#like what a good good quote but also so fucked up

[catis15]

I'm in gen Z and I've got friends who think like this

I wasn't too sheltered as a kid or a teen so like I don't agree with some but I can see the reasoning. Though the asking to masturbate one is wild, like wtf dude that's just like... A weird thing to ask. Also thought it was like a canon event for some ppl to masturbate to like the idea of ppl they found attractive. I've never done that cuz yeah it feels really fucking weird like dawg I know that person, but ASKING is so fucking wild man 😭

And actors younger than 18 what's that about? If it ain't got sexual content I don't see the problem as long as like workplace abuse isn't happening because it's pretty common to my knowledge in the industry.

Like how am I on the other side of my own generations BS 😂😭 I think I should be grateful??

Don't think not smoking and drinking is a bad thing though lmao. But I know a lot of my friends and I were shamed for sex related stuff by our parents. I mean when I was i think 16 or 17 my mother went through *private* ifykyk messages and continued to shame me for things that were said for a month or so after, even getting my MUCH younger sisters involved by telling them "Leaf is doing nasty things' or "Leaf is doing things she knows she shouldn't" and then she'd directly quote things I said to my partner as a way to embarrass me. Kinda weird looking back on it but my mom's kinda fucked up lol

But I had a lot of friends with similar experiences. It doesn't really create a safe place for what are pretty normal feelings :/

But then on the complete opposite side we have shows like Big Mouth and sites like AO3 where it's a very normal thing to be horny and have kinks and it's not shamed, sometimes even encouraged. We grew up wack y'all lol

So lines had to be drawn SOMEWHERE and for a lot of ppl my age it gets to be a little much

Like I have a friend who hates like any sort of sexual reference to underage characters. Which is totally fair they're underage it's whatever. But it's to the point he gets like defensive about it. And he's the dude who's pretty steadfast in his beliefs, but it got to the point even i thought it was a little weird. Like sometimes he'd get mad about making out or slightly heavier relationships between minors, eich again I can see the thought process, but also ppl are having sex by 16 or 17, and it makes sense that characters those ages would be doing similar things. I grew up reading books where teenagers did teenager things, and I feel like there is a level of age appropriate stuff? Like no dawg don't make full ass bdsm shit for teens but I feel like referenced or even vanilla type shit is fine????

I don't have a license so I can't talk-

Working on it though ;v;

And yeah lmao masturbate it's good for you (no literally there are studies saying it's good to do lmfao, like drinking a single glass of red wine before bed once a night is good for you... Unless your a recovering alcoholic then maybe not)

Sorry went on like a whole tangent lol but I'm bored and wanted to throw my two cents as someone who's got friends who think like op mentioned but I... Don't lol.

weird anti ideology finally leaking out into the mainstream

[scribefindegil]

Lorraine Baines McFly and Female Autonomy

Hello. I have spent the past month slowly losing my mind about Lorraine Baines McFly, Marty's mom in Back to the Future, so I am finally trying to articulate some of the reasons I'm so feral about her.

There's a quote from Lea Thompson, the actress who played Lorraine, that goes, "The three parts that women usually get to play are virgins, whores, and mothers, and in Back to the Future Part II, I got to play all three." While this is commentary on Hollywood and the limited roles that fictional women get forced into, I think it's also interesting to think about it in terms of how these roles are reflected onto actual women and used to limit their personhood and confine them to a very narrow range of acceptable behaviors . . . and then in turn to think about how the character interacts with these roles on a Watsonian level. They're affecting not just Lorraine the character as she was written, but Lorraine from an in-universe perspective trying to navigate life as a woman in a patriarchal world. Some of the sexism she faces is a deliberate narrative choice and some of it is a result of the writers' blind spots, but for the purpose of this essay I'm less interested in teasing out which threads are which and more in looking at it holistically.

Because the thing about Lorraine is that she's aware of what the acceptable roles and behaviors for women are, and the versions that we see of her across the various timelines alternately fight against and capitulate to these constraints. What is a woman allowed to be? How much is Lorraine willing to break from those restrictions? How much does she allow other women to break from them? Does she resent her role or embrace it? I have a lot of thoughts specifically about how the different iterations of her interact with concepts of female agency and autonomy.

(Putting this under a cut because it is. Long.)

I started thinking about this when I was talking with my partner about 50's Lorraine. She's extremely active and driven and planning to Get What She Wants (in a way that is very scary, if you are Marty) . . . but at the same time she's clearly aware that she isn't supposed to be. A Good Fifties Girl is demure and passive. Lorraine isn't--but she's still trying to toe the line. I think constantly about the scene where she shows up at Doc's garage to be like "I followed you home . . . so that I can ask you to ask me to the dance." The girl can embrace borderline stalking but she draws the line at directly asking a boy out! She's exercising a lot of agency but views doing so as rebellious and subversive--and risky.

