#mostly how the thing is. the ideology is extremely harmful

[ilikethecolorredsstuff]

ARCANE Rant

Arcane s2 ending is underwhelming because the show was slowly building up to it (the biggest disappointment of the century)

U can feel it slowly letting go of the class issues that s1 was based on ( arguably the reason why the show was appealing to begin with) foe what seems to be no reason. Cause it seemed that they could've done better with presenting the themes that were already there in the subtext of it all or atleast it was that way for s1 and the first act(s?)

By the 3rd act, it's like they make it a point to stray away from what the show is supposed to be about and maybe that's why there's a lot of distraction going on (*caughs * fan service). In the last act there's just so many loose endings and key points are missing, ones that are usually provided to the whatcher bethey offer needed insight like how jayce decided to touch the arcane or what happened with ekko and jinx when he stopped her. This is a pattern that also shows in s1 and the other acts but the avoidance of clearing things up or providing insight on character's behaviors in this case isn't to get us to think about it and interpret it on our own instead it leaves a feelibg of just accept it for now that's how thongs came to be, and it doesn't even explain it later(would've beena great move tbh).

This lack of insight makes it easier to just accept other shifts that don't actually make sense like the main shift of victor's character when he gave up on doing good for the ppl the moment jayce attacked him and honestly not only did jayce have no business doing that, victor also had no reason to change his ideology for only that. The attack harmed not only him but also the ones connected to him so it does make sense that instead of healing he decided to eliminate all danger but even then it wouldn't make sense for him to agree to forge an army and pick sides for a political war something he aims to demolish.

And then it's not even about his conquest anymore and we get a fairly easy and rushed destruction of the black flower and then back to Victor.... Victor changes his ways and they disappear leaving everyone behind to what? Move on? As if the story is about how humans weren't ready for a progress that fast andbnow they can learn from their mistakes and take their time, as if that insane leap of advancement both biological and technical isn't just a by product of an environment manufactured by classism that pressured and cornered ppl into this extreme reality.

At the end, nothing has changed from the beginning of s1, the counsel just added a physical chair for the undercity instead of the invisible one that silco did hold at some point.

The truth is zaun isn't even a separate nation anymore it's still the undercity who now has a representative in the counsel.

War didn't even unite the ppl in fear and grief because except for the enforcers the fighters were mostly from zaun, this is dangerous because it paints a picture where the unpriveleged lot are fighting someone else's battles while the priveleged (root cause if said battle) get to flee and only comeback when everything is settled to look all bigoted and give side eyes to the representative of the unpriveleged (im looking at u short grandma).

My point is what is the show trying to say by ignoring the core issue, leaving us in the dark abt a character's motivations, and jumping to war with spiritual robots meanwhile the counsel is full of classist cowards leading a nation they fled when shit got bloody and letting the war criminal from the uptown have a happy ever after, her crimes don't even get mentioned while jinx is told that no amount lf help she offers can undo the harm she caused. It's all intentional, the show even ends with a hidden message that heimdinger was correct from thr beginning for restricting research or at least it felt that way.

[soggypotatoes]

my tutor asked me if she could ask a question abt queer culture and she was all 'but i dont want to like, burden you with the expectation of explaining things to me, or treat you like a mouthpiece' and i was like omg PLS ask me questions i LOVE being treated as a mouthpiece hahhaha

and then she asked me about terfs and how older feminists may not align with terf values but feel protective of their experiences as afab women when the cultural conversation around feminism and queerness is changing.. and i was like.. oh god, do you have a few hours to spare?

so she asked me to email her resources and information about this topic hahaha

[imustbenuts]

nuts reading trigun in japanese 3 - "weirdo" and vash's pronoun switching

disclaimer: my jp reading posts are all for triangulation purposes and nothing else. scanlating mangas is tough work. @-@ i know this.

"Weirdo"

the word 'weirdo' in 2024 english carries connotations of neutral-bad or positive depending on the context of the speaker. depending on how one curates their internet space, weirdo often leans more positively with the same meaning as eccentric, but not always.

however, but in JP, "weird" is more specific and often negative. there's the well known, hentai 変態 (ie. deviant, pervert, freak, extremely negative in tone), and in this case, kimochi warui 気持ち悪い (gross, off-putting, bad vibes). eccentrics are more as 変人 henjin and carries a more neutral tone.

in this panel here papa nebreska uses 気持ち悪い in katakana キモチワルイ in reaction to vash busting his ass saving people and putting out of harms' way. vash's vibes are so off putting to this wanted man he's actually creeped out.

this is particularly interesting to me bc the english translation didn't end up portraying how utterly weird vash's mindset is fully. it wasnt until wolfwood points out how flawed vash's pacifist mindset do i get a proper frame of reference of norms in this world, but i might be having skill issues in english comprehension. ;w;

Pronoun switching

quick. 俺 Ore! 僕 Boku! 私 Watashi! they all mean "I", and there's 2 spectrum of expressions going on here thats commonly believed. 1st being Masculinity to Femininity. what's the 2nd?

the answer is... Rudeness/Assertiveness to Politeness. and gosh does vash switch a lot between Boku and Ore in the first 4 chapters of this manga lmao.

