#literally thinking about getting a reduction

[professional-rat-eater]

Let’s just be super clear. If you ship Daniel and Armand and you genuinely believe it wasn’t a horribly abusive relationship, then you are reading their relationship wrong and you also believe there are circumstances where relationships between kidnapper/abuser and kidnapped/abused can work. Saying it’s just fiction doesn’t make sense because it still doesn’t exist there.

It’s not about the law, or what was common at the time. The relationship is believable. That definitely happened back in the 1970s. It’s not about whether it could have happened, because those relationships still happen in some places. But just because we don't want to use the medical term for the severe damage being done to Daniel’s mind, does not mean it didn’t happen.

There is no context that you could give that would make a relationship between a regular human (a deeply traumatised one) and a grown powerful abuser healthy. It does not exist, even in fiction. Daniel was an actual human and that isn’t how humans work.

Just call it what it is. If that’s gonna be your thing, be honest about what it actually is. If Daniel himself can acknowledge it, then you should be able to as well. It’s impossible to actually discuss these characters if people are just going to lie and purposely misinterpret them. Daniel’s trauma is literally the entire Devil's Minion thing and Armand is all that there's to it. If Armand isn’t an abusive creep, he is simply not Armand.

LMAO! So for anyone seeing this that didn’t see the post that provoked it, this is word-for-word a post I made about Marius and Armand’s relationship but with the names swapped out for Daniel and Armand.

Hey anon, these are not equivalent and I think you know that. Yes, I’m sure there more people like Daniel who were stalked around the globe by ancient vampires in the 1970s. Maybe there’s enough for them to start a support group for each other. And yes, you’re so right that this is exactly the same as real children who are groomed by real adults in the real world. What a fair and reasonable comparison to make that isn’t at all reductive to both DM and the character you’re trying to defend.

I know you probably think this is the call out post of the century but you’ve neglected to consider a pretty significant detail:

Virtually every Devil’s Minion shipper knows they’re toxic, much like Marius fans who understand him can admit to what he is. I know DM are toxic. If I knew Daniel irl, I would be telling him to get the fuck out of there. We all know Armand is evil and manipulative. It’s literally why we like him. I saw how pathetic and fucked up he was and was immediately enchanted by him. You see the difference between that and the specific Marius fans I talk about? We acknowledge exactly what Armand is and enjoy his character for it. We don’t pretend he isn’t a manipulative murderer. That’s (part of) why we like him. Of course that’s not to say there aren’t those who mischaracterise him too, but you responded to me so I can only speak for myself and what I see my mutuals posting about. I love Armand for what he is. All the good parts, all the bad parts, and that is literally all my Marius post was about. Holy shit. It was the singular point I was actually making. You were so close to getting it. I couldn’t give a fuck who your favourite character is, but quit pretending he’s not everything he is because you’re not a fan of him then. You’re a fan of a fanfic version of him.

I think I’ve probably posted at least a dozen times by now about Armand’s trauma shaping him into a monster, but you used DM so let’s go with that. You what’s particularly interesting about them? The many examples of Armand recreating behaviour Marius subjected him to with Daniel. The love bombing, lavishing him with gifts, being incredibly hot and cold with him emotionally, withholding vampirism from him and eventually turning him when he was dying. They’re a deliberate parallel!! Hello!? Terrible example to use!! It’s almost like traumatised people can in certain cases go on to recreate their trauma to try and make sense of it. You can also see this in Armand’s treatment of Claudia. They could’ve bonded over neglect by their makers and being turned young, but Armand decided to take out his trauma on her instead. I love how fucked up he is. Pretty much every Armand fan who gets him is the same. All DM’s existence proves is that Marius actually did deeply damage Armand’s ability to accept love and how he formed relationships, because he’s a fucking predator in multiple senses of the word. Whataboutism literally doesn’t change a thing. Armand could’ve gone after someone underage too and it still wouldn’t change anything about Marius. If anything, it would’ve reinforced it.

But notice how you were forced to acknowledge that Daniel was in fact a grown adult at the time? If he hadn’t been, the ship wouldn’t be nearly as popular.

Most. People. Don’t. Like. Pedophiles. You can’t be this much of a fan of one and be sensitive about it. I’m sorry to be harsh but it’s literally just the truth. Armand fans get enough shit from people who hate him, and it is only going to be worse if you like Marius. I’m not suggesting that’s okay or that I would dream of contributing to it, but it is going to happen more and more after s3 of the show airs. Prepare for that in whatever way is best for you.

You couldn’t even have your username attached to this. If you’re gonna go so hard to defend your favourite pedo, at least have some conviction about it. No one cares who your favourite character is. Well, I’m sure some people do but those people are weirdos and you should learn to ignore them. Love him as much as you want. I’m actually looking forward to seeing him in season 3, even if he is an utter bastard. Just either quit the mischaracterisation or suck it up and get on board with the fact that even in a fictional setting, and even in gothic horror, people do not vibe with pedophiles and they never will.

[kiyosbrokenmirror]

@serfuzzypushover 🙏🙏 thank you so much for leaving this in the tags because I have been meaning to talk about this topic for months!

