#not actually solving or even understanding problems

[bonyassfish]

Nope! You missed the point entirely.

I don’t want the person who abused me to get a bullet to the head. I’m willing to bet a lot of survivors may not want that either. And more importantly, it doesn’t actually solve anything. Say you shoot my abuser. Then what? It doesn’t undo the trauma. It’s not closure, at least not for me. And it’s not going to stop another kids from getting hurt in the future.

Also, let’s be clear: you can’t trust any state to execute justice correctly, even if they hide behind the veneer of protecting children. For every child molester who actually goes to jail, dozens more are never even reported because those kids don’t even know they’re being abused, or they feel so ashamed that they can’t speak out, or their abuser is threatening them, or don’t have any adults they can trust to talk about the abuse.

And for the kids who actually end up going through the justice system? God, sometimes it can be just as damaging as the abuse itself. Constantly being made to relive some of the most horrific experiences, sometimes right in front of the person who hurt you. You think cops are sensitive and understanding with kids they interrogate? Especially if those kids are disabled or black. Every detail of your story will be meticulously picked apart by people who might think you’re lying. Every survivor of sexual violence I know who has interacted with law enforcement has a horrible story.

And of course, what happens when the state equates being trans to being a pedophile? What happens when doing drag storytime is a sexual offense? Do you see where I’m going here?????

Seek out revenge to your own abuser if you want, I can’t judge you for that. But don’t decide on violence and prison as a solution for all of us wholesale, especially when it doesn’t fix the problem in the first place.

Speaking as a survivor of child sex abuse: the world would be a lot better if yall spent less time talking about the ways in which pedophiles should be punished and more time supporting survivors and preventing abuse

I get it, punishment can feel cathartic. I’ve certainly spent time imagining all the ways in which my own abuser might be punished. But ultimately, him dying, or being jailed, or publicly shamed, isn’t actually going to help me nor will it stop more kids from getting hurt in the future.

I don’t want more prisoners. I want free therapy with trauma informed counselors. I want better sex education for young children that teaches them about consent and body autonomy. And I want a society in which I can openly discuss my trauma, or at least as openly as yall discuss the evils of pedophiles

[nothorses]

Hi, I'm new on Tumblr. I've been doing a ton of research on TERFs and TIRFs and white feminism, and a lot of people say that the problems with all of these movements at least partially stem from the fact that they all are based off the framework of radical feminism. I'm having trouble understanding the connection, and you seem pretty knowledgeable about this sort of stuff. Could you explain the flaws in radical feminism that cause the problems in these movements?

Sorry this has sat for so long!

"Radical feminism" originates in the second wave of feminism: the first-wave/liberal feminist belief was that patriarchy is a legal issue that can be solved through changes in law. The second wave/radical feminist belief is that patriarchy stems from individually-held biases and large-scale cultural misogyny, and requires a fundamental cultural shift in order to solve. Which is an important step forward in feminist thought! Subsequent waves of feminism included and built on those ideas.

The core of the issue with radical feminism is that it is still very much holds that the oppression of women is the first or most fundamental form of oppression, and everything else is built on top of that. Even when radical feminists do pay lipservice to other forms of oppression, ultimately those things just can't be as important; and even when this belief isn't explicit or conscious for a particular individual, the implication is present in all of the other radical feminist beliefs that have come from that core idea.

So, if women's oppression is the root of all oppression, why focus on other kinds of oppression? Why focus on racism, ableism, classism, religious persecution, or any other form of oppression? Surely, those problems will be resolved when we dismantle patriarchy.

If misogyny lies at the center of it all, well, it follows that other forms of oppression also stem directly from misogyny- or are, literally, just misogyny. For example, they tend to believe that lesbophobia exists entirely because lesbians aren't available to men, and homophobia exists entirely because men are acting like women; biphobia is just a combination of those two things, and therefore doesn't actually exist as a unique phenomenon.

It also follows that the greatest privilege that one can hold is being a man. Black men cannot be uniquely oppressed, because male privilege is the ultimate and most fundamental privilege there is- and the same goes for other men of color, disabled men, gay men, etc. Radical feminists are generally uncomfortable with the idea that white women can oppress men of color at all, or they dismiss that possibility outright.

Bioessentialism and gender essential are foundationally important to radical feminism for this reason: they need to know how to categorize you. Are you a man (oppressor), or a woman (oppressed)? Or, if you don't like that language: Are you woman-aligned or man-aligned? Are you feminine or masculine? Woman and/or femme, or other? Man or non-man? AMAB or AFAB? Are you TME or TMA?

