#so we're fucked either way

[megumi-fm]

.

[raayllum]

They're so sick for this

& was gonna originally leave it in the tags but then I liked it so why not:

I do think this parallel helps contextualize why Claudia's offer is there in the narrative beyond just characterization "she knows this is a loss the boys have experienced, and there is possible room to convince them," or beyond "I doubt they're going to bring Harrow back fully (if at all) so why tease it" and well: I think this parallel is exactly why.

For starters, there's the sheer difference in presentation that help to contrast and compare Callum and Claudia as characters. More importantly for next season, I think, is that it ties together Claudia wanting to save her father is what led to her working with Aaravos in the first place versus Callum wanting to free Rayla's parents likely being something that is just going to put him further on Aaravos' dark path of destiny for him, if not outright lead to disaster. The road to ruin is paved with good intentions, after all - even if he's being selfless about it because it's not even for himself or one of his direct loved ones, but purely by proxy

[strangeasf]

I really truly don't get this whole bucktommy and buddie rivalry.. I mean I love buddie and I really like bucktommy and don't understand the problem of liking and rooting for both. yeah, at the same time. what happened, everyone forgot about multishipping? why can't two ships coexist in peace??

[ratcandy]

(spoilers for the new update btw; this is tagged as spoilers too but just to be safe) By the way, headcanon-wise, I don't think the parasite is out of Sozo's system that easily.

like. I understand to some extent imprisoning him is forcefully sobering him up by denying him further intoxication, which would be one thing, but this is not Just Drugs . this is Drug Parasite. That is a thang inside him that is alive

At least this is assuming that he is indeed based off of an ant with cordyceps. Which I figure is most likely But even if OTHERWISE, I emphasize:

we revived him. by planting the mushroom

Mans was resurrected . Not through our usual means. But through the mushroom. There is no way, if it is the literal Thing that brings him back to life, that he is separated from the parasite by just popping off the outward manifestation of it on his head .

Surely planting the parasite would only bring IT back. But it brings him with it when it is revived, because not only is he its host, he's the best damn host its had. Considering just how he goes to fucking town on those mushrooms (or the mushroomos)

I mean we could argue that re-education while in prison is a literal cleansing process somehow, but For Me. Personally. As someone who feeds too much on angst. I keep imagining a scene wherein Dr. Sozonius is just sprouting a new mushroom again (if not various across his exoskeleton) and just .freaking out. Because while he doesn't remember any of what he was like or what he did during that time, he knows that it fucked him UP because why WOULD IT NOT fuck him up .

he lost his family. his home. he has no idea where he is. he woke up in some strange place feeling like he was gonna vomit. because he was so full of mushrooms why wouldn't he.

but there's something still there. there's something depending on him to the point that HE depends on IT

and just gradually... as the mushroom(s) sprouts again... he starts slipping into his old mannerisms......... he starts craving..... and he knows he Should Not. he knows he's so old now it would just kill him (not knowing it already killed him once). surely he wouldn't handle it again.

but it's so . tempting. the mushrooms. he needs them. he can hear it. them. whispering. to him.

something internally. pulling

towards

the

[hidedino]

i'm so so curious.

are we thinking that mike will wake up today and convince fit through lies that pac doesn't appreciate his presence and would not want fit to be hanging out around him now that mike is back which will lead to fit keeping his distance from pac and pac misunderstanding his reason for it?

or rather something along the lines of fit insisting to mike that pac doesn't hate him, but then pac choosing to care for mike and take a break from interacting with fit for the time being until he manages to convince mike to trust fit?

[caluupin]

neuvi is meeting his peepaw rn

[irradiatedsnakes]

i miss ai image generators that suck. i want old artbreeder back so i can make flesh computers again. i want to tell the computer to make something that is 50% website and 50% swimming cap to get the Meat World back

[sonknuxadow]

you know i do wonder how many sonic characters actually have living parents. like knuckles is the last of his kind so obviously his parents arent around anymore. both guys who could be considered shadows dads are 100 percent confirmed dead. sonic is canonically an orphan im pretty sure. and on the other side of the coin cream is like the only character in the game cast who has a living parent we actually see onscreen. but what about everyone else i dont think theres a straight answer for any other character. other than rouge's mom being mentioned a couple times i Guess but we dont even know anything about her or if shes still alive just that she existed at some point. are these kids constantly putting themselves in danger because they dont have parents around to stop them or because their parents just dont care

[outism-had-a-purpose]

Ryoshu and Rodya friendship where they sometimes sleep in each other's room when it gets too much in theirs.

