#politics n culture

[lookwhatilost]

desantis is intent to sign a six week abortion ban. if he ends up running in the general presidential election, this is going to sink any hopes he has of winning it in general. if the midterms and wisconsin supreme court losses for republicans proved anything, it's that this issue is a real loser for them. there's a reason why some of them want to change the subject so desperately.

it's very clear that giving the government a role in pregnancy at all is a slippery slope. people understand that there's a religiously motivated wing of republican voters who want to ban abortion entirely and would be unsatisfied with anything intermediate to that. not rape or incest exemptions. not the life of the mother, even though the united states has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. even voters who feel kind of icked about abortion conceptually are wise of this, and understand it to be a really bad outcome.

abortion probably isn't going anywhere in us politics, but it isn't an abstract idea like many of the other culture war topics. what unites trans issues, illegal immigration, and police shootings is that the vast majority of americans don't have firsthand experience with these things and can defer to partisan cues. but you can't propagandize that way with abortion, because half of this country is shaped by the decisions they make about pregnancy and childbirth. if you want to trigger the libs by asking them what women are, i have your answer – a large and powerful voting bloc. you'll find out soon enough.

[kristiliqua]

CHUNSIK MY BELOVEDDDDDD

[frenchie-fallen-angel]

French leftists are making edits and Fancams of French left politician to increase our chance to beat the far-right next month.

You might see it as stupid or funny, but this is actually a very smart strategy. We know a part of the people who voted for far-right this weekend don't care about politics and just voted for the guy because he has an active tiktok account.

So if people want to be dumb let's play at their level.

[atopvisenyashill]

every time someone does “valyrian culture was more egalitarian than andal culture” discourse i point to the fact that jaehaerys invented the doctrine of exceptionalism and was an evil misogynistic menace to every woman he knew, how visenya was not the ruler of their house despite being older, and how the vale which is STEEPED in andal culture & chivalry & the seven regularly has their houses ruled by women in a way that almost no other region outside of dorne has ntm having the ONLY ruling lady of a paramount house INCLUDING VALYRIAN AND FIRST MEN HOUSES and also i start shrieking

[khattikeri]

maybe a controversial opinion but while i really love jiang cheng as a character he is deeply self-centered as a person. and seeing people fight tooth and nail claiming he isn't, or is just misunderstood, or that he has genuine valid reasons to be selfish when plenty of other characters make the difficult choice to forego status and opportunities for what they believe is genuinely right to do (read: wei wuxian, wen ning, wen qing, lan wangji, jiang yanli, mianmian, etc.)

it's just odd to me. especially if they're talking about the novels.

mxtx didn't give jiang cheng the name "sandu shengshou" as a quirky coincidence. there's a REASON she named him & his sword after the 3 poisons of Buddhism (specifically ignorance, greed, and hatred). it's crucial to the story that jiang cheng is NOT selfless and that wei wuxian IS.

it's important to accept that wei wuxian is, by their society's standards, not morally gray; he represents several Buddhist ideals in direct contrast of jiang cheng and multiple people attest to wei wuxian's strong moral character, which is a lot of why jiang cheng even feels bitter about him to begin with.

it's crucial, because by the end of the novel jiang cheng realizes the extent of this and begins to let go!

the twin prides thing wasn't jiang cheng wanting them to 100% mirror the twin jades. he does care about wei wuxian, but he wanted wei wuxian to stay his right hand man, in part the way wei changze was for jiang fengmian.

and if there's one thing you can notice about wei changze in the novels, it's that literally nobody talks about him. he is only ever mentioned when his cool mysterious mountain sect wife cangse-sanren is mentioned, or (even more rarely) when they discuss him as a servant to jiang fengmian. regardless of jiang fengmian's own feelings, wei changze was considered lesser to him and didn't seem to outdo him, since nobody's out there years later still waxing poetry about wei changze's skills.