(to be clear, while i am aware of trans hc thats very popular in the fandom, im not at all diminishing or talking about gender expression specifically. im talking about what vash is presenting himself as in context.)

so to perhaps oversimplify this, in JP the idea of politeness and hierarchy is so super duper important, its very built into the language itself. and Japanese is a very high context language. if someone of a higher or equal standing uses "Ore", its totally fine. but if someone of a lower standing uses "Ore", they've committed a social faux pas.

as an obvious example, if a fresh new employee approaches his Boss with "Ore", he's potentially getting dressing down in the company. maybe in front of his coworkers. if this employee forgoes polite speech (keigo) and uses a too Assertive and Casual speech, they've Really Fucked Up and are one foot out the door.

this is also tied up in gender to some extent, hence why girls using Ore is incredibly uncommon, but guys would use Watashi in certain contexts such as talking to their Boss. (woo woo the forces of hierarchy/patriarchy... or something.)

so. vash switches his pronouns for the same effect. when he uses Ore, he's making himself sound more assertive and confident. when he uses Boku, he's often making himself sound less threatening, smaller, open, and trying to avoid conflict.

sound familiar?

bc if you translated all of that into a character design instead of relying on just jp pronouns, we'd get TriStamp Vash.

slight spoilers, but this is even true in one of the tensest moments between vash and wolfwood, where the latter provokes vash and tears into his pacifism ideology. vash sticks with boku in this scene as he says his piece.

if he ever uses watashi, it's bc he wants to be polite straight out of the gate with an air of formality. (this is japanese manners and the proper approach to talking to strangers. mainly to get a feel for each others standing without offense until context changes.)

i also wanna point out maybe something obvious here but.

real life pronoun switching in japanese is a COMMON thing. no one ever really sticks to 1 pronoun bc of Good Manners and the aforementioned hierarchical systems in place. it is only mostly in anime/manga and video games where characters overly prefer 1 due to this being a good shorthand for characterization. this being how rude or polite they are, and in some cases, Gender.

[darkfictionjude]

you don’t have to put it on this blog but was going to address ur analysis of the US election because I don’t think it’s entirely accurate (as a woman of color myself). She ran a very misguided campaign that was filled with celebrity endorsements (who are in image and in reality so far removed from the conditions of regular folks) and Liz Cheney (who’s a unpopular war hawk amid a year that saw the most anti-war protests), most of her messaging was catered to right wing voters and centrists which historically never works well.

This leads to working class people, who mostly care more about material conditions than ideology or image, to move towards right wing populism because regardless of how harmful or horrible the ideology might be, they saw her image as one far removed from their concerns and Trump took advantage of this. In fact even tho Trump is probably more pro-war, he pretended he wasn’t and even campaigned on ending wars. In fact Trump had fewer votes than he did his first time, but Harris had even fewer because voter turnout was just not good esp when her whole campaign was just “im not as bad as the other guy” and no concrete domestic or economic platform. She also never distanced herself from the Biden administration so people saw her as a continuity candidate to one of the most unpopular presidents of all time.also Her messaging to Arab Americans, who have been most affected by the conflict in Lebanon and Palestine/Israel, was just very tone deaf (there’s a speech where she says she knows the deaths in the Middle East is tragic but people need to prioritize the prices of groceries)

before she was a candidate she was also a prosecutor and was responsible for so many horrible things so anyways I can understand in many ways why she lost and I think just saying she’s a woman reduced the issue to identity politics when it’s much deeper than this

So the reason I said that was because like I said a few times I didn’t want to get into politics on this blog. I wasn’t going to go on a whole explanation for an ask that wasn’t even about politics because it makes no sense. That person who sent me that ask didn’t ask for that. Like I wasn’t going to go into extreme detail on this blog because this is a game blog

Obviously there’s more reasons, the fact that she didn’t have long to campaign also didn’t help but it isn’t wrong to say that so long into its history America has never had a woman at the forefront while other similarly advanced countries have, gender and race is a problem in American politics

The only reason I’m answering this is because I feel like I’m being talked down and I don’t like that. I wasn’t reducing anything and it wasn’t an analysis I literally just a quick answer for a question that was mostly about the game. I’m educated, I’m politically aware, and I really would have preferred to have talked about this on the other blog like I said I’m not comfortable doing it here but I did so because this is the blog the message on

[kazimirkharza]

What are your thoughts on how many anarcho-primitivist/luddite/anticiv spaces have been taken over by right-wing types? It seems less people are actually engaging in primitivist thought and more so thinking it's "based" and "trad."

I saw how you got downvoted for insulting whatalthist, and this is what led me to ask this question.

I'm assuming you're referring to online spaces. There's a strong effort by the right to co-opt primitivism. There are some forums that are frequented by right-wingers, though they're in the minority; most problematic spaces are the ones about Kaczynski and things directly related to him. There are also many social media accounts that express primitivistic ideas in combination with authoritarian and rightist politics (e.g. individuals who adore both Ted Kaczynski and Pentti Linkola). Most concerning to me are actually the offline examples that get press coverage.

I see this as being both due to deliberate efforts to co-opt primitivism, much in the manner Nazis co-opted socialism, and due to ignorance on the part of many right-wingers. It isn't too hard to misinterpret Kaczynski's remarks about leftism if you read him inattentively, and conclude that he must be some sort of right-winger. Ted's mistake was focusing on attacking the left too much and worrying too little about the right, but at the time he wrote his manifesto this choice made sense.

Ted was a fan of Earth First! and when he wrote Industrial Society and its Future the wounds of an ideological split within it were still fresh. EF! started out as a truly ecocentric movement with extremely narrow goals of protecting the wilderness from the ravages of industrialism and other harm caused by civilized humans. After gaining a lot of momentum, EF! attracted thousands of newcomers, many of whom leaned more to the side of leftist humanism than deep ecology, causing conflict — the newcomers were trying to transform the movement into one about ecology-related social justice issues, while the original Earth First!ers preferred to only focus on wilderness conservation. (For more on this check out Earth First!: Environmental Apocalypse by Martha F. Lee). The right-wing in America at the time was comprised mostly of people who were staunch prometheans, warmongers, etc., and Ted rightly assumed they weren't going to take over his movement. However as the political climate changed they became one.

