#me: this is IMMORAL and INHUMANE

[licollisa]

i’d love to hear your take on sans’ personality!

i was going through your whole blog (as you do) and saw ur post on how sans tends to be mischaracterized, but fanon takes are also very normal and generally just fine, and i agree - i feel like some amount of personal spin from the author is always expected (and keeps things fresh and fun to a degree), but i also feel as if sans is a somewhat tough character to actually pin down when you’re writing him, so i’ve similarly had to drop some fic when they stray too widely from my non-negotiable sans traits lol. (like Being Calm and unruffled. bc while some of that is depression, a large part of it is Just The Way He’s Built lmao.)

Oh for sure, I also have my own set of Sans mischaracterization pet peeves in fics (though I'd often look the other way if the fic is well-written because beggars can't be choosers, no writer owes anyone a perfect Sans voice, fanfics are for fun, etc etc. Hell one of my favorite fics of all time portrayed Sans as an asshole and I'm not complaining because good god the writing is just THAT delicious and I still can't believe I'm reading it for free).

E.g Sans calling another adult (often times the MC) with 'kid'. Or like I've mentioned on another post, if he's quick to anger or aggressive enough to attack at the slightest provocation. Sometimes it's not a case of mischaracterization at all, just something I personally can't read without feeling like a wet kitten (the next time I read an overused skeleton related pun I will escape my own and DIE).

I often theorize why this is a Thing. I yearned to understand why I'm subjected to read yet another skele-ton, tibia, humerus, funny bone pun. Maybe since Undertale was popular with a big ass fanbase, and Sans is like our mascot, so when you combine this with a majority of the fandom being in the younger side -- youths full of time and creativity and energy though lacked the writing experience -- what's left of our poor skeleton is a pile of flanderized bones. Which is often the case when you're young and you just started writing because damn that blue skeleton is too romance able to deny (want write... But HOW write???).

You thought of some of his traits you often see (ketchup, touch Papyrus and die, blue glowing eye, epic bones & blaster attacks, puns, depression, have I mentioned the touch Papyrus and die? Puns again, threats, the bad time catchphrase, so on so forth) and you use these as a guiding bible to writing Sans the Skeleton. Boom, Sans x Reader 200k enemies to lovers.

,,,Bottom line is, I'm kind of sure the tendency to mischaracter him stems from Undertale's popularity and the younger part of the fandom. That, or after all these years, people had simply grown to love and accept Fanon Sans in all his slightly unlikeable behavior glory (heartwarming). So the inaccurate potrayal is now, like, on purpose -- on top of fanon him being easier to pin down because the canon guy are too tricky to pin down, like you said.

From what I've seen though, the canon Sans starts to get the love he deserves again! All is good. Now I can read a Sans x Reader 200k enemies to lovers, but with the actual dude this time. Awesome.

Ight, that said. I legit also think people should write him in the way that makes them the happiest. Sans is fictional but your happiness isn't. Even if your Sans will finally be the one to prompt me to escape my own skeleton. Or your Sans is RABID and deserves JAILTIME and GROWLS and BARA. Go wild, be free, and more importantly, have fun! <3

[thornsent]

i am prepared at an impending point in time to post a long tangent about how the redesign of a specific character from a fighting game I have NOT played and probably WON'T because of the treatment of this character single-handedly says more about exorsexism and transmisogyny targeting nonbinary people than most binary trans people are willing to even consider

[star-mum]

local girl wakes up not in a good mood, minor inconveniences and period pains make her absolutely insufferable. More at 7pm

[dragonlights]

Idk man. I don't know about the history of Palestine. And I- not having done like, academic research- do believe that Jewish folks might indeed be indigenous to the area. (Like, it sounds plausible from what I've heard)

But. Using that as an excuse to like, force folks from their homes and kill them is unconscionable. Like. How do other Jewish folks not look at the suffering of people in Gaza and not see their cousins? Their grandfathers and mothers?????

Why do we use the past to completely excuse the cruelty of the present???

[cursemewithyourkiss]

"Morals" are not a specific set of beliefs, but any set of beliefs about what is ethical. Stop calling people who don't share your morals immoral. They do have morals, just not yours.

[kathrahender]

So let me get this straight:

You're okay with your children watching murder scenes or worse things in media, but when two boys/two girls kiss is suddenly too much for you.