And I also want to talk about the whole "boy crazy" thing because like . . . society (especially in the fifties) tells women that the most important thing they can possibly do is find a good man and become wives and mothers, that this will define the success or failure of their entire lives (and given how many things were unavailable to single women at the time this is in many ways true) . . . and then relentlessly mocks and punishes anyone who actually takes an interest in pursuing this instead of just sitting back passively and waiting. She is trying to do what society says will make her happy! And even her desire for a white knight is very much based in the reality of her situation! She's getting sexually harassed at school and around town and she's doing exactly what she's supposed to and standing up for herself and saying no and fighting back--and this is not enough. She does need backup! Biff harasses her in the middle of a crowded cafeteria and Marty is the ONLY person who does anything! No fucking wonder she latches onto him as hard as she does! (There's. I promise this is related but there's a BttF parody musical on YouTube where when Strickland comes to break up the lunchroom fight he says, "Now, I can excuse sexual harassment, but LIGHT SHOVING?" and like it's a haha funny joke but also?? Yeah?? That IS how it works. The way Lorraine's being treated is so overlooked and normalized that the authority figure isn't going to step up the way he will when it's a physical altercation between two guys. Screams.) I wonder if part of the reason she stuck with George in the original timeline even though they didn't have a lot in common is that "I have a boyfriend" is a boundary that some people might actually take seriously whereas "I'm not interested" is not.

But. In general 50's Lorraine is very much about grabbing as much agency as she feels she's allowed to . . . and then Twin Pines Lorraine is what happens when she regrets the result of those choices (because while we don't see it, it's pretty obvious that in the original timeline she pursued George as aggressively as she pursues Marty in the new one), and so she decides to deny, not just her own agency, but female agency as a general concept. She leans so heavily on the idea that her relationship was "meant to be" because it absolves her of any culpability in creating a life she's unhappy with. She's rewritten her own past to view herself as a passive participant in something inevitable. (Exactly the view of womanhood that she was fighting so hard against in the 50's!) And she extends this idea of female passivity to the women around her: telling Linda that she should sit back and wait and a relationship will "just happen," actively resenting Jennifer for doing something as simple as calling Marty on the phone. It's a really interesting form of internalized misogyny, perpetuating these sexist ideas as almost a misguided form of self-defense.

And then for Lone Pine Lorraine this is completely flipped! She loves Jennifer for the same reason she disliked her in Twin Pines: because she reminds Lorraine of her younger self. And like . . . this is something of an extrapolation, but while obviously her husband and kids are still very important to her, it also feels like she has interests and friends and other things going on in her life, whereas part of the isolation of Twin Pines is that her life has shrunk down to the point where she's ONLY a wife and mother with nothing else to define herself by. And it also matters that in this timeline she has a partner that supports her, not just in the big dramatic moments (although also that), but you can easily see the dance as a catalyst for George actually learning to listen to her and stand up for her about smaller things as well. George McFly feminism arc. (I'm being slightly facetious but like. George starts off kind of shitty. The spying is actively Bad and I hope Marty chewed him out for it offscreen, but also his reaction to the harassment scene being "I think there's someone else she'd rather go with," implying that he sees what Biff is doing as like. Normal flirting that he expects to work. He doesn't GET it. Unsurprising because he is. A teenage boy in the fifties. But I do believe that saving Lorraine was something of a wakeup call and after that he listened to her about things that make her uncomfortable and gave her the support that she needed. Which would also give her a lot more freedom in this timeline because she has someone with more societal power who has her back!)

And then. Hell Valley.

If Lone Pine is the version of Lorraine who has the most freedom, the most opportunities to make decisions based on what she wants instead of What Is Expected Of A Woman, Hell Valley is the opposite. The things denying her agency in Twin Pines is largely societal forces (and herself); in Hell Valley she is actively being denied autonomy by her evil husband who functions as the personification of a bunch of sexist ideas.

She's been objectified to the point that she doesn't maintain control over her own body; Biff pressures her to get cosmetic surgeries so she can continue to look attractive to him because that's the only value he sees in her. Her physical appearance is entirely tailored to his preferences.

Biff's view of Lorraine is wife-as-possession. He treats her like a prize he's won and her kids like parasites. And he is NOT subtle about this. But Lorraine is still desperately clinging to the idea that she's wife-as-family. She calls Biff "your father" to Marty when he arrives, and talks about "our children" because she wants so so badly for this to be something different than what it is. It's especially terrible because this is a timeline where she got seventeen years of being happy with George, she knows what she's missing, and she keeps trying to force this new relationship into a similar mold even though Biff is openly contemptuous of her and especially her kids. It's been twelve years and she's still trying to pretend. To call back to that Lea Thompson quote: it's obvious where Biff thinks Lorraine fits on the virgin-mother-whore axis, while Lorraine is actively trying to centralize her motherhood partially because the kids really are that important to her and partially as a defense mechanism.

(And it's also such a bleak cautionary tale about how fragile women's stability can be when they're dependent on their husbands; Lorraine was happy with George and had a fair amount of freedom, but he was the only one with an income so when he died she was suddenly forced into a truly horrific situation because she had no other means to support herself and her three young children. Especially given that the Hell Valley universe is also worse in some broader political ways that mean there were probably even fewer social supports available than in real life 1973)

And god. It kills me the way that we see her lash out, the way she's clawing for autonomy when she threatens to leave . . . and then exactly how Biff levels all his axes of control against her. It's very interesting that his first tactic is consumerist (Who will pay for all your things? Who will take care of you?) and that doesn't work even though not being able to support herself is a very real concern. It's only when he threatens her kids that she folds. And then she immediately crumples and pivots to rationalizing Biff's behavior and blaming herself for her own abuse (in a way that is both HEARTBREAKING and also? surprisingly sympathetic and realistic for an 80's movie?). It's similar to the passivity we see in Twin Pines, but here we see exactly where it comes from. She doesn't have any way out so she has to pretend. It's the only way she can keep going. She has these flashes of rage but they're immediately snuffed out by despair and denial.

