#sorry for the screed

[thedissonantverses]

Your suspicion is correct and I know why and it’s stupid. Because it boils down to all they actually care about is the romance but they’ll say anything but.

They claim they want moral ambiguity then get mad the morally ambiguous choices in the game don’t have clear right or wrong answers. They say they don’t want Solas to be villainized and his writing to be good and when we got that they got mad when they figured out that a compelling antagonist is still an antagonist. (Okay some of them still haven’t figured out he was the antagonist the whole time)

They claim they want conflict then get mad when Neve or Lucanis are cold after their city gets destroyed. They claim they want slavery in the game then kill all the abolitionists gleefully to romance Lucanis again and downplay the literal piles of bodies leftover when this happens. They will happily run Neve’s name through the mud and claim they love the representation. They’ll erase Lucanis’ queer identity on every level and downplay his trauma to make him their sexy Spanish daddy dom but claim they love his character.

Like it’s painfully obvious when people are viewing Dragon Age only through whatever character they’re romancing. And it’s even more painful watching people just be racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, and ableist, and just plain hateful towards the writers and other fans because they didn’t get their romantasy tropes or their elf supremacy bullshit. (I’m not saying if you ship the characters listed you’re bigoted I’m saying a lot of you sound like Reddit bros without thinking so you can shit on Neve, Bellara, Taash, or Davrin again.). So many of my mutuals are directly affected by these issues and I can’t shut the fuck up about it to be honest haha.

Anyways if you’re still crying over Veilguard go play a different game for fuck’s sake. There’s that one with the sad vampire or whatever probably more your speed.

I mean the same people that will complain about Lucanis’ “cut” content (something something crying about the art book again) will also say that they “can’t”romance Davrin because he’s the archetypal jock character and if that doesn’t make anyone who actually paid attention to his character arc fucking livid I don’t know what will.

People are mischaracterizing Neve as an “indulgence” for Lucanis who wouldn’t be able to help him like Rook because apparently Rook is so special they have magical genitalia and that’s what fixes Lucanis not…Lucanis. This such a fucking awful read of every character involved and how PTSD works it’s impressive.

We all know why. We know why Neve and Davrin are being mischaracterized and sidelined like this for a lighter skinned character. Disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourselves. The misogyny involved with Neve combined with the racism running rampant through this fandom lately should be making everyone think fucking twice.

[moretheta]

they're my roman empire tbh. my hbo succession

[tenderlady]

hi love!! out of curiosity, i didn't know about the lindsay ellis video, how bad is it?

hey, friend!

so, the video itself is here:

in the interest of full disclosure, i haven't actually seen it, so i really can't comment on the quality. my beef is not with lindsay ellis or the work that she's doing--as far as youtubers go, i think she's actually one of the better ones. this video might actually be good! but i haven't watched it, so i, frankly, don't know. my beef is much more with the video essay as a form and what it's doing rather than with lindsay ellis, or this video, specifically.

i'm guessing you're asking because of my tags on this post, which articulates a lot of my issues with the video essay industrial complex lmao, which gets at a lot of my discomfort with them. i used to watch video essays (a lot!), and a lot of my friends still do. like a lot of people, when i got out of grad school, i found i wasn't reading as much anymore, but i still wanted to be stimulated intellectually, and video essays were a good way to do that. but eventually i realized that i wasn't actually Learning Anything lol.

as ismatu gwendolyn says in her piece, "short-form video entertains more than it sticks." this was the place i was finding myself getting into when i was watching video essays a lot, and also the place i see my friends getting into. they are video (and arguably this isn't really short-form since it's over an hour long but i digress), but i find that most people i know don't actually Watch Them the way that you would watch a movie or, say, a lecture in a college class. instead they listen to them as you would listen to a podcast or an audiobook, which is to say While Doing Other Things. some of this is definitely because of the way our current economy is structured (a lot of the people listening to video essays are very busy, i.e., in university or working in a professional desk-type job, or have minimal downtime when not doing those things and have to double dip with their free time, so like things they can use to multi-task), and that is something i totally understand. but if we're looking at these as pedagogical objects (teaching tools from people who are trying to impart knowledge in some kind of way) they're actually not very effective. i respect folks like philosophy tube or contrapoints who include reading lists with their videos, but how many people are actually turning to these original sources? another of gwendolyn's points that i absolutely agree with is that you are engaging with a work in a totally different way by reading it. you have to give a written text your full attention, which is why the backbone of education is still Reading. this full attention forces you to have a deeper engagement with a text than you would while listening to it ambiently, or even just watching it. i get that there are people who can't do this for various reasons, but if actually sitting down with the texts a video essayist is talking about is available to you, you will find a totally different experience, even if those texts are just beatlebooks lol. (additionally, primary video texts--like interview footage of the beatles and yoko--are also hugely informative and different from the interpretive work i'm assuming is happening in lindsay's video)

i actually watched a good chunk of contrapoints' most recent video on desire but ended up dipping around the middle because she brought up anne carson and i realized i could just be reading anne carson lmao. i told a friend about this and he looked at me like i had sprouted an extra head and said "i never really thought about doing that. you're probably the only person i know who's ever done that." i get that like, 5 nerds in usamerica are hardly a representative sample, but that is the kind of behavior i see with video essays: people using them to fill a void of silence while they work/study/play video games/fold laundry rather than engaging with the material critically and learning in a concerted way.