it may not be the only thing jiang cheng wants out of a twin pride dynamic, but it is a big part of it. regardless of his parents' intentions in taking wei wuxian in and treating him certain ways, this twin pride right-hand man thing is what jiang cheng has felt owed since childhood. he gave up his dogs for wei wuxian, people gossip about his sect heir position with wei wuxian there... jiang cheng wants the reciprocation of what he views as personal sacrifices.

he is ignorant to the depth of what wei wuxian must've suffered for over 6 years as a malnourished orphan child on the streets. he hates how wei wuxian's intelligence, witty charm, and cultivation abilities are naturally stronger than his own. he does care about wei wuxian a lot and want them to be together as sort of-brothers, sort of-friends, sort of-young master and sect servant...

...but if it's between that unclear (yet still caring) relationship and being able to save himself just a little bit more, jiang cheng nearly always manages to clam up in the face of danger and choose the latter, which ultimately benefits himself most. maybe it's a stretch to call that sort of thing greed, but it certainly isn't selfless.

there are of course plenty of justifications for this. it's his duty as sect heir. his home and sect was severely damaged by the wen attack and subsequent war; he had to protect himself, etc.

but doesn't that prove the point?

wei wuxian may be charming, but in terms of pure social standing, he is lower and far more susceptible to being punished or placed in harm's way by people who have more power and money. to protect wei wuxian, yunmeng jiang's long-term head disciple and semi-family member, even in the face of backlash and public scrutiny would've been the selfless thing to do. this is what wei wuxian does for the wen remnants in the burial mounds.

jiang cheng does not choose this. it's not even an unreasonable choice for him to make! nobody else in the great clans is doing such a thing, stepping out of line to take on a burden that could weaken them in the long-run. wei wuxian himself doesn't hate jiang cheng for it; he lets go of these things and focuses on what good he can do in the present.

jiang cheng thinks further into the future - what would happen to him if he continued vouching for wei wuxian and taking his side? what about jiang cheng's face, his sect's face? would wei wuxian even care to reciprocate somehow? everyone expects him to cut off wei wuxian for being dangerous, for threatening his position, for...

do you see what i mean? to call jiang cheng selfless for falling in line with exactly what people expected him to do after the war is not only wrong, it's foolish.

"but they faked their falling-out!" okay. why fake it to begin with, except to protect jiang cheng and the jiang sect's own face? is that selfless? who does it ultimately serve to protect? wei wuxian canonically internalizes the idea that he stains all that he touches, including lan wangji, and agrees to the fake fight because he doesn't want to cause the jiang sect harm. regardless, it eventually slides into a true falling-out, and in the end jiang cheng is more or less unscathed reputation-wise while wei wuxian falls.

that isn't selfless. it's many things! it's respecting his clan and his ancestors, it's making a good plan for the future of his sect and cultivation... but it isn't a truly selfless in the interest of what's right rather than in the interest of duty and what's good for him and his family lineage.

that brings me to my next point: even though wei wuxian hid the truth of the golden core transfer, jiang cheng spent nearly 20 years believing that the golden core "renewal" he was given was a birthright gift of wei wuxian's from baoshan-sanren, an immortal sect teacher of wei wuxian's mother's and a martial elder to wei wuxian.

of course we all know that's a big fat lie, but jiang cheng believed that wei wuxian gave up a critical emergency use gift to him for decades! he was lied to, yes, but jiang cheng immediately agreed without even needing to be convinced. the light in his dead eyes came back with hope the moment wei wuxian even said baoshan-sanren's name. he accepted wei wuxian's offer to give that up to him and take it via identity theft without missing a beat.

with how mysterious and revered baoshan-sanren is, that's obviously not a light sacrifice to just give up to anyone, no matter how close they might be to you. pretending to be wei wuxian to take the gift could even be considered dangerous. what if she found out and got offended? could wei wuxian be hurt by that?