Do you realize how horrible does that sound?

You prefer your children watching something ilegal and immoral (like yk, killing someone) over letting them watch two persons showing that love has no gender.

Very logical.

Very very logical.

And not inhuman at all.

[slayingfiction]

Character Flaws

When creating characters, it's all too easy to envision the most perfect people, especially when it comes to creating love interests. Even our loveable morally grey characters are mostly perfect, if only they would stop killing...

So, here are a list of some flaws (based on personality, not appearance) to help round out your characters. While it's nice to be good at everything, it's abnormal. No one is perfect, and your characters will be much more relatable if you knock them down a bit.

Please note, none of these are (specifically) mental disorders, as I don't consider those a character flaw.

The Good (aka little flaw):

Absent-minded, aimless, argumentative, audacious, awkward, blunt, bold, boring, capricious, childish, clumsy, competitive, complainer, cowardly, critical directionally-challenged, dubious, finicky, fixated, flake, flirty, foolish, gossipy, gruff, gullible, hedonistic, humourless, hypocritical, idealist, idiotic, ignorant, illiterate, immature, impatient, impetuous, impulsive, incompetent, inconsiderate, indecisive, indifferent, indomitable, irrational, lazy, lustful, materialistic, meddlesome, meek, mischievious, nagging, naive, nervous, nosey, obnoxious, overambitious, overconfident, overemotional, overprotective, overzealous, passive-aggressive, paranoid, peevish, perfectionist, pessimist, pest, predicatable, pretencious, prideful, rebellious, renege, rigorous, sarcastic, skeptic, seducer, selfish, self-righteous, shallow, slacker, solemn, spacey, spoild, squeamish, stubborn, supersticious, sycophant, tactless, tease, tempermental, tenacious, theatrical, thoughtless, timid, unpredictable, unsupportive, vain, workaholic

The Bad (aka big flaw):

Addiction, adulterous, aloof, anxious, apathetic, arrogant, belittling, belligerent, bigmouth, bitter, bully, callous, deceptive, dependant, deranged, dishonest, disloyal, disrespectful, egotistical, envious, erratic, exploitive, fanatical, fickle, fierce (at the extreme), gluttonous, greedy, harasser, hubris, impious, infamy, intolerant, judgemental, lewd, liar, meglomaniac, morally grey, narcissistic, negligent, obsequious, obsessive, offensive, prejudiced, quixotic, reckless, rigid, self-martyr, self-righteous, short-tempered, spiteful, squanderer, stingy, unethical, unforgiving, untrustworthy

The Ugly (aka cross the street when you see this person):

Abusive, bigot, controlling, cruel, explosive, immoral, inhumane, intolerant, machiavellian, manipulative, murderous, neglectful, oppressive, racist, remorseless, possessive, self-destructive, threatening, treacherous, vengeful, vindictive, violent

The seven chief features of ego: self-deprecation, self-destruction, martyrdom, stubbornness, greed, arrogance and impatience.

Some of these may not even be considered flaws, and some may jump from one category to the next. It's all about how you present these flaws in your characters.

Have any more to add? Did you find this useful? Let me know down in the comments :)

[barblaz-arts]

If you think what israel is doing is wrong tell me, what do you think they shouldve done after what happend on oct 7th? It seems like israel is the only country who isnt allowed to win a war.

You are asking the wrong person this question. Tf am I supposed to do? That's a question you should be asking Israel's President. Ask him why he refused to accept the hostages Hamas tried to return. Ask him why he's bombing the place where the hostages they claim to be fighting for are.

And it's almost laughable how you said that. "Allowed to win a war," you say. As if it were some kind of game to be won. As if the soldiers and civilians that die on both sides aren't being sacrificed while the people who have power sit in their lavish homes and reap the benefits of their blood. Israel's President and all its previous leaders failed their own people on Oct 7 by brutalizing the Palestinians for the past 70+ years. They created their own monster.

And I can't even call this a war. I just can't see it that way with the sheer power imbalance that is apparent. When one nation is able to cut off electricity and water of their opponent. When one can cut cables for telecommunication and destroy cell towers so that the other is not able to cry for help as they get massacred. When one is able to do carpet bombing while the other doesn't even have a military.

