#our society would be a lot better

[gogoakechi]

my political hot take that would make most politicians shit themselves is that we should be able to decide what AT LEAST a portion of our taxes are dedicated to. let the people fund what systems they find most important man. military profit gonna plummet

[userautumn]

"not all men" but not in a men's rights way, in a "it's important to remember that men aren't the only perpetrators of cruelty, abuse, and evil and that subconsciously or consciously training yourself to view men as inherently evil and everyone else as inherently safe inadvertently puts you in a position where you're both vulnerable to attack or harm from people you otherwise wouldn't suspect, AND causes you to limit the number of allies you might have in a time of need" kind of way.

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

when the long night inevitably ends and the previous social structure has crumbled and both westeros and essos are in chaos, do you want characters who genuinely care about creating meaningful change to be in power, or do you want them to die/not be in power because “feudalism is bad” and therefore these characters who derive some of their authority from the class they belong to cannot hold any power after the long night bc that somehow contradicts one of asoiafs most prominent messages. (despite the fact that many of our main characters suffer due to the current social systems in place)

personally, i’d prefer it if the characters who are able to see the good in the undesirables of society (and protect/empower these undesirables) are able to live on in order to restructure society in a way that protects all people.

to be frank, i don’t think it’d even be possible for the world of asoiaf to return to feudalism after something like the long night occurs.

but the thing is, society needs structure and humanity will naturally restructure itself whether people like it or not. so when spring comes, i want the characters who wish for a better tomorrow for all people to be in power in order to create a better world.

so to everyone who thinks that certain characters being in power only perpetuates the cycle of class violence and oppression, i’d like to ask you what you think is a better alternative way for asoiaf to end.

[adhderall]

well as you can see besides being ugly as all fuck I'm also extremely bitter so that doesn't help at all in making me appealing. but it also comes with the territory you see, being treated as a hideous freak of nature for your whole life kind of does things to your psyche.

also going into shit in the tags as an extreeeemely jaded individual who's been on every side of the discourse and KNOWS it all VERY PERSONALLY so I know many people will find all sorts of different reasons to hate me (if they want ig) because I'm ~politically homeless~ at this point because I'm sick and tired of everything but whatever

(also fuck I ran out of space in the tags so another post maybe idk. )

[zylphiacrowley]

Okay but what if allied society quest that's just like... all of Shaaloani and it encompasses helping our train boys rebuild a new train, while also helping Koana and the Hhetsarro bridge the gap between them regarding technology and honoring traditions while also maybe helping him get some closure on his abandonment.

[giantkillerjack]

Uh-oh! You are like, SOOO awkward!!

You're so awkward that it is occasionally mildly uncomfortable for people!

You're so awkward that sometimes people are confused by you and then there are awkward silences!

You're so awkward ...... that ultimately no one is harmed!!

Oh damn!!! What a vile crime you have committed! What an unforgivable thing it is to make a fellow human briefly confused!

Why, if *I* were ever briefly confused and kind of uncomfortable as a result, I'd be devastated.... by the absolute net zero change in my happiness and health! - From which I might never recover!! Yes indeed! No punishment can ever be enough for you!!

So you better absolutely hate yourself for it.

Better be SO MEAN to yourself about every single missed social cue so you don't forget your horrible crime! Meaner than you'd ever dream of being to someone else for the same thing! This is YOUR responsibility!

You need to show the world that you KNOW you are bad by punishing yourself constantly! After all, think of all the people who BENEFIT from you punishing yourself! - No, really! Think about it! Think about who benefits from your pain.

Think of alllllll the definitely-good people that your definitely-necessary self-torment definitely helps! I mean, you can't just cut off their definitely-life-sustaining supply of your suffering, right?? Sure, everyone else has a breaking point, but you're probably the only person in human history who doesn't, right? Best not to question it probably. Sure, it's a symptom that billions of people with trauma have had, but who knows? You could be a one-in-seven-billion exception. Anything's possible!

Instead, better just accept that idea that bullies carry like guns in holsters - the idea that people who have trouble with social cues deserve to suffer. Better carry on the burden they placed on you until you drop. Aid the cause of the callous by enforcing shame and suffering upon yourself extra hard; try your best to do their work for them. They're very busy.