When the candlelight in Ryoshu's gets too bright and suffocating with the heat and reminds her too much of the fire her daughter died in sometimes she knocks (more of. just letting herself in lmao) on Rodya's door to literally cool off.

Sometimes when Rodya's room freezes her down to the bone to the point where that she can't sleep, and the stench and sight of her dead neighbors haunts her every senses, Ryoshu gets a quiet knock on her door, and an even more surprising, a solemnly quiet Rodya outside, asking her if she can take a quick snooze here because she doesn't wanna go out and do the night watch.

Something something the only bed worth sleeping is the one right next to you (sad). Fire and ice duo. you get me riht

[xxlovelynovaxx]

Something I've noticed but only just now been able to put into words, is that a lot of the people who are like "I could never fall for cult shit, I'm too smart", and "I would never be bigoted against marginalized people, I do all the Right Social Justice Things" also seem to be incredibly convinced that if they ever listen to what anyone they believe is harmful is saying to really try and understand it, not even to agree with it but literally just to understand it, that they'll be "brainwashed" into believing the harmful shit is good and being a harmful bigot.

That cognitive dissonance there, that "I'm immune to propaganda because I never ever ever look at propaganda of any kind, not even to learn to recognize how it works" - radicalization relies on that.

Long post about this below the cut.

It's how people fall down the te/rf, the incel, the far-right pipelines. It's how people who consider themselves "leftist" become anti-porn, anti-sex-work, pro-censorship. It's how people who are otherwise progressive go from a baseline level of ableism, antisemitism, intersexism, radi/cal feminism, etc, that hasn't been unlearned, to spewing violent bigotry against these groups thinly veiled as "justified resistance" against "fakers" and "able-bodied" people, against "zionazis" and "genocide apologists", against "tmes" and "TMRAs", all while the people they're attacking are none of these things.

No one is immune to doing this is some way. There is no axis of marginalization that makes you harmless, in part because there will always be people in your own marginalized group that you have privilege and power over along another axis of marginalization. There is no identity that makes you only a "victim" and never the one doing the harm.

But radicalization, bigotry, oppressive systems, they rely on this doublethink of "I can't do harm" and "if I listen to those who are Categorically Harmful, they will Seduce and Turn me into being One of Them and Doing Harm". Because then all anyone has to do is convince you that the Other is inherently a Harmer, and that therefore fighting them makes you inherently Harmless.

This is especially true when the victims (not necessarily victims of the alleged aggressors, but inarguably actual victims of horrific acts), have very little power to speak for themselves about who is really doing the harm.

Sexual assault victims and especially CSA victims are a rhetorical tool in arguments about censorship and queer people, despite many of us being anti-censorship and either queer or allies. Victims of foreign wars and oppression, particularly with limited access to communication, are used for racism, antisemitism, and xenophobia - despite often actively telling people that those bigotries make things worse for them too and don't help. Disabled people have the symptoms of our disabilities used to excuse the behavior of people who are liked and condemn the behavior of those who are not - disabilities are only genuinely disabling to others for as long as its convenient for them to be.

I don't really know what drives it? Is there at some level a recognition of a fear that maybe, actually, the moral cause you've championed for so long actually made you one of the Bad Guys, because of puritanical culturally christian thinking that is only worsened by the punitive, bloodthirsty mindset of social media nowadays? Everyone likes to watch whoever's been assigned Main Character of the Week get "justice" fighting in the coliseum, always aware of the eyes on us waiting to shove us in too.

It would make sense - it's not just a fear of hurting people, but that if you admit to doing so, "both sides" will descend on you like ravenous wolves. It's a fear of Being Hurt, from people who have already been hurt far too much. I've endured many types of trauma, and can say with confidence that online harassment and dogpiling is as horrific as any of them.

Is it just basic fascist ideals that haven't been unlearned, that the "enemy" is both weak and strong? That they can't get to you because you're not reading all that, because you know better than to try and understand your enemy, but that if you ever did they'd immediately corrupt you completely?

I don't know. But the reason it works is because if you think the people you're fighting will convince you if you listen, once you're convinced you should be fighting them, you'll see every last drop of blood spilled as righteous. This, all while radical groups and bigots rely on you not knowing or examining how propaganda of any kind - helpful, neutral, or harmful - actually functions.