And if it were a war? Israel is waging it in the most inhumane ways. You're not supposed to prevent aid from going to the civilians. You're not supposed to shoot journalists so that nobody can know the horrors you've done. You're not supposed to bomb hospitals so that even those that rise from the rubble don't survive.

The Philippines, my country, was terrorized by many countries, but some of the most horrifying stories I heard were from the time of Japanese occupation. But even so, I have the heart to understand that those people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who had nuclear bombs dropped on them did not deserve any of that. Because those were civilians. Because nobody deserves such atrocities.

Every pro-Israel rhetoric that I've been thrown with will always have the same answer. That nobody, absolutely nobody deserves genocide, and Israel is committing a crime against humanity. When this is pointed out they never have anything to say about it. Always skirting around, changing the subject to something that is still inconsequential in face of immorality. Because the real answer as to why they excuse this inhumanity is because they simply do not consider Palestinians and arabs human.

[redeem27]

The mysogony blogs in my feed are getting out of hand and its getting me irksome. Yes I think a woman becoming a baby factory is extremely arousing, but it takes a specific kind of woman to be that. Someone who is willing to entrust her liberties to the partner whom she trusts and believes in. It is submissive, it is intimate, and it is consentual, and consent is beautiful. That kind of person should be cherished, loved, and cared for, because she is a rare jewel.

But then I see this whole talk of forcing women to become right wing rape victims, slaves to mysogyny, and it makes. Me. SICK! The moment you take away someone else's rights, you are a disgusting inhuman creature. It's immoral. I don't care if its a fantasy for you, its still spreading a message, a message that can be heard by people who think that its ok OUTSIDE of fantasy. I don't want to see it anymore and anyone who posts it can be shown the door and potentially the firing squad.

[germiyahu]

Interesting that h*r*t*g*p*sts is so fixated on Hamas captives being subjected to annoying children's music. I already touched on this, but while continuously playing music in order to psychologically break someone has been a documented method of torture in interrogation, and I don't mean to downplay that (even though one might debate whether its intended to be psychological torture or merely trolling, but I digress)...

It's very weird to constantly bray about that all the while saying nothing of the freed hostages who said "Yes we were tortured, there are still people being tortured," and saying nothing about the 1st person documentary footage so generously filmed by Hamas as they tortured and raped countless people before summarily executing them.

This need to invert crimes against Israelis/Jews and to frame these Israeli crimes as inherently worse, inherently more immoral, inherently more mortifying... it's notable and it's not unexpected and it's part of a pattern. Part of it feels like gaslighting. Like I'm being subjected to someone breaking into my house and demanding I admit that hearing the Teletubbies theme on loop is the ultimate crime against humanity. But rape is apparently not now. Oh okay then.

Like sorry that just doesn't register quite as inhumanely cruel to me as... raping someone so hard her pelvis shatters, cutting off someone's breasts while she's still alive, making a man watch his girlfriend be brutalized by dozens of men before shooting both of them in the head... I won't go on.

Taking it at the best faith interpretation, you can condemn both you know. You can condemn Hamas' war rape, their brutality, their disregard for civilian vs military targets. You can also say the Israeli military and public making a meme out of humiliating people who've also usually been stripped naked is pretty gauche too. You can say that's a tactic of oppressing people who are just struggling for their liberation, sure. But you can't say that and literally pretend like the other just doesn't exist, or worse, isn't relevant. That's intellectual dishonesty of the most blatant kind.

[porcelain-gal]

ANOTHER CONTROVERSIAL SHIFTING TAKE moika yapping about shit no one cares about again?? that's crazyyy, who would've thought! but fr, i know i said i'd stop with this shit but i'm a very opinionated person with entirely too much to say so i'm back to talking! like always, if you don't agree that's fine but please don't leave rude or passive aggressive comments or messages in my inbox because i will delete them and block you! <3

i need y'all to stop yelling "it's not your life" and getting pissy at people when you post about the immoral and inhumane things you do in your realities/lives and receive backlash from it. your excuse is that "it's not your reality so you shouldn't care", failing to realize that most of the people here have grown up in society and you probably have as well and in this society, we are taught morals and values.

if you post about doing shit in your life that the majority of society in this reality as a whole has deemed as bad/immoral (e.g., dating minors as an adult, race-changing/rcta, etc) for multiple reasons, why do you expect to not be judged or criticized for it? you cannot expect people to throw aside their feelings about what they have been taught is bad and that many have seen the harmful effects of in seconds just so you and a small demographic of people who like doing that kind of stuff can feel comfortable talking about it freely.