The US and the rest of the "West" seems to be experiencing a rise in right-wing back-to-nature ideas, similar in many ways to the so-called "right-wing hippies" of the Weimar republic. I'm talking about doomsday preppers, christian nationalist communes, etc. Kaczynski did not anticipate this, and by the time news about who was adopting (some of) his ideas — not just anarchists and former Earth First!ers, but people including the Greek fascist Golden Dawn party, and Andreas Breivik — reached Kaczynski in his supermax prison it was a bit late. He penned a short note titled Ecofascism: An Aberrant Branch of Leftism in 2020, arguing against their ideas and saying he's their enemy. However, more people read and will read ISAIF in the future than this obscure note and the few other scattered critiques of the right that can be found throughout his work.

What we need to do is to aggressively shun these types until we successfully repel them. This applies to real life and online interactions. There will always be some who'll try to co-opt primitivism, but this big wave needs to be halted. There are also some who are genuinely willing to learn and adjust their beliefs, but they're few in between. It's necessary to distinguish between the two, keep the latter and reject the former.

[incesthemes]

at the end of 1x08 bugs, larry and matt are able to reconcile and make amends. they do this by way of larry abandoning his ambitions in housing development and real estate, and of matt giving up his interest in bugs. much of the tension in their relationship comes from these two points of contention: matt's interests are off-putting to his parents and to normative society, and larry's pursuits become a vector through which larry alienates his son from the family in his attempts to placate and solicit his potential customers. importantly, i think, matt's interest in bugs is not actually harmful nor dangerous; it's just socially unacceptable and weird.

the episode considers sam's relationship with john through this allegory. at this point john still has not made an appearance in the show, so allegorical placeholders like bill carlton and jake devins (1x03), reverend sorenson (1x07), and now larry in this episode are vital to developing an understanding of who john is, especially through the filtered lens that sam and dean provide. who they think john is. 1x08 is the first time that sam and dean really go head-to-head over The John Issue and take ideologically opposite standpoints, and they do this through the medium of matt and his father; sam encourages matt, and dean takes a reactionary stance in favor of larry. the family becomes a battleground for their own issues, and so the reconciliation that larry and matt have at the end of the episode is therefore a thinly veiled blueprint for what sam and john must do in order to overcome their differences.

that is, john must be willing to give up on his ambitions—hunting azazel, his revenge quest—and sam must be willing to sacrifice his "interest"—which must be his pursuit of a normal life, also read as a pursuit of independence. through this reading, the only way to become a big happy family once again is to abandon azazel for good (it's important to note that sam's hunt for azazel is itself a hunt for his own revenge and therefore his independence and, realizing that revenge, a return to normal life). they both must turn away from azazel's path and to each other, or they will forever be at odds.

conveniently enough, this is exactly what they aim to do between 1x22 and 2x01. john sacrifices himself to azazel in order to spare dean's life; he is giving up his revenge quest in the most literal and extreme way he possibly can. he chooses his children over his revenge, and he is freed of the anger and hostility at the end of it all.

sam, at the end of 1x22, equally gives up his revenge by refusing to kill azazel and by choosing his family (mostly dean) over his revenge. he then spends the entirety of 2x01 trying to dissuade john from seeking out azazel, because he is no longer concerned with hunting him—dean is all that matters now. and it's from this point on, too, that he entirely abandons his dream of a normal life. he sacrifices his "interests," and at the end of 2x01 he is able to find a certain peace with john (and indeed he is the one who finds john dead, the one who reacts most violently on screen, and the one who vehemently defends john to dean throughout the rest of the season).

it's just an interesting thing, i think, that bugs shows the audience exactly how sam and john will be able to make peace with each other, and even more interesting what it depicts as being the things they each have to sacrifice for that to happen. for john it is his wife's memory, his grief, his violence. for sam it is his memory of a normal life, his own grief, his independence. reconciliation for them is a bittersweet thing, one not without its casualties.

[everybodyshusband]

Lemme in that cocoon of dark/sad ghoul thoughts.... It's even better if it's sad dark regressed ghouls thoughts (in my opinion) bc those are the ones that really hurt 😭

no sad regressed ghoul thoughts unfortunately, but uhm, i do have thoughts about whatever this is... O_O

cw for eating disorders/calorie counting and obsessive counting under the cut. it's quite a lot, please do not read this if you think it will trigger you. also, a gentle reminder that i am by no means attempting to glorify or encourage eating disorders. i am not promoting aeon's behaviour nor trying to put it in a positive light.

the cocoon is basically filled with thoughts about how aeon accidentally developed an eating disorder O_O

think about it, he's new topside and so intrigued by everything !! especially numbers and counting !! like, WOAH, he can count so many things and keep track of numbers and woah, he couldn't do that in the pit, there wasn't anything to count, so this is incredibly cool !!! buuuut... as he's topside and around the abbey for longer, he's no longer quite so happy about everything anymore. slowly, other thoughts and feelings start to creep in, or at least, they begin to present themselves more entirely now he's no longer too busy being fascinated by life in the abbey.

he likes counting, he's discovered. aether buys him a watch that counts his steps and the from the first day he wears it, he's in love. he doesn't have to count his steps in his head anymore, it's a revelation !! but now he's no longer caught up with counting his steps, he starts to count other things. he starts counting the number of doors he walks through, the amount of letters in words he sees, and he especially likes creating counting patterns that he can't help but enact every time he sees something he can count.