There's not a lot of talk about Lorraine and what there is tends to reduce her to "well she's Marty's mom" as if she's a boring character who doesn't have a lot going on. But even though most of her role in the movies has to do with her relationships with the various men in her life, those relationships are really interesting if you actually pay attention to them! She's not just (in the 80's) a wife and mother--she's someone who has a complex relationship with marriage and motherhood and the societal expectations surrounding them. She's not just (in the 50's) a vapid boy-crazy girl--she's doing her best to go after what she wants in a world that doesn't want her to (the fact that one of the things she wants turns out to be her time-traveling son from the future is unfortunate but not something she has any way of knowing!). She's stuck in a society that doesn't want women to be people, and she knows this, and because we see her across two different time periods and three different timelines you can watch how sometimes society grinds her down until she gives in and tries not to be a person. And also how, sometimes, she fights back.

[carabas]

Sorting out Veilguard thoughts. This is very long, I had mixed feelings about Solas's endings and this is me trying to make Solas's actions and motivations make sense to me through quotes and bullet points.

Basic starting principle of the game: Solas is trapped by regret. We left him at the end of Trespasser heading out on the din'anshiral but not exactly enthusiastic about it, he's conflicted, he doesn't want to break the world again but he feels he has to, the whole plot here grows out of that. He tried to save the world and woke up finding he'd created a nightmare hell world a la the Inquisitor's trip to the terrible future version of Redcliffe, and it's his responsibility to fix that.

Specifically, the problems that make this a nightmare hell world:

The Blight's still here!! The whole point was to trap the Blight and yet it's still leaking into the world, his world-saving plan didn't even get that part right, what the fuck.

Mortality. First spirits took bodies which he had mixed feelings about to begin with, and which was the crime against the Titans which ultimately resulted in the Blight which I can't imagine improved his feelings about it - but also now they die, he is personally responsible for generations of people being permanently trapped in bodies which die, he didn't even want a body in the first place. "Your legends are half-right. We were immortal. It was not the arrival of humans that caused us to begin aging. It was me. The Veil took everything from the elves, even themselves."

A world of Tranquil. It's not just how long mortals live, it's the way they live, with no connection to the Fade outside their dreams. "You saw the remains of Vir Dirthara. The library was intrinsically tied to the Fade, and the Veil destroyed it. There were countless other marvels, all dependent on the presence of the Fade, all destroyed." Instead of those marvels, there's a fear and distrust and ignorance of all things Fade - and there are few things that frustrate Solas as much as ignorance - and that fear of the Fade naturally results in the fear of mages, the whole central plot of DA2, the struggle for mage freedom which Solas was vocal about and which was a big factor in his approval in Inquisition.

The effects on the spirits of the Fade, who Solas sees as people when most of the mortal world does not. ...You know what, I'm just going to copy-paste some longer quotes from Inquisition for this one because this is something that wasn't touched on much at all in Veilguard.

Even in Solas's very early-game conversations with the Inquisitor, he tells us exactly how he sees the effects of the Veil on spirits and how the mortal world relates to them:

Inquisitor: I'd like to know more about the Veil.

Solas: Circle mages call it a barrier between this world and the Fade. But according to my studies in ancient elven lore, that is a vast oversimplification. Without it… Imagine if spirits entered freely, if the Fade was not a place one went but a state of nature like the wind.

Inquisitor: It sounds like it would be wonderful.

Solas: And dangerous, but… yes. A world where imagination defines reality, where spirits are as common as trees or grass. Instead, spirits are strange and fearful, and the Fade is a terrifying world touched only by mages and dreamers. I am glad that I am not alone in seeing the beauty of such a world, along with the obvious peril.

And:

Inquisitor: I’d like to know more about demons.

Solas: The Chantry says that demons hate the natural world and seek to bring their chaos and destruction to the living. But such simplistic labels misconstrue their motivations and, in so doing, do all a great disservice. Spirits wish to join the living, and a demon is that wish gone wrong.

Inquisitor: Is there a way to coexist? To live with them, if not in peace, at least without such active confrontation?

Solas: Not in the world we know today. The Veil creates a barrier that makes true understanding most unlikely. But the question is a good one, and it matters that you thought to ask.

And this was the codex entry description of demonic possession in the first two games, as written by a senior enchanter from Ostwick:

Why do demons seek to possess the living? History claims they are malevolent spirits, the first children of the Maker, angry at their creator for turning from them and jealous of those creations he considered superior. They stare across the Veil at the living and do not understand what they see, yet they know they crave it. They desire life, they pull the living across the Veil when they sleep and prey on their psyche with nightmares. Whenever they can, they cross the Veil into our world to possess it outright. We know that any demon will seek to possess a mage, and upon doing so will create an abomination.