Whether they define "woman" and "man" by some oversimplified version of "biological sex" (think TERFs); by a more lenient, but still oversimplified version of gender identity; or whether they redraw the lines slightly to create a new gender binary, the core idea is the same: women are one way, men are another, and men always oppress women.

This gender essentialism is also why radfems tend to cling so hard to ideas that very obviously strip women of their agency. Misogyny is viewed as so fundamental to the shaping of every single person and their every decision that radfems often believe that a woman cannot truly consent to certain kinds of sex or sex-related work. If it is in service of a man in any way, it must be motivated by patriarchy and misogyny, and it therefore cannot be genuinely consensual. (Nevermind the fact that this work is also often in service of the woman in question, performed for other women, performed by men for women, or performed by men for other men... etc.)

The original shift from first- to second-wave feminism was a good one, and radical feminism contains some really solid feminist ideas. There are also a lot of other branches of feminism, most of which share the exact same good ideas & build on them in far better, more intersectional and inclusive ways. People don't see "radfem" as a red flag because they believe liberal feminism is the way to go-- they avoid it because the reasons for identifying as a radfem in the present day are generally limited to the aspects of radical feminism that virtually every other feminist movement has long since left behind.

(This is also by no means comprehensive, and while I've spent time digging around in this, I'm very much not an expert in gender theory as an academic field. This is just my understanding!)

[daughterofheartshaven]

Andred, for all his being a loser, really was trying to protect Gallifrey. From what he tells Taylor, I think he has a better understanding of the current political situation then basically anyone else of his people. He wanted to make a better life for himself, but Romana refused to let him. He wanted to make a better life for others, but Darkel won't let him do that. He still loves his wife, but she won't even look at him anymore. All because he made a dumb, fucked-up decision that's destroyed his whole life, and even now, he cannot separate himself from it.

Andred: You were right. I’m not the man you married. Somewhere between my regeneration and my masquerade as Torvald, that man got lost, but he’s trying to find his way back. He’s trying to find his way back to you.

Andred: What should I do, Leela? So many people have tried to tell me, I- I don’t know who to listen to. I don’t know who I can trust anymore. I can’t trust myself. But I trust you, Leela. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. Tell me how I can put things right! Leela: The man I knew would not have had to ask.

I think that's the tragedy of Andred, and one of the reasons I find him such a compelling character. Yes, he lied. He cheated. He murdered. He has done terrible, unforgivable things. But he spends this whole season desperately trying to find a way to solve problems that can't be solved.

Andred: I am Andredocelus of the House Deeptree, Castellan of the Arcalian Chapter of Gallifrey, and I order you to show yourself!

I've said before that I think Andred is actually from the House of Redlooms, and that Torvald was from Deeptree. It helps that going by earlier episodes, Andred is a Prydonian, and Torvald is an Arcalian. And I still believe that even in this moment. Andred, in the moments before he died, said he came from Torvald's house.

[nerdy-hyperfixations]

"Ford is intellectually smart and Stan is emotionally smart" is a statement that makes me want to nose dive into academic studies in order to single-handedly redefine the categories of intelligence because that *cant* be right.

[emcapi-gaming]

@elizabethrobertajones: #how did they cope with scary lightning aspected things like Ramuh or the Aery? :O

Couple of ways!

One is that they started out as a conjurer, and picked up sage notably earlier than the game officially allows (still haven't decided whether white mage is canon for them in this AU, I think they may have gone right from conjurer -> sage). Arkose is really good at coming up with creative solutions (something Ardwin shares, but hasn't had as much necessity to develop the skill in the same way). So what they come up with here, which gets them through ARR until they've got the fully empowered Blessing of Light, is an earth-aspected shield spell which can nullify most levin-based magic that gets thrown at them (so long as they react fast enough to cast it in time).

The other, as mentioned, is that the full-power Blessing of Light provides them with pretty solid protection. It prevents corruption, which in Arkose's case, means that getting hit with levin won't make their imbalance worse, so they're no longer getting lingering symptoms if they miss a shield or two. This helps with Ramuh, since he only shows up during the ARR patches, after collecting all six of the jolly ranchers crystals of light - he's terrifying, but relatively manageable.

It helps less with the Aery, since Midgardsormr blocked all the crystals. Arkose makes it through by keeping the earth shield up basically the entire time, but it can't fully block out the environmental effects. Having to maintain their personal shield for so long, combined with handling normal healing and combat, drains their aether so badly that they collapse as soon as Nidhogg is dead.