but something he's especially intrigued by is the little nutrition information on the back of food packets; there are so many numbers and statistics he can look at and try to make sense of !! and naturally, he's drawn to a number he can keep track of: calories.

at first, it's not necessarily a bad thing. the ghouls are kind of aware of it, but he's not trying to restrict his intake in any way, so they let him be; he enjoys counting things, and as long as he isn't doing himself any harm by restricting his diet, then it's fine, right ? well. it would be, except for the fact that one fateful internet rabbit hole sends him headfirst into some extremely harmful ideologies (in his defence, he didn't think finding a community of people who also counted calories would mean they're counting to the lowest number they could eat rather than just counting for fun like he is).

he becomes obsessed, discovering the recommended daily calorie intake and flips his little notebook open to look at his counted calories within the past few weeks and... he's been at the "right" amount mostly; a couple of days here and there he's been over or under depending on illness and energy, as is fairly normal. but now he's realised that he can count to a limit, he wants to try that. it's almost like a challenge for him. a competition with himself that he eventually begins to find joy and excitement in, unaware of how harmful this newfound ideology is.

he starts by trying to stay under the limit every day for a week, always keeping track of the calories he's eaten in a little book he keeps under his mattress. once he's managed that, he sets a new goal, and then another, and another. and by the time the ghouls realise what's happening (he somehow manages to hide it from them for quite a while), he's already too deep in his obsession with counting his calories for them to ease him out of it gently, so despite how they want to help him in the kindest manner possible, they know kindness won't work. they're going to have to help him against his will and it's not going to be pretty.

...fuck that's a lot of writing O_O

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

What's your opinion on parasocial relationships

From: "I don't think we should be able to see fictional characters have sex because they haven't consented"

To: "Blatantly and overtly objectifies -insert celebrity here-"

There seems to be wild swinging from one end to the other 🤔🤔🤔

okay so this is uuuh a Large question and I need to start by saying flat out that "parasocial relationship" is a pretty value neutral term that's only very recently taken on a distinctly negative connotation. the term was invented in the 1950s in response to increasing television viewership in America, to describe the one-sided attachments that viewers formed with fictional characters and media personalities. while Horton and Wolh, who coined the term, did express concerns that some people might be prone to substituting parasocial relationships for real, reciprocal human connections, it wasn't intended to be a condemnation of the practice. parasociality in small amounts is essentially necessary to have any sort of stake in fictional characters or celebrities who can't love us back, and its worth noting that parasocial relationships significantly predate the terminology - humans have felt strongly about rulers who don't know them and characters from myths and stories for centuries. this sort of connection-making is fueled by the same extremely social nature that let us bond with dogs and other domesticated animals.

so the tl;dr there is that my feeling on parasocial relationships is that it largely depends on whether we're talking about, like, people having harmless crushes on attractive and charismatic actors or, like, twitter stans sending each other death threats over musicians who don't know they exist. like most things, it's harmless in moderations and is mostly down to individuals to use their grown-up brains to not make it weird and harmful.

now, onto the example you gave of people objecting to depictions of fictional characters having sex because they can't consent. I don't know that parasociality is the main issue at play here, although as we've noted a degree of it is certainly necessary to care that much about a fictional character in the first place. that particular ideological clusterfuck is a result of several things colliding, I think namely:

a.) an increasingly prevalent and normalized streak of extreme sexual conservatism amongst people who broadly consider themselves progressive. if you've spent much of the last decade online and especially in fandom spaces, you've probably seen this mindset becoming more and more pronounced via a bunch of horse-assed debates about the morality of depicting #problematic things in fiction and fanworks. sincere arguments that sex scenes are bad because made up people who don't exist can't consent to being featured in them is pretty much always where that particular line of thinking was heading.

b.) an absolutely tragic conflation of media consumption with activism and political beliefs. this overlaps heavily with point a (with a lot of assumption that if you're a Good person you must take great pains not only to not consume Bad fiction but also to call it out at every opportunity for being Bad, lest you be accused of having Wrong opinions) and also generates a lot of very stupid takes like treating Captain Marvel as a #girlboss #feminism movie despite being sponsored by the US Air Force and holding creators from historically oppressed identities to impossibly high standards of Good Representation, a thing that doesn't exist and no one agrees on. (read Elaine Castillo's excellent essay collection How to Read Now for way more eloquent thoughts on that.) the point being that people's so-called hot takes about popular media are almost conflated with their politics, whichever way they may lean. this also related to point c, which is"

c.) the internet and its many insufferable algorithms encourage outrage and conflict at every opportunity, so nobody can just say some normal shit like "I don't like seeing sex scenes on tv, it feels uncomfortable :/," because people will start crawling down their throat screaming about how it's actually very sex negative and queerphobic and problematic to dislike watching sex scenes and that the person who posted that is somehow personally oppressing people with sexual trauma who are reclaiming their relationship with their sexuality and were greatly helped by [insert sex scene here]. so you have to pre-empt those replies by acting like you're teeing up a fucking tedtalk and also are ready to throw down in defense of your lukewarm opinion, and that's a lot easier to do if you've figured out how to use language affiliated with social justice to bolster your point.

anyway. that's my opinion on that.

[eastgaysian]

Hello there 樂眀 (I think that's your name)! I have three (I think) things to say to you!

#1: Your pronouns are very cool

#2: Would you mind explaining some of your recent post (tumblr.com/eastgaysian/728507273015672832)? I'm not entirely sure what entrenched fantasy tropes you are talking about. the only one I can think of at the moment is the sort of evil race thing. it probably has a name but where one race are the bad guys or minions of the bad guys (usually orcs) but it sounds like theres a lot more. no pressure to answer though :)

#3: may I please see your little korean white dog??????