And this was Cole's reaction to discovering the history of the Veil in Trespasser:

Cole: The Veil isn’t real. It’s false, fake, fabricated to forbid. Isn’t it wonderful? It means I belong here! Helping, healing the hurt! I’m not a wrong thing, a wreck, a ruin. I’m what I should be!

...We're repeatedly told throughout the series that spirits desire to be with the living and the Veil is preventing that, for good or ill. Rook's team cares about this in terms of the threat of their world being destroyed by a sudden flood of demons, but from Solas's point of view the spirits belonged here to begin with and it's his mistake that makes coexistence impossible.

But at the same time, the first three games were set in the South - Veilguard shows us the Mourn Watch and Rivaini seers who do coexist with spirits, even with the Veil still in place. Other characters are less comfortable with this, but we're not getting anywhere near the same focus on the fear of spirits and mages here that we saw in the South. The game's just... not really interested in discussing this, we're not focusing on these ongoing effects of the Veil right now in this game about Solas trying to bring the Veil down, sure there's the occasional haunting and plenty of demons to fight but we're treating the ability to coexist with spirits as basically a solved problem in northern Thedas. And we've already put the mage rights plotline to rest in Inquisition. We're done, we're moving on, those parts of Solas's motivation are still important in that Solas's attitude toward spirits is important, but focusing on those problems is not a priority right now.

So of Solas's motivations that we saw back in Inquisition, the outlook now... the Blight's a problem, everyone's on the same page about the Blight being a problem, and in the good ending Solas winds up working on that aspect of the problem - but his other motivations, although they may still be problems, do not look as huge and pressing in Veilguard as they did in Inquisition. We've seen cultures where people and spirits coexist even with the Veil in place; mages in the north seem to be doing fine, at least as far as my Nevarran mage Rook's experience goes, and even in the south the treatment of mages is no longer what it was in the first two games; and the wonders of the Fade may be great but there are also dangers, acknowledged by Solas, and if a lot of people would rather keep the dangers out than bring the wonders or the immortality back in... who has the right to decide that for the whole world?

That's become the sticking point here. It's not really about how to solve the ongoing problems created by the Veil... it's whether they're Solas's problems to solve. And there's plenty of reason for him to answer yes to that, he created the problem to begin with and few other living people even have the knowledge that the Veil is unnatural, much less the ability to fix it - but also, let's be real, his attempts at solving problems have had some extremely fucking questionable results thus far.

And the stance this story has taken is: Solas is imprisoned by regret. Whether the Veil should come down or not, the reason Solas specifically has to walk this path is because of regret. And this story's happiest ending that takes the most effort to unlock is trying to release him from the role his regrets have imprisoned him in. (Relevant parallel: Lucanis carrying his mental prison around with him to the point that Spite can't tell they ever left.)

It's not like the whole world has taken a vote and decided that the Veil is good and immortality/wonders/coexistence with the Fade are not worth it. Obviously the player character of Veilguard is firmly in favor of guarding said Veil, but in Trespasser and the Masked Empire, Solas had agents working for him; in Tevinter Nights, Solas's monster wolf form was followed by an army of Valor and Justice spirits; in Veilguard, Solas said he had a host of spirits ready to help when the Veil fell to minimize the loss of life. For all the reasons Solas believed the Veil must come down, there's room to believe there are other characters on both sides of the Veil who also see those as problems and would presumably still be working on those problems, although that's not the focus of this game. And more people know about the origins of the Veil now, the story of the gods and Titans.

Solas tried to share the truth with the Dalish when he first woke up, but it went badly then; we know the truth now. Maybe if Solas were just a wisdom spirit he could even have been satisfied by sharing that history and having the truth be heard without taking the whole fate of the world on himself - but Solas is not just a wisdom spirit, and he has been defined by both wisdom and pride. He took on a role he never wanted because Mythal asked it of him, he so hates when spirits are twisted away from their purpose and his got complicated the moment he first took a body. Having the truth heard isn't nearly enough to fix this situation, and he needs to fix it, it is his responsibility to fix it, he is trapped by his regrets.

Talking with Rook about Elgar'nan...

Solas: Can you see how he and I might frustrate one another?

Rook: The two of you are too much alike. Both of you want to be in charge.

Solas: I have no desire to be "in charge."

Rook: No, you just want to be able to correct anyone who's not doing everything the way you'd've done it.

Solas: (Chuckles) I see you have been observing me as well during these conversations.

...Rook and their team can come up with a very wide variety of opinions on Solas, but that line did seem to amuse Solas, Rook had a point with that one. That is the place where Solas's wisdom meets pride.

Rook: All right, I can see how you and Elgar'nan would hate each other.

Solas: He has always been what I most feared becoming. Callous and uncaring, his arrogance unchecked. To have that much power and no one to remind him that he could be wrong…

Rook: Well, he had you.

Solas: (Chuckles) And I suppose I had you.

