#or really politics in general

[askchilchuck]

Do you support Kamala?

No idea who that is.

[michaelgovehateblog]

Just going to take a moment before I let myself start despairing the new government, to realise that holy shit. The conservatives have actually lost in a major major way. After 14 years they're actually gone. I was 8 when they came into power, most of my life, and definitely all of my life where I've been politically aware, has been under Tory rule. They're out and that's a victory

[lully-jo]

I wonder how many people really love and relate to Alisaie because they too were the girl who struggled to understand how folks around her could act like suffering and selfishness and hivemind behavior was normal and their softness was called a weakness and so they built up an abrasive exterior to force people to take them seriously and now they don't know how to be vulnerable without feeling embarrassed or cringe even though they still feel things so deeply it's almost suffocating...

[maingh0st]

i know i'm not the first to say this, but the acolyte's cancellation has confirmed how tired i am of disney's decision-making when it comes to their content. i know nostalgia is the easiest way to a big payout, but we can only take so many spinoffs before the universe starts to feel too small. but then fresh content—content that's building on the canon by looking to old star wars lore while asking new questions—fizzles out.

it's the sequel trilogy all over again. we're promised something new, something that actually expands the canon rather than just recycling it, even bringing in concepts from legends, and then the rug is ripped out from underneath us & we're punished for ever caring about any of it. silly babygirl! palpatine was always the big bad (don't worry about the fact that this is thematically nonsense and not foreshadowed in any way), and rey isn't a nobody ("your parents sold you because they loved you"), and this isn't a story about how the force transcends human categories and dynasties (represented by a grey jedi force dyad between a legacy skywalker and a nobody orphan from a backwater planet, fulfilling not only balance between light and dark but also transcending the old to become something new). silly idiot!!! rey's a palpatine by birth and a skywalker by self-adoption and god forbid she create her own identity outside of these names our fans recognize. watch as she stands alone on a sand planet that has no personal significance to her, ending her arc almost exactly as she began. but look!! two suns! neat

i don't even know if fanservice is the right word. at a certain point, it just starts to feel like they're quaking in their boots at the thought of doing anything new. i had my gripes with some of the choices in the acolyte, but at least it was unique. it explored a new era and asked questions that star wars has only ever flirted with. like: what happens to the children who are uprooted from their homes at such a young age, yet can't find their place in the jedi order? how does one survive in a supposedly honorable system that nevertheless relies on the repression of some of humanity's most fundamental emotions? is it possible that an organization dictating exactly how one ought to interact with the very life force of the universe... could perhaps be faulty and shortsighted? what happens when the ways of that order clash with other cultures and worldviews? (spoilers: space colonialism). and that's not even to mention the ideas they play with re: the force itself (vergences! plagueis! force witches!)

i know not everyone loved the show, but a lot of people really did care about it. a lot of people, like me, were excited to see these new questions being raised. but forget it—the disney gods have decreed that it didn't hit some magical threshold of streaming hours or reach a "broad enough" audience in the two months it's been out. but don't worry guys. turn your brains off and tune in for the next spinoff 2 chewy 2 bacca

[vinyls-and-valentines]

I do think that a good chunk of killjoys are long-time sufferers of "if I don't make art I'll die" disease, but also I think amongst that demographic there's and even more niche, more annoying sub-demographic made up of people who treat art as solely a political statement and constantly get in shit with other crews/runners over disregarding Zone common sense or coming up with the most batshit insane and specific unwritten rules no one can really be assed to understand or even take the time of day to consider

[gailynovelry]

Thinking a little bit about that one "I'm an English major and a professional as opposed to you amateurs" anon. Gonna roast 'em a little bit, but with the intention of addressing a thing we've had in mind for a while.

Real talk, coming from someone who WAS an English major; majoring in English is not necessarily a guarantee that someone is a good writer. For one, you can be bad at your major, full stop. For another, it's not even a guarantee that someone identifies as a writer to begin with. English as a major is pretty broad, and it covers reading too, among other things. There's library science, analytical academia, historical preservation & interpretation (MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS HELL YES), editing, nonfiction trades (often crosses over with STEM majors), marketing (crosses over with business majors), and also book design and typography (<3 <3 <3 our favorite, crosses over with art majors).

Someone can major in English and take a specific minor with the goal of falling into a trade that is not writing literary fiction. In fact, we would argue that most people who get something useful out of their major are the ones that do that.