#4

look how big the #4 is! That's so cool! I never knew that could happen! Wow!

ok have a great day bye!

oh wow i think this is the first time someone's written my name in chinese online instead of just lok ming. and thank you it/its pronouns are very cool i think more people should use them.

yeah, what i'm referring to in that post is primarily the expectation in a fantasy world that Race Is Real, which is to say that race science/race essentialism is treated as a provably true fact of the universe and of biology, rather than a social construct. i'm not sure if there's a term specifically to discuss this in the context of fantasy, but to be clear, what it is is race science. if you are writing a world where sapient beings are divided into biologically distinct race categories, you have created a world where race science is real. if you are writing a world where certain biologically distinct races are inherently evil and their deaths are always morally justified, all the while being acknowledged as sapient beings of comparable awareness/intelligence to everyone else, your world has a racial hierarchy embedded into it as a law of the universe.

this is bad! even before we get into the fact that these inherently evil races are 9 times out of 10 coded as/composed of caricatures and stereotypes based on real life people of color. 'what if biological essentialism was real' is a hallmark of fantasy (and sci fi). it's not really a fun whimsical what-if, though, it's an extremely harmful ideology that causes direct harm to people in real life, and cloaking it in people being purple or having horns or pointy ears doesn't erase the troubling implications. and when creators literally just base their goblins on Jewish stereotypes or their trolls on Indigenous peoples or their fucking feral animal people on African cultures... somehow you've squared racism. there's other stuff i could talk about but they mostly build off of a fundamental basis of Fantasy Race Science Is Real anyway

[on this topic, i've heard that charles w. mills' the wretched of middle-earth picks apart the construction of fantasy race in tolkien in an insightful way (and tolkien obviously has far-reaching influence on high fantasy as a genre), but i haven't read it myself. i could probably look harder for a pdf, it's just not at the top of my list of priorities.]

anyway. my dogy ⬇️

[spongebobafettywap]

I really don't get the X-Men fandom: For people who claim to be all about inclusivity and "seeing people beyond their label" they are the most close minded folks I've met and can only think about labels.

Like when I think about Magneto, I perfectly understand where he's coming from but I can clearly see that his mentality and the execution of his ideology are both extreme and sometimes just evil which makes his redemption arc all the more satisfying and well earned. But no the fans and the writers go as far as to say "Magneto was/is actually always right and what he was doing back then was always the right thing and perfectly planned to help mutants".

Emma Frost was very evil at the start and she didn't care much about mutants or people other than herself. She had reasons for doing so and they made sense. Many many things happened which changed her overtime and ended with her finding herself back to doing something she initially liked: Teaching. But no the fandom and the writers both go "Actually Emma was always a mutant ally and X-Men at heart, was really constantly looking out for her people and everything she did was to help mutants and others".

If you were to say you'd never side with Mystique and Destiny, the first thing the fandom will do is call you homophobic then block you and spread the word around that you're anti LGBT. This tells you that the fandom really only views these two for the shipping and their sexuality aka as labels instead of the bigger scope which is that these two are SELFISH TERRORISTS AND BACKSTABBING CONSPIRATORS AGAINST THEIR OWN PEOPLE WHO HAVE CREATED DYSTOPIAN FUTURES THROUGH THEIR OWN SHORTSIGHTED BUFFOONERY

The X-Men franchise got so boring when the story and writers began sharing the same lackluster and surface level analysis pov as the fandom

Magneto is mostly right, sometimes the writers just decide to make him come up with plans that will either harm humans or ones that target humans who aren't even anti mutant its very odd. Mostly because they want to write him as an extremist but they don't want you to sympathise with him too much. Whilst I don't like it I also think it is kinda hard to write him as a villain so I guess I understand why they do it?

Emma was literally part of the Hellfire Club they had ties to the Sentinel Program and engaged in anti mutant acts LOL. She was evil, she redeemed herself later but they devalue that arc by saying she was always good.

Don't get me started on Mystique its like if Magneto is written like "he has a point but lets make him do something evil so people don't root for him" Mystique is written like "lets make her do something so evil and then later pretend she has a point to try and get people to root for her"

And I hate it, I get that she's a shapeshifter so they want to do stories about her manipulating people and switching sides but I don't get why they can't do that AND have her be some type of pro mutant extremist. I much prefer the idea of Mystique being like akin to a Black Panther party member being a fugitive but still fighting to free Mutants and defend them and that getting extreme a lot of the time, thats the type of conflict I want to see with her and her kids. And writing her like that at least makes it more logical why the X-men would ally with her at times not a bad person at the core but just does some villainous things for good reasons. You're definitely right about how people call you homophobic if you don't like her or transphobic despite the fact she is not a trans character officially and she is bi.

Not even gonna comment on Destiny as I just find her like this character a lot of comic fans pretend to like more than they actually do lmao.