jiang cheng doesn't even hesitate. wei wuxian is the one who mentions that if jiang cheng doesn't pretend to be him, the immortal master could get angry and they'd both be goners. and funnily enough, the day they do go to "the mountain", jiang cheng is the one worried and suspiciously wondering if wei wuxian was lying to him or had misremembered.

of course they've both been traumatized like hell prior to this point. but still: it speaks to how broken he was at the moment as well as to his character overall.

i digress: jiang cheng "gets his golden core back" via what he believed was a gift that should've been wei wuxian's to use in serious emergencies. rather than use it for himself, wei wuxian risked his own safety and gave it to jiang cheng... and jiang cheng still ends up embittered and angry, believing that wei wuxian is arrogant and selfish.

if he truly views them as 100% brothers and equals with no caveats, why would he think that way? it's not like he needs to grovel before wei wuxian for doing that, or to reciprocate... but this is what i mean when i say jiang cheng feels he is owed things by wei wuxian. wei wuxian's actions hold a very different weight in jiang cheng's mind, and jiang cheng himself doesn't ever act the same way, except once.

is it wrong for him to feel like he is owed something? it depends. many asian cultures, including my own, feel that a person owes their family in ways that may not make sense to westerners. for example, it's considered normal for a child to owe their parents for giving birth to them, or to other caretakers for feeding, clothing, sheltering, educating them, etc.

however, something like verbally saying "thank you" or "i'm sorry" to family is considered crazy- why would you owe that? you're supposed to inconvenience your family; saying thank you or sorry is the sort of thing you say to a stranger or acquaintance. i get half-seriously lectured by my elders on this a lot even now, even though they know such phrases are just considered good manners in the US.

this muddies up the idea of wei wuxian being jiang cheng's family vs his family's charge or servant even more. jiang cheng wants wei wuxian to be close... but ultimately doesn't really choose to use what power he DOES have to protect wei wuxian. he considers himself still owed something that in his mind wei wuxian flagrantly never repays.

this isn't even getting into how despite spending a majority of his time with the yiling patriarch he never once noticed that wei wuxian stopped using any spiritual power-based cultivation. even lan wangji, who met them far more rarely, realized that something was wrong and that wei wuxian had taken some sort of spiritual damage, hence the "come with me to gusu".

of course manpain is fun and i'm not immune to the juicy idea of them reconciling and talking things out... but jiang cheng is deeply mired in his own desire to be "above" wei wuxian in multiple ways, and doesn't realize the extent of wei wuxian's actions, the intentions behind them, and the consequences wei wuxian knowingly faced for them.

to not recognize this about jiang cheng, especially in the novels, is really revisionist if you ask me. i reiterate that i really do like him a lot. he's flawed, angry, traumatized and has poor coping mechanisms, an overall fascinating character... but he is not selfless nor ideal, and i seriously draw the line at people saying he is.

wen ning shoves this all into his face at lotus pier to disastrous results. it is the reason why jiang cheng's a total mess at guanyin temple, and the reason jiang cheng ultimately doesn't tell wei wuxian about the fact that he ran towards the wens on purpose.

for that one last act of his to have really been selfless, he needs to not seek anything in return. he did it purely because it was right to do to protect someone else. if that means wei wuxian never finds out about it, so be it.

that moment that ended up causing jiang cheng irreversible harm is not a debt that wei wuxian owes him. it hurts, but no matter how bitter it is, that realization is so important to him changing in the future.

[iicherrl]

first page of my sketchbook lolz

[gerandor]

Ngl im kinda pissed at wwdits' continued erasure of Nandor's iranian origins. They keep calling him an ottaman soldier without mentioning his iranian roots. They call his country a madeup name and have given him a non-iranian name. They have nandor speak farsi but the fandom just keeps saying Alqulanadorese as if farsi isn't a real language. They even give nandor persian-themed outfits but they don't talk about the references as if its supposed to be a secret that only iranian people would know. It doesn't help that kayvan doesn't say anything about Nandor's iranian background and cultural influences. I think now more than any other time iranians need to be seen and heard. And i love wwdits with all my heart for giving us an iranian character but...barely anyone watching the show actually knows he's supposed to be iranian and that really hurts.

