#please reblog. or don't. do whatever you want.

[meloneta]

i'm tired i'm too tired to keep approaching people individually and i'm kinda done. i'm just gonna say this publicly once, please read this. the situation over here rn isn't about palestinians fighting for their human rights and freedom, if it were i would support it. the attacks on israel are by a terrorist organization named Hamas and you're more than welcome to look them up-their ideology is: number one that they see the muslim people as entitled to the land of israel/palestine (which i am not going to argue about, i don't agree nor disagree on that i quite literally don't care about that conversation), and number two that they need to kill jews. i'm not paraphrasing that's in their literal "covenant"- again, look it up- that they strive to kill all jewish people and see it as their obligation to do so. i hate this country and its government with every fiber of my being and the things israel has done (and still does) to palestinians are absolutely horrible and condemnable. with that said, the attacks rn aren't about that. they're not by palestinian citizens, they're by the terrorist group known as hamas. they do things that could not ever be done in the name of fighting for human rights or self-preservation. i am critical of israel but 1,100 innocent israeli civilians are dead since saturday. some are people i know and care about. so many were kidnapped and tortured. this IS complicated and you SHOULD educate yourself proparly on the matter before speaking and yes before reblogging random posts too. your opinion is your own but you must have the proper information before preaching it.

reblog this, don't reblog this, i don't really care anymore. but i had to say something.

[scoriarose]

Psst, other snake caretakers

I have an idea for April Fools-

who wants in? Private message me for deets.

[skibasyndrome]

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[fagdykevash]

oh sorry, did i not lick your boots enough when i wrote that image description for you? my bad

people's accessibility discord, for your ID needs

[kyliafanfiction]

I sometimes feel like characters who do truly monstrous things while also having been victims of some pretty insane shit themselves are sort of an exercise in empathy. Or at least, should be seen as such.

Like, in real life, if a person who has been horribly broken by their experiences and failed by society than proceeds to rape someone - it's hard to feel the justifiable sympathy/empathy for that person (without excusing their rape, never do that) because well, you can look at this actual human person they hurt, or worse, and it feels gross and disrespectful to the rape victim.

And this is understandable. (And applies to more than just rapists/rape victims of course, that's just the most visceral one and thus picked for that reason)

But a fictional rape victim is... fictional. You can't 'disrespect' their trauma, and while obviously rape/whatever else is real, and people may related to the rape victim and thus see your comments about the rapist also being a victim as somehow being about their experience...

Well, it's not.

Because the rapist here, didn't actually hurt a real person. Fictional characters are objects. They're objects that often grab us by the throat and refuse to leave our fucking heads, yes, but they're objects. They are tools used by writers to tell a story, and readers to tell a story.

And one of the things fictional characters are good for is allowing us to consider experiences we never had, and imagine ourselves in other circumstances and lives. (Also just fun and fascinating and interesting to watch their stories).

It's very easy to feel for the rape victim in fiction, and rightly so. That's Level 1 Empathy there. Granted, some people IRL fail that, but that's not really what we're talking about here.

Advanced Empathy, hard Empathy is feeling for the rapist. Not for the rape, of course, even if they feel guilt about it, but if someone really was failed on multiple levels and was broken and damaged and went through the sort of psychological wringer that would leave most of us here on tumblr catatonic - they do deserve the same Empathy any human (any person) who went through all that.

Even after they also do the bad thing, critically they still deserve Empathy. And that is fucking hard. I very often have a hard time feeling bad for truly awful people who also deserve empathy and sympathy, real and even fictional (despite all this, yeah, I'm not perfect on this) for what they (separately) went through.

It also becomes even harder when what they went through is utterly bound up with what they did. How what they went through and experiences is in part responsible for what they did - because they still made a choice. The circumstances may have left them not in their right mind, may have left them feeling without choice, may have driven them to things they normally might not think of or do, but they still chose to do that bad thing. And that's not okay. They still hurt someone.

And yet - one cannot remove the action from the circumstances. So you can still feel empathy, and elucidate all the factors and circumstances as to what led up to their choices and why, and it doesn't change that they did the horrible thing. The rape, or the murders, or whatever.

But circling back - with a fictional character... they didn't hurt a real person. There's no one who is real that suffered. The things the character did IRL are bad because they hurt real people.

So you're not being disrespectful to the victim by feeling that empathy, or sympathy. By exploring the things that they were a victim for. Even by wanting to focus on those things - fictional characters should be compelling in all their aspects, if they're written well.

And yet, of course, if you do that empathy and do talk about what the bad person went through and all that context, people come at you. They call you evil, just as bad as the (again, fictional) character, or they say that you're treading dangerously close to the arguments people use to defend the real people who do these things in real life. Or you're disrespecting all the victims of these crimes IRL. Especially of course, if the person coming at you has a reason this comes close to home.

But again - fictional.

In an ideal world, we'd all feel sympathy and empathy when it's called for, regardless of what the person did. Even the worst most monstrous people deserve human treatment in prison. And if you don't have empathy, that's hard. Even if you do have empathy, that's hard.

So if you look at a fictional character (who doesn't hurt a real person by virtue of being fictional) that does horrible, vile things, but went through so much, and you still can't empathize or sympathize with them... I mean, it doesn't make you a bad person, not even close, this is still fiction, and there's people I should empathize with in fiction that I don't, but...