I definitely agree with you that the X-men books became really boring once the writers started to have the same surface level reading of the books as the fandom and then basically wrote fanfiction, its like why even bother when you can find this stuff online for free

[okthatsgreat]

can you do one for nagito? the "why is everyone mean to nagito, he never did anything wrong" except he did and deserves that everyone treated him like shit.

the fandom definitely treats all three antags quite differently but one of the similarities between how people treat nagito and kokichi is that they are both victimised in crimes that they had very intentionally committed. like i said in my previous post, in the fandoms pursuit of finding meaning and sympathetic reasoning behind these characters actions they are reducing them to character traits that do not embody them at all, which leads to the fandom getting angry at the OTHER characters for being mean or expressing fury over the antag's actions. ive seen this more frequently with kokichi but it ABSOLUTELY also happens with nagito

with characters like nagito it becomes a very fine line between understanding that he has a reason behind his actions and believing he is entirely justified in what hes done. there is a difference between a character having a motivation and a character having a justifiable excuse-- neither of these are "better" from a narrative standpoint necessarily, but it is important to discern when examining a character. nagitos ideology of hope has become so radicalised and overzealous that he is willing to hurt himself AND (more importantly in this argument) other people just to reach this.

kokichis true motivations are never reeeaalllly laid out simply (mostly because its impossible to tell if kokichi is lying or not), which leaves a lot of room for the fandom to create sympathetic explanations for why he did the things he did. nagito is a bit different in that he makes his motivations extremely clear from the beginning, and explains that he is intent on hurting others if it means finally reaching his goal. whether or not he believes it is for the "greater good" does not change the fact that he is intentionally placing his classmates in harms way. he gets people killed and he doesnt express much visible remorse about it, and is willing to do it again. he places BOMBS ON THE ISLAND???? it is ENTIRELY reasonable for the other characters not to like him. there is no reason for them to be patient with him when he is an immediate threat to their safety and wellbeing.

there are elements of nagitos story that are supposed to be sympathised with, absolutely. but using those sympathetic elements to portray nagito as a character who never wanted to harm others is reducing him to a person he really never was in canon. its unfair to expect the rest of the cast to be extremely patient with him and forgive him all because he has a few sympathetic reasons as to why he did the things he did. nagito still intentionally and deliberately hurt other people. having a reason for why he hurt other people doesnt mean the other characters are not allowed to react negatively to being hurt, and it sucks that some of the fandom thinks that theyre all dickheads for it lmao

nagito is an extremely fascinating character but he NEEDS to be analysed for his good and bad parts. his willingness to hurt others in the sake of hope is frankly what makes him so compelling. and please for the love of god he doesnt have to be this completely blameless victim for him to be your favorite character, APPRECIATE HIS FLAWS !!!!!

[katyspersonal]

Hey guys.. Thank you for the kind words. I am just not feeling like talking yet, I am mostly just spending time alone.

It is hard to explain how one thing leads to another thing and how things that are troubling me are conjoined, but I just feel like I don't have a place as a human being. I am caught in the loop of escaping people that hate whites / males / heteros / etc by proxy and soon enough the freedom and reason I've been after ends at dead end, me meeting people that instead hate blacks / women / LGBTs / etc. No matter what I do, no matter where I go it is always fucking something. It is always hatred to a demographic of people by proxy, people just can't comprehend the idea of hating the bad and harmful instead of this stupid disparity between "good" demographics and "bad". When it is not dumb American college esque "systematic/historical oppression" flex - it is a sob story about various bad events caused within confrontation to the group. EVERY demographics has people that will willfully weaponize belonging to it against others. EVERY single ONE. Every race, every gender, every culture, every sexuality will have pricks. When it is not """systematic""" privilege - it is victim's privilege.

And I am tired too. I question whether the freedom and reason I am looking for even exists. Maybe it is normal for humans to blame the ones who are not like them as a 'covenant' instead of looking up into something that can occur everywhere, and I just have no place in society. I feel like blasphemy is becoming the same entity as religion: there is always that guy that claims they know how things "really" work, that everyone who disagrees is against the "truth" itself. And I am tired. I am tired of running from one kind of control freaks and ending up with the other, after having a hunch of hope. I am tired of always, always, always being pressured into being an ideological soldier. When it is not 'you should let others walk all over you because you are white and cis' - it is 'you should stand against them with us as a woman and a bi'. And there is always control freakery, pressure and hatred for not agreeing 100%. When I am not called a disgusting bigot - I am called another woke brainwashed feminist (sometimes also with 'child murdering psychopath' for supporting abortion rights).

I am feeling ideologically homeless, because apparently 'for reason and against idiocy' is not an ideology. I choose my own sources of information and do what I can to keep drastically different people around so I am always forced to question or reaffirm what I already think, but HOW do I always end close with people with whom being honest is hated and punished? When it is not a public social abuse from cancel culture simps - it is private emotional abuse behind closed doors by friends.

And in the end? I am still the dumbest person in this equation. It is all my fault. I've failed to nurture enough self-confidence to be independent without the need of any approval, and so I am blaming who exactly? The entire human society for how it works? I feel like I am more like Djur4. He is not against the hunt altogether (he tells the hunter to go kill beasts outside), but he personally quit it and protects the beasts that CAN'T harm anyone, he has only like 3 true friends (funny enough, I also have 3 people that truly accept me as who I am without any contempt and conditions), but he has quite the mood swings and used to be fearsome (and well, I used to be aggressive kind of feminist anti something something years ago). But I am yet to become really like him, because he is confident living on his own with what works for him. (Heh. Would've been funny to switch M3nsis on Powder K3gs, considering he still resides extremely close to M3nsis base.)

In the end, what I am really looking for is the dreaded unattainable trait of "not letting someone's insults get to me", but even this is hard because if I never listen to them, how will I know when I am ACTUALLY being a dumbass? Is anyone really qualified to unmistakeably distinguish between "they insult me because they can't control me" and "they insult me because I really fucked up"? I've endured a lot of abuse from either "side" under delusion that they could not insult me without a logical reason... But what if they do not understand logic to begin with? Or what if their logic is rigid and stuck in certain dogmas, that can't adapt and evolve? And what if they don't know the "truth" but just fucking hate women, even if some of their observations and reasoning could be useful? In the end, no one can know my intentions better than me, but if I never listen - how WILL I connect with other people? Yet I did not connect just to be condemned for not being antagonistic "enough", or for constantly listening trash about women and their rights and being told that I am in "denial about FAAAAAACTS uwu" when I disagree. In the end, chaos is just another form of order, only its order is being antagonistic to the previous one.

