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

[artbyblastweave]

Is it weird that, the more posts you make about how being a genre fiction protagonist would suck and ruin your life (posts I love and think are great), the more I want to go full "No, suck eggs, Alan Moore, being a superhero is cool and good, actually?" I can't tell if it's mindless contraiantism or an actual point.

I think it's an understandable impulse, because there are absolutely strains of very-online genre-fic and cape-fic critique that, if taken super seriously as a blueprint for how fiction ought to be written, would basically amount to the Wertham Scare with a social justice gloss, and we don't need a second one of those. If a person bins the entire superhero genre as "irredeemably fascist" or anything similar, for example, I start paying extremely close attention to the implicit back half of that proclamation, the part where they lay out what part of that condemnation they consider actionable. The censorious should be made to eat their own black markers. You can do whatever you want forever.

On the other hand, you really can't get around what happens to a lot of escapist genre-fic- cape-fic in particular- if you apply any kind of scrutiny or big-boy grown up emotional or moral logic to it whatsoever. It wasn't built to survive that level of scrutiny, it wasn't built to still see publication 80 years after the fact- and indeed, stuff in that space that isn't seeing active mass-market success, John Carter and the like, that tends to get judged basically as harshly as I think it deserves. There really isn't any way around the fact that we're all playing Frankenstein with the innards of mass-market children's stories. And moreover I feel like there's an offputting mealy-mouthedness to a lot of the contemporary big-two output that notices the cracks in the foundation and tries to have their cake and eat it too, having capes that beat bad guys up but in a markedly progressive way. A certain level of pessimism and cynicism is often the only believable way to get those wires to connect if you're trying to make your spandex crowd interface with real-world cynicism. (Superman is ironically one of the Big-two properties that I think most consistently threads this needle. Batman has a harder time due to the billionaire thing. The X-Men are turbofucked and have been for a while.)

Astro City is one of the capethings that I think hits the best balance on all of this, and nonetheless one of the worldbuilding beats that does a lot of the heavy lifting on believability for me is that the Nixon Admin executed the setting's Captain American analogue on trumped-up charges as a show of force and as a distraction from Watergate. Because he would! He would do that! "What about Nixon" is a fantastic litmus test for this kind of thing IMO- even if the answer is that he was the head of a cult that built a mutant-powered flying saucer to take over the world with, that's still better than dodging the question entirely, or having Superman suck off Reagan like Byrne did.

[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

[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

[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.

[creature-wizard]

Any ideas about how to respond to people who are “anti-cult” but in a shitty/sexist way?

Context: I’m a (queer) leftist Christian whose denomination is progressive, but have a couple friends who are queerstakes (queer Mormons in community w each other bc the mainstream church is homo/transphobic) & 1 queer lefty Catholic. We’ve all encountered, but them more so, people who want to “save us” from religion in some way.

For me it’s mostly the type of Nü Atheist/antitheist extremist who I can laugh off easily because they’re arguing against a version of ‘my church’ that I’m not in, but especially my Mormon friends will have a harder time because (as with Catholicism) their congregations really are kind of safe-haven offshoots of far-more-conservative traditions, whereas I actually have a synod/denominations/bishops to back me up. But a thing that comes up repeatedly especially for the Mormons is “You’re in a cult”, and with both the language of “You THINK you like it and you THINK you’re happy, but you’re so brainwashed that you don’t know your own mind, you have no agency, and if you just abandoned your (hard-fought for, safe-haven) religious community you’d become Normal, you’ll see!!”

Now. This really rubs all of us the wrong way as a group of queer people who are mostly women. “You can’t trust yourself, you’re incapable of logic, you don’t know how to think for yourself, you have no agency or desires of your own” comes off sexist as all Hell, and appeals to “Try being like everyone else, it’ll make you normal” call to mind religious conservatives who call you back to the fold or push conversion therapy on you. It feels like this is itself trying to deny them agency to make their own choices.

But people (online, or in person in college mainly) never believe the beliefs are genuine or that they’ll ever be safe even among other queer people and progressives.

So I guess the question is… how do you convince someone you don’t need deprogramming when you come from a tradition which is, overarchingly, a lot more high-control to the point that I get why when people say “Mormonism is a cult” etc. When you’re religiously-observant but treated as apostate by a lot of people. Etc.

Any thoughts on ways to respond or explain? Or should they just disregard it because of the bad attitude involved?

I'm not really sure. I think many ex-Christians are channeling their own traumas with Christianity into these conversations, which means they aren't really in a good headspace to be reasoned with.

Maybe it could be useful to start a conversation about how their behavior is Christian missionary behavior in a new hat, and ask them why they think they're going to get a positive response to a type of behavior that they themselves would find incredibly obnoxious. But, I can't guarantee it would work.

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

Interesting. Don’t necessarily think I’m autistic but I have more going on than just ADHD and I’m not sure what that is.

[yashley]

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

[hamletthedane]

2023 year in review:

[constelationprize]

Okay so I wasn't going to post about this because there is a kind of person I don't want to attract to this blog and I have so blessedly few followers it might not even matter but. It's been driving me insane for days.

You guys know we can't hold people accountable on information they don't know, right?

I've seen this said in two contexts: Kevin and Thea (and the other Ravens) in regards to Jean, and Nicky and Aaron in regards to Andrew.