[rubberbandballqueen]

when at the library today i picked up a book abt typography to pick up some more theoretical skills there and to no one's surprise it pretended that european languages were the only languages in the world which like whatever i'll still learn what principles it has to teach and then try to reverse-engineer applications to cn font design based on what i know.

despite not trusting the english-language resources available online to be as in-depth or technical as i desire, i got curious and googled "chinese typographic design" anyway n scrolling through the introduction to the first result, you can kind of tell it's not written with a chinese-speaking audience in mind, or at the very least an audience with some semblance of chinese cultural sensitivities bc its section headed by the words "navigating the simplified and traditional divide" goes on to basically say it's an Aesthetic Decision which. well. is certainly a way to pretend you're avoiding politics.

[jacks-weird-world]

[marbleheavy]

i love love watching things and thinking critical thoughts! it i so much fun! i am being so garfield /srs rn! it is so exciting and fulfilling to be able to engage with what i watch and think about what it does & means

[tikycuki]

hey guys I wanna get into punk music so I can be truly punk but. a lot of the songs don't interest me. uhh

can yall gimme recommendations?? I like songs that

tell some form of a story

have some lyrics that are very singable (not rapping/screaming)

that's all I like in songs tbh. do yall have any recommendations :3

[lookwhatilost]

is anyone here old and online enough to remember the final fantasy vii house? if you don’t, rewind to the turn of the century, 20 odd years back. i haven’t brushed up on the details, but i’ll give you a general synopsis.

so, this 19 y/o with a troubled home life – i think they were trans, which i only bring up to give some context as to how someone might stuck end up in a situation like this, because they need support wherever they can find it – ends up meeting some people at a con who are really into cosplay and really into final fantasy vii, jrpgs, anime, amongst other 90s turn of the millennium stuff, and ends up living with this deeply troubled lesbian couple, and some orbiters that come and go. “kinnies” wasn’t really a term around at the time, but that’s probably the closest description to what they were. “there’s this parallel universe, not one that’s just alternate potentialities of our world, but anything you can think of or imagine or conceptualize is spawning into a reality in and of itself. therefore, you can have these spiritual soul bonds with fictional characters. you are them, and they are you, and you have a dimensional link to this character from a video game that was written by a japanese guy who worked 80 hours a week” they all engage in this to varying degrees, but the person at the center of this did so the most strongly. they really sincerely believed this and it was this nightmare situation of this one central individual doing weird torture rituals to people. like putting them into ice water baths and stuff to try and bring forth their connections to these characters... but at the same time, making everyone else pay the bills and do the housework and everything. a proto cult. the initial kid who moved in with them gets out of this situation eventually and issues a warning to the ffvii fandom.

if you google final fantasy vii house, you’ll find videos and summaries. the original callout page is still up and down the rabbit hole did an episode about it.

that basic idea that “all the movies you love exist in a parallel universe that exists unto itself and can interact with ours” is something i’ve seen fiction that touches on it. wishbone goes into the book and becomes one of the characters. anybody remember wishbone? or the never-ending story. those were most of my imaginary kid scenarios when i was a kid playing in my back yard. some iteration of me interacting with all my favorite characters. it’s kind of... a stunted, juvenile mindset. but there are some people who don’t grow up and who are so, well, mentally ill that the intersection of these things makes their filter for reality so busted. they’re so emotionally connected to whatever fictions they escape into that they turn this into a cosmology that they really, sincerely believe in. and as the internet coalesces and comes into being, scattered individuals that have taken the ball and run with it on these fictional contrivances interact with each other and reenforce one another’s delusions. the story of tumblr dot com.

