#please just be nice and do better

[jjdizz]

Posting this here as well

Food for thought

[stemmmm]

more people gotta try this shit where bill has not improved and will not change but he's just chilling so its fine probably. its great

[lilaccatholic]

Complex feelings about copyright and Disney's appalling ethics aside, it does unsettle me how quickly people jump to make and monetize the most unnerving, depraved content imaginable about characters created for children the second it hits the public domain

[drinkupthesunrise]

Generally, I don’t really do conventions anymore - I sort of feel I did enough in my teens and early twenties to completely exhaust myself - so of course, when I returned, it figures that I flew transatlantically to go to one.

Anyway, very much enjoying the 20th anniversary Battlestar Galactica convention, and very grateful to my colleague (also a fan but not a fly several thousand miles fan) who talked me into it being a good experience.

Please also enjoy this photo of Jamie Bamber sneaking to the front of the questions line to ask the writers / producers a tongue-in-cheek question about casting

[xxplastic-cubexx]

sequel to this ramble cause the way james talks bout the reduced cherik scenes throughout the xmen films in this video is making me want to kill people. 'we'll always have paris darling' what if we all blew up.

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

me stubbornly forcing myself to drink green tea and rest from my THIRD COLD THIS MONTH

[what-the-fuck-khr]

what-the-fuck-khr’s most popular sky is tsunayoshi! he won with 38.6% out of 10 characters!

[torahtot]

you can always tell when someone doesn't have maga men in their life and god it makes me angry.. "if you're nice and compassionate you can be the one woman that makes them realize women aren't mean!" my mom bent over backwards for my dad for 25 fucking years he has plenty of other women kissing his ass and it never changed anything. do you really think that before being radicalized they never knew a single kind woman? they were never friends with a nice girl? alt-right men's problem with women isn't just that they've experienced too many mean women and they need to be shown that women can be nice, it's that they think women are inferior and don't deserve rights and don't understand anything so you can do what you want with them. and it takes a lot more than being nice to show someone that you aren't inferior. this isn't a case of being nice even when it's hard for the sake of deradicalization, it's about spending every fucking interaction with someone trying to get them to see you as a human being with value and a functioning intellect while they just laugh and show you that's never going to happen.

i cannot stress this enough: random women are not just going out and Being Mean to men. ur average guy interacts with plenty of women throughout his life- close women amongst their friends and family, casual interactions etc. most people don't start out being shunned by women, they start out being treated as NORMAL. & when they show their disrespect in normal society, it isn't tolerated, but when they go to alt-right spaces (which they're pushed towards online) they're told they're allowed to be as horrible as they want with no consequences because they're entitled to everything. it isn't "women aren't welcoming and the alt-right is so friendly so i'll become alt-right," it's "women don't let me disrespect them and the alt-right tells me fuck them, do whatever you want, you're entitled to it all" and why would you choose the group where you have to be a normal accountable person when there's a group that will reward you for being a shithead who gives no fucks?

the alt-right can afford to be more friendly and welcoming because they can allow bigotry. this can't work the same way for progressive spaces because we can be as kind & welcoming as possible but at the end of the day we have lines where we have to say "this behavior/speech isn't allowed in this space," and for certain people, that just can't win against a space where you can be as nasty as you want. these posts always end with a disclaimer saying "of course being kind doesnt mean you need to tolerate their bigotries" but what they don't realize and what drives me crazy is that women not tolerating bigotry IS the "women are mean" that radicalized them in the first place. they perceive you pushing back on any bigotry or bullshit as you being a meanie and treating them like they're ontologically evil. the 'kindness' they need to be deradicalized is you letting them walk all over you.

idk what the answer is to deradicalizing them and im sure relationships are part of it but you can be as kind as you want and all it will do is destroy you ime. i cant stand to see people (who have never even successfully deradicalized any man by being nice btw they always speak in hypotheticals and not from experience) double down on telling women to do things that will see no results and only hurt them, especially when any woman who has tried can tell you exactly how it went