Solas was afraid of becoming like Elgar'nan, more pride than wisdom. He could see the possibility of that happening, the same way spirits become demons. And in the final scene, if he's not convinced to turn away from his path and attempts to tear down the Veil, he sounds very much like Elgar'nan. In the trickery version, Rook calls him out on this and Solas argues against it but then he comes out with these extremely Elgar'nan-like lines:

Solas: You think yourself capable of judging me? I have faced things you could not possibly comprehend! You are a mortal! A mortal! And I am a--(Rook interrupts him by shoving him toward his prison, and then Solas 'chuckles bitterly') I am a fool…

Even more so if Rook fights him instead of tricking him, with Solas declaring that compared to you mortals, he is a god - which Solas was pretty emphatic about denying before. And maybe that's what he was starting to say in the trickery version too before he was interrupted, "I am a--" and then he had a moment to realize what he was saying.

He was a spirit originally, and spirits are changeable by beliefs and expectations, and in this game the attempt to tear down the Veil very much does change him, instantly. The game treats him as a spirit who is being twisted away from his purpose by the act of tearing down the Veil. More than that, his purpose has already been twisted for a very long time, he already had regrets about this in those memories of ancient Elvhenan, talking about how at least the Disruption spirits died without being twisted from their purpose. He was wisdom before he was pride.

So if the bad endings are about Solas being twisted away from his nature by the very thing he feels he must do to save the world - the good ending is the opposite. It's about bringing him closer to the spirit he used to be, by finally putting down the thing that has been twisting him up.

In the good ending, Rook tries to talk Solas around even before Lavellan and Mythal join in - Rook doesn't want to see the world go through even more pain on top of what Elgar'nan has done, the world is broken but breaking the world again is the wrong way to make up for the damage Solas has caused, Solas has a chance right now to save the world by saving the Veil - and this argument is actually tempting to Solas! It's not enough, but he does pause, he thinks about it, he's conflicted, he's been conflicted this whole time, he was already wrestling with this back in Inquisition when he had only just woken up and had only seen a little of this new world, he has never wanted to break the world. He believed he had to.

Solas: I cannot. To stop now would dishonor those I have wronged to come this far.

Lavellan: Even if those you've wronged asked you to stop?

Solas: Vhenan…

Lavellan: You think you've gone too far to come back, but you're wrong. I am here, walking the dinan'shiral with you!

Solas: I lied. I betrayed you.

Lavellan: I forgive you! All you have to do is stop.

Solas: Ir abelas, vhenan… But I cannot.

...He actually paused way longer for Rook's argument about breaking the world than for this. He is more emotional with Lavellan, this did affect him, but that wasn't a convincing argument. I lied, I betrayed you - she tells him she's with him and he gives her a list of reasons she shouldn't be, he can't let himself respond to this right now.

Solas: Long before we met, I failed my oldest friend. She died for that failure. If I leave the Veil in place, I am destroying the world she wanted. And I will have… She will have died for nothing.

He believes the Veil is destroying the world Mythal wanted - and they were the firstborn elves, she invited him to take a body, the union of spirits and the mortal world is integral to his memory of her.

Side note here. If Bellara is in your team when you and Solas are traveling together during the endgame, you get this conversation:

Bellara: All I really want to know is why you killed Mythal.

Solas: The Evanuris killed Mythal.

Bellara: Only the first time. The second time, she was in Flemeth's body, and she didn't want you to destroy the world to avenge her… But you killed her. Was it because she was willing to stop, and you weren't?

Solas: That was not Mythal. It was merely a fragment.

Bellara: Right. That you killed.

…He didn't answer her after that. And now, here at the end of the game, "I will have.... She will have died for nothing," the fact that he killed that merely a fragment of Mythal for this is sticking in his mind, and we saw his regret about that moment plastered on the wall of the Lighthouse, and he is imprisoned by that regret - however conflicted he might feel, he was firmly committed to this path the moment he killed Mythal for a second time.

The final straw, the moment he finally gives up his plan, isn't about the fate of the world at all:

Mythal: I pulled you from the Fade you loved and sent you into war. I used your wisdom as a weapon… and it broke you.

Solas: The things that I have done…

Mythal: Are not for you alone to bear, my friend. The many wrongs we did, we did together. I release you from my service.

For this, he is hunched over and small, like she broke him all over again - maybe he had the right idea and breaking something a second time is the way to fix it in his particular case. He was a wisdom spirit before she sent him to war, before he was the Dread Wolf, before he broke the world trying to save it. He has been at war with one thing or another for a very long time.

Here Lavellan says "There is no fate but the love we share," and he doesn't argue with her this time. He can't look at her yet. He makes a fist. He puts a hand to his brow - was Mythal's vallaslin there once? Lowers his head. Looks at the tear in the Veil. Now he finally looks at Lavellan and the other people standing in front of him, not that fragment of Mythal, Mythal is gone. And then he binds himself to the Veil.

He hasn't let go of his past mistakes, that's not what's happening. He's still got regrets. He is letting go of the Dread Wolf, the role that a spirit of wisdom was twisted into.

Solas: With every breath I take, I will protect the innocent from my past failures. The Titans' dreams are mad from their imprisonment. I cannot kill the blight, but I can help to soothe its anger. I will go and seek atonement.

And then he is finally able to respond to Lavellan's love for him, to make this journey together.

