#not to vagueblog

[cuntyromero]

Harvey Elliott called Harry kane an ableist slur btw. It's not 'making fun of him slightly'. Whether Elliott should be called up anyway because 15 year olds make mistakes is a different question I don't really care about but it's insulting to suggest that what he said is anything other than what it is. And while we're at it you don't get a pass to make fun of someone's speech impediment because you don't like them nor does it make it less ableist.

[katatonicimpression]

I think, if you have beef with someone in a fandom, and think they're too confrontational or "antagonistic", you should block them.

It's that straightforward.

[fnord888]

Child abuse is a big problem, so it's important that we don't let children communicate with adults except their parents and other official authority figures. Everyone knows the best way to prevent child abuse is to keep children isolated and ensure all their communications are controlled.

[philosopherking1887]

Another day, another mutual uncritically reblogs one of those neo-Rousseauian "humans are inherently good and pure, capitalism and a mysterious 'few horrible people' have singlehandedly corrupted us!" posts.

STOP. JUST STOP. You should know history better than that.

[lesbiancorvoattano]

im so tired of the "we shouldnt criticize andrew tate fans, they're kids they don't know any better 🥺" and framing these boys as victims meanwhile those boys are being misogynistic bullies to the girls in their classes.

boys are coddled and treated like their beliefs and actions are harmless meanwhile girls' suffering is ignored. sure the boys are "just kids" but so are the girls.

imagine being a girl trying to learn in this sort of environment.

teenage boys are engaging in abusive behavior towards their girlfriends that they learned from andrew tate and your primary concern is the left doesn't coddle men and boys in this discussion about misogyny?

framing all andrew tate supporters as "young boys who don't know any better" ignores the support he has among adult men. in the UK, 26% of men aged 18-29 and 28% of men aged 30-39 agree with his opinions on women.

looking beyond andrew tate specifically, young men are more likely to feel threatened by feminism than older men. 50% of gen z men believe that feminism has gone 'too far'. there is an epidemic of misogyny among boys and young men.

[tanoraqui]

AND HERE COMES TAYLOR SWIFT WITH A STEEL CHAIR!

[vaguely-concerned]

when obi-wan said 'I won't kill anakin' and then spent the entire rest of his life following through on that. fuck everyone else obi-wan I respect you yoda should've taken you at your fucking word

'boohoo why did he walk away and not kill anakin this time either even with all the suffering he'll go on to cause if he lets him go' he's told you why very clearly you just didn't believe him I guess!! desperately not killing anakin is obi-wan's main export. it's his universal constant, his life's work, his magnum opus. he gets creative about not killing that guy. he tries to send anakin's teenage twink son to do the job for him because he simply can't. he fucking... peaces out and dies to avoid killing anakin. that's like his whole deal. whether he's right to be like this is another entirely separate conversation but it is what he is

[nonasbirthday]

it is PLOT-RELEVANT that House society has stagnated for ten thousand years!! it's not just that muir picked a giant number and forgot to account for the ways society would change in that massive span of time. there's a POINT there about how founding your entire culture on death means that the only innovation happening is around how to necromance better. and even then the whole society still tries to emulate a past they don't know or understand. you could blame Jod for repressing progress but honestly I think the point stands just as well if Jod isn't directly doing anything to stifle growth aside from FOUNDING A DEATH CULT. they still have MUMPS for god's sake

[st-just]

Fundamentally if someone looks out on the whole span of humanity today and complains that life is too convenient and easy I can't help but feel a real contempt? Even beyond the total selfish myopia, it's not like the world lacks for edifying struggles and productive challenges for someone with some free time and capital to take on. You're just terminally incurious and lazy and want to make it technology's fault.

[unnameablethings]

god not to get into the discourse but like. we gotta discuss the dialectics of Getting Attention For Art. Two things can be true simultaneously.

1. it is TOTALLY NORMAL AND EXPECTED to really want people to give your art attention/notes/love/care. That is a deeply fulfilling and necessary part of the process of creating art.

2. You are not entitled to attention/notes/love/care just because the art exists, and you HAVE to find a way to drive yourself to keep creating in the absence of those things.

Maybe people aren't paying attention because your art is not good. Maybe they're not paying attention because your marketing is not good. Maybe it's just not the right timing Maybe it just got lost in the vast morass of internet content. The only way to fix these things is to persist in creation and improve in the process.

We can discuss the role of the audience in helping art thrive, but I think it's more useful to focus on your own contributions. Are you leaving detailed enthusiastic comments on everything you love? Are you reblogging with tags and commentary? Are you sharing the things you love? You cannot control the behavior of anyone but yourself. You can take your disapproval of art culture as a prompt for your own behavior, but it's pointless to resent Society for your art not doing well.

Wrt writing specifically, am certain you have all heard/read the stories of your favorite authors getting umpteen rejections by publishers before getting published. I feel like in some ways the system of traditional publishing allows for more ego-preservation. You can think "I KNOW people would love it if The Gatekeepers would give it a chance."

But now it's just out there on the internet and nobody's watching or reading it at all. Turns out maybe the gatekeepers were right about this one. And that's genuinely really difficult to deal with, it's something I struggle with frequently.

But oh my god. oh my god. listen to me. if you take anything away from this post. YOU CANNOT BULLY OR GUILT TRIP OR LOGIC PEOPLE INTO READING YOUR SHIT. It either hits or it doesn't. If you can't handle that, DON'T POST YOUR WORK.

[dreamer81093]

“Why—Why do you keep doing this? Over and over and over again, you break yourself to pieces for others and never let me help!”

“Because I don’t want you to! You have enough to deal with!”