And if I can't become whatever the secret third thing is... it is better to exclude myself from this life altogether.

[howieabel]

“Over recent years, [there's been] a strong tendency to require assessment of children and teachers so that [teachers] have to teach to tests and the test determines what happens to the child, and what happens to the teacher...that's guaranteed to destroy any meaningful educational process: it means the teacher cannot be creative, imaginative, pay attention to individual students' needs, that a student can't pursue things [...] and the teacher's future depends on it as well as the students'...the people who are sitting in the offices, the bureaucrats designing this - they're not evil people, but they're working within a system of ideology and doctrines, which turns what they're doing into something extremely harmful [...] the assessment itself is completely artificial; it's not ranking teachers in accordance with their ability to help develop children who reach their potential, explore their creative interests and so on [...] you're getting some kind of a 'rank,' but it's a 'rank' that's mostly meaningless, and the very ranking itself is harmful. It's turning us into individuals who devote our lives to achieving a rank, not into doing things that are valuable and important.

It's highly destructive...in, say, elementary education, you're training kids this way [...] I can see it with my own children: when my own kids were in elementary school (at what's called a good school, a good-quality suburban school), by the time they were in third grade, they were dividing up their friends into 'dumb' and 'smart.' You had 'dumb' if you were lower-tracked, and 'smart' if you were upper-tracked [...] it's just extremely harmful and has nothing to do with education. Education is developing your own potential and creativity. Maybe you're not going to do well in school, and you'll do great in art; that's fine. It's another way to live a fulfilling and wonderful life, and one that's significant for other people as well as yourself. The whole idea is wrong in itself; it's creating something that's called 'economic man': the 'economic man' is somebody who rationally calculates how to improve his/her own status, and status means (basically) wealth. So you rationally calculate what kind of choices you should make to increase your wealth - don't pay attention to anything else - or maybe maximize the amount of goods you have.

What kind of a human being is that? All of these mechanisms like testing, assessing, evaluating, measuring...they force people to develop those characteristics. The ones who don't do it are considered, maybe, 'behavioral problems' or some other deviance [...] these ideas and concepts have consequences. And it's not just that they're ideas, there are huge industries devoted to trying to instill them...the public relations industry, advertising, marketing, and so on. It's a huge industry, and it's a propaganda industry. It's a propaganda industry designed to create a certain type of human being: the one who can maximize consumption and can disregard his actions on others.” ― Noam Chomsky

[anendoandfriendo]

Hey there! Y'all are out as plural at your work right? Would you be willing/able to share how you did that? Everytime we consider being openly ourselves outside of our close friend group, we kinda seize up, unsure of really how to broach the situation.

Honestly, we have a more "fuck it, fuck this, fuck that, fuck everything," attitude to most things when it somes to social norms and that's probably not something most people can pull off considering our body's parents' first concerns when we first started university were:

Please don't get stabbed.

Please don't get arrested at a protest.

We didn't do either of those things (aww, that's unfortunate) but basically the reason that happened is we asked the mother for some advice once way back when. She told us that at some point, she had also heard the words "just screw it and do it," from someone. So we took that to an extreme they probably were not expecting given the above.

Anxious? Screw it and do it. Scared? Screw it! Just do the thing already! Think that the worst could happen? Fuck this, there is already some bad shit happening and you don't need to hurt yourself even further.

While retail was our main job literally filed an ethics report against the boss of our boss...of maybe our boss??? but walmart is weird. We were told we would be notified when the case closes and still haven't gotten any notification so we're absolutely convince this man will not have a job within the next six months, but we've also gotten a yellow warning for trying to talk to them about another employee's Qanon ideologies.

What we mean when we tell you all of this is that YMMV. We are extremely stubborn and bullheaded and annoying as FUCK and will drag just about anyone through the mud who has the audacity to tell us we cannot/do not exist in public. Like. Not everyone is like that. We're mostly just using our worst natures and turning them into something a bit less harmful and more hopeful.

We also make heavy use of the weaponizing our supposed respectability, which we vaguely discussed here but only vaguely. Jade Leech 1.0 does this quite a lot even compared to the majority of us, and on the other side of that spectrum 🏖 has tried it once and failed miserably. We think if you have seen us talk about Jade 1.0 or you have met Jade 1.0 you will know what we mean, and we believe you have at least heard us describe his antics.

Edit: we found the article! We would take a look at this if you'd like to get an idea of what we mean.

Unfortunately, the more humanizing side of us is a little less refined than the monstrous side of our system, which means we don't think we're quite there yet but what's described in that article is something that makes sense to us and we strive to be more hopeful than "nice" when it comes to making the world better, if that makes sense.

[mournwatch]

and people said that proved they can r-move entire h-rassment posts when needed. Its not the main reason the site has issues but its why a lot of people are upset at st-ff about it all. Also I’m SO sorry about the random dashes I literally could not send the ask without them because st-ff bl-cks certain combinations of keywords from being sent in asks and this topic is one of the f-ltered ones. But yeah other than that you’re 100% right 2/2

So I heard about the case of this staff member as it was going down. If it’s not immediately obvious, I do know people who are on staff even if I myself am not. I sew costumes for a living at a corporation. As far as I understood it, what happened was someone found out that a person on staff (but *not on trust & safety*, which is the department that handles reports of harassment) was a Harry Potter fan. And then they proceeded to make a big deal out of it in a way that singled that staff member out for harassment, which is against TOS. I don’t remember seeing any specific transphobic posts from this person, just that they like Harry Potter. And that it seemed unfair that the person bringing this to people’s attention was punished, even though they really did break TOS.