Better not recognize that you need patience and kindness to heal from your trauma. Better not find out that it was trauma rather than personal weakness filling your head with self-hating thoughts. Better not find out it wasn't your fault.

Better not find out that awkwardness is not inherently harmful or unkind, and, in fact, the people who act like it is *are the ones enacting harm and being cruel.*

Better not get righteously angry when you realize just how much unnecessary damage this has done to you. After all, if you get mad, you might realize you deserve better. You might even feel brave enough to DEMAND better! You might build boundaries that keep you safe! You might make other people think they deserve to feel safe too! And we obviously can't be having that, so...

Better not show yourself even a little kindness a little bit at a time.

Better not make a habit out of it after all that practice.

Better not get confident.

Especially if you can't first wipe out every trace of awkward. (And you probably never will. Because people who experience absolute social certainty at all times tend to be insufferable assholes that enforce the status quo. And you just don't have the stock portfolio for that.)

Better not be confident and awkward because then you might confuse and delight people

- you might accidentally end up making other people feel less shame for their social difficulties

- you might make isolated, traumatized, and shy people feel like they deserve to be included in social situations

- you might even make them feel they can be themselves around you

- you might start loving the effect you have on a room

- you might enjoy conversations more

- you might forgive yourself and bounce back from shame more easily and frequently

- you might come to enjoy some of those moments of harmless confusion you cause because NOBODY expects the Confident Awkward, and that can genuinely be an advantage in social situations

- you might stop apologizing so much.

- you might find that socializing is like a video game: it requires practice but also a safe space for it to be fun and positive.

Or if you can't become assertive and confident, better not remain awkward and shy and quiet, and then love and forgive yourself anyway!

Why, it would be carnage!!

In either scenario, you run the risk of finding out that it's not your fault that safe spaces full of kind people can be really hard to find, create, and nurture. You could end up building a skillset that helps you do those things if you're not careful!

If you start giving yourself even the tiniest amount of grace at a time, you will find that you've accessed a gateway drug with extreme long-term side effects:

- You might realize that it was never your fault that it took so long to like yourself.

- You might realize that you were always worth talking to, even when you didn't like yourself and communication felt impossibly difficult.

- You might realize that you'll still be worth talking to even if communication becomes harder as you age and/or experience disability.

- You might come to know that you deserve to be heard even on bad days when words come slow and blurry.

You might discover that you were always deserving of kindness, first and foremost from yourself.

So. As you can see, it's FAR too much of a risk to start granting your awkward self free pardons for your many heinous and harmless crimes. Better to just leave it there.

[rotzaprachim]

you’re thinking about how easily massive numbers of the wildly antisemitic tankies would have been pulled into the actual political tenets of (esp early to mid 20th century) armed Zionism and you’re laughing?????

[dxxtruction]

///

[cruelsister-moved2]

so many peoples allyship to trans women is just 99% calling them beautiful and then only supporting them when you find them attractive like you people are MISOGYNISTS anyway shout out to trans women who look average as hell and are just some girl

[solittles]

thinks about dave k's bad take on hickey n his potential personality disorder. gets upset again .

[torchickentacos]

can fucking harvard maybe not try to sell me weight loss diets?

[izzy-b-hands]

my body needs to get its shit together lmao

[cleartastemakertheorist]

We have a (live-in) housekeeper now because we literally do not have time to do the chores and we had to leave our dogs for hours at a time because we were away so much. We are "rich foreigners" where we live now. Thus, we also have a social obligation. We pay her good money, she has a nice room, we buy all the foodstuff she likes. We share our wealth and pay her for a service she really likes doing (half of the time she gets to chill with our dogs in front of the TV while we are away). We are extremely grateful and happy that we have her and we tell her (and show her through pay & benefits). In many parts of the world, housekeeping or cleaning personnel or caretaking jobs fulfil an important social function for parts of the society who did not have good access to education or vocational training; it may help send children to good schools, may help themselves pay for education, or support their elderly parents.

[giantkillerjack]

People are so shocked that Black folks existed in ancient Rome like my dudes Italy is like 10 feet away from Africa some of it was literally part of the Roman empire don't make me google maps this for you

[w0lp3rtinger]

"- I have a lot of problems with Biden. He is clearly the better of the two options, which I recognize is a very low bar. Being better than Trump cannot be the standard, because Donald Trump is the absence of a standard.

