brutus and Judas, plus the other six dogs. Even if she would've made that attack on Leviathan without Taylor there, I'd be shocked if that association wasn't there.

I swear to god the official word for this liveblog is "bleak," but I'll stop calling things bleak when they stop being bleak, how about that.

Siblings!

Yeah, what I said earlier.

The fact that Shadow Stalker actually seems to respect the Undersiders more for being hardcore as fuck is. A little funny. Like okay, I guess her worldview has some consistency.

Also yeah, gotta be weird to realize you were going to school with a murderous vigilante. Can only imagine how Winslow students would feel about realizing Taylor was goddamn Skitter.

I'll admit it, this feels bad. Sophia deserves comeuppance for being a violent murderer but what she's about to be put through is beyond the pale. Genuinely one of the most fucked up things that has happened in this story so far.

But we'll get to that later.

Siblings!

Tattletale managing to be the peacemaker for once, which is a little funny.

Grue being exasperated by Imp is funny, but then it gets sad again when he looks over at Skitter because. Yeah. They'd actually gotten along okay for the most part, until the kiss and the Nazi attack, and then Armsmaster tried to ruin the relationship further and mostly succeeded.

The fascinating thing with Taylor is that she's also pretty uncomfortable with the moral lines she's crossing and how fast she's crossing them, it's just that she's really good at not letting that discomfort slow her down.

Quick overview of the Undersiders' current states, courtesy of Taylor's goddamn panopticon abilities. Also: puppies!

This was scary as fuck on the first read-through, and this time it's more... I think Alec has a bad sense of humor. Again, raised in a cult, so it's hard to know what's appropriate for comedy and what's, uhh, using your bodyjacking victim to falsely threaten the life of a teammate, but still.

Freaky as hell.

Current Thoughts

Regent's "secret weapon" turns out to be the scariest goddamn power of any Undersider, so that's. Something.

The group's tension with Taylor is palpable, even if it's just Brian and Rachel who seem to be feeling it with any heat. I dunno if Alec is one to forgive things easily (doubtful) or if he's enough of a pragmatist to let Taylor back in with relatively little complaint. Maybe it's a mild thing compared to the trust and loyalty he's used to with Heartbreaker's kids. I'll be curious to see whether Brian or Rachel relent first, because I think it could go either way.

Hoo boy. This arc. Thiiiis arc. I can't believe I'm feeling bad for Sophia goddamn Hess, but we've found a way to do it.

[sophieinwonderland]

Yes the word grooming has been blown out of its original meaning. However Grooming isn’t limited to antiqueer propaganda though, the definition of grooming is literally “the behaviour or action used to establish an emotional connection with a vulnerable person so they can abuse and/or manipulate them into doing things”

What your suggesting to do with these vulnerable groups is literally the definition of grooming.

To add to that you keep comparing these “marketing” tactics to branches of Christianity that verge on being called a cult. You’re painting it as though every branch of Christianity does the same thing when it doesn’t and it just so happens that those branches are so F’ed up.

The “marketing” of some of these you mention involve purposefully isolating its members to create a them vs us dynamic and that sort of thing doesn’t help anyone, look at the syscourse community as exhibit A.

Marketing a religion or movement in of itself is not bad, however the way you want to go about it is doing exactly what you preach to be against. No religion is good or bad it’s the people that are involved in it that make it so.

Part of your problem is that you're focusing on using a very broad interpretation of a definition of a word that has very specific connotations. Even if you can find broad definitions like this, that doesn't change the word's history.

Connotations of words can be just as important as literal definitions. For example...

I'm curious where you got your specific definition of grooming as well. I can't find that particular arrangement of words on Google. Here's the Webster's definition.

There are two forms here, one that is neutral and one that is negative.

The neutral "grooming" isn't an issue. People groom someone for a position in a company. They groom candidates. They groom successors. These are fine. But obviously, this isn't how grooming is being used here.

For the second form, this is clearly negative. And while you could make the argument that because it says "especially" for nonconsensual sexual activity, it could technically be applied outside of that, the connotation is still there and is the reason it's be used.

The reason queer people and systems are being accused of "grooming" people to be queer and to become systems is because of the connotations with sexual predators and child molesters.

Also, I find it curious that this language is almost never aimed at these branches of Christianity that use these tactics to convert and indoctrinate children. If me, a queer tulpa, suggesting that we use the same exact tactics of proselytizing religions to spread tulpamancy is "grooming" then surely all proselytizing religions that spread this way are grooming people as well!

And yet, this use of "grooming" is almost exclusively targeted at queer people and systems.

