#or thinking someone deserves it

[verysaxyberry]

A startling amount of you guys seem to be devoid of all empathy

[demaparbat-hp]

She will (and he'll let her)

[chloesimaginationthings]

RIP Michael Afton, you would of LOVED Foxy’s log ride

[werewolfetone]

Shout out to this tiny yet crucial error on an otherwise actually very informative post about myths about tax returns and the IRS

[hinamie]

"I'll show you every day that choosing to live was worth it"

some of my favourite scenes from @hijinks-n-lowjinks' fic things i would miss from the other side . this fic tore my heart out fr but like in a good way and i wanted to pay it homage the only way i know how <3

[ratbastarddotfuck]

if you're a white person taking pleasure in the idea that Trump voters of colour are experiencing racist violence from white trumpers because "they got what's coming to them" I don't think you're anti-racist at all, I think you were just waiting for an acceptable target, and you're also fucking weird.

Bad Person Deserves Punishment For Their Sins give me a fucking break and get yourself out of the fucking catholic church. you're all prison abolitionists until you see someone you don't like.

[duchessofostergotlands]

This is a link to Blake Lively's full complaint against Justin Baldoni and holy shit is it incredibly damning. Most of the news outlets are skimming over the details but it is absolutely worth a read:

https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/1629cc34e562e325/4410b1d9-full.pdf

[inkskinned]

today i love the red metal crane in her long neck arching her body over the boston skyline, which means i am okay for a moment. when i am unwell, everything is a little ugly. i always tell myself look for the beauty but when it is bad, i will look at birds and sunsets and little ducklings and feel absolutely nothing.

when my brother got his puppy, i was in a deep depression. what kind of monster isn't affected by a puppy. i was gentle and kind to her - i just didn't have an emotional reaction. she's five now and i feel like i spend all of our interactions apologizing to her - i don't know why. i just didn't feel anything. how embarrassing. i feel like if i admit that, i'll seem cruel and jaded. it comes in waves. like, two months ago when i went out into the world - it was like that. life behind a pane of stormglass. a firework could go off over your head - nothing. like dead skin, no reaction. not to ice cream or rainbows or baby chickens. life foggy and uninteresting.

i love goslings again. i love their little webbed feet splayed over grass. i love good food and live music and long walks. i like puppies. i feel like some kind of my soul has been starved - i keep staring at everything with wide eyes, trying to burrow the sensation into my stomach. it's real. beauty is real. when it's bad again, remember this. i stop and smell the flowers, feeling cliche in the moment. i like the white-to-red ombre of my neighbor's roses. i like colorcoding and yoga and cold drinks. i try to pass my hands over every moment, feeling like i'm squeezing joy out of every instant. remember this. for the love of god, it's real - just remember this.

[linddzz]

I love the theory of JayMelVik. They could be the ultimate power throuple and man Mel would be so good in there. She's already so supportive of her boytoy's weird codependent thing with his lab partner (tbh she's probably like "I didn't realize this was a package deal but I also did not realize that the boytoy Himbo I wanted to politically manipulate is a needy puppy so... sure") Checking in to see how Viktor is doing in the hexcore goo. "He'll come back to us."

It's all there ok! Season2 showed me the wonder that could be Mel going "This is my boyfriend Jayce and this is Jayce's soulmate, Viktor. Jayce and I make out and Viktor and I are frienemies for reasons that don't have anything to do with Jayce and more to do with Viktor's opinions of politicians."

Unfortunately Season 2 also absolutely torpedoed my ability to see Viktor being ok with this. Holy shit this look he shoots between Mel and Jayce when she interrupts them. Holy shit Viktor

This is the angriest he looks in his entire actual villain arc. This is the most murderous he looks. He looks like he just found his man cheating and he's going "actually maybe I will straight up kill his ass" (Viktor she interrupted because you were literally choking him out what is wrong with you)

I think it even goes deeper than just sexual jealousy. I think that codependent nerd labeled her a homewrecker when she made Jayce a councilor and in doing so committed the heinous crime of having Jayce do things outside of the lab more. She took Jayce's attention. She took Jayce's mental energy off the work. The dream. Their dream. At that point banging Jayce was just the sprinkles on top.