So, I have talked about how Korekiyo (and many Dr charas tbh) gets viewed in a strictly black and white way, my first post abt him was literally about how I wish he could be represented as both a freak and a victim but let's talk about the way Sister Shinguji gets discussed instead.

The biggest problem with Sister is that, frankly she is a plot device, and her characterization in Canon is so sparse and ambiguous and only viewed trough the lens of Korekiyo (who is not reliable in the slightest) I understand how a lot of people don't know how to write her! But I find the reluctance to write her as an actual character sometimes a bit frustrating.

I agree with you that for me portraying her as a character creates a better narrative then not, because Korekiyo's story is deeply intertwined with her, and to never discuss her side can be, for me, at least very limiting narrative wise.

I feel like many people refuse to make her even a little sympathetic in fear that might invalidate Korekiyo's trauma, and in turn I think people who write her to be a good sister refuse to make her have any sort of flaws, for fear to make her seem abusive in any ways, and I think this way of thinking is limiting, like you as a person have to choose between a completely unsympathetic Sister who just wishes to hurt her brother and a symphatetic Sister who just wants to help him.

In that way you have people using Korekiyo's words to invalidate any form of theory that paints him as a victim, because she has to be evil, so if he says that he understands her, that she made him feel safe, that he loves her and that she did so many things for him, that cannot coexist with the vision that she is 100% evil thus cannot coexist with the theory that he was victimized by her.

It's a reductive, limiting way of seeing this, and furthermore a limiting way of seeing abuse and the dynamics between an abuser and their victim, in a way many abuse survivors will not even be able to relate to!, plus it truly limits the narrative between them into two choices and that really makes things frustrating :')

For me the tragedy of their story lies in the fact that Sister or how I call her, Miyadera was kind and loved her brother in sisterly ways, but she still choose out of her volition to hurt him and scar him for life, she knew what she was doing, the tragedy for me it's exactly that she was compassionate, kind, safe, but she was also controlling, selfish and unsafe.

Miyadera lived in a cage, and everything she was living trough was out of her control, that is tragic, that is something I want people to look at and think it's tragic but it's also tragic that she choose to trap her brother in the same cage she was in, even if she genuinely loved him.

[imwritesometimes]

This is the shit democrats need to be out in the streets banging the drum over right now. You voted for him and he's already fucking you over. You rural farming voters who thought you'd be safe from his anti-woke agenda. It's already coming for your livelihoods. Can you afford 4 more years of this shit?

[gxlden-angels]

I don't know entirely how to explain this, but I think an important part of healing from religious trauma is learning about substance use disorders and shifting your views on drugs to neutral

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

Sonic fandom when Knuckles has an entire epiphany montage where he calls the Whipple family his home: I mean. This could mean anything. Maybe Wade and Knuckles are good friends. Maybe Knuckles is friends with them.

Sonic fandom when Maddie tells a construction worker that the damage Knuckles did was done by her "big kid" so as to not admit that she has alien anthropomorphic animal teenagers living in her house, and then follows that up by calling Knuckles by "our big red friend" to Sonic, with all of this happening after Sonic says he considers Knuckles to be his roommate: OMG Knuckles series confirmed Knuckles Wachowski CANON I cannot believe we won!! He's her kid this is his home he's Sonic's brother!! After the show he gets back to the Wachowski household and gets in sooo much trouble cause Maddie is his mom

[lgbtlunaverse]

Could someone tell me where the interpretation that, in book canon, the promotion Nie Mingjue gives Meng Yao made Meng Yao's life worse than it was before, came from?

I have seen that claim made multiple times now and I've looked at the text over and over trying to see where the basis for it is and I. Can't find it? Don't get me wrong, it absolutely spells out that it does not and cannot fix everything for Meng Yao, but the idea that it was actively bad for him?

Lacking other evidence, I kind of have to assume that it comes from cql canon being sort of projected backwards onto book canon. In cql canon, meng yao is suffering active and explicit bullying and abuse from the captain while under the nie, and does so because the capain believes he has risen above his station via nmj's promotion of him. (In book canon this... isn't happening. It happens with the captain in Langya instead) However, in cql canon he has also been with the nie for years and is openly close to both Nie Mingjue and Nie Huasiang, whereas in book canon he has only been working with nie mingjue for a few months (though has, in that time, apparently become close enough to him for Lan Xichen to explicitly state Meng Yao is able to calm nmj down in ways no one else can? Ofc he does this... Right after that stops being true. But. Food for thought. Not what this post is about tho.) So, if you project the much more explicit abuse from the nie sect captain in cql back on novel jgy who has a presumably much less stable position in the sect overall you get... a meng yao for whom the promotion only means a bigger target on his back and virtually no protection from nmj, who we must assume he can't trust to talk to his about because he never mentions it. (This also explicitly violates book canon when it comes to meng yao's general behaviour, we'll talk about that in a sec)

And look. We all do frankencanon in this house. I get it. And for fanfiction that is very fun. But for a serious reading of the character, his situation, and the actions that lead from that this... doesn't make much sense, in my opinion.

So. Why is that? Why did I say this was out of character for the novel? Because Meng yao spoke up about the jin captain mistreating him. Multiple times! It's just that none of it mattered because no one cared to listen to him. This is a pretty important line for his character because it flatly shows that meng yao is not and has never seen murder as something trivial. He's not trigger happy. He will only do it if he sees no other way out that doesn't end in himself being seriously harmed. (Whether he's right or justified in these cases is not the point of this post.)