I don't know what to do about this. I know I've unpacked harmful beliefs a dozen times because I actually listened to people. I know another dozen times, actually listening to people has only further shores up my own beliefs - but critically analyzing what they are saying, weighing it against my own knowledge and experience, giving it a space where yes, I genuinely evaluate it's validity.

I think that's what scares people the most. It's "well but then, aren't I saying that [bigotry] could be valid?"

The thing is, that's not really what you're evaluating. You've been successfully tricked, indoctrinated into believing that if you question "is this actually bigoted against that group", you're actually questioning "is it okay to BE bigoted against this group".

This, too, I believe is coming from a place of cultural christianity. Questioning whether something is "sinful" is itself "sinful". Critically analyzing the way you apply your beliefs is conflated with critically analyzing the underlying beliefs themselves.

And of course, there are times when critically analyzing beliefs themselves is important, also something tantamount to being seduced by the "devil". That is how the "enemy" is treated in secular spaces - an all powerful force waiting to corrupt you at every turn and steer you away from the Good Progressive/Leftist Path. Generally though, these questions are not "is bigotry actually okay", so I'll leave a wider discussion of these for a different post.

I will say, though, that I do think not having devoted any analysis to the above is part of what makes that conflation possible. Disabled people arguing against other disabled people for exercising their right to bodily autonomy in a way that affects no one else because it's "unhealthy" despite disability itself being based around abled standards of health, trans people treating other trans people as dangerous and/or oppressors on the basis of bioessentialism and/or gender essentialism, plurals arguing in support of the historically violently pluralmisic psychiatric institution and using it first and foremost to support their right to self-determination, rather than said right being inherent...

How much of this is simply based in, rather than valuing autonomy, rejecting bio and gender essentialism, and prioritizing self-determination, simply relying on things like "the logic of disgust" and what "feels" right, despite those "feelings" and "instincts" being largely guided by the bigoted socialization we all grew up with?

Of course, some people might genuinely have chosen to explicitly prioritize an oppositional value - conformity over autonomy, authority over self-determination, assigning inherent moral value to identity over decoupling morality from inherent traits.

But given the inconsistency I've seen, these people seem to be rather few, and those that do exist are almost refreshingly honest even when fundamentally opposed to my very existence. They typically don't make convoluted justifications for their actions, nor contradict the very values and beliefs they claim to uphold, nor undercut the causes they claim to stand for.

But everyone else... it goes back to something that I've seen talked a lot about in discussions about censorship.

It is important to read and analyze things you disagree with, and listen to people you believe are harmful. Even if you're right a hundred percent of the time - a true rarity especially nowadays when there's so many "ins" for indoctrination into bigoted and oppressive systems - doing so will only make you better able to fight bigotry. It'll also serve to make you able to either deradicalize, help deradicalize, or minimally avoid hindering deradicalization of, bigots and other radicalized people.

And it's also important because yeah, some of the Harmful people you think you Can't Harm in your Moral Crusade to Protect Innocents, you're harming. Full stop. No one escapes socialization in our societies unscathed. No one enters the wider world as a blank slate, sure, but no one enters the world without ignoring systems we benefit from and the harms that maintain those systems.

You have to be willing to be wrong. You have to be willing to admit you've hurt people. As someone with moral OCD, yeah, it fucking SUCKS. As someone with BPD and depression, we've split on ourselves (in the BPD sense, but also sometimes the DID sense) and been suicidal over it.

So we're not saying you have to be examining this and yourself every moment of every day. There's times where you won't be able to and that's okay. Those are generally the times it's important and healthy for a good portion of people to step back from social justice movements and activism anyway and rest - but in cases where it's not helpful, it seems that often people will still narrow their focus to issues which most directly impact them anyway, which does help reduce harm.

But people justifying lateral aggression and oppression by utterly rejecting the material reality and oppression of marginalized people, because of that depersoning and positioning of said people as ontologically Harmful? If you're viewing any identity as inherently, categorically, Dangerous and Bad before anything else, ironically, that framework makes you significantly more likely to do harm.

This gets complicated, of course, with nonmarginalized identities. But people don't exist on only one axis - and if we're actually using intersectionality theory as it was intended, acknowledging that each identity interacts with each other identity to form a complex, multifaceted, cohesive whole, well... even people with many axes of privilege may still be marginalized, sometimes significantly. There are severely disabled nonqueer people who have essentially no power over queer people, abled children who have little to no power over disabled adults, white trans people who hold power over all nonwhite trans people - and drive transphobia even as they uphold colonial gender standards and white supremacy.