It's also worth noting that it's possible to be an English major focused on "lowbrow" fiction. There are people who major in English and use the experience towards the end of writing erotica. There are people who major in English with the intent to write genre fiction. There are people who major in English to study the history and social context of fanfiction.

These things are, in fact, worthy fields of study! The realm of the "amateur" is the realm where a lot of cultural conversations and innovations happen!

Expecting English as a major to be a tract specifically for producing acclaimed literary fictionists is not realistic, not how the discipline typically works, and it's certainly not a thing you can use to hold over other writers' heads. It is perfectly possible for people to write good things (professional-grade things even) without ever touching a college course.

I sat through so much bad writing in college. Technically bad, thematically bad, gramatically bad. And I routinely bump into non-graduate authors who write texts, formal and informal alike, that blow my own writing clean out of the water with their quality.

In short, dismissing other people in your general field as "amateurs" who are beneath you is an incredibly unprofessional thing to do.

[junglejim4322]

As a USamerican I can tell you every place I’ve lived the one constant is I’ve known so many people who dream of getting out and moving away to some magical place that’ll fix all their problems only to find out if you manage to move almost everything is exactly the same because there’s no running away from racism and homophobia etc and all of these places are relatively the same in that how good your experience is really is just based off of how much money and resources you have at your disposal

[tanadrin]

"Zero-sum game" anon returning. I am surprisingly capable of maintaining optimism of the will, but ONLY as long as I stay away from the news or even other people liable to be upset by it. This unfortunately includes not only everyone I care about personally, but quite a few of the larger communities committed to organizing against those who would harm them. Advice to "try to change the subject or else walk away" works mainly for the former, and in any case is much harder to do when it's your own life at stake too.

Last month, you covered a related phenomenon in an excellent musing about the dangers of conflating identity with suffering. "Everyone secretly hates me and is out to destroy me" is terrible enough as a self-concept, but as a rallying point has even more potential for harm. This is where I think an element of peer pressure comes into doomerism: If catastrophizing is part of what holds a group together, then non-participation becomes a perceived threat to unity no matter what the rationale. Never mind that I want to avoid a mental breakdown from dwelling on all the reasons bigots want me dead; plenty of loud doomer activists from multiple demographics would still declare me as evil as a bigot myself for this "crime" of wanting to turn away from our shared pain.

In theory, balanced ways must exist between obliviousness and burnout. In practice, I feel disloyal to anyone I share even the remotest crumb of kinship with for even daring to consider such a thing. And yes, I do realize now how that might be actually be part of the problem.

yeah i'm sympathetic to the whole "sometimes binging news coverage is a huge fucking bummer that drags me down" thing; and there's not actually any inherent virtue to Bearing Witness to the Horrors, especially if you find that shit demotivational. and if people want to make Bearing Witness to the Horrors, or even worse, Being Victim to the Horrors, the non-negotiable determinative element of a shared group identity, the thing you must do to prove your trust and virtue to others, run the fuck away!

people who demand you make misery central to your identity or your worldview aren't just wrong, they are dangerous. they are emotional vampires. they are interpersonal varelse. many people acquire social antibodies against that sort of thing as they mature, but not everybody, and sometimes these kinds of people will try to leverage the mechanisms of shared identity or in-group language to sink their metaphorical fangs into your metaphorical jugular. so for those people that need it, i am giving you explicit permission to tell people like that to Fuck Off. you don't need to give them the benefit of the doubt--it doesn't matter whether they do it on purpose or not. you don't need to feel sorry for them--they will feel plenty sorry for themselves. you don't need to try to help them--they do not want your help. just tell them to fuck off. then ignore them forever. you're allowed!

[lesbianralzarek]

wondering if the "young witch looking for her neighbors lost cat in the alps" meme is actually well-known, or if i just see it a lot because its popular with my disco elysium mutuals. girls love data

for reference:

[prolibytherium]

Beautiful friendship

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

Hey hi hello to any fellow Brits reading this.

You probably know we have a general election coming up, which by the way, make sure you're registered to vote and have the qualifying photo ID.

And hey maybe you're a fence-sitter who doesn't want to vote for Labour for whatever reason.

Well, this post is giving you a reason to vote for Labour (or any party other than Tory if the candidate actually has a chance to win the seat).