[chompe-diem]

just randomly recalling moonshine’s

“a child has a duty to his father. but a hero has a duty to the world”

literally loses my mind gnashing teeth etc etc. heartbreaking

[seewetter]

This seems like a series of perplexing opinions.

Sure, trains were built by capitalists for the needs of capital. Unsurprisingly, that's their historical context and intended purpose.

And yes, trains imply long-distance travel. Trains imply transporting goods across vast distances. Trains imply an interconnected society, a society whose needs and ambitions are geographically quite far-ranging. In a world with train networks, someone or something is traveling far beyond a local village.

And I agree with girl-debord's first post in this thread and don't see anything particularly weird about it. But that's because I give people the benefit of the doubt when I can. To me, saying "tech is not neutral" is a fine statement to make, because tech is embedded in social processes and can often cause harm through them. We can use mass surveillance tools to monitor the health of animal populations, for example, but that is not their main use -- and in cases like that, the wonderful use case is only relevant because of problems caused by capitalism to begin with. Would we worry about rhinoceros or dolphin population decline without a capitalist society, where "free markets" have generated mass production processes for fishing industries and generated market pressures on black-market ivory trade or the cutting down of forests?

"what are you even trying to say here? mass movement of things and people is bad?" Not every Tumblr post drawing a connection between capitalist interests and the creation of something is morally condemning that thing. That said, it's possible to assume that the Debord quote "it should be understood that this apparatus is in no way neutral" is being used as moral condemnation here, so it's a fair question, I guess.

"moving objects for significant distances along the ground" is a priority to a particular global system under which trains were invented.

It's also a priority for a lot of people who find parts of that particular global system appealing for reasons that are entirely understandable. People all over the world do in fact want access to resources not found in their neck of the woods.

And I will be careful here. I agree, for example, that the mass transportation of medicine, for example, is often only necessary because big medical conglomerates are legally prohibiting and violently enforcing their patents.

But it's kind of odd to argue that it's a bad thing that large numbers of people can flee a large natural disaster (say a volcanic outbreak) with the help of fast transportation.

trains are "efficient" within the parameters of that system--that disrupting ecosystems and exploiting immigrant workers are acceptable trade-offs for the value generated by global trade

Trains are not global trade.

Global trade does not, intrinsically, involve exploiting immigrant workers.

"those bad consequences you bring up aren't an inevitable consequence of a connected world."

Are we going to argue that train tracks don't disrupt ecosystems?

"technologies are neutral. politically they don't actually cause people to act."

Depends. If you have a train, you might go looking for work far further away from home than if you didn't have a train. Your family might not see each other much because the availability of the technology (paired with market pressure to get a job) has conditioned you to behave a certain way.

"i don't want borders. you know what makes for a great border? the inability to just fucking physically go somewhere else."

I don't think that's a good way of framing your opponent's ideas, transfemsriseup. Plenty of immigrants cross borders without trains.

Actually, come to think of it, how can technologies not actually cause people to act if without them, people supposedly act differently?

"but what I'm suggesting is that the consideration of whether or not trains are "worth it" has happened within a framework that I don't ascribe to as a communist, a framework of value."

You don't ascribe to value as a communist? Not even use value?

"railway workers don't build railroads because they believe that the railroad will be a good thing for everyone, they build them because they are paid to and without that pay they can't eat or afford a home. and these technologies were invented for similar reasons."

We could apply the same argumentation to paleolithic technology still in use today. Under capitalism, workers don't (generally, unless they happen to be enthusiastic) do anything at work except to get paid so they can eat or afford a home. We can't argue that trains mustn't exist because their construction and operation has some environmental impacts that are imperfect and because the workers who built them weren't free. Might as well argue that people should live without homes, because workers don't freely build homes but do so in order to eat.

Okay, maybe that's not what you're saying. Another thing you might be saying is "just as workers are restricted to certain choices, so too are profit-seeking capitalists restricted and under these restrictions they invented the train".

But I think a similar rebuttal applies. An abandoned military barracks can serve as a makeshift shelter and will not turn people into servants of the military-industrial complex if they take shelter there. Similarly, a train can serve more purposes than the one for which it was built.

"i think if you can understand the idea that maybe car-centric suburbs are terrible & wouldn't exist without the pseudo-needs created by a capitalist society, this shouldn't be much of a jump."

Understanding the argument isn't much of a jump, no. It's just odd to argue against the least intrusive form of adaptive long-distance travel. Trains are less environmentally intrusive than highways, shipping lanes and air travel routes. Yes, people could walk, but if people walk, they can't escape unforeseen disasters or physically connect with family members on the other side of the continent. Then there is no way to supply people with emergency aid or help out with a resource shortage.

"wow, an ML, the supposedly scientific and materialist ideology, saying that material conditions dont affect how people act? and in the defense of consumerism, no less?"

The ML you are mocking mentioned 3 benefits:

Medicine (an essential supply)

Immigrants (freedom to travel)

Food (potentially a consumer good, but also a vital necessity)

How do we conclude that this is a defense of consumerism?

on the topic of trains and the role of technology in ongoing atrocities, i think something to consider if this is shocking to you is that the development of all technology since the start of the industrial revolution (and a lot of it before that tbh) has been dictated by the needs of capital. trains wouldn't exist without the reign of an economic system that demands mass circulation of commodities. the world has not been shaped by what's best for everyone but what's best for perpetuating that economic system. as Debord says about media technology, "it should be understood that this apparatus is in no way neutral and that it has been developed in accordance with the spectacle’s internal dynamics" (The Society of the Spectacle, thesis 24).