Estinien has to haul them back to Ishgard to recuperate for several days from both overtaxing their aether and the worsened levinsickness symptoms before continuing on with the MSQ. (Arkose absolutely forbids Estinien from going to talk to Hraesvelgr without them, because they - with good reason - do not trust him not to be a total asshole and screw up the whole thing. Fortunately, Estinien is not immune to the Arkose Sad Puppy Dog Eyes. Nobody is immune to the Arkose Sad Puppy Dog Eyes.)

Also, in response to your other tag... come to think of it, I think Hydaelyn might be nudging them to keep them apart on purpose, because she's concerned about destabilizing the Elpis time loop. If they get too close to meeting, her memories start blurring on who Venat met in Elpis. If they stay apart, it's very clearly Arkose.

She knows that she only met one of them, so she has to make a choice. In her opinion, Ardwin seems very competent, but Arkose is doing very well as the WoL and has two major qualities that make her think they have a better chance of stopping the Final Days: the creative problem-solving, and the fact that they're significantly better at dealing with emotional stress. Arkose's main coping mechanism is humor, as opposed to Ardwin's repression, and they've actually been to therapy before and came out with a basic understanding of The Necessity Of Emotional Processing that Ardwin completely lacks at this point.

So, even though it feels rather cruel to keep them apart, it seems like the safest option, and she starts figuring out how to give them very subtle suggestions to keep them at a distance. It's different enough from her usual modus operandi that it takes some time for her to get the hang of it, leading to a lot of especially close misses early on that are very stressful for her, and very entertaining for the rest of us.

(There's a reason why she knows she only met one, but can't tell which: if they properly meet, they end up as co-WoLs. When they reach the point where Elidibus sends someone back to Elpis, he only has enough 'juice' for one of them. They literally flip a coin for it, hence the uncertainty. Unfortunately, Venat/Hydaelyn is working off very limited knowledge, so she assumes the two of them must be mutually exclusive.)

Some of the basics of the AU where Arkose is the main WoL:

They're still from S9/Heritage Found.

After their falling-out with Endless Sphene - and subsequent falling-in with Oblivion - but pre-Domebreak, they somehow manage to get ahold of the dimensional key.

Given the strength of their wish to Get The Fuck Out Of The Dome, they immediately get launched through the rift - and land on the other side of the world, somewhere deep in the Twelveswood, and some months before the start of ARR MSQ.

This results in a stable-time-loop situation.

Ardwin is still around somewhere, but literally and metaphorically missed the boat, and is off doing her own thing with a group of adventurers independent from the Scions. (They keep having increasingly comedic near-misses on meeting each other, though they may eventually meet after the time loop gets wrapped up.)

Since they've already had the Echo awakened (thanks a lot, educational VR documentary on the geological history of Yak T'el with all the meteorites), they get hit with the Hydaelyn Broadcast Special almost the second they come out of the rift and get the Blessing of Light, which results in some immediate improvement on the levinsickness front. They get some further improvement just from being out of the dome, though they also have to deal with some muscle atrophy (not to the same degree as in their original timeline as they got out of the dome earlier, but it's part of the reason for the time stretch from arrival -> jumping on board MSQ). They're still dealing with mild residual symptoms all the way through ShB up until the Ardbert Incident, though getting the full 6-crystal power-up in ARR at least solves the effective "permanent levin vuln debuff" issue.

Although their initial motivation was mostly just getting out for their own sake, Arkose definitely starts keeping an eye out for potential solutions to fix the horrible environmental situation inside the dome, and they're increasingly determined to make it back eventually and deal with Endless Sphene and Zoraal Ja - hopefully before they can carry out their invasion plans.

However, that'll be a teeny bit more complicated if they don't manage to keep the rest of the world in one piece long enough for the timeline to get caught up.

[gur-sevraq]

Not that I don't appreciate people pointing out that using Dude as a "gender neutral term" when addressing trans women is shitty, [because it very much is, please stop doing so immediately].

But uhhh...., how do I get people to stop calling me "man". Like you would think people at least understand that calling a trans woman a man is a no go, but apparently not.

[hero-dualies-pog]

always remember that you can block people over the pettiest of things

[bueris]

okay maybe I should seriously reconsider my path in life and sell my soul to marketing or journalism instead

[prentissluvr]

guys i think i'm like... a conflict resolution god like. i can't even lie i'm so good at that shit... HAHAHA STOP THAT'S SUCH AN ODD THING TO SAY WHATTT

[tardis--dreams]

Feeling homicidal at work today ♡

[unproduciblesmackdown]

pinning to the workshop corkboard: you've heard of winston "i'm cassandra" billions clairvoyance concepts for fun & profit, hear also of winston billions sphinx concepts (you must be This understanding of what he means to proceed)

[monster-noises]

I am experiencing... frustration.