You might have noticed that a lot of local and city councils have either gone bankrupt recently or are teetering on the edge, and that officially, it's the councils themselves that have been blamed, and uh yeah, that's horseshit.

The majority of a local council's funding comes from core grants given out by Westminster.

There's actually a limit on funding that local councils can raise via taxes, and like a whole lot of issues in the UK, that comes down to Margaret fucking Thatcher. It's also thanks to her that local councils don't have as much power over the local area as you'd ideally want them to.

(That's been eased a little since, but if a local council ain't got the money, they can't exercise that power.)

Suffice to say, local councils are very much dependent on funding from the central government.

And as you might imagine, 14 years of Tory government has just made it worse. From 2010 to 2020, that funding was cut by 40%.

Wanna know why hundreds of libraries have closed down? Or why public services like bin collections are almost entirely ran by corporations? Or why bin collections are now once a fortnight rather than once a week? Or why council houses haven't been built? Or why public toilets are being closed? Or why you have to Tokyo Drift on the drive to work because it's been 2 years and no one's done shit about that goddamn pothole? Or why parks seem to now be maintained by Big Foot and by the way Big Foot has also declared bankruptcy? Or why local arts have had their budget of 17 paperclips and a whistle reduced down to 10 paperclips and no whistle? Or why your local museum is effectively a mausoleum?

It is all down to this.

Your local council runs on a shoestring budget because Tory rule has deprived local councils of the funding that they need.

If the Tories win in July, this problem is just gonna get worse and worse and worse.

More councils are going to go bankrupt; more public services are going to be cut or underfunded; more vulnerable kids are going to fall through the cracks; more local services will be privatised; more pressing issues will be ignored because there's no money left over to fix it.

You might not like the current Labour party, but hi hello welcome to harm reduction politics. Maybe a Labour government won't fix this, but another 5 years of Tory rule is going to break this country.

So for god's sake, get over yourself and your leftist purity bullshit, and just fucking vote for Labour as a vote against the Tories.

[Information for this post comes from this video by Tom Nicholas]

[hijinxinprogress]

Civilian Gothamites realizing they can get vengeance through Sword!Robin

Gothamites figuring out if they happen to mention a rogue treating animals poorly within hearing range of sword!Robin that rogue will be in custody with at least four fractures and a concussion and Damian being completely aware that like 63% of these people are lying but it’s the only way he can get experience with the nonlethal takedowns he’s experimenting with bc everyone keeps complaining about how he treats his opponents and allies 

Like he’s guiding a civilian to safety and they mention that “this would be the worst thing to happen to me today if riddler didn’t stab my fucking cat” and this civilian does not own a cat but they did own a car that was just paid off but riddler fucking crushed it with a stupid ass hot air balloon that’s shaped like a fucking question mark and Damian is aware of this bc he was the one that verified the insurance claim (but he’s been looking for a reason to punch Nygma in the throat since his last Arkham escape when he called Damian a moron)

And he also knows that if he plays along with it and says ‘as if I’d let that gaudy and tactless imbecile get away with committing such atrocities��� when prompted that he’ll get away with barely a slap on the wrist like he gets three half hearted but long lectures he’s not going to listen to and an online sensitivity training seminar he goads Tim into completing (Damian and Tim 100% try to trick each other into doing work they don’t want to do and full heartedly believe the other has no idea what they’re doing)

Bruce’s tendency for finding small crashouts at risk of becoming future rogues in Gotham and deciding they need love & supervision but what actually happens bc he’s so fucking awkward is they get almost the same amount of supervision just with like an hour of intense helicopter parenting a week but honestly besides that they just have more money and resources to do fuck shit

Tim 🤝🏾 Damian: using the manipulation tactics they learned from their mothers then later improved on with help from an assassin cult and bat/cape interrogation questioning techniques on the homies

[not-sure-what-im-feeling]

Reminder that I fucking hate generative AI and if you like it, use it, or support it, you can go fuck off

[winntir]

Just posting this today for now reason whatsoever.

Just don’t look at the tags.

[fauvester]

THE PRINCES OF THE NORTH!

i thought my little moshang kid could benefit from a baby brother

[the-girl-with-too-many-ideas]

You know, from the perspective of the SVSSS world, Shen Yuan and the system would be regarded as Lovecraftian horrors if you think about it.