[jackstheprinceofhearts]

y'all gotta stop making AI art of book ships... it makes me so mad because there are so many talented artists who show their love and support by working hard to make a great drawing for their favorite book. the thing that actually shows that you care is putting work into it not making a computer do it for you. if you wanna use AI to make art please clarify in the post that it's AI and DONT DO FANART THAT WAY BECAUSE ITS NOT APPRECIATING ANYONE OR ANYTHING BECAUSE YOURE MAKING A COMPUTER DO IT!!!!! there's no love or support in AI art.

stop slandering my favorite ships

[weaverofink]

Reading the archie sonic comics is such an Experience bc I'm always somewhere between "wow sally is such a cool character" and "girl you've GOT to put a shirt on"

[jacksprostate]

Treatise on why No, the doctor just giving the narrator of Fight Club (full name) his requested sleep medication or sending him to therapy would not have Fixed Him

Firstly, saying giving him the insomnia meds would’ve fixed him ignores the reason he has insomnia in the first place. He is so deeply upset by his place in society that he literally cannot sleep. Drugging him to sleep would not change that. That, of course, is the easy, quick response.

But with regard to therapy? The biggest flaw is that it ignores a central tenet of the book. Part of what tortures the narrator and drives him to invent Tyler is that his feelings about this collective, systemic issue are constantly reduced to a Just Him thing. His seatmates ask what his company is. He’s the only one upset at the office. He gets weird looks if he says the truth of what he does. People will do anything in their power to pretend he is the issue, as an individual, because it is far scarier to consider the full implications of the systemic issues implied by what he is saying. Everyone treats it as if the issue is him, so he goes insane. He does anything to get someone to say, holy shit, that’s fucked up, what you’re a part of is wrong. In an attempt to feel any sort of vague sympathy and catharsis, he goes to support groups to pretend to be dying, because then at least people don’t habitually blame him for his anguish. 

Saying therapy would fix him ignores that his problems are not individual. They are collective. It’s the reason the entire story resonates with people! Something deeply, unignorably wrong with society, where people would rather blame you for bringing it up than try and address it, because it feels impossible. I don’t blame people for this, really, because it IS scary. It’s terrifying to sit and feel like you’ve realized there’s something deeply, deeply wrong, but if you say something, people will get mad at you since it’s so baked into everything around you. Or, even if they agree, it’s easier to deal with the dissonance by pretending it’s individual.

And it’s not like that’s not the purpose therapy and medications largely serve, anyway. Getting into dangerous territory for this website, but ultimately, the reason the narrator was seeking medication was because it’s a bandaid. A very numbing bandaid. For these very large, dissonance causing problems, therapy does very little. Medications do what they always have, and distract you with numbness or side effects. It’s a false solution. He is seeking an individualized false solution because he has been browbeaten with the idea that this is an issue with him alone, when it's plainly clear it's not. 

Don't get me wrong. Obviously he has something wrong with him. But it's a product of his situation. It is a fictional exaggeration of a very real occurrence of mental illness provoked by deep unconscionable dissonance and anguish.  There is a clear correlation between what happens and his mental state and his job and how isolated he is. 

The thing is, even if he were chemically numbed, I do think he would’ve lost it regardless. Many people on meds find they don’t fix things. For reasons I’ll get into, but in this case because even if numbed or distracted, once you’ve learned about deep, far reaching corruption in society, it’s very hard to forget. Especially if, in his case, you literally serve as the acting hand of this particular variety. He’s crawling up the walls. 

So why do people say this?  Well, it's funny I guess. Maybe the first time or whatever. But also, often, they believe it, to a degree. Maybe they've just been told how effective therapy and meds are for mental illness, they believe wholeheartedly in The Disease Model of Mental Illness, maybe they themselves have engaged with either and have considered it successful. Maybe they or someone they know has been 'saved' by such treatments. 

But in all honesty.... What therapy can help with is mentality, it's how you approach problems. For issues on a smaller scale, not meaning they are easier to deal with my any degree, but ones that are not raw and direct from deep awareness of corruption; these are things that can be worked through if you get lucky and get an actually good therapist who helps build up your resiliency. But when your issue is concrete, something large and inescapable? It's useless. At best it can help you develop coping mechanisms, but there is a limit for that. There is a point where that fails. To develop the ability to handle something like this requires intense development of a comfort with ambiguity and dissonance and being isolated and a firm positioning of your purpose and values and and belief in wonder and all the other shit I ramble about. The things that the narrator lacks, which lead him to taking an ineffectual death knell anarchist self-destruction path. Therapy, where the narrator is, full of the knowledge of braces melted to seats and all the people that have to allow this to happen? It fails. 