no, people aren't going to respect or agree with you if you shift somewhere and kill innocent people. no, people aren't going to respect or agree with you if you go to realities where you shift to date minors as an adult. no, people aren't going to respect or agree with you if you change your race/sexualize and glorify or even villainize the lives of minorities. no, people aren't going to respect or agree with you if you're a bully and harass people in your reality "for the plot." you can't keep expecting people to conform to your ideals and actions just because you want to be able to freely talk about being a shitty person because in the eyes of many people here, you absolutely are.

and on that same note, you also need to remember that it is YOUR choice to post what you do on YOUR account. no one is forcing you to post about anything you do in your life. you willingly put out information about your life that NO ONE ASKED FOR onto the heavily-opinionated internet and expect people to just be like "oh cool" and move on from the fact that you're doing fucked up shit just because it's your life?

sorry to tell you this but if everyone just didn't give a fuck about what other people did in their lives, things like queerphobia, racism, xenophobia, and the variety of other -phobias and -isms would not exist and on the opposite side, shit like child marriage, murder, and abuse would be way more prominent and nothing would be done about it since people just wouldn't care.

people are going to be in your business whether you like it or not and it sucks but that's just how it is. now am i saying that you don't have a right to be upset at all? no, obviously not. you're being judged, of course you're going to feel upset or like shit about it and you're completely valid in that regard. however, you need to realize why people are criticizing you and understand that that's just going to happen.

you also need to realize that you're never going to change the minds of millions of people in this reality with a tumblr post of you getting mad and trying to shun people who think you're a bad person for doing bad shit and you probably never will. it's your choice whether or not to listen to the people or just go your own way because as long as you keep posting about you doing fucked up shit, people are going to react and the majority won't react positively.

but anyways yeah, this just my take. if you don't agree, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it just as much as i am to mine! just please don't be disrespectful or try to argue with me because again, i will block you and think nothing of it. thanks for reading!

SINCERELY, Yappatron 3000

[wishiwasfiction]

I saw a post that said locking alters away is never okay, and I wanted to talk about it but didn't want to derail, so I'm making my own post.

Tl;DR I don't 100% agree with it because there's nuance there.

read tags for TWs

Broadly speaking, I agree. Locking up alters can be damaging in a lot of ways: it hurts them, and their relationships to other alters, and can hurt other alters if they disagree with the decision.

Broadly speaking, locking up alters is counterproductive to healing/functionality.

Broadly speaking.

There are also situations in which locking up an alter is the safest option. Times where you don't really get a choice.

I'm honestly glad that most systems never have to think about this, because you only really think about it if you (or someone you know) has lived it.

Alters can do really fucked up things, dangerous things, both in the innerworld and out.

Alters can hurt others.

Alters can kill each other or send each other dormant.

Alters can kill the body.

And yes, in many cases they're doing this because they're trying to help, or they think they deserve it, or because they were trained to do so, or any number of other perfectly understandable and 'healable' reasons.

But some also do it because they think its fun, or because it makes them feel powerful, or just because they can.

Speaking as a gatekeeper/protector, it's my job to keep the system safe. If an alter is not safe to be around, then I need to protect against that.

I think it's important to establish that keeping an alter away from the rest of the system doesn't inherently mean that we're keeping them somewhere inhumane.

We put people in their own area, with space, light, good food, pleasant living conditions, and the ability to choose how they spend their time. We give them access to their hobbies and their favourite medias and comforts. If it's safe, we give them non-physical access to social spaces, guidance, and support. If we think it's safe, we give them in person visits with people we know they cannot harm should they try something.

Locking alters away is not always cruel and violent and brutal, even though you may consider it immoral or unethical.

And quite frankly, even if it is done in ways that are cruel or violent or brutal, if that is what is required for the body to remain functional and alive, then so be it.

You can't do 'better' if you're dead.

What I will say, is that locking up alters should not be a fix all. It should not be what you jump to or immediately reach for when conflict occurs.

It is the final option or it is an emergency stop-gap.

We have a very long list of things to try before we start considering locking someone up. We work with them to understand why they are doing what they're doing, and whether they're open to changing.