[waywardsalt]

dungeons in linear loz games made you feel stupid because you’d sometimes be wandering without a clue until stumbling over a little detail you’d overlooked; dungeons in totk make you feel stupid because they hardly seem to trust that you have any more than very basic problem-solving skills

[wukodork]

Things people did before chat:

Got someone else to do it

Wrote 600 words that didn't say anyhting

Asked the fried group (a proto-chat, if you will)

Had tutors help them

Didn't do the essay (this is what I usually did rip)

Typed instead of handwrite and fiddle with the formatting to half a page into a whole page

Wrote whatever they could in the period before the class

Plagiarism

There was also, like, a lot less homework 20 years ago, y'all. Anyways, add some of the bullshit you did to try to get a grade when you struggled with homework.

[tyrantisterror]

Fuck it, I didn't want to make a post on this but it's bugging the hell out of me so let's exorcize the thought.

Lilo and Stitch is an extremely good children's movie. I've been working at a daycare for over five years now, and out of all the children's movies I've shown to an auidence of twenty or so school-age kids (i.e. between the ages of 5 and 12), the only movie that's held their attention as well as Lilo and Stitch is The Emperor's New Groove, and the only one that's held it better is An American Tail. Of those three, Lilo and Stitch has won the vote of "what movie we will watch" the most. It not only entertains kids, but emotionally captivates them from start to finish, because it very thoroughly understands how to engage children on their level. It's a smart, tightly written children's movie.

The feat of story-telling genius it pulls of lies in its ability to reach both where children's imaginations want to go and where their lived real-world experiences lie - most children's movies focus on one or the other, but Lilo and Stitch dives deep into both. On the imagination side, there's Stitch's whole plotline of being a little alien monster being chased by other weirdo aliens onto earth because they want to stop him from running amok and causing havoc (which, of course, happens anyway in fun cartoony comedy/action spectacle). On the real-world side, you have Lilo's plotline of being a troubled little girl who has an abundance of very real problems that, like an actual child, she struggles to comprehend and deal with, as well as the many adults in her life that care about her to some degree but all struggle to fully understand her. Kids want to be Stitch and run amok and cause cartoony havoc. Kids, even the least-troubled kids, relate to Lilo, because all of them have been in a similar situation as her at least once in their lives.

Balancing these two very different stories, with very different tones and scopes to their respective conflicts, is a hard writing task, but Lilo and Stitch manages to do it in a way that seems effortless with one very powerful trick. The two plots are direct mirrors to each other, complete with the characters involved in each having foils in the respective plot. To break it down:

Stitch, the wild and destructive alien gremlin who everyone has labeled as a crime against existence, is Lilo, the troubled young girl who's viewed as a "problem child" by all the adults in her life. In both plotlines, Stitch and Lilo are facing the threat of being "taken away" from the life they know because they act out, and in both plotlines, we see that this is an unfathomably cruel thing to do to them and will not actually solve the problems they have.

Dr. Jumbaa, the mad scientist who made Stitch because making monsters is what mad scientists do, and who had no intentions of ever being nurturing or parental to anything or anyone in his life, is Nani, Lilo's older sister whose parents died when she was young and now is forced to act as a parental substitute despite not being mentally or emotionally prepared for that responsibility yet. Both Dr. Jumbaa and Nani are trying to get their respective wild children in line with what society wants them to be, and both are struggling hard with it because they in turn have a lot of growing to do before they can actually accomplish that.

Pleakley, the nebbish alien bureaucrat who ends up being assigned to help Dr. Jumbaa despite being mostly uninvolved in creating the whole Stitch situation, is David, the nice but mostly ineffectual guy who's crushing on Nani and wants to help her but doesn't really have much he can provide except emotional support. Ultimately Pleakley and David prove that said emotional support is a lot more helpful than it seems on the surface, as they give Jumbaa and Nani respectively a lot of the pushes they need to become better in their parental roles.

The Grand Councilwoman, who runs the society of aliens that is trying to banish Stitch forever for his crime of existing, is Cobra Bubbles, the Child Protective Services agent who is in charge of deciding whether or not Lilo needs to be taken away from her home forever for, ostensibly, her own good. Both are well-intentioned and stern, with a desire to follow the rules of society and do what procedure says is the most humane thing to do in this situation, but both lack the understanding of Stitch/Lilo's situation to actually help until the end of the movie.