For the record, I'm not against all forms of Christianity. There are plenty of liberal churches that I would be happy to see on our side. Especially since God Himself is a plural God. If I have one problem with these churches, it's their passivity. That they don't do enough to spread their values and fight for inclusion, because the right-wing churches will spread theirs at every turn.

I would like to see stronger allyship to marginalized communities from those churches.

[rabbitjester]

rly rly love my friends i swear i do but like can they please please stop treating cults like a fun quirky thing to throw at an oc

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 308

Honestly, Damian is so disappointed in his father right now. And his so-called siblings. The friends allies he had made over the years and he had been swapping multiple times, and still they hadn’t realized. Danyal was as pale as a corpse, closer to Drake for Pit’s sake! Jordan had red eyes! Elena was a girl! Respawn had white hair! Surely someone noticed- thank fuck, hello Todd, no he’s not on patrol, listen, listen, he needs you to know that Father? Blind. An idiot! The others more so! Yes yes, they’ve been doing their single-person trick, but surely someone should have caught on yes? And they haven’t- Oh? What a wonderful idea Akhi, he shall inform the others of this idea, the Lazarus waters do make dna testing quite hard to do. 

[sorrowsofsilence]

nick with a bun makes me want to chew drywall

[sufferu]

It’s also fucking ridiculous on a lot of individual levels. Like—

Subaru: I messed up. I messed up so bad. Emilia hates me now, I messed up, I messed up, I messed up—

Emilia, constantly on the verge of tears: I will not mess up again I will not mess up again I will not mess up again I will not—

_

Subaru: Rem’s mad at me, too? But we were — we were so close before! How did I mess up this horribly? Was what I did really this bad?

Rem, so horrified by everything that she’s practically numb at this point: I cannot do what I did last time, for the love of everything in the world I CANNOT tell Subaru to go and be a hero, for FUCK’S SAKE— WHY DOES HE STILL WANT ME AROUND AFTER I TORTURED HIM TO DEATH?!?!

_

Subaru: Why won’t Ram tease me anymore? Please come back, I’m sorry…

Ram, horribly awkward: Subaru I cannot joke about that sort of thing when I apparently ACTUALLY murdered you. I cannot encourage this behavior on your part. Why are you like this.

_

Subaru: I need to impress Wilhelm. I need to work hard and get better so that he’ll be proud of me. I want him to be proud of me, I want him to be proud, please—?

Wilhelm, achingly: My sweet, adorable, pathetic mess of a new grandchild who I fully plan to adopt as soon as I prove my worth by eviscerating the Witch Cult that is threatening your existence, please stop begging me to train you for lethal combat—

_

Subaru: I think Julius is planning to torture me.

Julius, wistfully: I really did miss this brattier version of Subaru :) I know he’ll need to grow up eventually but he’s just so cute right now, all I want to do is tease him all the time—

_

Subaru: Reinhard hates me now. He’s so strict with me all the time, and he never lets me leave his sight when he escorts me into the Capital, and he always forces me to follow these arbitrary rules, and if I ever fail to do what he says to the letter he drags me back to the Estate by the ear like some sort of—

Reinhard: l i t t l e b r o t h e r.

_

Subaru: The Captain of the Iron Fang really doesn’t like me. I don’t know why I’m on his bad side. Why does everyone hate me so much?

Ricardo, on the verge of an aneurysm: Subaru for the love of all that is holy sTOP SNEAKING INTO OUR CARRIAGES TRYING TO JOIN US ON DANGEROUS MERCENARY JOBS—

_

Subaru: Who is this scheming merchant and why am I the only one concerned by this

Otto, doing a horrible job at disguising his true intentions due to being completely wrong about being the only one who went back in time: I am so good at this. Nobody suspects a thing.

_

Subaru: Who is this monster that almost kidnapped me and when is he going home

Cecilus, beaming: I am never going home :D not without Boss!

_

Subaru: How did I make the Emperor of the neighboring country not like me?? I tried so hard to be polite this time…

Vincent, pouting: why won’t subaru pick fights with me anymore, this is bullshit

_

Subaru: Who are all of these escaped criminals and why are they still here?!

The Pleiades Battalion: s c h w a r t z - s a m a a a a a…

_

Subaru: WHY IS SHE HERE?!?!

Elsa: Why am I here????

Writing the BTZ fic(s) right now and it’s fucking hysterical, because the first one is solely from Subaru’s POV, which is really sad and angsty and him trying desperately to make everyone stop hating him because they all suddenly seem to absolutely despise him right down to his bones — and then you get everyone else’s POV of those exact same events and it’s just the Benny Hill Theme on full blast.