If they are not open to change, we respect that and do the absolute bare minimum necessary to keep everyone safe.

A lot of times, they will not be open to changing, and then after some time of us respecting their autonomy and boundaries, they approach us requesting help to change.

I am scared of the response this may garner, but I'm saying it anyway.

If an alter reacts violently to something out of fear, keeping them to one area with none of that thing can be a kindness.

This is a paraphrasing of something said to me by an alter I had 'locked away' for safety.

She reacted badly to change/uncertainty, and said the predictability helped her to learn how to work through her fear and manage it without violence. The system proper was too overwhelming for her to be able to change.

She's now happily living in a quieter part of the innerworld and no longer expresses those fear responses as violence.

This is one example i picked at random, but i have many more stories of locking alters away while they are learning to manage themselves, and then releasing them once they are no longer deemed dangerous.

If you want to judge someone for what they do when they have both time and options when making a decision, then fine.

But judging people on split-second decisions when (potentially) their life is involved, or when they've exhausted all other options, just seems to me to be picking on the vulnerable target.

[balladofthe101st]

i have a hard time rewatching the pacific because of how uncomfortably graphic and gory the series is (and because i live in the pacific so, the war there is familiar to me and too close to home)

when i started the series, i thought, "how are humans capable of doing such things to their fellow man?," but as i got further into it, i realized that that's one of the many things the series is trying to show—that humanity is capable of such things. that humans, when put in situations or circumstances such as war, or when pushed beyond human comprehension by the anomie or normlessness and nothingness of war, are capable of or disposed to being brutal, cruel, violent, immoral, and inhumane. and you feel disturbed because no one, more so not as young as them, should be put in such situations, and you feel uncomfortable because put in that situation, what would you do? shoot for fun? mutilate bodies? loot their belongings? turn a blind eye when civilians cry for help? would you lose your humanity, too? dehumanize yourself? lose yourself to the war? the violence? the brutality and cruelty of man?

the realities and uncomfortable truths about war and humanity that the series is making us confront and open our eyes to is compelling because it makes us think about just what we are capable of doing to our fellow man and to what extent, and makes us feel uneasy of the things we are capable of doing and being that we never thought was even possible

[soullessjack]

"tell me on anon what you wouldn’t off anon"

i think dean was straight up abusive towards jack and while there is room for redemption to be explored, in canon, the show did not give him any sort of redemption. in other words in my eyes "canon" dean winchester is an abuser (but canon is unimportant anyways so whatever)

im scared of saying this and getting stoned to death

no need to comment you can just post this without saying anything if you want

- 🏴‍☠️

no no you’re right and you should say it, however I disagree that Dean was completely abusive and that there was never any canon redemption.

firstly I think there’s a slight difference in someone being abusive vs being an abuser;

abuse (or abusive behavior/tendencies) can happen accidentally, unintentionally, especially if it’s resulted from trauma (like Dean’s). you can be completely unaware that something you’ve done or said is abusive, especially because being abusive can be as simple as yelling or hitting someone, or treating them unfairly (like jack). people who have abusive tendencies or behaviors are capable of regretting it and wanting/trying to change…whereas an abuser is wholly aware, intentional and remorseless about their actions. they know what they are doing, they know it’s immoral/inhumane and they just don’t care—either because they feel entitled or justified in some way, or even if they don’t.

Dean has repeatedly shown plenty of regret, guilt and blatant self hatred for his abusive tendencies and how they affect the people around him. It’s one of the most important parts of his character, being the crux of his self worth and why he can’t accept that people (Cas) genuinely care about him or consider him a good person. When he refers to himself as “daddy’s blunt instrument” or “poison,” it isn’t just about being a hunter whose life constantly risks other peoples inescapably, it’s also about the violent nature that’s instilled into Dean constantly by John and how both of those things either isolates him from getting close to anyone else, or drives away people who do get close. That’s why there’s no light at the end of the tunnel for Dean, why he’s so resigned to dying bloody. It’s all he thinks he can ever have or really deserve.

