#ofc this just my interpretation of the thing

[brainscrems]

I think this oversimplifies it, to an extent. I think there are a variety of issues, the leading one being that the republicans have become masters of propaganda and the democrats have proved unwilling or unable to counter at the same level. I think a large portion is that people vote on what they feel, rather than the policies they see. People consistently like democrat policies over republican ones in polling, but hate the democrats. The only explanation for this, to my mind, is the propaganda campaigns. These demographics are fed lies, day in, day out, about “the woke left” coming for their rights to freedom of speech and religion. Telling them there are all these things threatening their way of life. I cannot interpret this vote as anything but a rejection of the democrats and harris, instead of a vote for trump. And here’s where the, “being nicer” comes in. People like radfems and other assholes are frequently among the first voices an outsider to the left here’s coming from the left. Let’s say you’re 20-year old growing up in a place where your exposure to the outside world is mediated largely through fox news and people who like fox news. That’s the information you’re taught to believe. You get taught about the, “radical woke left” and shown cartoonish examples of what it is. And, well, there might not be anyone openly a part of the left, for their own safety, where u live and you may not have the means or desire to leave anytime soon. But. There’s the internet. You go on to talk to people on the left, see if they’re really what people say they are. You see some voices saying more reasonable things, but, ofc, this is the internet. The more extreme takes tend to be the ones publicized. So this young person starts trying to explore the left and runs into people like radfems and gets scared out of investigating further. I don’t think this is simply a matter of, “being nicer” to people. I think it’s a matter of countering the image problem that the left has among centrists and moderate republicans. That we are represented by our most extreme and outrageous voices. I think there are multiple components to this that should be done in tandem. The same way the right has all these podcasts and misinformational entertainment platforms, we need the same. Except ours need peddle truth instead of bullshit. Part of this campaign needs to be making leftist ideals represented by the people who make up the bulk of our numbers. Rational reasonable people fighting for a better world, not the smaller number that exist who fit the strawmen the right paint us as. Another part is creating space for those 20 year olds who have never really talked with a leftist before. We need people from those backgrounds doing the outreach to them. We need people to show them that we offer a community built off of working for a better world for everyone instead of the community build off of hate the right offers. It’s not about being nicer. It’s that often the first people these young impressionable people come in contact with are the most extreme voices of our movements, the ones who DO actually hate them for their identity and background. They then assume that they represent all of us. If instead we had strong outreach to those people, promising them community and direction and unity for the work to improve their working conditions, build unions, fight for higher pay, we could get them to start listening. Dems promise these policies but the media they encounter tells them that they’re just lying, lying, lying, or that they’re not proposing them at all. What we need is to show them that we are not something to fear, but a cause worth fighting for. I don’t think it’s “being nicer” that we need, I think it’s information campaigns to make us people to trust, to make our communities less scary to those who’ve never met us, and to make the most extreme of our voices seem as fringe as they actually are.

the thing I don’t get about both the Women need to be Less mean to Men and also Democrats Need to be Nicer to Republicans in the U.S. context is like…. Man if anything, what the 2024 election cycle showed me is that there are many people who don’t want their politicians to be even civil about them. The “let’s just have an all American shindig!!!” Song and dance?That was the democrats. Jd Vance wrote a whole book about how much the white working class from the area he came from were lazy criminal freeloaders he was somehow better than. he won in Appalachia. Trump has now had 8+ years of violent grab em by the pussy misogyny. The majority of white women voted for him. Trump has also had 8+ years of violent I Hate Latinos Bad Hombres messaging, including a graphic comedic description of their sexual habits at a rally right before the election. The majority of Latino men still voted for him. If there’s anything that seems to be suggested is that plenty of people respond well to people being mean to them and distrust civility. I don’t know what to think of it.

[gatoburr0]

I wanted to join idk

sharing is caring ffs Riley 😒😒 (read tags psst)

[nandorsrelentless]

there seems to be far too many fans who can't seem to wrap their head around the fact that no relationship in the Vampire Chronicles is healthy. every relationship includes an element of abuse/power imbalance by normal standards. literally every single one.

they are all monsters who are no longer constrained by societal rules. so I don't think it's too crazy to expect them to do mosntorus things. the genre is Gothic HORROR. the show really prioritizes the HORROR element more so than other adaptaions, which i love.

i don't need louis to be a liar to enjoy lestat. if louis lied or misremebered things about the fight in episode 5, i literally do not care because it's never gonna make me hate louis. the baseline of what constitutes "evil" or "bad" is so different in iwtv because of the fact that they are NOT HUMAN. Claudia is literally a serial killer and she's still mother to me. ykwim?

the nature of vampirism is they have to kill to survive. so it would be really cool if people could accept louis, armand, and claudia as complex characters who are fundamentally not good people (because they aren't people!) without being racist about it. THEY ARE ALL KILLERS

im more interested in this exploration of the complexities of memory and seeing how the show integrates the other books into this story in a way that hasn't been done before than I am in discoursing about whether louis is a liar or not. who gives a shit???? grow up and realize that there are no good guys here and that's OKAY

[blusandbirds]

eli moskowitz - "am i making you feel sick?"

[captainyaps]

I feel like the only way I can justify it is that it wounded Zeus’s pride, and threatens his authority. Judging by the quick glimpses of his character during Thunder Bringer and The Horse and the Infant, he’s always above Odysseus, which is to be expected, but you could go as far to say that’s a key part of his characterisation, he’s always above. Applying greek mythos context, yeah that pretty much sums up Zeus. He’s never below, he’s always the king, the unquestionable one, the one no one can defeat (or rather, no one dares to defeat, no one dares to defy.)