Finally, we have Captain Gantu, the enforcer of the Galactic Council who is a mean, aggressive, sadistic brute but is viewed as a "good guy" by society because he plays by its rules (well, when he knows can't get away with breaking them, anyway), who is the counterpart of Myrtle, the mean, aggressive, sadistic schoolyard bully who is viewed as a "good kid" by other adults because she plays by the rules they established (well, when she knows she can't get away with breaking them, anyway). Both Gantu and Myrtle are, in truth, much nastier in temperament than Stitch and Lilo, but are better at hiding it in front of others and so get away with it, and often make Stitch and Lilo look worse in the eyes of others by provoking them to violence and then playing the victim about it - in fact, both even have the same line, "Does this look infected to you?", which they say after goading their respective wild-child victims into biting them.

The symmetry of these two plotlines allows them to actually feed into each other and build each other up instead of fighting each other for screentime. The fantastical nature of Stitch's plot adds whimsy to the far more realistic problems that Lilo faces so they don't get too heavy for the children in the audience, while the very real struggles of Lilo in her plotline bleed over into Stitch's plot and make both very emotionally poignant. When both plotlines hit their shared climax, they reach children on a emotional level few other movies can match - the terror of Lilo being taken away from her family, and the emotional complexity of that problem (Cobra Bubbles pointing to Lilo's ruined house and shouting at Nani, "IS THIS WHAT LILO NEEDS?" is so starkly real and heart-breaking), is matched and echoed in the visual splendor and mania of the spectacular no-way-this-is-going-to-work chase scene where Stitch, Nani, Jumbaa, and Pleakley all team up to rescue Lilo from Gantu.

The arcs of the characters all more or less line up. Nani confronts her own failures to be a guardian and parent to Lilo and resolves to do better and learn from her mistakes. Jumbaa, who through most of the movie protests to be evil and uncaring, nonetheless comes to not only care for Pleakley, but more importantly for Stitch too, and ends up assuming the role he never wanted but nonetheless forced himself into from the start: he is Stitch's family. Hell, the moment that reveals this is really clever - Stitch goes out into the wilderness to try and re-enact a scene from a storybook of The Ugly Duckling, hoping, in a very childish way, that his family will show up and love him. Jumbaa arrives and, coldly but not particularly cruelly, tells Stitch that he has no family - that Stitch wasn't born, but created in a lab by Jumbaa himself. But in that moment Jumbaa is proving himself wrong - because Stitch's creator, his parent, DID show up, and did exactly what happens in the story by telling Stitch the truth of what he is. It can't be a surprise, then, that later in the movie Jumbaa ends up deciding to side with Stitch, to help him save Lilo, and to stay on Earth with his child.

David and Pleakley go from being pushed away by Nani and Jumbaa respectively to essentially becoming their partners in the family. The Grand Councilwoman and Cobra Bubbles finally see how cruel their initial solution of isolating Stitch and Lilo from their family would be, and bend the rules they are supposed to enforce to protect and support this weird found family instead of breaking it apart. Gantu and Myrtle are recognized for the assholes they are and face comeuppance in the form of comedic slapstick pratfalls. And most importantly, Stitch and Lilo both get the emotional support and understanding they need to thrive and live happy lives as children should be allowed to do. It's like poetry, it rhymes.

It's a very precise, smartly written movie. It's a delicate balancing act of tone and emotions, with a very strong theme about the need for family and understanding that hits children in their hearts and imaginations. It's extremely well structured.

...

So it'd be kind of colossally fucking stupid to remake it and start fucking around with the core structure of it, chopping out pieces and completely altering others, with no real purpose beyond "Well, the executives thought it might be better if we did this."

[linklethehistorian]

Dear people who use þ in the English language:

Please stop. Seriously. Stop it. It physically hurts my brain to look at, it’s ugly looking, and it just makes everything unpronounceable and 80% more difficult to read every time I see it even though I know what it stands for.

Not all of us have brains that are wired to handle this pretentious bullshit. Stop putting the very slightly greater ease of some hypothetical people from the very distant and unlikely future where this catches on and becomes the standard for all people enough that anyone knows what the fuck to do with this dumbass shit over the very real and tangible neurodivergent people around you RIGHT now whose brains may not be wired to handle this shit and who now struggle to read and comprehend any sentence you write for like five minutes each time.

It is reaching a point where I am very close to instantly blocking anyone on sight who uses this shit just for the sake of not making my brain explode every time someone thinks they’re cute enough to try to use it.

I get that some of you apparently have reading comprehension on easy mode all the time, and good for you, but please, for fuck’s sake, remember that not everybody’s like you and this isn’t some cute little fun, “quirky” thing that hurts nobody. Some people have enough occasional struggles with reading shit to begin with, without you throwing an additional unnecessary spanner in the works.