When Jack is dying in 14x07, Dean physically cannot stand to see it. He’s angry that Jack is dying so young and so out of nowhere; he thinks it’s unfair and wrong, point blank. But above all else, (as Sam says) Dean canonically has never forgotten or forgiven himself for how he had treated Jack, even though by this point in time they’ve already had a good relationship for the past two years. He’s angry and upset that Jack is dying, but he’s also upset because he still thinks, after all this time, that he’s never been able to fully make up for what he did, and now he’s lost any chance to with Jack’s limited time. That’s why Dean decides to take him on the road trip; that’s why he says “Who would’ve thought being around me (the person who treated you terribly at one point) would make you (the person who didn’t deserve it) sentimental?”

When Dean leaves Jack’s room for the last time and wounds up being absent for his death, he’s even more upset about it, and later brings it up to take a dig at Sam for thinking he didn’t do enough for Jack because, by Dean’s own admission, Sam had always been the one to do more. “At least you were there for him [because I wasn’t, and I see that as another failure on top of everything else I did to him before].” And then, after the three of them get hammered in Jack’s memory, Dean turns to Cas and asks, “we did everything we could, right?” There’s a lot more in 14x07 but I’ll leave it alone for now, and move onto the redemption part of what you said.

I know I said I disagreed, but really it’s only partially; instead I believe that the show simply didn’t give enough time for a complete redemption (save me spn revival wish fulfillments, spn revival wish fulfillments save me). The end of S14 is basically the destruction of the Team Free Will 2.0 found family unit, not just between Dean and Cas, but also between Dean and Sam, and Jack and the three of them. And I think the reason there’s so much more emphasis on Dean’s relationship with Jack (+ why the family unit falling apart is specifically centered on it) is specifically because of how they started; Dean was initially the only one to be distrustful of Jack and mistreat him as a result, whereas Sam and Cas were willing to see Jack with more humanity and goodness, and when Jack proved that he was good that was the crux of Dean’s guilt going forward; his distrust was wrong and misguided, and the abuse he put Jack through because of it was even more wrong and undeserved.

But then after Mary’s death, the three of them have no idea what to think. They’re more reluctant than Bobby is to admit that Jack could have simply had his evil bone activated after losing his soul/eating Michael’s grace, but they aren’t excluding the idea either. The question up in the air now is: “Was Dean right all along? Were we wrong for trusting Jack and thinking he was good? Is all of this our fault?” (and going back to 14x07, the basic ‘framework’ of Dean’s dynamic with Jack is basically ‘I was wrong about you being evil and now that I love you I want to be keep being wrong about you being evil’ and ‘I want you to be wrong about me being evil too, especially now that you love me and I love you’).

Sam, Dean, Cas and Jack are all presented with the worst case scenario that had always been hanging over Jack’s entire existence. None of them want to believe it after growing so close to him (and vice versa), but they’re not given much else to consider. Mary’s death was one thing, one horrible tragic wound reopening, but they knew it was an accident and they knew Jack had tried to fix it. It isn’t until Duma got her claws into Jack and ordered him to kill nonbelievers that TFW finally decides they have to do something final about Jack, and Dean resumes his militant Kill All Monsters behavior. He’s dissociating into the blunt instrument mindset to protect himself from the grief of losing his mother and potentially losing his son. He can’t even bear to consider Jack his son anymore, both because of Mary and the task of killing him, so Jack becomes “just another monster,” in his dissociative mind. His son wouldn’t have killed Mary or tortured Nick or murdered people randomly because his son was a good person, and his son does not deserve to die, but whatever identical monster has inexplicably replaced Jack would certainly do that and certainly does deserve to die.

Dean’s “poison” is rooted in the fact that his coping mechanisms are intertwined with abusive tendencies and behaviors. He pushes people away if he thinks he doesn’t deserve their respect or love, and he buries any emotional attachment to them because he knows it’s his greatest weakness. That’s why he couldn’t bring himself to shoot Jack, regardless of the grief he felt for Mary or how much he tried to see Jack as a monster that wasn’t really his son. When Jack knelt down, said “I understand. I know what I’ve done. And you were right all along. I am a monster,” and then waited for the gun to go off, that’s what snapped Dean out of it. That’s what got him to see that this was still his son—that and the road trip from 14x07 flashing before his eyes. The grief he feels for Mary’s death is still painful and will be for a long time, but he won’t let it cloud him from seeing that his son is still there and still a good person who deserves the chance to make it right and be forgiven.