And meds — meds are a fucking scam. We know the working mechanism of basically none of them, the serotonin receptor model was made up and paid its way into prominence. We have very little evidence they're any better than placebo, and they come with genuinely horrific side effects. Maybe you got lucky. I did, on some meds. On others? I don't remember 2018. The pharmaceutical industry is also known for rampant medical ghostwriting, and for creating 'off-label' uses for drugs that have gained too many protests in their original use, then creating a cult of use to then have 'grassroots' campaigns for it to be made a label use (ie, legitimize their ghostwritten articles with guided anecdotes). 

The DSM itself is basically a marketing segregation plot. It's an attempt to legitimize the disease model by isolating subgroups of symptoms to propose individualized treatments for subgroups that are not necessarily all that separate. But if the groups exist, you can prescribe more and different medications, no? Not to mention, if you use the disease model, you can propose that these diseases are permanent, or permanent until treated, considered more and more severe to offset and justify the horrific side effects of the medications. Do you know why male birth control doesn't really exist? Same reason. They can justify all the horrible side effects for women, because the other option is pregnancy. For men, it's nothing. 

And they're not bothering to invent new drugs without side effects. When they invent new drugs it's just because the last one got too bad of a name, or they can enter a new market. Modern drugs don't work any better than gen1 drugs. They still have horrific side effects. At best, the industry will shit out studies saying the old one was flawed (truth) so they can say this new gen will be better (lie). They're doing it with ssris right now. 

Fundamentally, the single proposed benefit of any of these drugs is that they numb you. To whatever is torturing you. It's harder to be depressed if you can't feel it, or if you just can't muster the same outrage. Of course, there is people who find that numbness to be helpful, or worth it. But often, it's stasis. For the people who have problems that can be worked on, it serves as a stopgap to not actually work on said problems. The natural outcome of the disease model is stagnation for those whose need is to develop skills and resiliency. It keeps them medicalized and dependent on the idea that they're diseased and incapable. Profitable. Stuck in the womb. 

I’ve been there. It’s easier, to wallow, and resist growth because it’s difficult and painful and unfair and cruel and you can think of five billion reasons to justify your languishing. But don’t listen to anyone who tells you you’re just permanently damaged, no matter how nicely they word it, no identity or novel pathologization, no matter how many benefits they promise, especially if they swear up and down some lovely expensive medications with little solid backing and plentiful off-label usage and side effects that’ll kill you. Some days it feels like they want us all stuck in pods, agoraphobic and addicted to the ads they feed us to isolate the markets for the drugs they’ve trained us to beg them to pump us with. Polarization making it as easy as flashing blue light for go, red like for stop, or vice versa. I worry about the kids, for fucks sake. That’s a bit dark and intense, and I apologize. But I want you (generic) to understand, there is a profit motive. Behind everything. And they do not mean well. They do not care about your mental health or your rights or your personhood or your growth. They care about how they can profit off of you.

For those struggling with immovable, society problems, like the narrator grappling with how his job fits into and is accepted by society while his rejection and horror in the face of it does not, it can work about as well as any other drug addiction. Your mileage may vary. From what I've seen, recovering from being on prozac for a long time can be worse than alcohol. They put kids on this shit. They keep campaigning for more. Off label, again. A pharmaceutical company’s favorite thing to do has to be to spread rumors of someone who knows someone who said an off label use of this drug helps with this little understood condition. Or, in the case of mental illness, questionably defined condition. And like, damn, I know I'm posting on the 'medicalization is my identity' website so no one will like all this and has probably stopped reading by now, but yall should be exposed to at least one person who doubts this stuff. Doesn't just trust it. Because I mean, that's the thing right?