It's still a failure of your ability to be empathetic. And we're all humans. We're all failing at that, among other things, all the time. But... it's good to be aware of that. at least?

At the very least, bear that in mind when other people are talking about that context, and that victimization. And please, for the love of god, don't fucking pretend that the victimization didn't happen, that this person who did do terrible things (in fiction) suddenly didn't also (in fiction) experience awful shit, as if doing a bad thing erases all the bad things done to you.

Again - it doesn't necessarily make you a bad person, but like... the horrible state of prisons in our society is a real, actual problem. The way we as a society dehumanize people who do bad things is a real actual problem for a lot of reasons (not least because it creates an incentive for authority that wants to dehumanize a person or a group to expand the definition of 'did bad things' to make their dehumanization now acceptable, among other things).

So yeah. Fictional character who suffers but than also makes others suffer - that's a useful exercise in Empathy. And doing that doesn't make you or anyone else a bad person, or actually defending the sorts of crimes, IRL or Fictional, that this character did. Contextualizing is not whitewashing, empathy is not erasing, and humanizing is not disrespecting the victim(s).

So yeah, they fictional character did bad things. But there's more to them than that. And you can say but and talk about what comes after but without disrespecting the fictional victim. Because the fictional victim... is just as fictional. Just as not real.

Is it possible for this to end up being taken too far? Yes. But that's a reason to be mindful of yourself when it comes to real people, not to never do it. And when it comes to fictional people - again, fictional. Nobody was actually, really hurt.

(I really do want to make clear, before people read the tags, that this applies to all crimes these sorts of characters do, rape was just picked as the one to use as the example.)

[aroihkin]

I'm exhausted. People exhaust me.

[i-can-even-burn-salad]

Me: Makes a post stating the loss of control over my stuff as one of the reasons I don't post here anymore.

Me: Makes said post unrebloggable.

Said post: Gets reblogged. Twice.

[theflyingfeeling]

so idk if anyone remembers anymore but some time ago I described a fic idea in the tags of a post (and then elaborated the idea in a later ask) regarding Olli/Aleksi falling for each other while still being in relationships respectively... yeah, I kinda ended up writing something based off that thought and I just uploaded the first chapter on AO3, I hope y'all will be cool about it 👉👈

[superyoshisisland64]

tbh my take from the whole Pal world thing is that I genuinely think that if Game Freak didn't fumble the bag w/ SV so badly, a lot less people would be singing it's praise and treating it like another mon game. (IMHO the gameplay looks like shit, and the only designs I like are the stolen ones) And more critical of things like the whole stealing designs and, you know, Capturing and Selling Actual Human People?!?

Like this really feels like a bunch of Pokemon fans got (very understandably) burned hard by how bad SV was at launch, and wanted to find something to fill the void and/or stick it to Game Freak by showing them that much smaller developers could make something superior to the largest franchise in the world.

But y'all, there are so many better options out there (Monster Hunter Stories, Nexomon, Coromon, etc.) If you're tired of Game Freak dropping the ball so hard these past several years, I highly encourage you to play these games. There are so many creature collection games out there that are much more deserving of all the hype and media PW is getting.

[coockie8]

I hate the way everything has been reduced down to "discourse" these days. Like I can't even complain about things without being accused of "engaging in discourse", and it's like, no, I'm just complaining about something on my own blog. It's really not that deep, and you really don't need to reply to it.

Not everything requires your personal response. It is okay to just ignore things and move on. You won't die if you refrain from giving your two cents on vent posts that have nothing to do with you.

[truecorvid]

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[kakusu-shipping]

btw not to be annoying but I'm in a huge drawing rut right now and almost everything I've made the past few weeks feels like garbo to me so if anyone has any X Reader requests from medias on my F/O list you want done, now would be a great time to send them in

[dewitty1]

Saturday Six (Stuff)

The Dude (@super-ultra-mega-kami-guru-blog) comes home Monday night!( ´͈ ॢꇴ `͈ॢ)･*♡

I guess the kittehs have been good company. Leeloo has been a typical kitten aka a terror. (^・ω・^ )

As much as I don't want my parents to interfere in my business I do want my mom to ask her bestie, WTF, because I did an estimate for her and I have heard back and I need money like now. Mom said no, and rightfully so, but still, lol.（’-’*)

Speaking of parents, Mom asked me to come hang out at their old people gratitude dinner today. Umm, yeah no thanks. Once was enough. I'm fine hanging out with myself.٩(•̤̀ᵕ•̤́๑)ᵒᵏᵎᵎᵎᵎ

Seriously the worst part of being a small business person is worrying about money. We hates it.( •̀ω•́ )σ

And even though he's a jerk about it, Dad is helping me get tires on my car. That's one good thing, he'll always keep the car up. Though he still calls it "his" car. s(・｀ヘ´・;)ゞ

Bonus: Happy End of Daylight Saving Time weekend! Tonight most of the USA imitates Cher and turns back time, the Standard clock. WHEEEE. (not fun. We hates the dark) (´～`)

[timeflow]

honestly i really like how you leave comments in the tags on every post and i love seeing you pop up in my notes <3

this is really kind, thank you :))

[deepspaceclawstation]

So this is why vagueposting is discouraged