If anything remotely similar was happening in the Nie sect, he would have said so. Cql Meng Yao doesn't do this because cql Meng Yao is a different character, and also the plot wouldn't work if he did. Cql Nie Mingjue, by extension, comes off as a fundamentally less trustworthy figure in cql Meng Yao's life because apparently for whatever reason, he cannot be trusted with the information that the deputy he has already publicly defended is still being harassed, and doesn't notice even when it is really blatant. The assumtpion the audience is given is that, like a middle schooler getting the principal involved when being bullied, it would only make the harassment more viscious.

This... actually has a somewhat solid basis in the book. Because after nmj yells at the bullies in question Wei Wuxian says this.

And it is important to keep in mind that this is Wei Wuxian saying this. Not Meng Yao, not an omniscient narrator. Wei wuxian is drawing on his own experiences, likely from the Jiang family, to conclude that if someone is angry at you and thwarted by someone defending you, this generally does not make them less angry at you.

This is leaving out two crucial things, though.

Firstly, this worry isn't about the promotion at all.

The promotion hasn't even been brought up. In the novel it doesn't ctually happen immediately, it takes another few battles where meng yao continues to do his job well and nie mingjue continues praising him for him to eventually go "yeah, you deserve a raise."

This is another aspect that is being projected from cql canon onto book canon I presume, because it does happen quite quickly there, and it's a throwaway line in the books so it's easy to miss. I can't be mad about anyone forgetting the difference, but it is important to mention for this particular analysis.

Which is the second point: change in status

Wei Wuxian couldn't exactly change status within the Jiang family. (And if he could, that would just fuel rumours that he was jfm's bastard even more and make madam yu even angrier at him, etc etc.)

This isn't comparable to Meng Yao. The worry Wei Wuxian is talking about is explitly about Nie Mingjue's initial very loud defense of him. Before he has any idea Nie Mingjue is going to promote him.

Promoting him would likely decrease his chances of cultivators coming after him because now he was in a higher standing in the sect than they were. If applied to that earlier metaphor of middle school bullying it's like if the bullied kid suddenly got hired as a teacher. Which. Doesn't work with the metaphor at all. Touché. But what I am trying to say is that any payback they would have planned for him relied on the fact that they could make sure that Nie Mingjue wasn't going to be within very convenient earshot a second time, and as a random disciple Meng Yao couldn't just go complain to him every time.

But as his right hand man? Who spends most of his time working directly alongside him? Lmao. Good luck. Oh, sure, it is very likely that they feel offended a son of a whore has been raised in status above them, and many will continue to do so as jgy rises through cultivation society (in fact, Wei Wuxian's observations are absolutely on point for how Madam Jin will be treating jgy later on). But as we can also see from the way jgy is treated and how he treats others throughout the story: you can be upset all you want, but if that person is higher than you in status there's jack shit you can do about it.

If I am correct and Wei Wuxian is basing this on his experiences with the Jiang family, it makes sense why he'd miss this. Madam Yu gets to be way angrier at Jiang Fengmian as his wife than some random disciples can be at Nie Mingjue. Insulting Meng Yao, suggesting that he didn't deserve his promotion or that he earned it through less than proper means (you know who is mother is) is also an insult to Nie Mingjue and the way he chooses to run his sect. They can't do that.

Another thing I see brought up in this regard would be the tea scene. There may be no explicit harassment like in the show, but cultivators still don't respect him! The disrespect is just quieter and more subtle.

Tiny detail: these are actually not Nie cultivators

They're cultivators Lan Xichen is escorting with him, making a pitstop in heijan.

The book confirms this by basically outright stating that this is the first time they see his face, and recognize him as Jin Guangshan's bastard son.

Now, just because there is no proof that it happened doesn't mean it definitely never happened. Mdzs is a novel that often leaves stuff out or up to interpretation. Similar stuff to the tea situtation could very well be happening in the background. But I do think it is pretty significant that there is no mention whatsoever of Meng Yao having any negative treatment from Nie cultivators betwen him and Nie Mingjue meeting and him executing them while spying for Wen Ruohan, and the most we get is Wei Wuxian's personal speculation, after which he immediately goes to wax poetic about how surprised he is that Meng Yao and Nie Mingjue are getting along super well.

And, again, novel Meng Yao would have said something. He doesn't say anything about the tea scene. - Or? Does he? Notably 3zun have some very long in depth conversations that Wei Wuxian zones out from because he's busy thinking about Lan Zhan again. But let's not rely on what-ifs. Let's say that neither he nor Lan Xichen find it worth bringing up. Major reasons for that would be that a) these are not nie cultivators, nie mingjue wouldn't really have the authority to scold them. Especially because b) it's such a subtle offense it could easily be handwaved as coincidence. "They just always brush their cups clean like that!! It's wartime you know, and they were traveling! They're used to drinking from vessels that aren't thoroughly washed everytime! It's just a habit!" And would therefore not be worth reporting.

