#rather than our actions

[magnusthepuppet]

if you engage in infighting, you are useless as a leftist.

if you tell people to k*ll themselves, you are useless as a leftist.

if you do not believe in somebody’s ability to change, you are useless as a leftist.

if you do not practice nuanced thinking, you are useless as a leftist.

if you are unable to have compassion for your fellow human, you are useless as a leftist.

[thessaralka]

the most romantic thing about the solas romance is how much love there is for lavellan in the act of breaking up with her.

solas breaks up with lavellan because it is objectively what is best for her. not because it's what he wants. not because his mission is just more important than she is. because he loves her.

it is in lavellan's best interests that she know who she falls in love with and has agency in that decision. solas breaks up with her because he is not entirely truthful about who he is. she can't make an informed choice about being with him without the truth. and because solas isn't ready to tell her the truth, he backs off.

whether we like it or not, fen'harel is part of who solas is, even if solas is part of his genuine character, the face he shows us in DAI is not all of him.

what is so sexy about solas showing his love for her in this way is he sees the clear power imbalance between them (him with all his secrets), and he chooses her well being over his desires, he puts the power back in her hands - by breaking up with her. he says, "it isn't right of me to continue with this when you don't actually know me". only his reveal in trespasser opens the door for her to accept him, or deny him.

ultimately, it is up to lavellan to decide what is in her best interests. does she accept solas, now knowing the truth, or does she say "wow yeah i actually can't live with that" and walk away?

[hedgehog-moss]

French TV journalist having a hard time trying to get woman in the street to comment on Macron's latest speech yesterday

Protesters organised casserolades (aka banging on pots and pans) in front of city halls across the country at 8pm, when Macron was speaking, to symbolically drown out his voice. Later that evening, Macron was filmed singing a song with some 'random people' in a street in Paris, trying to show he can go out and meet people and have fun because protesters don't exist. The people he was singing with (members of a choir, some of whom are 'alt-right-leaning') were using a folk song app created by far-right activists that was criticised a few months ago for hosting a Spanish fascist anthem & Third Reich military marches.

The government's response was that the President "couldn't know the background of the people he met that night." Maybe if he wants to avoid being associated with the far-right (that's a big if, I know), Macron should keep in mind that with the kinds of strategies and positioning his government has adopted lately, people in the street who welcome him with open arms and are proud to be filmed with him have a higher than average likelihood of supporting fascism.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

Honestly the empathy sequence makes NMJ kinda strike me as an entitled/abusive parental figure. Maybe I'm just drawing paralels that aren't there, but:

Feeling entitled to JGY's time and attention? He interrupts his conversations with LXC (twice, I think), one of said times because he was eavesdropping on them AND got angry about JGY expressing fear to LXC IN PRIVATE

Not letting JGY explain himself/ not listening when he tries. At the point of the staircase scene NMJ has been poisoned to hell and back by baxia, but I do believe it's not just that. He sees his moral code as absolute certainty and his inflexible nature makes it that he doesn't take well to deviance from that. Aka has to get his way or gets Angry

I think NMJ was an absolute idiot to let JGY ppay clarity for hin after the staircase thing! That draws more into the paralel because abusive people often hurt others and then act like nothing happened, as if their target doesn't have the right to be upset (see again: qi deviating over JGY expressing fear to LXC). NMJ does this to a degree that paints him as almost oblivious imo

I actually do quite like NMJ but he's. So many shades of fucked up, Christ alive

i am going to proceed cautiously here for several reasons, but primarily because:

i have been drawn into the "is nmj an evil abuser" discourse once before on discord (in defence of da-ge, believe it or not) and i Did Not Enjoy It At All, Actually, and

while i think the behaviour described above absolutely qualifies as abusive, nmj's intentions also matter, and i don't think what nmj is trying to do can be boiled down to simply exerting coercive control over jgy. initially on the hejian front when he eavesdrops on meng yao and lan xichen, he wants to help him; the second time he eavesdrops, it's because he straight up views jgy as a threat, and decides to kill him because of it.

imo their dynamic is dysfunctional and toxic and is a powder keg set to explode essentially from the moment nmj sees meng yao killing the jin commander on the langya front, but i think calling it abusive is an over-simplification of what is going on between them.

that said, i do think there is a character in the novel canon who nmj repeatedly tries to exert coercive control over, who is fully and unquestionably under his authority and influence, and who he treats with wildly vacillating levels of either patience or explosive anger depending on the canon point, and that character is nie huaisang.

[ciaran]

narratives of american exceptionalism creep into every part of life

and there is just something extraordinary about seeing a bunch of people be so blissfully unaware of what it means, on a very fundamental level, to live in the heart of empire. it actually does not matter which way you vote, your government will commit and fund war crimes in other countries regardless. your voting blue makes not the least bit of difference to someone in another country who dies in the wreckage of american imperial projects. and your government works in the interests of american citizens. in the interest of the universal purchasing power of the dollar. in the way that the flow of global capital maneuvers to bring groceries to your supermarket shelves. and it doesn't matter what you feel about this, and it doesn't even matter how oppressed you are in the heart of empire, because you live in its centerfold and everyone always knows about your problems. i know exactly how complicated american life is, i know your movies and your cities and your music and even your laws, sometimes better than i can know my own, not because i wanted to see it but because i have to. because the narrative of America plays out everywhere, all the time. because there is a domination of civil and cultural life that america imposes on all the rest of the world, but somehow americans always think we know as little about them as they know about us. but i do know you. i have to know you. i am left with no choice. this is uncomfortable for me. i want you to feel uncomfortable about it too. a little discomfort is good for both of us.