“So? You matter most! Not some stupid job, not money, not who lives or who dies! You!”

“But you need to not have to deal with the things I can! You need rest and you need these breaks—”

“I need you!”

…

“I-I need you. Only you. So please, don’t shut me out. You’re all that I need.”

[neveralarch]

98% of fictional characters start communicating right when the drama is about to get good. Don't give up!! That anime man could be standing on a table and screaming and still somehow not saying any of his actual thoughts right now!!!!

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

It’s really something to see a post complaining about how people aren’t reading enough diverse authors about [redacted] and see the list of suggested authors they then give is almost all USAmericans

[captainjonnitkessler]

"Obviously Americans don't have a real culture, so in order to heal yourself spiritually you have to find another more exotic culture to become a part of. But ONLY!!! if you have a genetic connection to that culture!!!! Whether you are being respectful or appropriative depends not on your actions but only on whether you have the mystical Blood Connection or not. Again, you HAVE to heal yourself spiritually, because I know for a fact that you are spiritually damaged by not caring about your heritage as much as I do, and specifically you have to return to your ancestor's traditions and reject any culture other than your own. This is progressive."

Bestie this is starting to sound a lot like blood and soil nationalism with extra steps

[azelmaandeponine]

Since the Gravity Falls fandom has trouble understanding the characters, I prepared a helpful chart.

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about how deeply lucanis' life has been defined by a lack of control of that life -- as he himself points out, even before the ossuary went and carved the headline out again with big bloody letters. of course he reacts badly to losing what little control he did manage to construct for himself even within those circumstances.

(namely: experience has taught him that things (caterina, loss, pain, love, all horribly and indelibly intermingled) will happen to him whether he wants them to or not and there's nothing he can do about that... but he gets to decide what's let in or out of his soul as it happens, even if he has to close it all down and deaden and numb himself out in the process. (even if that means he drifts further and further away from illario, who's been desperately reaching out and trying to keep hold of him until he finally gives up completely and tries to cut the bond all at once when lucanis doesn't seem to reach back anymore.) it's such rare well-observed freeze logic solidly constructed from the bottom up, I'm still so impressed with it.

the way illario seeks constant external means to cope with caterina's abuse and importance in his life -- he can't win her admiration or acceptance or warmth (or like. acknowledgement even, at times :') ), no matter what, so he goes out and finds those things in others and then disdains and dismisses it for how easily and falsely it's won from them. he plots, he conspires, he tries to beat her at her own game however clumsily, he tries. lucanis doesn't try things that way. he's not about 'how do I improve my situation' by nature, he's 'how can I stop this from getting worse'. he avoids, he internalizes, he hunkers down and makes himself nothing until the pain maybe ends. he's fundamentally not a plotter, he's a reacter. an expert assassin pantser, if you will, to illario's clear and stated exasperation fhsak. man I love them. illario says 'get us out of here!!! if you loved me as I love you you'd help me get us out of here before it kills us both', lucanis says 'there is no other place, there's nowhere to go, all we can do is endure. and if it kills us... well, that's just family. that's what love is (the way things are headed I'll die first anyway so it's fine I won't have to face losing you)', and they're equally baffled and hurt by each other's POV. but they're both right, and they're both wrong. there's no 'right' way to deal with caterina's treatment of them, or their situation. the house always wins, if you pardon the expression. house dellamorte still stands and that is what matters to caterina in the end more than anything.

it also fits so well b/c like... their core wounds are that illario is the least favourite and is constantly dismissed, so he has to prove to caterina again and again that he matters. not even that he's worth love or respect or warm regard, but that he's here at all and as such should be considered. he has to shout 'in case u forgot I EXIST!!' at the top of his lungs or else be rendered nothing within the family structure (and himself, because it's all about family, that's all that really matters. in some weird twisted way I think caterina openly declaring him before all the other crows to still be of house dellamorte -- and no one from house dellamorte kneels -- is kind of a victory for him, as much as it's also a furthering of a prison sentence and public humiliation. house dellamorte brainfuckery goes hard.). lucanis is the favourite, and it's the double-edged sword that he gets all the affection and attention but also all the control and impossible expectations. drowning under all of that constant stress and close evaluation, his brain whispers 'I don't exist' to try to escape, to hide and hold on to the deep parts of himself that are crucial to life but not part of the perfect grandson caterina demands of him as the price of her love.)

I think a lot about how what seems to disquiet lucanis the most post-ossuary (as it would anyone with that psychological makeup) is the dissolving of internal boundaries and control he's been relying on, which is part of what spite symbolizes. his anger and reactivity has seceded from the union to the point of personification as a little guy (a little guy he resents and fears for his unpredictability and invasions into regions of his psyche he wishes to stay frozen and barren, and yet cares about deeply, loves! and also constantly dismisses and frequently helplessly lets down unless he's helped to learn to do otherwise. does this remind you of another relationship in his life, perhaps. it makes me feel nuts to think about the illario/spite parallels thanks for asking), and now that little guy is out there running the show freely the moment he glances away or closes his eyes. literal nightmare scenario I feel for him so deeply. so much of his coping is predicated on being able to Not do or feel or want certain things, and that's out the window now, Spite has Opinions. Spite refuses to stay wisely in place even if that place is hell on the logic that if you move you could find yourself in a place that's even worse, somehow. Spite actually wants to experience the world, however fucked up and scarring the way he arrived here, not just endure it. Spite means he has to face that maybe illario wasn't wrong all those years, at the same time as having to admit and face what illario has done to him, and figure out what to do about any of it.

anyway. mary kirby ma'am that's some good fucking metaphor work. thank you, and sorry about all the shit that happened