And of course, this all gets even more complicated with rhetorical tricks used to obscure that identity is the actual thing being attacked.

People are convinced that it's not antisemitism to attack "zionists" while making the one and only criteria for whether someone is a "zionist" whether they are Jewish, all while weaponizing "antizionism isn't antisemitism" as a shield. If what you're attacking is the privilege of "being transmisogyny exempt"* it doesn't matter if you're basing that on someone's identity regardless of their actual experiences with transmisogyny or even whether their identity matches your idea of what that identity entails (for example, intersex people who were assigned female or male at birth).

*Obligatory disclaimer that we are not blaming any specific gender for doing this. We have seen this from everyone from multigender to transmasc to transfem to maverique people to plenty of other people.

Heck, if you attack a "non-marginalized identity", whether or not said identity is actually non-marginalized or has any power over you, that obfuscation isn't even necessary. If neurodisabled people are all able-bodied and always have physical access everywhere and are basically not even really disabled anyway, then how could it be lateral ableism to attack them for pushing back against those false and ableist narratives of their experiences?

If Jewish people are all genocidal Israeli oppressors, then you can go straight into "actually jewish people aren't oppressed and are basically powerful - and controlling the media - and the US government - and are babykillers anyway - and are stealing organs from Palestinians - and you've dove headfirst into blatant antisemitism. But wait! According to you, it's not, because you don't hate theoretical Jewish people, only any Jewish person that doesn't kowtow to you and sycophantically uphold literal blood libel and conspiracy theories.

And if you stopped listening as soon as I said something that you thought conflicted with your existing beliefs - about the tma/tme dichotomy, about Jewish people and zionism, about neurodisabilities being disabling and not all neurodisabled people being able-bodied, etc etc ad nauseum - then this post is about you.

Because you heard someone say "this harms people, you are harming people if you do this" and went "nuh uh I'm not listening actually you're the harmful ones", if you "interrogated" your beliefs without actually listening to what people who are calling them harmful are saying, or at most by decontextualizing and maliciously misinterpreting their arguments to reaffirm your own biases and cognitive dissonance...

You're who I started writing this post about in the first place.

I have laid out, frequently and extensively, the interrogations I have done of myself and my beliefs to come to the conclusions that the things I claim are harmful, are. I've actively looked for logical fallacies and ethical violations. In some places, I've found them, and been forced to re-examine my views. When this has happened, sometimes it's changed those views, and sometimes I simply shored up the foundation by removing the bits that were themselves not supportive or dangerous.

I've apologized and owned my mistakes. I've had the privilege to not just apologize, but undo the harm I did. I've gotten to work to repair not just my relationship with people and their trust in me, but the wounds - and work against the larger structures that I had acted as a single finger of.

And more than anything, I'm sure there's still harm I'm doing or will do that I'm not yet aware of. Out of over seven billion people, there might be several dozen who are not currently, passively or actively, participating in some kind of harm at some level. I can basically guarantee that if you're reading this you're not one of them. This is not because we are inherently harmful, but because we exist within harmful systems that make it impossible to exist without doing so.

"No ethical consumption under capitalism" as an example. Many of the things you might have zero control over right now.

The point of this is not "you are bad" - quite the opposite, in fact. It's "you are complex, and doing harm doesn't make you bad". It's "attempting to never do harm will often make you more likely to do so, and will certainly hinder or outright prohibit attempts at effective harm reduction". It's "the sooner you accept that you will do harm and evaluate that from a neutral standpoint, the sooner you can focus on doing less harm where it IS possible".

But to do this, the very first step is - you have to be willing to listen. You have to understand that you're not going to suddenly be brainwashed into being a hateful bigot because you critically analyze whether something is bigoted or harmful. You have to understand that if you're not willing to try and understand even the most truly harmful, awful people, that you ironically WILL be susceptible to being turned into a bigot by anyone who convinces you that someone else isn't worth listening to.

You have to understand that not listening - is actually just listening to the people who have a vested interest in telling you what others are saying. Who really benefits from controlling the flow of information that way - because it's not you or other marginalized people, I guarantee it.

...

One addition: Yeah, I'm literally the person that has my partner screening my notifs for harassment and hate rn. So this all might seem ironic.