[uncanny-tranny]

I think a lot of people don't support punitive justice on a governmental level (good), but they don't understand why punitive justice is overarchingly a bad thing, so they still operate with the idea that it's still the Best Option, but only when they can wield it.

Of course, there is a difference between a government having access to punitive justice and individuals or a small community having access to it, but the mindset is still strikingly similar. I've seen it time and time again where one's desire to destroy after even a small slight outweighs anything else, and that's alarming, actually. Yes, it's understandable, but I still don't think it is a healthy impulse or knee-jerk reaction for every minor affront.

[anchorandrope]

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[elftwink]

been learning to play ironsworn (gritty fantasy ttrpg which you can play with a gm but is mostly suited for solo or small group co-op gmless play) after having the rulebook pdf for several years (stars finally aligned to remove invisible thing blocking me from reading it idk) because i'm on another solo ttrpg kick & i don't know what took me so long to get around to this game because it genuinely is exactly what i was looking for. years ago when i was playing through solo 5e modules i should have just been playing ironsworn (believe it or not, 5e isn't very suited to solo play and is extremely clunky when you try lol).

also though i have dabbled in some other solo ttrpgs, a considerable amount of them are journaling games which is fun but imo considerably more work (usually by the time i'm a quarter of the way through the journal entry, i know how to entire scene played out and i want to move on to the next gameplay thing, so i get frustrated and bored quickly. it feels like when you solve a level in a video game but don't have the coordination to pull off the necessary move so you have to spend 20 extra minutes doing something you already figured out), so i really appreciate like not needing to write something for the game to progress (ive been taking notes for my own record since im playing solo and thus am not really out loud roleplaying the way you do in a group, but i definitely could do that instead and not take notes and the game would still function perfectly)

& ive been playing by myself but also in the past ive played a lot of ttrpgs in very small groups which has been other games but is mostly dnd and like. we also should have been playing ironsworn so that having a gm was not necessary. have definitely played games where we had to adapt the rules soooo much to do something that is just base game included in ironsworn. plus it's rules-light enough to do pretty complex moves that pose difficulties in bulkier games (ever introduced someone to dnd and they tell you they want to do a sick backflip and catch something and then attack and you have to tell them that will require several different consecutive rolls and some creative liberties with how the rules are 'supposed' to let you move? you can just Do That in ironsworn. use the strike move and describe it. done!)

the one thing is that although it's rules-light enough to theoretically play any setting or genre (some with more difficulty than others), ive found so far that like... the grittiness and sense of threat is very built into the mechanics so that would be sort of difficult to work around or change (but i think it's great from a game design perspective). what i mean is like, okay: you start with 5 max hp. there isn't really a way to raise this max hp, you just slowly gain abilities (assets) that make you less likely to have to lose the hp in the first place, or that make it easier to recover. when you encounter foes, you rank them on a scale of 1 -5, and enemies on the lowest side of this scale do one harm to you, while enemies on the highest side do five harm to you. so even though encountering an epic enemy won't always be deadly due to the assets you have, they are ALWAYS capable of taking you down to 0 hp with one good hit. so the feeling of threat is much more present compared to games where your character starts to be able to just tank and push through a failure or huge threat.

admittedly also i'm playing solo, im still learning how to balance combat, and also i built a character who has NO combat talents and iron (the close quarters fighting stat) is one of my lowest stats so i personally am under much more threat than if you built a character who knew how to fight or who could do deadly harm. but also the other thing about combat is it's extremely difficult to maintain control of the fight; you have to score a strong hit to do it on basically all moves, and there's a really limited pool of moves available when you don't have the initiative, and obviously none of them really favour you. i don't know that this makes combat genuinely more difficult, but it does make you feel like the fight is always about to spiral out of your control. every second you let it drag without decisive action feels like it brings you closer to dying. like i said, this is a feature of the game design and not a problem in any way. just thinking about it because when i was initially learning i was going to try to supplant it into a homebrew fantasy world of my own but the tone just wouldn't be right. and that it is somewhat difficult to replicate the kind of worlds that i typically play or run for dnd, which tend to lean somewhat sillier and definitely much higher fantasy

but i like to try new things and tbh especially in dnd i find that i very rarely feel that sense of threat and when i do feel it, it has nothing at all to do with the actual mechanics and reality of the combat and everything to do with how well the dm sells it to me and makes it sound and feel scary and dangerous. which is a testament to what a good gm can do for you but i do appreciate the threat feeling more built-in and also being actually real.