But anything worse than that? A "price tens or hundreds of times greater" like wwx mentions? He'd report it! I do understand that "well if it was happening why didn't he say something?" would, in real life, be victim blaming. This is not real life, and I am not talking about this in a matter of blame. If Meng Yao was being mistreated in the Nie and stayed silent about it, it would still not be his fault. I am talking about this in a manner of character consistency.

His admission of seeking help in the Jin sect shows that at that time and prior to it (a very good argument can be made that he loses faith in this idea) he believes that if he is being mistreated and someone with the authority to say something about it takes his side, things can improve. If Nie Mingjue standing up for him in Qinghe only made things worse, he would not have tried to ask for help in an even more hostile environment. You can call Meng Yao many things, but naïve isn't one of them.

Meng yao's later habit of completely isolating himself and lying to everyone around him comes from the fact that revealing his suffering would mean explaining several horrible things he's become complicit in and he does not feel safe admitting to that. But he's done nothing wrong here!

The reading where he says nothing would imply an either correct or incorrect belief in Meng Yao's eyes that Nie Mingjue did not much care for his wellbeing or safety. Oh sure he defended him once but doing so again multiple times would be such a bother. This also contradicts his later behaviour, where he banks solely on Nie Mingjue's protective instincts to seal his qi and escape during the confrontation in Langya. After having been caught murdering a man, he is still convinced Nie Mingjue will immediately try to help him when he is in serious danger.

And even if you very badly want to characterize Nie Mingjue as a blundering idiot who is apparently less trustworthy in Meng Yao's eyes than the jin cultivators who had already resoundly rejected him by the time he tries to ask for help with the langya captain. He doesn't say anything to Xichen either! Lan Xichen, who has explicitly and exhaustively been portrayed as kind and understanding to Meng Yao's circumstances and very willing to talk to Mingjue if Meng Yao wants something from him he doesn't otherwise think he'd get. The conversation Mingjue overhears where Meng Yao's new position in the Nie is explictly brought up would be kind of the perfect time to go "yeah I've been promoted but I'm not treated well by other soldiers" aaaand. Nothing. So unless you come to the conclusion that Meng Yao trusted the Jin he told about the captain's abuse more than Lan Xichen you kind of have to conclude that Meng Yao's treatment after his promotion improved significantly. And that even if people still disliked him they could not openly do anything about it because he was high enough in status for that to be socially inappropiate. Which is, explicitly, one of his main motivators over the entire course of the story: Avoiding mistreatment by getting high enough on the social ladder it doesn't matter what people think of him, they can't hurt him.

And I'm not sure how to reconcile that character journey with the idea that he would, at any point, have preferred to keep his head down and stay where he was. When he was so desperate to crawl his way out.

[please-picturemeintheweeds]

..

[sexynetra]

As a contrarian to how so many people perceive (or write) Marcia as a pillow princess that doesn't have a bone in her body that could top, power top Marcia is the only Marcia that lives in my heart. Okay, maybe submissive top Marcia can also be there. As a treat.

I had this chat early on with my beta and she opened my eyes to the vast and beautiful world of the potential of top Marcia. I’d already established the rawnsyf dynamic, but I have many universes planned in my mind, and Marcia deserves to be dominant sometimes!!! Like just cause she’s blonde and hyperfeminine doesn’t mean she can’t fuck yknow? Let hyperfeminine girls top intimidating girls. As a treat.

[riddlemearose]

There were a couple of things for me.

The first was realising the plot, especially the opening tutorial area, was a copy-paste from BOTW. Ghost King, area secluded from the rest of the map where you have to complete four shrines to leave, etc etc. It didn't have any of the importance that I felt the Great Plateau did. Hearing Zelda's voice, watching the Calamity awaken and envelop the castle, and finally having Rhoam himself be the one to ask you to save Zelda and the rest of the Kingdom hit hard, and I didn't get any of that w/ Rauru and the sky islands.

The next thing was the loss of the Sheikah tech like everywhere - and finding out that the devs were like "yeah it just vanished". Umm what? The Sheikah and the ancient technology is one of the two cores of BOTW's whole narrative, with the other core being nature. Number 1 how do you just strip that away, especially when it's so key to Hyrule's history? And number 2, what's replaced the Sheikah tech then? The answer is nothing. The Zonai were introduced to be a replacement, but the writers never went in depth with anything about the Zonai. They lived, they died, we get to use their stuff for free.

The Secret Stones. Wtf is up with them? It feels weird that Ganondorf is causing the regional phenomena to stop people from finding the Stones or something, when literally no one knows wtf a Secret Stone is, nor would be able to or have any reason to go access the temples where they're kept. Ganondorf causing the regional phenomena is the direct reason anyone gets a Secret Stone. If he didn't do anything (like he does w/ the rest of the plot), then Link wouldn't have a single Sage?????

The biggest thing for me is the plot. For an open-world game, TOTK has an extremely linear and extremely shallow storyline. The thing about BOTW is it literally doesn't matter what order you do anything in; the story is the same and, better yet, it's wholly unaffected by your choices (in a good way obviously).

Totk does not have that. For example the devs don't want you to get the Master Sword before you find all the other Dragon Tears, Mineru and clear the Great Deku Tree, despite giving you the technology to get to the Light Dragon.