But then when I go "I don't think there was as much sexual/romantic jealousy" I remember this. Viktor...my guy...

And it's so one sided. It's so one sided he's so petty with it. Mel is so supportive! she's already viewing them as a pair of brilliant minds! She figured out quick that Jayce comes as a package deal!!

She comes in to ask how he's doing and help support Jayce. she says "he'll come back to us" and worries about what the hexcore is doing to him. and Viktor's stupid little cocoon tries to bite her!! yeah it's likely a reaction to her own latent arcane ability but my take is funnier

He's so petty!! Uncalled for!!! Viktor please you are killing what could be the baddest hottest power triad in Runeterra!

[mueritos]

happy pride to all queer children of immigrants

patreon

[anghraine]

It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.

If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.

Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.

I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.

There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"—and there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits them—but one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.

This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.

Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.

Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.

And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.

And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."

[2hoothoots]

been chatting with a friend who's playing through PN2 again and i want it to be known i will not hear anyone say a WORD about Hollis giving Raz a hard time at the beginning of the game. if anything she is OUTSTANDINGLY accommodating to this random ten-year-old who wandered in unattended off the plane in the middle of an extremely tense situation

[uncanny-tranny]

I recently had to do a project in one of my psych classes, and man, I knew that CBT was used for every little thing, but seeing over and over, "do CBT! CBT is the best for every mental illness!" was so jarring. I'm absolutely biased because of my own experiences, but I just don't think it's as universal a treatment model as it's touted.

If you didn't benefit from CBT, it's not because you're lazy or didn't try hard enough or lacked intelligence or foresight into your own needs. Frankly, it's a therapy model that (I think) shouldn't be the only readily-accessible model and among the only therapy models covered by insurance. Some of us should not be treated in a CBT model and that's okay. It's not a sign of poor character or unreasonable demands, and if you don't think it's a model that works for you, then it's your right to express that!

[twinstxrs]

so much happened in this whole episode but i’m still on fig infiltrating ruben’s dream, making it look like the place where his friend was murdered, and then disguising herself as kipperlilly & repeatedly saying different variants of “somebody needs to take the fall for this, and it’s not going to be me. it’s going to be you.” while adaine as the elven oracle shows up next to her. can you imagine waking up from that, the idea of a horrible truth being pinned on you by your friend to save her own skin while the personification of fate and destiny stands there, almost as a promise that this is GOING to happen to you. we don’t even know if this kid is guilty. my god.

[ruporas]

being a little petty (ID in alt)

[dukeofthomas]

I find the fact that the confrontation at the end of UTRH is often summarized as Jason asking Bruce to kill the Joker for him fascinating.

Because that's not what happened.

Jason holds a gun up to Joker's head, gives Bruce another, and tells him that if Bruce doesn't do something (shoot Jason), he will kill Joker.

Jason doesn't give the gun to Bruce so that he would shoot Joker. He isn't expecting Bruce to pull the trigger on the clown. He's asking Bruce to do nothing. To be inactive. Because that will still be a choice, and despite having done nothing, everybody clearly agrees that Bruce would still, at least in part, be responsible for Joker's death.

...And to me, this moment is a kind of- microcosm, of the rest of Jason's point. Because after being captured and carted off to Arkham, the villain will escape again, and will kill more people. The only way to truly prevent that from happening would be to kill them; Bruce refuses to do so, and I respect his right to choose such a thing for himself, but it is still a choice, and if we agree that Bruce's inaction during the confrontation would leave him at least partly responsible for the Joker's death, then we must also agree that his inaction in permanently preventing the Rogues from killing more people means he is also, partly, responsible for all of those deaths.