It's so big. What would it mean, for this all to be true? Yeah, everyone says pharmaceutical companies are evil and predatory and ghostwriting, but to think about what that really entails. Coming back to the book, everyone knows the car lobby is huge and puts dangerous vehicles through that kill people. What does it mean if the car companies all hire people to calculate the cost of a recall and the cost of lawsuits? No one wants to think about the scale that means for people allowing it or the systems that have to be geared towards money, not safety like they say. Hell, even Chuck misses the beat and has the narrator threaten his boss with the Department of Transportation. And shit, man, if every company is doing this, you think Transportation doesn't know? That they give a fuck? You're better off mailing all the evidence to the news outlets and hoping they only character assassinate you a little bit as they release the news in a way that says it's all the fault of little workers like you, not the whole system. Something something, David McBride, any whistleblower you feel like, etc. 

So I don't blame you, if your reaction is "but but but, that can't be right, people wouldn't do it, they wouldn't allow it" or just an overwhelming feeling of dread that pushes you to deny all of this and avoid thinking about it. Just know, that's in the book. That's all the seatmates on the flights. That's all his fellow officemates. It's easier to pretend, I know.

But think about, how the response fits in with the themes of the book. The story, as a movie too. What drives the narrator’s mental breakdown? How would you handle being in his position? How would you handle being his seatmate? It’s easy to say you’d listen. But have you? Have you had any soul wrenching betrayals of how you thought society worked? How about a betrayal by the thing that promised to be the fix of the first? Can you honestly say you wouldn’t follow that gut instinct, saying follow what everyone says, that person must just be crazy, evil, rude, cruel, whatever it is that means you can set what they said aside?

For a lot of people, they can do that, I guess. Set it aside. Reaching that aforementioned state of managing to cope with the dissonance and ambiguity and despair is very hard. The narrator made the Big Realization, but he couldn’t cope. He self-destructed. Even when people don’t make the big realization consciously, they’re already self-destructing. It’s hard to escape it when it feels easier than continuing anyway. When it feels like the only option,

Would therapy fix the narrator of Fight Club? Would meds fix the narrator of Fight Club? No. He knows too much. All meds will do, by the time he’s in the psych ward, is spiritually neuter him. A silly phrase, but really. Take the wind out of his sails. 

Is he fixed if he doesn’t try to blow up town? If he just shuts up and settles in and stops costing money? If he still can’t cope with the things he’s unearthed? Do you see how this is a commentary in a commentary in a commentary?

Fight Club is an absolutely fascinating story because of this. The fact that it addresses the fallout of knowing. The isolation. The hopelessness. The spiral that results from a lack of hope. This is, I think, what resonates most with people, even if not consciously. Going insane because you’ve discovered something you wish you could unknow. It’s a classic horror story. Should our society be lovecraftian evil? I don’t think so. 

Do I think changing it will be easy? No. Lord knows a lot exists to push people who make these sorts of Realizations towards feelings of individuality and individualized solutions and denial and other distractions and coping methods. And to prevent people who make One realization from expanding on it and considering further ramifications. Fight Club itself gets into this; the isolation of men being a strict part of the role society shapes for their sex leaves them very vulnerable to death fetishes, in a sense, and generally towards self destructive violence. It helps funnel them away from substantial change and towards ineffectual change. Many things, misogyny, racism, serve to keep people isolated from one another, individualized, angry, and impossible to work with. Market segregation; god knows even appealing on those fronts has become such a classic ploy that companies do it now, the US military frames its plundering that way, etc. 

I’ve wandered a bit but ultimately, my point is this: Fight Club is a love letter to the horrors of critical thinking, and the importance of not falling into the trap of self destruction and hopelessness in the face of it. The latter is why Tyler was an anarchoterrorist instead of anything useful. The latter is why it was a death cult. It’s important to work through the horrors of critical thinking so you can do it, and stand on the other side ready to believe in each other. It’s worth it.

[omaano]

"Cassian's face is a brittle thing, no person's eyes should shine as painfully tearful as his. Kino offers his hand and Cassian - bright as the sun, steady as a roc, fluid as water Cassian - accepts it with shaking fingers. He tells Kino everything."

Art for we're spitting off the edge of the world by Xenomorphic for the 2024 Star Wars Big Bang @swbigbang. It is an amazing Canon Divergence Fix-it fic from one of the most memorable moments of Andor onwards, with beautiful prose that fits the mood of the show so so well and will make you feel just as deeply for these characters. Please give it a read and heap some love on my team's amazing and hardworking author, they were such a delight to work with!❤️

[catz4ever]

Just found out today that our beautiful Sam Hazeldine is 52 years old.