So if your story is reliant on people following it in a linear way otherwise they either get massive spoilers about important plot points, then it shouldn't be in an open-world game.

And finally Ganondorf. Oh my god, Ganondorf. This might get catch some shit but I dunno how they managed to make him more bland. His entire character is literally summarised perfectly by Yunobo in-game as "we don't know anything about the Demon King other than the fact that he's bad news and super strong".

Writers that is your main antagonist! We should know stuff about him? We should know his motivations and they should be more complex than "wants to destroy everything bc Power"?? What are you doing???

I was done w/ the game by the time I got to Ganondorf. Walked into the boss fight w/ several rocket shields, at least two 5-shot Lynel Bows and about 800 bomb flowers from exploring the depths to hide from the plot. Whole thing was over Very Quickly.

To summarise, here are my thoughts on TOTK Cons: the entire plot Pros: Glide Armour

wont have time to work on anything for a few days probably, so uh, since i love reading comments/tags of people sharing their experiences- as part of the preparation for the totk rant script i got another question to ask :3

if you dont like tears of the kingdom, was there a moment that "broke" you, as in, the moment you knew this game is worse than you thought/hoped, and if so what was it?

personally, while i was suspicious after seeing its last trailer, i told myself its just me again and i kept up my hopes for a long time into my playthrough- its hard to point to a specific point since it was a growing feeling of something being off, things didnt make sense and i ever so more wondered how they would pull this all together (they didnt)- i do think the moment i stopped being in denial about it was when i found the shrine of life, the beginning of botw, and found .. nothing, a dingy cave practically licked clean of any traces of the shiekah tech like it never existed, instead of the medical bed a pathetic puddle of water that healed you, no one caring at all, like it actually never happened- i felt like the game pointed and laughed at me for caring about botw, pretty sure i was struggeling to keep it together on stream bc it forced me to realize this game truly is everything i hoped it wouldnt be, even if that sounds a little weird, at that time zelda and especially botw was so much more important to me, a passion for the franchise this game really did end up killing.

[icannotgetoverbirds]

love love love being forced to go downstairs where they have the tv blaring at full blast for an appointment only to find out that the person I'm meeting with isn't going to be in today (and she didn't bother to send me an email to cancel it) and then on top of that when i see the aggressively heterosexual aggressively monogamous and amatonormative scene on tv about a woman being more attracted to her male partner for getting jealous because it's "caveman"-like and i joke that I'll never understand monogamous people, getting told by the security guard there that it's human nature to get jealous of your partner's exes, implying very casually that polyamory is somehow less natural. I told the guard I exist as proof otherwise and was met with "yeah well you're the exception not the rule" it doesn't make me any less natural???? it doesn't make me any less human???

i should not have to justify my existence to random ignorant monogamous people for the crime of making a light hearted joke.

[transmutationisms]

You ever think about how bleak it is that the American understanding of addiction treatment is still based almost solely on the ideology of AA and NA? I think it's by far one of the cultiest, most retrograde things still viewed as totally normal in the US.

yes it makes me so insane. even doctors in the us who don't reroute patients directly into 12-step meetings are still operating off the same basic ideas (substance use is an uncontrollable external disease entity that takes over yr brain, also you're intemperate and morally compromised, also the only solution is to seek god a higher external intervention) like it has such a total capture of the entire us medical imagination. the number of people who don't even know that things like medication treatment exist, let alone having any familiarity with any harm reduction or recovery frameworks besides total abstinence, is frankly disturbing. and then it just becomes this self-sustaining logic where you punish people for using and then they use more and the psychiatric-carceral explanation is that that's proof of how innately fucked up they were all along and how they need to be kept away from substances. even the few social workers or whatever who criticise 12-stepping usually max out at "well it works for Full Blown Addicts but regular people can probably be less strict" like the existence of these groups completely obviates the need for any actual challenge to ruling treatment ontologies. and this is before you even get into the expansion of 12-stepping into other behaviours lmaooo like in undergrad in the dining hall i used to get visually assaulted with posters for 'overeaters anonymous' 12-step meetings every time i wanted coffee, there are meetings for sex addicts, 'crime addicts' (i'm not kidding), gambling, workaholism, going into debt... and the original model doesn't even work for the one thing it was intended to work for! because it's the equivalent of going to confession for protestants. and then we just export that model onto literally any behaviour designated as socially insalubrious anyway 👍 i mean really, why do things that help people. who cares about that shit i think we should keep berating them into xianity instead

[grison-in-space]

from the number of asinine complaints about how "voting is NOT a form of harm reduction" because harm reduction is for ADDICTS! ONLY! I'm seeing around... all coming from OP blogs I don't recognize and which otherwise don't have much presence... well, that coordination alongside the timing of US politics sure feels like the Russian troll bots agitating again. (Yes, they absolutely infested Tumblr; I think @ms-demeanor had a great post about what the bots looked and felt like somewhere that I will have to try and track down tomorrow.)