The thing is, you don't have to respond directly to someone who you feel is harmful. In fact, especially if you're triggered or otherwise in a heightened state, I'd say it's often better not to. When triggered especially, you're literally less able to process and integrate information and critically analyze stuff.

It's actually usually better to do this in your own space and time. Privately or with trusted people is best, though yes this sentence alone makes me a hypocrite because I absolutely do this shit publicly and that's absolutely something I should be working on that I'm... not, really.

Anyway yes there's always exceptions, yes there's times where it becomes important to actively seek out people to talk with and find recommendations for reputable educational sources and ask good faith questions of people, yes, even regardless of who is actually doing harm. Sometimes asking those questions is key to deradicalizing them and sometimes it's key to your own deradicalization and sometimes is just makes you able to realize that you all are crab bucketing and you can start helping each other instead.

But while I'll admit to hypocrisy on the "public vs private processing" front, I very much am not on the "listening to people" front. I've had to put some trust in my partner to help me with this because of trauma lately, but as she's documenting any harassment anyway, I can go back to reference it later. And if there's literally anything other than literal slurs or fakeclaiming or similar, she is good about letting me know. So... yeah, I might miss something on the individual level, but I am still doing the work of listening to - seeking out, if I have to - people opposed to our beliefs and such.

[zeb-z]

ok listen. you're badboyhalo and having the worst week of your life. you're willing and wanting to give anything, anything, to get your kids back. forever, your crush/enemy/friend/date partner?/ president sits you down and asks you to marry him. he's on a drug that makes him manically happy and has an extreme level of brainwashing for federation purposes.

you consider for the briefest moment saying yes, because you're drowning in your grief and hard in bargaining, but it won't do anything to help bring the eggs back, forever doesn't know anything. forever wants the eggs back as much as you do, the real one at least, you know this.

you're surrounded by roses. you ask him what you can do to help him, what he needs, asking the forever that you know is in there somewhere. any other personal feelings aside, he's your friend and he clearly needs help. he asks you to marry him again. he tells you to stop making some noise that he's clearly hearing through auditory hallucination. you just want your kids back, you keep telling him this, until he snaps and starts shooting mines under both of you.

forever is still out of his mind. your kids are still missing. the roses are burning.

bad said no to the proposal, of course he did. that's not forever, the kids are gone, this is no time or place for such a thing even if forever was himself. but I don't think forever asked because he feels "opposite than what he usually feels" under the pills. he's manic and under the influence and half brainwashed - he wants every day to be the best day.

and how heartbreaking is that? that bad is only being proposed to while forever is out of his mind. that forever wants bad to say yes because that would make the day the best day ever for him. that under any other circumstances, on that bench with the roses all around them, it might have been something good?

[magentagalaxies]

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[pegasister60]

Go for it, CAR-11E!!

--

Do your part in helping CAR-11E defeat the source of their increased anxiety by voting for CAR-11E in the @best-hifi-rush-character polls!! CAR-11E has the opportunity to rock Kale’s shit and it’d be really fucking funny to watch them obliterate him.

[thedeviljudges]

yeah yohan's a brotherfucker, what about it

[feluka]

idk man i feel like if you're building your entire setting off of SWANA cultures you ought to voice support for its causes. just a thought.

[designedparadigm]

Also the more I think about it, the more I realize I really don't want to lean into anything fluff/gentle/fix-it with Ghost. It's just not inherently his character to me and I just? Don't fuckin care for it. I lose my interest in it so fast and I can't pin why I just know it's not up my alley for him. His journey is not one that gets a happy ending. He's damaged, broken beyond repair, and it's about acknowledging that and learning to live with it. Some things are too late to be repaired. There are other ways to live and still live up to the fullest. There are people with jagged edges that fit his jagged edges. It's bloody and it's rough and that's what he needs. He lives and breathes a bloody and violent existence, he needs someone to slot that back in with.

There are like one or two exceptions I've had to the rule but... I mostly find myself struggling to connect if it goes too mushy with him. Wherein Ghost himself would pull back and push against it. Not want it. Because it's foreign. It's? Disgusting to him in a way. It's not him, it feels like a perversion of what he is. To think he wants that in any way has him curling up his lips, sneering. It's not him.

So I think I might? Lean more into going through that arc and journey with him. His was never a healing story. And it never will be. It's coming to terms. Finding your way around that. Flaws that are cemented, flaws that someone else can work with.