"But the truth is, even if Trump looses, that won't be the end of this. The people who cooked up Project 2025 will just move onto Project 2029 instead, because for them, this is so much more than just one election, or indeed, one candidate. Project 2025 is born from impulse as old as America. It's an impulse that says one class of Americans is entitled to lead, and the rest of us are lucky to be allowed to serve- that thinks there should be a limited government when it comes to rules they have to live by, but also a unitary executive to keep the rest of us in line. These are old, old ideas that have been shouted from podiums-... but have now been placed into a new handbook for an only too willing president to use on day one.

"And in a perfect world, I would love if we had an opposing party better able to articulate a strong defense of our country's ideals and that also consistently lived up to them. People are entitled to hope for more from the next four years than someone just not being Trump (and for at least two supreme court justices to die)-...

"And for anyone tempted to think, 'Well, we survived Trump's first term,' first, not everyone did, and it should hopefully be very clear by now a second Trump term really does promise to be far, far worse, because if Trump's first term was defined by chaos, his second could be defined by ruthless efficiency. That should be troubling to absolutely everyone because Project 2025 is a movement who's members joke about wanting a white homeland and insist women have to have more babies to uphold western society.-

"We need to be better than this."

-John Oliver, June 19th of 2024

[tossawary]

One of my personal nitpicks for historical fantasy is a lack of servants, staff, subordinates, and... idk... subjects? Like, their absence is not... a total dealbreaker for me, depending on the situations the characters are in and whether or not I can just assume that other people are there in the background... but so many of the protagonists in historical fantasy stuff are higher-ranking (very often royalty), and/or have busy jobs, and/or have enormous houses that would necessitate having at least part-time staff.

Like, girl, you should have a maid! WHERE is your chaperone?! WHO is driving this carriage?! Where are your footmen? Are you trying to imply that a WEALTHY DUCHESS is taking a CAB?! You know that you probably have tenants, right? Where is your steward?! Where is your lawyer? Your accountant?! (Like, yeah, you're not going to have your lawyer living in your house, but you HAVE one, right???)

Or, man, you're supposed to be a military commander and you don't even have a single secretary?! Where is your SQUIRE?! (In the spirit of historical fiction, I am jumping wildly across time periods with every sentence here.) Man, I know you aren't looking after your own boots. Where are your GUARDS?! Who set up this tent for you?! Who is looking after your horse?! Who is making and carrying the incredibly valuable maps people are recklessly stabbing daggers into?!

SOMEONE has to be scrubbing these floors and delivering the mail and cooking the meals and doing laundry, and they're probably all DIFFERENT people! My dentist has at least three different receptionists and we can't even get ONE for our court wizard here? A sorcerer's apprentice to take notes? Someone like Sherlock Holmes could get away with just having a housekeeper and taking taxis, sure, but your character is supposed to be a KING?! Why is he answering his own front door? He's going to get assassinated. His SERVANTS should have SERVANTS.

Like, yes, I understand that a lot of servants in certain places at certain times were supposed to make their labor invisible, but there have always been servants who still had to interact directly with the masters of the house?! Yeah, there are potentially really messy ethics here, class divisions are bullshit, but I don't think that completely ignoring the reality that humans have ALWAYS been doing work for other humans is better than just including some well-paid and well-treated servants and employees? Because a complete absence of them, especially where logically for the worldbuilding there MUST be servants (and probably exploited servants, or worse, for some particular worldbuilds to work), often makes me think that your main characters just don't care enough to notice the "lower class" people or know their names.

Also, even Frodo Baggins had a gardener and Samwise Gamgee might be the best damn character in the story?! Sam saved the world?! Servants are PEOPLE. Servants are often the funniest and most interesting characters, tbh, with the most to say about a society and its workings (yes, Discworld is a very good book series, highly recommend), and also the joke of some romantic scene being carefully orchestrated by a stage crew of servants frantically diving into bushes to stay out of sight never gets old to me. Teamwork makes the dream work!

I don't want to gatekeep historical fiction, especially not historical fantasy, because the worlds don't necessarily have to conform to our own and may have magic and characters are often in very unique circumstances, but... sometimes I pick up a story and it's like... "Author, please tell me that you know there is a difference between a butler and a valet?!"