[deathbypufferfish]

Miyu has been in the clinic more which means she spends most of her time with her girls in the morning, but sometimes Nella joins her and pretends to be her assistant. Oscar has still been working on his writing skills too. Also Marinella is proving to already be a handful.

[yergink]

so i was thinking about the anniversary flashback and there’s something interesting about the way stede and mary’s gifts are really just them misguidedly presenting each other with what they think will be the solution to the problem that is their marriage. 

mary gifts stede the lighthouse painting and specifically calls back to what they were told at their wedding. she’s saying “let’s remember what is expected of us.” she’s sort of. tethered, i suppose, to complacency here, and i feel like that’s reflected in what she says later, too. “we’ve only got this one life. we have to try, don’t we?” in this context, it’s kind of admittance that she doesn’t expect to ever have anything more.

then stede attempts to gift mary the revenge--by extension, a life away from society--and he’s really just begging her for an escape. like, he doesn’t know what the problem really is, but it’s like he knows it’s here on land and maybe, just maybe, if they got away, things would be better. 

and... neither of them are right in these solutions. on mary’s end--it’s never going to matter how much they try to be together, they’re never going to love each other, they’re never going to be happy in the life they have.

and for stede, he’s never going to have room for his self discovery if his family join him at sea. he needs to disconnect entirely from the societal pressures that have traumatized him. 

and it hurts so much more because they are both offering solutions. you could consider that they’re simply in denial about how broken their relationship is, but mary seems genuine when she says she doesn’t hate their lives enough to so completely upend them, and stede does seem excited at the prospect of his family joining him at sea. but at the same time they’re both just so horribly wrong here, and it’s because neither of them understand what the other really needs. staying on land and trying to make their marriage work will only drive stede further into his depression, and them going to sea would sever mary’s chance at getting what she needs (support, community, freedom). 

this is all what makes their conversation in ep 10 so much more meaningful. them sitting down together, finally and for once having an actual honest discussion is like a sigh of relief. they finally get the chance to see each other clearly for the first time and it’s. just so wonderful in comparison. 

[grahamcore]

truly don’t understand anyone of the opinion that oppenheimer is u.s. military propaganda the whole fucking point was that the international arms race has had, and will continue to have, dire consequences for humanity… oppenheimer and all the other scientists at los alamos were explicitly shown to be grappling with insurmountable feelings of remorse because of what they had done… i’m sorry where are we seeing war propaganda? just because a movie is ABOUT war does not mean that it PROMOTES war jfc

[daz4i]

ratio is one of the funniest characters in anything ever not only because he plays chess with himself and shames/compliments his own moves, not because he sends you 20 messages in a row and then talks about how he likes to "keep his words few", not because he wears a goddamn plaster head (sometimes bc he's literally like. canonically too hot that it distracts his students), not because of every silly thing he's done in canon so far that i won't list or we'll be here all day, but because one of his phds is in a topic that can be summed up as - from my understanding, and if i oversimplify things - explaining religious phenomena or arguing about religious topics such as "is god even real" via science, in a world where gods very much exist and it is a known fact and like he himself even wanted to be seen by one of them. and yet

[clowndensation]

opens up a new post, types the words "gojo is kind of like if jesus christ was a failure" before having a brain hemorrhage and dying

[zonotrichia-albicollis]

Giant personal vent time

This guy stole somewhere between 3 to 6 MILLION dollars from my grandmother by conning my great aunt into signing over her estate and medical & financial power of attorney to him literally on her death bed

I and my aunt have been working basically a whole second job the last 3 months trying to get together a legal case to go after this guy. And now my grandma wants to drop it. And no one else has standing so what the fuck can we do.

This man has absolutely done this to other ppl before, there is no doubt in my mind. I’ve seen his property records for just what’s publicly available in my county and it’s sketchy as hell. I am never going to get over this but there’s nothing I can do.

Gonna put like a million more thoughts in the tags because I’m losing my fucking mind.

[the-busy-ghost]

Warning- this is a very petty post, but I think I'm entitled to at least one petty, pissed-off reaction every time I finish a classic novel that hit harder than I expected so take this as my quota for the year.

Also spoiler warning for a book that came out over a century ago but still, I didn't know the plot going in so don't want to ruin it for anyone else, if you haven't read it shut your eyes. (Also Local Tumblr User Going Wild Over Book Published a Hundred Years Ago That Everybody Else Already Read should probably be categorised as akey part of indigenous tumblr culture at this point).

Anyway I just finished the War of the Worlds and in between studying I've thinking about Themes and Motifs as you do, and idly looking for further analysis. I then accidentally ran into an article called 'A Quiet Place II Succeeds Where the War of the Worlds Failed' and:

Now I haven't seen any of the Quiet Place films, this is not a rant against them and of course everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But re: the ending of The War of the Worlds, I have to ask, did this guy somehow miss, uh, the entire point of the book or am I just utterly insane?

[bunnihearted]

i thinkkk i thinkk ppl like just blaming the "oil companies" so that they can completely renounce any responsibility whatsoever and keep doing whatever they want without feeling a single drop of guilt 💀