chris-chan is another huge example of this. if you look at the early chris-chan lore, like making billy mays the mayor of cwcville, which is something she was really upset about initially. that limitless capacity to make yourself believe whatever you want to believe, regardless of the external world. pure solipsism. the world is what i make it and i live entirely in my delusion. the same cosmology: all the fiction i love is real, and i can really meet those characters. ezra miller’s cult thing seems like it’s also hitting the same beats

as more and more people get online and grow up in a media-saturated environment, and as corporations embrace the multiverse concept as a way to have, like, 8 different versions of spider-man for every demographic and have them meet, i think this is going to become more a cosmology or ideology that gets built into new-age cults, etc. not to be super doom & gloom, because this is going to be an insane crank belief in the same way that if you went back 50 years, there were plenty of other insane crank beliefs. but i think this is going to be the new dominant one because, absent anything else to get invested in, absent a world of class consciousness or meaningful political movements, but post the atomic bomb, it’s kind of hard to have conventional religious beliefs.

even the people i know who are converting to catholicism, there’s a kind of post-modern self-awareness that is different from the sincere un self-reflective faith that would have constituted most people’s engagement with religion, like, 500 years ago. it has the same pieces of all the other new age stuff that gained prominence in the decades post wwii. it’s a search for something that fills a spiritual and social void, but can square with a reality where personal religious belief no longer seems tenable.

“what am i emotionally connected with?” i don’t know, sonic the hedgehog. or the flash . or kylo ren. or whoever. it’s so desperate to satisfy that emotional connection with those characters and their worlds, you convince yourself there’s some way to actually spiritually, mentally, even physically connect with them. that they are more than just fiction.

we’re gonna keep seeing more and more of this kinda shit. this is just the beginning.

and the core person behind the final fantasy house is still out there to this day.

[sentimental-apathy]

By this time next year I might be living in Scotland. Fuckin well hope so. My parents are seriously considering moving back. I know the grass isn't always greener on the other side but I seriously think the quality of life over there seems better than here (WVIRGINIA). Is anybody Scottish following my blog? I cannee wait teh try oot muh Scottish accent... jk. I'm wondering how most Scots feel towards Americans who move to Scotland..? Will I be welcomed? I like to think I'd make friends easy but I'm afraid cuz I know how so many Americans treat foreigners here and I just wonder if there'll be people who'll treat me like that.

No but seriously, where my Scots at? You want a chubby, eccentric, slightly weird American woman as a friend? I need more friends in general but also need to learn more about current Scottish culture since my parents haven't been home in years (except once in a blue moon).

I've looked up flats in a few places in Scotland n I'm fuckin astonished at the quality of living standards vs where I am now, especially the prices. Right now a friend of mine is homeless, living in a hotel, her parents help paying because just to find a room for rent, a ROOM, not a studio or efficiency, a ROOM in a shared apartment or wee house is anywhere from 800-1200/month. And no one will rent to her without stipulations like making sure she makes 3× the rent on a monthly basis which she doesn't even tho she works full time. The housing crisis here is unbelievable. Is there a housing crisis in Scotland?

[knxfesck]

If I see one more usamerican white girl with parents from jalisco talking about how "I'm not white I'm mexican" I'm gonna throw my phone. This dumb ass country's racial categories oh my fucking god

[daisythornes]

anyways i think extreme antinationalism is… not as bad as extreme nationalism, but certainly very unproductive in combatting it. every country is not a monolith for god’s sake - every country has like… historical figures that were good and kind and clever, beautiful art and architecture and music and food, etc. not to mention most people in any given country are normal and decent and don’t deserve to be hated for the actions of the few awful people also there.

of course i recognize the awful things america has done to its citizens and other nations but constant self-flagellation and self-hatred are like… bad for the brain, puritanical and unrealistic. so what i’m saying is happy fourth of july <3

[femslashspuffy]

Colorado is so greedy my hometown now has a Raising Canes, In-N-Out, AND a Buckees. Plus if you drive a little more than an hour you can go to a Pizza Ranch. There's a reason no one can agree on what part of the country Colorado is because it wants to be every part.