The thing is, if you actually do know harm reduction well, the complaint makes no sense. It's not as if the origin of harm reduction is a secret or especially hard to find out more about. I am not exactly an expert in the field: I have a educated layperson's interest in public health and infectious disease, I'm a queer feminist of a certain age and therefore have a certain degree of familiarity with AIDS-driven safer sex campaigns, and I'm interested in disability history and self advocacy (and I would in fact clarify harm reduction as a philosophy under this umbrella). So I have about twenty years of experience with harm reduction as a philosophy basically by existing in communities whose history is intertwined with harm reduction, which means I know it well from many different angles, and I know how the story of the philosophy is generally taught.

See, this is a story that starts, as so many stories do, in the 1980s with something monstrous President Reagan was doing. In this case, it was the AIDS epidemic, and Reagan refusing to devote any money or time to what eventually became called AIDS (rather than the original GRIDS, which came with its own baked in homophobia). Knowing themselves abandoned by society in this as in all things, and watching as friends and loved ones died in droves, queers and addicts are two communities who see that they are the only resources that they collectively have to save each other's lives. Queers know that sex, even casual sex, is an important part of people's lives and culture... and people aren't going to stop doing it even if there's a disease, so how can it happen safely? Condoms. Condoms every time, freely available, easy and shameless, shower them on people in the street if you have to. (And other things: this is the origin of the concept of "fluid bonding", for example... both of which were concepts that were immediately adopted in response to COVID, like outdoor socially distsnced greetings and masks and "bubbles." That wasn't an accident. Normalizing sexual health tests and seeing hard results on paper before sex was a thing, too.)

Addicts, too, knew that using was going to happen no matter how earnestly people tried to stop. If it was that easy, addiction wouldn't exist. So: how do you make using safer for longer? If you could stop someone getting HIV before they could bring themselves to get clean, that's a whole life right there. If you could stop someone overdosing once, twice, a dozen times, that's more time you're buying them to claw themselves out of addiction and into a better place. Addicts see, right, needle sharing is getting the diseases spread, so cut down on needle sharing. Well, needles aren't easy to get hold of. Their supply is controlled because people who aren't prescribed needles are theoretically junkies, so taking the needles away makes it harder to use, right— and no one is complicit, and also you see fewer discarded needles lying around where they're unsanitary and unsafe, right? Except that people want to do a buddy a good turn, so they share if there's no other option, and they'll keep a needle going until it's literally too blunt to keep using if need be. So fighting needle sharing means making it easier to get needles to shoot up with: finding a place to discard used ones and get as many fresh ones as you need to use safely!

Making free needles available to junkies and free condoms for the bathhouses was not a popular solution with politicians, for perhaps obvious reasons. Nor was routine testing of the blood supply, because that cost money too. But these things work to stop the spread of disease. Thus the principle of harm reduction: policy interventions in response to communities that frequently engage in risky behavior should focus on whatever reduces aggregate harm by reducing the risk rather than by trying to reduce the behavior. The homos and junkies say look, all your societal judgement in the world hasn't stopped us being homos and junkies yet. You ain't going to look after us? We'll look after our own. And this is the form that takes. Not increasing the pressure to act like people who aren't is, but making it safer to be the people we are while we try to be the happiest versions of ourselves. Even if that means being morally complicit in a whole lot of casual sex and drug abuse.

The thing is, harm reduction is a philosophy rooted in the defiance of people who knew that their society thought they deserved to die painfully, young, invisible and alone. This is not the kind of thing that people come up with and get mad if you adapt it and share it, especially if you tell the story of where it came from. And importantly, harm reduction is not purely the child of addiction: that philosophy, from the get go, was cooked up to apply both to substance abuse and casual sex. It didn't just spread from addiction care; it was born straddling addiction care and queer & feminist health care.

So it doesn't make sense to see actual activists who know harm reduction well complaining that this is a term exhibiting semantic drift when we talk about voting as harm reduction. It's actually a good metaphor: you're reducing the overall risk of the worst case scenario metaphors by voting Democrat, at least until future votes can install a system where multiple parties can flourish on the political scheme. (Democrats and Republicans are essentially coalitions of a pack of arguing factions anyway, and those factions are essentially what would be classed elsewhere as a party in its own right; the US essentially just lumps political granularity rather than splitting it in our political system.) And anyone who understands harm reduction itself knows that.

So it's this wildly inorganic complaint being voiced repeatedly by different sources. Sounds like a pretty good flag for a potential psyop to me.

If you want to learn more about harm reduction and its history, especially from an addiction perspective, I cannot recommend Maia Szalavitz's Undoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction (2022) highly enough. Szalavitz has a history of addiction of her own as well as being a clear and accessible writer with an excellent grasp of neuroscience and history. I have a lot of respect for her work.

[avelera]

I feel like so much of the silly Mel vs. Viktor discourse when it comes to Jayce would be resolved if people realized that the plot was originally conceived as a basic morality play arc with Mel as the devil on one shoulder and Viktor as the angel on the other for Jayce. You can even see it in some of the early promotion art for the show:

The bones of Jayce's plot in Season 1 is of a good-guy scientist who is tempted by the allure of politics and fame, with a beautiful femme fatale politician seducing him towards power on the one side and his humble 'brotherly' relationship with his scientific partner representing Jayce's 'true self' that he is drawn away from by her machinations. It's a very, very old school, reductive, male-centric plot that literally boils down to "bros before hos".