I won't elaborate much on Jean because TSC2 is yet to be released and I expect this to be expanded upon there, but I'm going to point out a few things: there is no proof that the Ravens at large knew exactly how old Jean was (I do not personally looked that different between 16 and 18), which is a shit excuse, but is compounded by: the Ravens are a cult with a dog-eat-dog mentality. No one there had the time or the will to think "well let's consider the ethics of this situation" because they were all locked in the fucking Torment Nexus. Riko deliberately packaged Jean and the circumstances of his SA so that it would further alienate him from the rest of the team. He was offered to them as a scapegoat and even if a single person there thought the situation looked iffy, they were not in an environment that allowed people in power to be questioned, and so no one was going to look their captain and head coach in the eye and say "hmm actually Mister Moriyama I think you're wrong". They accepted the version of events that Riko and the defensemen he picked told because they were the loudest voices and because an easy lie is so much better to hear than an ugly truth. Yes they are complicit for not seeing the red flags and cowards for not standing up if they did, this does not mean that their actions were senseless or purely out of some inherent moral cruelty.

But most of all: none of them saw a need to defend Jean because JEAN never defended HIMSELF. And yes, WE THE AUDIENCE know why that was, but you cannot expect everyone to. Jeremy knew, because he was outside of the situation and already looking for signs of abuse in Jean.

So, while I don't LOVE how Thea seems to have reacted to Jean's assault, I understand why she did it. (And if Nora hadn't been bullied off of writing her, I would have loved to see her come to terms with how she played a part in the abuse of someone she clearly cares about). As for Kevin, Jean himself says he did his best to not let him know the full truth of the situation, and for other reasons I have my theories, but I will just sit back and let TSC2 prove me right on this one.

Now, about Andrew. It fucking baffles me how anyone can interpret Nicky and Aaron as deliberately malicious toward Andrew for no reason when they have made sacrifices to stand by his side for no reward at all.

Aaron's first contact with Andrew is a hopeful letter he wrote as an abused child longing for love and connection, which Andrew just threw back in his face. When Andrew is in juvie, Aaron tries AGAIN, even though he had no reason to believe it would work, and for all intents and purposes it looks like it doesn't change a thing when Andrew moves in with him! He is cold and cruel and distant and he kills Aaron's mother and buys a sports car with the life insurance money. Can you really blame Aaron for believing Andrew's motives are petty when Andrew himself goes out of his way to pretend they are? He bought a car. With the life insurance. Of the woman he murdered in a car accident.

What is more likely: that the brother with a history of violence who has pushed you away at every try killed your mother as revenge for her abandoning him? Or that he did it to be the first person to ever keep a promise to protect you?

And even after that, when Aaron truly believes that Andrew does not and cannot care about him, he makes a second deal to keep Andrew in his life. And then renovates it through college. He can't hold a single conversation with Andrew and he still won't let him go. Aaron reaches for Andrew in the only form he knows that Andrew will reach back even as he tells himself that it's for nothing.

I won't even talk about Nicky because that man left his only chance at happiness behind in a heartbeat to care for two teenagers who were all but strangers to him just because he (correctly) believed no one else would.

It's so crazy to look at this story, a tragedy about how the Minyard-Hemmick children were so systematically failed by the adults in their lives that they were subjected to horrible abuse, and the consequences of that made it so they had incompatible coping methods that stood in the way of them being capable of understanding each other, and those misunderstandings only drove them apart even as they were holding onto each other for dear life, and ask: Oh but why didn't they notice Andrew's trauma? :(

Bitch they tried!!!!! But at the point that Andrew even met Aaron and Nicky, he was past believing that the truth would make a difference, so he didn't even try to tell them; rather, as Nicky says multiple times, he did his best to push them away and make them believe there was nothing behind his attitude other than cruelty. And they still stood by him ANYWAY. Not even Neil, who has more context than both of them, figures out the truth of what Andrew went though until the literal last minute. Because Andrew, and repeat this with me, didn't want them to know, and they were not fucking mind readers.

It is so naive to believe that every single person who struggles does so openly; or even that if they do, that they'll accept help just because you, who Knows and Fixes everything, offered it. Be so for real. If there is one thing AFTG does well is portray realistic trauma responses and how people from the outside perceive them. Try to learn something from that, or if you don't want to, at least try not to publicly put your foot in your mouth so much.

[im2tired4usernames]

Ugh I was excited for today until I found out I'd have to spend it with people that actively make me hate being alive hate the future and drain me off all energy physically mentally spiritually like a vampire I can't stand to be around her she is the definition of stupidity and even then that's generous as fuck this bitch has filled her brain with so much garbage I watch her brain cells die at alarming rates every single time she uses her vocal cords her giggles make me want to jam a sewing needle into my ear repeatedly so I can never have to hear it again its a friendly reminder that my parents decisions this time my dad's constantly makes me want to die

[pissmoon]

I know how gone girl midsommar girl n Maria Callas in pasolinis medea felt and if u call these 'white karen feminism' ur probably insufferable. These arent even 'feminist' movies in any political way, theyre even all directed by men actually, theyre just about the heartbreak of realizing that a man you sacrificed your entire sense of self for, moved to a shithole town for, walked around eggshells for to not seem needy and 'annoying' right after ur entire family died or killed a family member for and commited blasphemy that you were kicked out of your kingdom and lost your witch powers never gave a shit and just cheated first opportunity possible

[whumblr]

I saw a post on someone's blog that said when we write torture and pet whump and conditioning that we're the reason real people get tortured...because people have looked to fiction for their ideas on how to torture people before so when we write it for whump it's making us bad people and it can make real people torture others with our ideas. And a couple blogs here reblogged and liked it agreeing and saying whump is a cult, and now I'm feeling guilty about liking whump when I just stopped feeling guilty. I've been through a lot of real abuse and I really like whump but with those people saying it's disrespecting victims I feel like an evil person again.

First of all, anon, please don't feel like that.

You are not evil.

People who write or like horror are not evil.

You feeling like this and reflecting on it like this makes you quite the opposite.

I write about torture and horrible things. I like whump. I do not want to see these things in real life. And I doubt you do.

The world isn't as black and white as some people think.

And you have nothing to feel guilty for.