[front-facing-pokemon]

[kacievvbbbb]

*Puts hand on your lower back and gently leads you down the path* walk with me for a moment. Think about it;

Young Mihawk, Young Shanks, Laurie confessing to Jo speech from Little Women (2017). Right before Shanks pulls off the robbery and heads to the East blue. the last time Shanks asks Mihawk to join his crew the only time he really means it.

*Grabs your arm as you start to walk away* wait wait- just listen.

Shanks saying all this? Right before he knows he’s about to steal something very important from a navy ship and would probably need to lie low for years. His way of begging Mihawk to come with him? Insane fucking cut my heart out.

Shanks: Sail with me?

Mihawk: …..What?

Shanks: Sail with me.

Mihawk:….(sigh) Shanks can we not-

Shanks: no no its no use Mihawk , we gotta have it out I have loved you ever since I’ve known you Mihawk I couldn’t help it, and and I tried to show you and you wouldn’t let me and I must make you hear me now and give me an answer because I cannot go on like this any longer, I gave up rum I gave up everything you didn’t like I’m happy I did it’s fine and I waited and I never complained because I, you know I figured you’d love me Mihawk and I realised im not half good enough and im not this great man and I-

Mihawk: Shanks! No.

And Shanks would keep pushing because to a young shanks whose only ever had crew as family and who never really got over his abandonment issues; Joining the crew is saying you’ll stay and staying means you love him enough to not leave him. And Shanks can’t deal with anyone else leaving him.

But of course all this does is push Mihawk away. They leave Shanks to rob a marine ship and Mihawk to leave a trail of bodies in his wake. And the next time they see each other Shanks has lost an arm and Mihawk’s entire world came crashing down.

[djevelbl]

Alright, so, final thoughts, the short version: gET ON WITH THE NEXT SEASON, CHOP CHOP STORY BOY--

Seriously tho, GREAT story — there's something about it that has made me go existential crisis levels of poetic over it that NOTHING ELSE has made me go which like. props to Evbo, he's doing great! I WILL be going feral over that ending and Parrot and that Clown cameo and Zam and all things I liked and so on so forth, like always. I wanna make character designs but it feels... wrong, I guess, in a sense to give them all designs beyond the cubic space they inhabit — I don't do well with simple and detail-free designs (like Zam's and Wemmbu's like seriously, 5 year old in paint level of detail smh /aff) and I believe that giving them ANY amount of detail they don't already have is doing their characters a disservice?? ESPECIALLY with clothes???? Idk how to say it or explain it, but the fact they don't wear armor is VERY intentional, right? I mean, PVP typically involves armor and the fact that acquiring armor is OPTIONAL is intentional for whatever reason so, again, in my head giving them any more detail than they have (or lack I say as I side-eye Zam and Wemmbu) is a disservice to how PVP Civilization works. But that's honestly just me

More spoiler-y territory up ahead, gonna put in one of those good ol' "click here for more!" thingamabobs that tumblr has. Don't say you weren't warned.

Alright, now that all the cool kids are here, let's discuss details:

When I say I went "existential crisis levels of poetic" over this thing, I mean "I wrote a whole thing about being a spectator willing and wanting to help, but unable to due to the nature of being in different levels of reality" type shit, might drop it on my ao3 (y'all should go by my ao3 i have fun stuff there and might start dropping some other stuff as well wink wink ok. self promo over) and it was honestly fun! Will DEFINITELY do some MORE of that around this new episode! Unironically frothing at the mouth waiting for a new season to start slowly being drop-fed to us like little fish being thrown those fish food chip things idk I'm too drunk to think (not really. but it's fun to say anyway)

I LOVED Zam but tbf I've been loving that motherfucking asshole bastard /aff this WHOLE TIME so like. nothing new lmaooo. I ALSO love Clown's little cameo! (not counting it as a SPOILER spoiler cuz like. it's 2 mins or so in. I won't count that shit as spoilers c'mon) but uh. ALSO nothing new lol I'm a HARDCORE (not really) Clown fan I WILL be bought and EASILY swayed over with the promise of Clown content, I'm REALLY that easy; anyway it was really fun and OFC he's an antagonist smh — he's either a bad guy protagonist or an antagonist, NEVER on the same side as the protagonist/a good guy who DOESN'T wanna murder ppl (I see what kinda theater kid he is. I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE MR. CLOWN. YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM ME)

I said it already but I'll say it again: Tabi had ALWAYS been fucking sus to me from the start, what with being SO AT THE READY to exploit Evbo's respawning ability for her own gain and all that, so her backstabbing him ain't a surprise to me; but what someone (I'm too lazy to get to the computer to give proper credits or quoting. y'all are gonna have to make do with paraphrasing) said in the comments is actually fucking interesting: Evbo respawned; after the cut to black Tabi is seen holding her diamond axe and while that serves to show the audience what she was really born as, it could very well also show that Tabi gave Evbo a mercy — she let him respawn. She — potentially — didn't kill him with The Eternal Sword, and instead delivered the final blow with her diamond axe: an object that would allow Evbo to come back from death. She's gone soft.