That militant dissociation comes back again following Jack’s death and Chuck’s retaliation/reveal that they’ve been nothing but a bunch of lowbrow Truman Burbanks to an unfeeling deity their entire lives. The most recent Destivorce is because Dean has constantly been pushing Cas away and severing their ties to cope with the situation. It’s bad throughout all of S15, but it’s especially worse towards the end when Dean is rampant on Jack’s suicide bomb plan happening for a chance at freedom. I’ve seen a LOT of people say that Dean’s love is conditional because of this, but it really…isn’t.

If Dean never cared about Jack, he’d never take time out of his life to spend some final moments with him, or share a specific father/son memory with him to indirectly communicate that he does see Jack as a son, but ultimately doesn’t feel like he deserves to be a father. If he truly felt that Jack “wasn’t family,” he wouldn’t have shown any of the concern for Jack that he did after Jack detonated in the Empty (frantically demanding to know if he’s alive and to bring him back); he wouldn’t have tried to apologize to Jack for hearing it, and he wouldn’t have *checks transcript* reacted in mild horror at Jack agreeing with what he said (and personally, if I’m insulting someone, I would want them to feel the same way that I feel).

Additionally, If Dean’s love is conditional, particularly on the basis of how useful someone is to him, then he wouldn’t have been expecting Jack to come back home with them or considering buying him actual gifts (a flat screen TV and a recliner, specifically for his room in the Bunker I might add) for saving the world.

Out of all the problems S15 had, I think the pacing was the absolute worst. Too many plots and one-off characters and plot devices squeezed into a short amount of episodes; too much focus put into filler instead of plot progression, etc etc. But what it absolutely missed out on was granting any of the characters any proper closure. I think that’s why Dean’s conflict with Jack feels so unresolved and unredeemed. Dean gets mean -> Dean feels bad -> Dean gets nice again, but that’s about it. For now I tend to view his dynamic with Jack as them being two sides of the same coin: Dean feels like he doesn’t deserve to be a father figure to Jack after everything he did, and Jack feels like he doesn’t deserve to be a part of their family as a son after everything he did.

[coveredinmetaldust]

The discourse around the OceanGate situation is making me really fucking mad. You are getting a lot of posts like this one where people are decrying how inhumane it is for people to meme on the situation instead of grieving for the kind of people would work you to death if it meant a 0.002% stock price increase.

Yup, these fucking losers are equating willfully creating a death trap and killing 5 other people instantly to a car accident.

I don’t even entirely disagree that yes, it is tragic. I’d rather they didn’t die from an implosion caused by their metal death-tube crumpling in on itself because the arrogant shithead CEO decided that all these safety standards other subs adhere to were getting in the way of innovation. Obviously it would have been preferable to find them drifting on the ocean surface a day later shaken but ultimately unharmed.

No, I’m mad about how blatantly lopsidedly this flavor of moral outrage is always applied. You never see these people on Reddit, Twitter, etc crawl out of the woodwork to denounce the people saying “well he was no angel” when a person of color is gunned down by the police. You never see these same multi-paragraph posts decrying how immoral it is to say “play stupid games win stupid prizes” when this shit happens to the poor, disenfranchised, etc.

You don’t see it, because the people currently on their high horse are the same people who would call you a fucking idiot if you were on this submarine.

If the entree fee was $250 and five working class people were killed I can guarantee you'd see these same people joking about Darwin awards instead of saying stuff like this.

But no no, suddenly now is the time to stop victim blaming and start grandstanding while clutching at pearls. Now is the time to get indignant and accuse people not of feeling empathy and being inhumane sociopaths. There are now were entire call-out topics on Reddit where they organized and briggaded anyone who dares to say anything bad about these poor billionaires. Where the FUCK was this outrage during, I dunno, pick any one of the numerous fucking examples of brutality and/or exploitation occurring within the last three years. Oh right, these dopey fucks were too busy wagging their fingers at the victims and telling them to take Personal Responsibility™. Too bad, if only they were born rich—then maybe these paragons of virtue on social media would go to bat for them.

But you know what the worst part of this discourse is? I can’t quite put it into words, but it’s so blatantly fucking obvious to me that all of this is insincere—this is actual virtue signaling. You can just tell by the tone, the regurgitated talking points, the slimy smug indignation. This is false empathy over people they couldn’t care less about and won’t even remember in a week, because the point isn’t to being a compassionate person.