It even makes sense for S2, with Jayce overcoming his corruption arc in S1 and returning to his "bro" only for his prior sins to tragically launch Viktor's own corruption arc as the Machine Herald only after Jayce has learned his lesson.

And then the Arcane writers and Fortiche subverted this plot. Here's how:

They made all three characters multi-faceted adults with their own agency and motivations. None of them are puppets for the others or, if they are, the time one character spends controlling the choices of another becomes part of that controlling character's sins that must be atoned for (namely, Jayce resurrecting Viktor against his will, Mel manipulating Jayce against his will, Viktor trying to control everyone against their will).

For example, they made Mel complex and interesting and a good person in her own right. Yes, she still has elements of the beauty, danger, and allure of a femme fatale but by making her her own person with her own plot and motives, none of which are malicious (at most, they are self-serving until she changes her views on Hextech and how best to bring peace to Piltover).

Jayce is still torn between Mel and Viktor but he also fully has his own agency, as many are quick to point out. He is often dragged around by the manipulations of others too (Mel yes, but also Marcus, Vi, and Ambessa influence Jayce into bad decisions). Part of his arc is learning how to be true to himself and his own goals after his time spent in the Anomaly future. But, even there, you can still see the bones of the original morality play arc, where the "Good Ending" for Jayce is to go back to his lab partner "bro" and bring both of them back to being true to themselves.

Viktor isn't just helplessly standing by while Jayce ignores him. In fact, Viktor often deliberately cuts Jayce out of his experiments. He doesn't tell Jayce about the Shimmer, or the self-experimentation, or even about Sky's death until after Jayce resurrects him with the Hexcore. Viktor has agency, he has his own goals, and while he frequently chastises Jayce for abandoning their shared dream in what I believe is another hint of the bones of the original morality play plot, he also has his own flaws and his own journey to go on independent of Jayce.

Much of the silly bickering I see between Mel and Viktor fans comes down to who "deserves" Jayce, who is "erased" by not ending up with Jayce, whether or not Mel is manipulative, or if Viktor thinks about Jayce at all when he's busy pursuing his own goals, and I think all of those are absurd arguments.

Mel is manipulative, it is part of the bones of the morality play plot that has her as the antagonist, but they made her so much more than that, that I think it's an active disservice to the character they made to reduce her story down to whether or not she ends up with Jayce. I get why people get hung up on it, because I do believe it's the core of the first draft of her plot, but the richness of her character comes from moving beyond that. Indeed, in S2, the least important part of her character is her relationship to Jayce. She has her own stuff going on.

Whether or not Jayce is a victim of manipulation or whether or not he pursued power for its own sake is also showing an understanding of the basic, core plot they built the richness on top of. Jayce was seduced by Mel's manipulation and he did grasp after power, but they enriched his character by making his goals more noble and more tragic. He's always trying to fight for Viktor, for Hextech, for their shared dream, and for making Piltover a safer, better place, but how he goes about it often makes matters worse until he learns, grows, gains wisdom, and makes terrible mistakes he arguably can never make up for fully.

Jayce also isn't fully a victim of Mel's manipulation, just as she is not fully a mastermind able to control his every move. He breaks away at a certain point and makes his own (poor) decisions in ways that frighten her and make her regret her actions, until he grows enough to recognize the wisdom in her advice (though he later grows again and recognizes the original manipulation, which leads to him breaking up with her in 2.08 because Mel's sins are still there and they are the reason she and Jayce don't have hope for a future together once he realizes he can't trust her because actions have consequences in Arcane).

As for Viktor, he doesn't like Mel. In that, I think we again see the original morality play roots, with him as the angel on the shoulder disliking the devil who is seducing Jayce. But they enriched his character by having him respect Jayce's choices even as he may have privately disapproved of them, and to have his own arc to worry about with his failing health, and his other flaws like intellectual tunnel vision/naiveté, and his tendency to self-isolate in the face of his terminal illness. He has his own stuff going on.

They also subverted the morality play arc to a certain extent by having Viktor stop being the angel in S2. Indeed, the framework more or less falls away entirely and it become Jayce trying to save Viktor from himself, and from Jayce's own mistakes of not destroying the Hexcore, while Mel is busy with her own story of politics, war, and magic.

Anyway, I hope some of this makes sense. But I think if people just recognized that yes, there are elements of Mel as a bad guy in the fabric of the story, of a story where Jayce is in a balancing act between his demons and his angels, but that good writers came in and layered real people over these simplistic plots, made it so Mel's story isn't just about Jayce, Jayce's story isn't just about getting corrupted by a femme fatale, and Viktor's story isn't just about being abandoned by Jayce, and thus elevated the trope beyond its tired-out, simplistic roots, there'd be a lot less wank.

[deathsmallcaps]

She *can* do damage, but she doesn’t now that I’ve kept her safe for so long. Instead she likes to prop her legs up and cross them like a lady

I don’t have a picture of her crossing her back legs but she DOES do it

getting a wolfdog for protection is so fucking dumb. ma'am you know wolves are naturally timid of humans, right? you could grab literally any shepherd or pit mix from your local shelter and it will guard your house better than a wolfdog and destroy your house slightly less

[glitter-stained]

Thinking about how some modern comics writers (Tom Taylor) write the batfam and why it doesn't sit right (this post centers around the robins because of their training but some of that reflexion would definitely fit for Barbara and Cass as well.)