I'm sorry... 😳

WHAT!?! EXCUSE ME?!

He's two years older than Joseph Mawle and walking around like this?!

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

Okay I just need to say that I knew I'd like this Tailstube as soon as I saw the thumbnail (after all, I am a Sonadails enjoyer, and Tails is literally in the middle of them in the thumbnail)

But I think probably something that stood out the most to me when I watched it was just

The hints that Shadow and Tails have a relationship outside of Sonic??

The first thing that tipped me off to this was that not only did Tails convince Shadow to join in on his show, he also convinced him to stick around to its natural end?? You know, Shadow. The guy you can't force to do anything and frequently will just dip if he's bored or doesn't want to be there. But even while Sonic was annoying him and he made it clear he wanted the "interview" over with, he still never made a move to chaos control out of there because of any of this.

And the second thing that tipped me off was this:

When Shadow is both confused and annoyed at Sonic, he chooses to complain to Tails about Sonic. And so Tails steps in to try to "explain" what Sonic meant by what he said (i.e he told Shadow something much nicer in the interest of getting them to be on better terms). The fact that he looks to Tails to complain to about Tails' own best friend and possibly even to explain that which he does not understand in a social context tells me just how highly he regards Tails. And since both Shadow and Sonic are being childish here, it's amusing to see Tails regarded as something closer to a trusted figure with more power here.

From an objective analysis standpoint, of course this means they have their own friendship. And this is a prospect I enjoy (The idea that Tails and Shadow are good friends)! It actually means a lot to me that Tails could form a frienship or bond with Shadow outside of the context of Sonic (in terms of who initiates it and for what reason it's initiated).

But, my friends, from a biased standpoint, I'm shipping trash. And to me this Tailstube was a fun show for Sonadails fans. Honestly, Tails staging this episode to get Sonic and Shadow to talk and "bury the hatchet", as well as how he acts during the show, read a lot to me personally like a guy trying to get his two boyfriends (who happen to be rivals) to get on better terms, if not just tolerate each other. I quite like the idea of Tails dating both of these idiots and just trying to get them to play nice when they're all together (although frankly I think the ideal scenario for Tails in my biased reading is that Sonic and Shadow get together as well).

This is also not to mention the dynamics showcased here! Sonic and Tails as best friends, with Sonic assuming that he and Tails were gonna talk shit about Shadow behind his back, and Tails trying to get him to play nicer. Shadow and Tails as friends, with Tails trying to convince him why he and Sonic are in the perfect position to become friends and helping him out socially, and with Shadow choosing to do something he doesn't want to because of Tails, as well as looking to Tails to complain to when Sonic is annoying him or when he doesn't understand something. And then there's Sonic and Shadow. In short, their relationship in this episode reminded me a lot of the dynamic I plotted out for that Sonadow post I wrote up where the two just beat the crap out of each other. In slightly longer terms, I find interesting how Mr. Flynn maintained Sonic and Shadow's dynamic during SA2 (with Sonic bothering Shadow and trying to fight him, while Shadow is just annoyed that Sonic won't leave him alone) while also showing the audience that they are rivals. And in longer terms...Sonic was clearly seeking a fight during this episode. And the facial expression, the mocking, his tone of voice, it doesn’t really matter whether or not he actually dislikes Shadow and believes they could never be friends. He's trying to annoy Shadow and goad him into a fight because he wants to fight Shadow so badly it makes him look stupid. And we can tell by how he expresses his confusion to Tails that Shadow is just not getting this. To him Sonic is just being annoying and confusing. Sonic is targeting him specifically, and Shadow shoots back with his own words. And so it's also pointed that Shadow reciprocates/actually decides to fight Sonic when Sonic specifically challenges him. He doesn't respond to Sonic trying to goad him on, but when Sonic challenges him specifically he's much more interested in opposing him.

Anyways guys I love Shadow and Tails having a soft on the side relationship while Sonic flirts by convincing Shadow to fight him somehow😂💖

[moeblob]

Huevember 22

Brent, the most expressive bard to ever bard.

[sysig]

Scriabin and Edgar eating crepes for requestober !!

Day 8 - Delicious silence