No, this to grandstand and get that dopimine rush by calling people out. This is being done to score points for some political ideology and Own The Libs/Commies/Socialists/[insert any slightly left of center ideology]. This is so the Panglossian shitheels of social media can maintain the status quo and feel superior by stamping out any act of defiance or rebellion.

None of these of these people seemed to care about how disrespectful this kind of disaster tourism is for the victims of the Titanic. (Victims, who, were mostly lower class since the wealthy were the ones who were allowed to escape.) They don’t care that these rich assholes were profiteering off a tragedy and making a spectacle out of visiting a mass grave. No, they save that smug, condescending, and cynical response for the people who call out these rich assholes.

It makes me want to throw my computer into the ocean.

Now, if you are one of these people I’m screaming into the void about, and you genuinely do not understand why people are memeing the situation so hard, you need to take a step back and recognize that this is, objectively, an absurd and cartoonish situation. This could have easily been a plot for an episode of The Simpsons. This whole goddamn situation reads like something thrown together by a room of writers who were trying to out “yes and” one another until one stopped everyone and said: “Woah woah, hold on. The CEO’s wife is a descendant of the Titanic victims? Isn’t that just a little much?” And then everyone else ignored this person and just kept fucking going.

In short: it was the perfect storm of absurdity, coincidence, hubris, tragedy, and stupidity.

But that's just a surface level explanation which ignores the context of the last hundred or so years. Ask yourself: "why are so many people so unsympathetic towards these particular victims?" Well, there are a multitude of reasons that contributed to how we got to this point and this guy does a much better job of explaining it than I ever could:

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

I think we as a society really need to get over the idea that 'natural' automatically = 'good'.

And I don't just mean in a 'use actual disinfectant instead of cobwebs and wishful thinking!' kinda way, although that is part of it.

I mean in the way that so many people seem to fucking valorise the neolithic period as some sort of Pure and True Garden of Eden where everything was Perfect and humans got it Right.

Obviously we all know conservatives do it. The whole evolutionary psychology 'pink is for ladies because they evolved to see berries better, while blue is for boys because they evolved to hunt under the sky and we're going to ignore that these trends are less than a century old' thing. Yeah, we all get that that sucks.

But for some reason the Left Wing response is so often to just pull out the Uno Reverse card and be like "well actually the Neolithic era was a socialist utopia because-" which is surely a much less revolutionary argument than people seem to think it is.

Firstly, because it encourages historical revisionism. Like, if everything people learn about the lives of Early Humans ends up getting twisted into some political argument about the Right Way To Live in the modern day, then people are obviously going to be motivated to interpret the facts in a way that supports their own personal values.

To give an example: suppose one day we somehow found incontrovertible evidence that Stone Age autistic people were not actually valued for our ability to sort animal bones or stay awake all night or whatever, but were rather beaten to death with rocks the moment we started showing symptoms.

What would we do with that information? Given that 'autistic people were valued members of society in Stone Age times!' is currently being used as a key argument for our right to exist?

Ignore it? Refuse to believe it? Shrug our shoulders say "well, guess we were wrong" and start beating people to death with rocks as an expression of the wills of our Pure Divine Ancestors?

Which brings me to my second point of: while I don't think stone age societies actually did beat autistic people to death with rocks for no reason, they almost certainly did a fuckload of stuff that we would consider immoral today.

I mean, they definitely didn't vaccinate their kids. If you went back in time and told somebody from the Neolithic era "poke your kid with the Magic Needle and they will be Protected From Disease" they'd probably go for it, but if we're going for natural = good then technically the anti-vaxxers have it right.

There's also a fair amount of evidence for cannibalism. And massacres. And infanticide as a method of birth control. The natural state of humanity is pretty shitty by most modern standards.

And like, I'm not saying that stone age cultures were cruel and inhuman either. They were very human.

The nature of humanity isn't inherently brutal or inherently pure… it's mostly, in fact, the desire to build something for ourselves and our communities that is better than what we have. Medicine. Shelter. Warmth. Clean sources of water. Consistent sources of food.

Humans didn't Get It Right in the stone age, and we sure as hell haven't Got It Right yet. But billions of people didn't spend their whole lives working to make things better for future generations, only for us today to decide that the only way to Get Things Right is to go all the way back to the beginning.