That's gonna be her downfall, one way or another. Clown was right in doubting her — while she's physically strong and knows all the techniques, she's not detached enough from her emotions that she's fully capable of pretending to form friendships without actually making friends; aka: she can pretend she doesn't care, but something deep inside of her does care what happens to Evbo. Until proven otherwise I'll take this scene as bEING RIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS, I READ TABI LIKE A FUCKING BOOK LET'S GO--

So all in all I'm gonna be OBSESSED over this for the next while — well done Evbo, well fucking done

The end to the story. whatever happens, I guess it happened — I have hopes, idk where they're placed or what they mean, but I have them.

Whatever happens, I know Evbo is going out with a bang.

[buddietommys]

"Why not?"

"I wish you were a girl."

[ratatatastic]

"And then looking at Niko Mikkola—obviously a guy that played a big role his first season here. Things are different for him now this year—losing Brandon Montour—you got him with Kulikov right now, they played quite a bit last year together. What are your expectations for him that carry possibly playing them together?" "I don't know if we'll end on that pairing 'cuz—it's gonna be a function of what we end up on Opening Night if all players are healthy and 5-6 isn't—is the 5-6 pair better off being split? So we're gonna have to do a little work on that. I expect Niko to continue to get better. I think he's still got room to grow not that we were by any means disappointed. He, right from the start of training camp last year, fit in, and then [be]came part of the identity of the team. The way he plays is the way we want our team to play. So I think he just found like the perfect home for him. We value his game. He' stronger, fitter, faster this year than he was last year, and you can see it on the ice. Hardworking man, hardworking man everyday. Plays hard in the games, plays practising hard to the point that I don't even watch him in practise other than when you're forced to 'cuz he kills a play or closes the gap or... In hard camps he's still got a smile on his face, he still enjoys it—really big part of our culture. I don't have a ceiling on him yet. He gets up the ice, he's just, you know, one of those gamers. I know that's too general of a word but his identity, his base state of play is exactly what we're trying to get all these younger players to [do.] The skillset doesn't matter, and certainly some players will look different by that skillset—they're not all that big, they're not all that rangy but the effort can be applied by all players, the way he plays. So he's a bit of a standard setter in intensity.

Training Camp 24 | 9.26.24 (x)

any time we get the audio of paul talking and waxing poetic about mikksy an angel truly gains their wings, puppies are happy and yipping, light is returned to this world and we all vomit rainbows

"in hard camps he's still got a smile on his face, he still enjoys it." YEAH HE DOES PAUL ROLL THE TAPES (x)(x)

[lemongogo]

hi

[astranauticus]

oh lol i forgot to post this robit sketches! because i have one (1) bit and im sure as hell gonna commit to it apparently

[b4kuch1n]

small update! much less sick now, fully on the mend. the comic's literally 3/4 done but I will not be posting it (along with all the other s&co stuff Ive been doodling) this week, in accordance with the global strike. I'll be finishing up and rounding out the rest of the e-sim donation comms instead, as well as highlighting similar drives and other fundraising efforts. thank you for your time

[starlooove]

I alluded to this in tags awhile ago but like. IK continuity doesn’t work this way and when things shifted from kooky and silly 40s stuff with psas scattered to like dark brooding whatever we’re supposed to take it as like either time passing with some hand waving to personalities or ‘it was always like this for them trust’ but thinking about dick specifically going from holy galloping grasshoppers Batman to dealing with Bruce in spyral and shit is so so so sad I can’t articulate it well rn but like everyone kinda agrees the shift happened after two face and jason but like no dick saw it all he saw it while it happened he saw Bruce taking tim to baseball games and then gaslighting him at 16 he saw the man who’d take care of a random baby on the fly threaten to send his youngest son back to the league he saw the man who helped usher in a new era of young heroes treat Steph like shit he saw the man who inspired hope for a future in civilians heroes and enemies alike take advantage of cass’ suicidal thoughts and separation from her own humanity he saw everything and he just has to. Deal. To everyone else this is just Bruce and ppl like Tim and cass justify it to an extent bc they love him and get exasperated and when Dick is angry but how couldn’t Dick be angry? That’s his dad and he’s being so fucking mean and idk I’m rambling

[zentriii]

this post was tagged anime and istg i have the scream. antonio the anti semantic cunt who dehumanized shylock simply bc he's jewish? is fem!shylock's fucking love interest? what the actual fuck

[bookwyrminspiration]

Line for you to find:

“It’s yet another reason I didn’t want to involve my family. I’ve never done anything I didn’t believe in—but that doesn’t mean I haven’t crossed hard lines.”

I have to concede this one to you, Mr. Pyren. I knew I recognized it, but I couldn't place it even after over half and hour of brainstorming. Because I got it in my head that it was an Alden quote, but when I couldn't find it I went to the internet to double check, and unfortunately it showed me the page number, so I ruined the test </3

alas! it is so obvious now that I've gotten past the Alden thing! but I think it's no surprise I missed the lodestar quote, that book mysteriously vanishes from so many memories