[pinkd3mon]

I can respect the hater mentality

[arsenicflame]

since we all appear to be talking about izzy 'calling the police' on stede id like to offer my silly little two cents:

its not like the navy wasn't actively looking for him anyway??????

at most, izzys actions sped up badminton catching up with stede, but its made very clear that badminton wanted Stede dead well before this, and was willing to use whatever he could to find him- whos to say jackie wouldnt have cut a deal on her own? that any other pirate thats seen them being unsubtle in a port wouldn't take the opportunity to make a quick buck over a guy who is Nobody and holds no influence that could lead to any consequences for them?

in reality izzy is probably the only person who would receive negative repercussions to selling out stede, given his personal connection with ed- any other pirate would probably have gotten away unscathed, anonymous. they likely wouldnt have even been present like izzy was. izzy had personal stakes, anyone else would have taken the money and ran

the way i see it, with or without izzy the events of episode 10 probably would have happened in some degree, izzy just expedited the timeline

[pantherlord4]

I know an RPG net thread that helps expand on Captain Clown here

Here's the thing about him

"He is the master of oppression through comedy.

His "humor" is crude, uncreative, lowest common denominator and very, very mean spirited. Alichino loves to punch down on oppressed and marginalized people, turning them into offensive sterotypes or making jokes about perceived flaws. When called out on this he goes to the old defenses of "Its just a joke" and "Don't be so thinned skin." All of this is a calculated psychological attack in order to erode empathy towards these groups and everyone remembers who is in the lower classes.

Alichino will also direct his "comedy" towards legitimate good aligned rulers, painting them as weak, incompetent, or exaggerating minor flaws in their characters, again this is a calculated effort to undermine public confidence in these leaders and get rules more in line with Asmodeus' world view (IE Fascists) put in charge. Alichino and his followers target anyone who is trying to make the world better, trying to fix broken systems, anyone who cares as idiots worthy only of mockery and scorn. He also delights in cruel mean spirited pranks which can be outright dangerous to the victims.

Ironically, Alichino himself is incredibly thinned skin. He can't stand be heckled, and he hates being the butt of a joke. Doing so can easily send him in a rage, at which point he drops all pretense of humor and tries to kill whoever upstaged him as gruesomely as possible. His arch nemesis is Picoperi, the merrygleam, the Empyreal lord of jokes, pranks, and surprises, not only for being legitimately funny, but he has managed to prank and bamboozle Alichino on numerous occasions.

Alichino's cultists consist of indivudal bards, playwrights, novelists and satirists who all publish and create nasty unpleasant barely disguised racist screeds meant to divide people and push oppressed people down. Most Alichino cultists work solitarily, but occasionally cults dedicated to him will spring up among groups of wealthy affluent people, who pass their time holding private parties where they kidnap random poor people and torture them to death in creatively horrific ways."

I can totally also see the clown subscribing to the "one bad day" ideology too(though in my eyes,one bad day is just the straw that breaks the camels back,it requires a series of misfortunes beforehand to work. Hence why Bruce didn't go mad but joker did; Bruce didn't have a bad life before that night in Crime Alley,joker was struggling for most likely MONTHS to YEARS and lost basically everything that night.)

Sorry I went overboard

It really is a pity, if I'm being honest. If you told someone who had never dove into Pathfinder's lore that Golarion has its own version of the Joker and that he was an extremely powerful devil whose job and entire purpose for existence, specifically, is "conquer Golarion," this hypothetical person would probably have their flabbers gasted if you told them he has never been the Big Bad in an AP or even so much as a Module.

This guy

is Asmodeus' most trusted agent for the purpose of conquering Golarion, arguably THE most important planet in all of creation for Asmodeus to have total dominion over due to it containing Rovagug.

And yet, scarcely a mention in any book not specifically about fiendish divinities! One of the scant bits of lore about him (in Council of Thieves: Infernal Syndrome, pg. 89) tells of when his trickery was reversed upon him, while his second largest scattering of lore (throughout Rule of Fear) reveals him as the secret patron of a clown school, with his most fervent follower being a mime, who work to gather enough blackmail material to secretly control a whole city from the shadows.

NOT including him in more material feels like leaving proverbial money on the table, if you ask me.

[randomidiocyncrazies]

Honestly... milgram project is fun bc you get to analyze the characters (and try to work out their "murder" + the circumstances surrounding it) AND you get to analyze the fandom as a bonus too

[illdothehotvoice]

Sometimes I forget Princess Peach Showtime exists actually. Like it's not bad it's just so disconnected from the rest of the series plot and genre wise I kind of just. Forget it happened???? Like we as a fandom do not bring it up at all chcbcbxbsfg.