But then Athena rolls in, wins God Games something she was clearly supposed to lose, and does exactly that. Link back to when Zeus is listing off the gods she can try to convince, then says or me, implying he is the final option, I believe this means Athena was meant to lose God Games, so she would be forced to try and persuade Zeus, which, I assume, was meant to end in begging, pleading, some other means of supplication, that would reaffirm Zeus’s power over all the gods, even the goddess of wisdom, who ‘never asks for favours’. I could even go as far as to say at the end of God Games, when she is reduced to pleading, that is the only reason Zeus decides to release Odysseus. He gets what he wanted.)

Therefore winning God Games, and winning it so swiftly, scares him. She wasn’t supposed to do that, and because she’d won, there’d be no begging. What would that mean for his authority? What would that mean for the other gods, could they just roll up to Zeus beat his game and suddenly they get what they want, and Zeus has to abide by the rules he set? No of course not! That’s ridiculous! And so Zeus goes beast mode to make an example of this, to remind everyone ‘hey guys, btw, I make the rules. Don’t piss me off asshole.’

So in conclusion, Zeus doesn’t actually hate Odysseus, he just hates being bested in anything. Athena does this, and it scares him into beast mode, and tries to kill her!

(But also I do think it would’ve been a nice odyssey referenced touch if we had some sort of Poseidon threat return, instead of Zeus going sicko we have him about to release Odysseus, then BAM SECRET BOSS LEVEL POSEIDON WOAH WHAT’S GOING ON? he returns from his trip and he’s BACK FOR MORE BABY! but judging from the snippets we’ve seen, we get a Poseidon return anyway, so I’m chill w that.)

Okay, so uh, wisdom saga. It was fine, telemachus and athena are very cute, very fun. I like how Odysseus' misery and suicidal ideations on Ogygia were touched upon. The callback to warrior of the mind made me a bit emotional ngl.

BUT.

Why the fuck was zeus portrayed like that??? Why did he smite athena?? What?? Why is he all "no one beats me at my game?" What game king. This portrayal just rubbed me all the wrong ways. Like, especially considering that in the odyssey he AGREED to let odysseus go, but it was poseidon they worried about.

Idk man the saga was okay, but i feel like that portrayal of zeus at the end was pretty unnecessary.

[danothan]

Just reading some comics and saw a panel I thought you might like. :)

ah fuck, characters reminiscing always get to me ;__;

but i will never ever get over that fond way these two talk to and abt each other. especially when they’re poking fun, you can just hear the love in their voice it’s SICK.

the halbarry love language is annoying each other, but even more than that, it’s being each other’s exceptions

[bunnihearted]

˖°🦇ִ ࣪𖤐

[real-reulbbr-band]

isn’t it so weird that cats- the show where you have to interpret certain aspects to create your understanding of the world, its characters, and relationships

has a fandom subgenre that just loves shitting on “wrong” interpretations because they don’t agree with it or like it.

[rouge-the-bat]

repeat after me: details a creator has stated about their characters/stories/etc for a piece of media outside of said media is not canon.

the creators saying x thing about y character on social media/in an interview/etc can potentially give you insight on their intentions/ideas behind the characters development/personality/etc, and you can accept it as true to your views on the character- but its still not canon if its not in the actual source material.

the term youre looking for is "word of god." in fandom, thats used to describe the creators interpretation of the media. some will accept this into their own view of canon, and some wont. either way, it is not strictly canon, and should not be treated like an asbolute fact of the character/story (or whatever else the information was stated about).

and also remember, subtext and things "read between the lines" can and will always be interpreted differently across the fandom. no matter how "obvious" a detail about a character seems to you from subtext, other people will still garner something different, because thats the point of art. everyone will resonate differently with art and come away with different ideas about it for a multitude of reasons.

sure, some people may be forgetting something or outright ignoring something thats blatantly stated, but when it comes to subtext any interpretation is valid. even if it contradicts whatever the creators may say. art is a mix of both what the creator tries to tell in their story and what the viewer interprets from it. you have to accept that sometimes these will not always align, and thats perfectly okay.

(and also, dont forget something in one official universe doesnt mean its canon in all official universes of a piece of media- even if one is meant to be the same story in a different media form (like an anime adaptation of a manga) or a reboot).

[parkitaco]

maybe i am dumb maybe i’m smarter than everyone but i thought it was common knowledge that mike did not initially intend for the ‘it’s not my fault you don’t like girls’ comment to have gay implications

[steven-cartoons]

one thing I feel like some of y'all tend to forget is that effeminate behavior =/= feminine presentation

a character may have effeminate mannerisms and personality traits while still being masculine in their clothing and overall appearance

....

...aka....stede is the butch and ed is the femme !!

[derpinette]

SPERG YOUR HEART OUT

[rmbunnie]

I am alone on this barren earth (Jason Todd liker and Mia Dearden liker who honestly thinks issues 69-72 of the 2001 Green Arrow run are fun and good and would really like to talk about them beyond "Jason Todd was ooc and irredeemable there because he was trauma-dumping on Mia but also everything he said was fake and made up and he was manipulating her to become his sidekick and he blew up her school in retaliation because she didn't so really we should ignore the whole comic as bad writing /or agree he should just be read as an sadistic sidekick killer" (None of which is true and over half of which is directly stated to be false in the comic's text) but all people ever have to say about the comic is weird wrong takes about the three pages in which the gym fight happens ripped out of the very interesting and fun surrounding context)

[transannabeth]

hi. for people who saw gatsby: an american myth. do you remember mckee asking nick for lunch. and then gatsby in like the next scene inviting nick for lunch. because i remember.

[amadryas]

"The hymn is about Demeter" is one of the weakest arguments you can make against modern iterations of the Persephone myth.