The thing with writing a team of people with similar training and strength is you can't take the easy route of "well this one is the smart one! And this one is the flexible one! And this one is the strong one!" .... which is obviously reductive to all of their characters. Obviously, they have interpersonal differences; Dick, being raised as an acrobat, is the most flexible, but that doesn't mean that every single one of these little fuckers doesn't like to bend, twist and somersault to dodge bullets like an annoying worm on a string being flung around in the sky. They're Robins. Obviously, Jason is the bulkiest, but that doesn't mean they don't all go through hardcore conditioning -Tim is only considered "frail" when you put him between Bruce and Jason, this guy would bench-press you any day, come on. (And DC editorial can lie to us about the girls' weights and heights and make them at the limit of ed-territory even though they're doing parkour and hardcore martial arts every day but I know the truth, Steph's strong as hell, homegirl's got bazooka-level guns). Obviously Damian was raised in the League and is proficient in a bunch of martial arts, but they all received training from a bunch of different experts, including, for all of them, the same guy (that they are all so normal and chill about.) Obviously, Tim is the one who used detective work to figure out everyone's identity but you're kidding yourself if you think he's the only intelligent/detective one amongst the robins. Being smart and a detective is a defining part of all of their characterization, and so is being a leader and a strategist. And then of course with that kind of simplified characterization we end up with Steph being "the girl robin" and Damian "the assassin one/stabby one" and Duke "the meta one" (yes this post counts Duke as a Robin. They trained him and also just cause I wanted to. I love him.)

And even if we make an effort and try to dissect it "this one is the detective smart one! And this one is the strategist! and this one is smart in a more techy-way! And this one is the leader! And this one- hey what kind of intelligence do we have left..." obviously doesn't work either. Duke was a exhilarating strategist in WaR already, Jason's strategic work in UTH and detective in Lost Days is thrilling, Damian is a fucking child surgeon (do I need to develop how intelligent that kid is), Dick was the first leader of the Titans and is always doing detective work like, that's an inherent part of his character, Duke was a cute-ass baby doing puzzles and planning to defeat the Riddler himself, Steph literally became Spoiler to stop Cluemaster (girl knows to solve riddles that would make Nygma shit his pants), they've almost all lead a team at some point, etc, etc. All of this is great and cool and a character being great doesn't take away from the skills of another character! Stark contrasts cannot possibly be the only interesting team dynamics, especially since they already have their own teams of contrasting skillset and personalities.

Imo, best robin team-up dynamics is them stepping on eachother's toes with their plans, getting into rapid-fire brainstorming sessions where they're all finishing eachother's sentences, reaching a conclusion and saying it out loud at the same time, one of them having a crazy ass plan and suggesting it to the other and the other saying "i like the way you think" to that person who thinks exactly like them, getting mad at eachother for being stubborn while also being a stubborn little shit, pulling complicated acrobatics together, and just thriving solving a good old complicated mystery with other people who are just as competent and enthusiastic about detective work as them but not a carbon copy, with extremely specific strength and weaknesses and quirks (like Dick's ability to recognise heroin by putting it in his mouth, Damian's uncanny voice imitation ability, etc.)

Of course, this doesn't even begin to touch the family drama, but honestly we get so much family drama angst with no real consequence rn, I'd really love just a robin team-up, relatively low-stakes (aka nothing taking over the city, the world, no past traumas unearthed to haunt them or parental abuse or secret cults etc etc.) Just a very elaborate murder mystery and a good excuse for all the robins to be there and a story that works with their similarities and their potential (both comedic and in terms of plot) rather than erasing it. It would be so much fun!

[elumish]

Hello friends!

I know it's only August, but I thought I'd start early:

If you have the legal right to vote in the United States, there is no benefit to you in not voting. All that not voting does to you is remove your most powerful legal ability to impact the identity of those who represent you in the government.

By the time you reach the election, by the time ballots are printed and you are filling in a bubble or pressing a button or flipping a lever, your only meaningful choice for who to vote for are the people who are listed on the ballot.

Because we live in a two-party system, in the vast majority of jurisdictions*, you are choosing between members of two parties. If you vote for someone who is not a member of one of those parties, you are throwing away your ability to meaningfully impact who wins that election. It sucks. it's shitty. It's unfortunate. But if you want a third party candidate to have a chance in a major race, it starts years before the election, not when you are standing in front of your ballot in November.

And if you think, they're both the same as each other--they're not. For literally any policy that you care about, there will be differences. Pick the policies you care most about, find the one who sits closer to you and vote for them. That is the only way that laws will move in the direction you want, by electing people who vote for policies that are closer to what you want.

I studied game theory in college, and from my standpoint it was one of the most useful and educational classes I took during my entire academic career, because of this key idea: If you want 10, and your options are 0 or 5, 5 is a better option for you. Something gives you more than nothing, even if you want a lot.

You will not get a politician who agrees with everything you want, unless you run for office yourself. Pick what you care the most about, and vote based on that. See voting as harm reduction. See voting as public transportation. See voting as whatever gets you out to vote.

But vote.

*There are a few independents in office. An independent or third party candidate will not win the Presidency in 2024.