Now, to be clear I think it’s in extremely poor taste to still be a fan of Harry Potter now. The author is so beyond the pale in terms of proof pointing to her bigotry. And being a member of Tumblr staff I don’t think you can even give this person the benefit of the doubt in assuming she didn’t know. She probably does. She could be anywhere from an ignorant idiot clinging to nostalgia to someone who really does hold transphobic beliefs. But ultimately as far as I understand it there wasn’t sufficient proof of her saying blatantly transphobic things, so what do you do? Would you, as a member of HR staff at a company, feel comfortable enough to potentially risk being brought to court over firing someone because they consume shitty media? It’s almost inevitable as an adult in the workplace that you’re going to have coworkers that have harmful political stances. My best friend worked with an antivax flat-earther. But if they don’t talk about it at work, there’s not a lot that most companies would do about that. It’s annoying and unpleasant but the same laws that protect someone like me, a trans gay Jewish AnSoc, also are protecting them. But anyway, since this person wasn’t actually on trust & safety, it isn’t within her power actually to make decisions over how transphobic harassment gets handled.

Further, it’s weird to then treat staff as if they’re a transphobic monolith when most people don’t even interact with each other directly. This company is almost entirely comprised of remote workers. They’re not like, hanging out around the water cooler pitying this person for liking Harry Potter. By far the most annoying result from their perspective has been this game of telephone that started at “there’s a staff member who has interests that are distressing” to “the company is sheltering a secret hive of TERFs.” When meanwhile the people I know who are affiliated with Tumblr are as far from that ideology as you can be. And they mostly are not going to be outspoken about this issue at all because it is pretty uncomfortable to get in direct fights with the userbase when it really only will result in not letting this matter ever die if they did and wouldn’t help clarify anything.

Most people who are invested in this come off as very young to me and without the experience of how working at a company like this is. They don’t know how difficult it is to be bound to a enforcing a set of rules that can both be used against bigots and people who mean well but still break those rules. I’m nearly thirty. I really feel sorry for the people who feel like they’ve been treated unfairly, but I think what they’re looking for doesn’t exist. You can’t even get people to all behave in a leftist discord server. And as you can see in the other conversation I’m having, people constantly underestimate the labor it takes to keep social media safe. I could grumpily tell people to grow up and touch grass but that doesn’t do any good either. All I can do is simply plead for people to think it through better.

[gayahithwen]

I notice that you immediately moved the goal post after I showed you that your "fact check" was factually incorrect. If you're not willing to ever admit fault, you will continue down a path of sunk cost fallacies that will only drive you towards more hatred and violent extremism.

Calling for recounts in close races is actually perfectly fine and normal. I personally don't know anyone who had a problem with Trump calling for a recount on the states he lost by a small margin. Were we worried about what the outcome would be? Sure. But it was his right, and recounts were done. And Biden still won.

Like, I don't understand how I can explain to you that people who genuinely care about democracy actually want things to be done democratically?

Harris/Walz is a vastly different ticket than Trump/Vance. If you can't see that, then... I don't know how to fix that.

Yes, Harris is not as pro-Palestine as we wish she could be, and peaceful protestors being arrested for "blocking traffic" is ridiculous.

But Harris is at least fighting for a cessation of violence. Trump, on the other hand, has said he'd deport pro-Palestinian protestors, and that he wants Israel to "finish the problem" with Gaza.

Those are some significant differences on the one issue you seem to care about.

Those of us who care about policies beyond Israel are also quite excited at the thought of having politicians in charge who are willing to do things like create programs that allows first time offenders to go to school instead of prison, or ones that make sure school children get free meals (both of those programs are real examples that Harris and Walz have actually done).

The Democrat party is actually acknowledging the wealth inequality in the country and have shown themselves willing to try some common sense approaches like increasing corporate tax rates and allowing the IRS the resources to investigate rich people's tax fraud.

You know, while the GOP thinks 13 year old girls should be forced to give birth to their rapist uncle's child, and that billionaires need yet another tax cut.

Also, wtf are you talking about "entitled" to people's votes? That's not what this post is about at all. This post is a democratic reminder of how fucked up the electoral college is, and reminding people that if just six hundred people in Florida had voted for Gore instead of Nader, the early 2000s would most likely have been significantly different.

Would a Gore presidency have been perfect? No, I don't believe so. But there's a decent chance a more intelligent president would have been able to prevent 9/11. And even if he hadn't, he would probably not have full-on defied the UN Security Council to start an illegal war. The United Nations used to actually have some sway back in the day.

This post is about pointing out the futility of voting third party as long as the US remains a first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all, bipartisan system.

And it's pleading (not demanding, like you seem to think) with people like you, up on your high horse and ignoring mostly everything I'm saying, to make the choice and vote for harm reduction in lieu of your "ideologically pure" candidate who will never get enough votes to get into office.

With Kamala/Walz going up DAILY, I've seen more people talking about voting third party/Jill Stein (EW) and I believe the above screencaps from @three--rings can explain WHY Third Party votes NEVER work NOR is this the election to screw around in.

Everyone....like she says above.....PLEASE LEARN FROM HISTORY!!!

(Because if Trump gets in, he's NEVER LEAVING).