the entertainment aspect is also something that bugs me, but i am a joyless hag, so that may just be me. i have a similar issue with john oliver. folks like oliver and the video essayists are definitely making complex issues more accessible to people who may be unfamiliar, but i don't know if they actually do much in the way of using that opened door to get people anywhere. there's also the issue of video essays being monetized. this isn't to say that Theory(TM) Isn't Monetized (they are published in journals and books, which you often have to buy), but that monetization isn't embedded into the work itself the way it is with video essays. nothing kills the vibe for me like talking about the great works of a philosopher and getting jumpscared by an ad for rocketmortgage or nordvpn halfway through.

like i said: i've watched video essays from time to time. i still do! but sometime in the last like.....4 or 5 years i realized that there were other things i could be doing with my One Wild & Precious Life.

to bring it back to the lindsay ellis video: i had a bunch of irl's (including a fucking ex that i don't talk to anymore!!!!!) send it to me, and i'm sure lindsay does a good job, but i kind of doubt she's going to tell me anything i don't already know lmao. one thing i love about the beatles fandom on here is that (for the most part) we aren't afraid to actually do Real Research Ourselves. the girlies are reading primary sources!!!! i just feel like the lindsay ellis beatle video is Not For Me, but feel free to prove me wrong!

[dokidaikon]

they call each other slurs

[what-do-bunyips-look-like]

This crab day thing has gotten so frustrating so fast. The person who suggested it is an anti-abortion anti-feminist right wing christian transphobe. Many of the people spreading additional posts and info are ALSO anti-abortion right wing christian transphobes. Seriously. Start clicking their blogs when you see these posts. Search "abortion" and "feminism" and "trans" and "gender" and "groomer." This is really easy to confirm. But people don't give a shit because "crabs fun." okay.

And its not like people aren't aware of it at this point. Search "crab day" on tumblr and a good chunk of the results are asks saying "hey btw crab day was started by a transphobe/right wing christian." and most of those people have responded with something along the lines of "Um okay but like its a good idea though??? You guys can't even collaborate with conservatives for like a second to achieve a political goal? UGH this is why nothing ever gets done 🙄." or "Um okay but like that post had nothing to do with their political beliefs. so like its fine lol. Crab fun." Or "oh no omg im so sorry thats so gross i deleted the post but im still gonna keep reblogging all the other posts by the conservative transphobic anti abortion right wing christians whos blogs i wont check because we need to save tumblr!!!!"

Let me make this really fucking clear for those who don't get it: it doesn't matter if the post is not about their political beliefs. You and all your mutuals are reblogging them. You are making it easier for them to network and find each other. You are bringing them new followers, a bigger audience, a bigger platform and a bigger pool of people who will spread their oh so relatable non-political posts. Which will bring in more followers. And some of those new followers are going to be young dumbasses who are going to see all their posts about "groomers" and "mutilation" and the evils of porn and the horrors of abortion and how feminism actually harms women and do i need to tell you how that story ends?

You are showing that "crab fun" is way more important to you than the safety of trans tumblr users. You are giving them a bigger platform and a wider net with which to potentially harm trans people. By saying that you're not going to let their political beliefs ruin your fun, you're making it very clear that trans people are less important than your fun. And you're making it VERY fucking clear that you'd RATHER tumblr become a safe and welcoming place for anti-feminist anti-abortion right wing transphobes than give up fun crab.

You are showing that your need to throw money at a corporation is more important to you than trans tumblr users. I get where you are coming from. I do. You want tumblr to keep existing. I want tumblr to keep existing. I also want the other trans people who use this fucking platform to keep existing because frankly, they are the only reason i'm here. and if they aren't safe here and if you will throw us away just to keep tumblr shambling along a little longer then I have no fucking interest in tumblr.

"Okay but we need to save tumblr uwu!!!!" Look I'm just some dumbass and I don't know shit (and to be PERFECTLY honest, so are you), but I think this is a little more complicated than "if we raise enough money we can save the school/family farm/community centre/(insert cozy heartwarming thing that needs to be saved)!" As other smarter people have said, tumblr is operating at a yearly $30 million deficit. Thats $30 million just to break even. For one year. not become profitable. Its not a bail them out once and its all good forever situation. Tumblr is not a small message board run by volunteers who actually use donations to stay afloat. They are not a non-profit. They are not running a pledge drive. Throwing money at a corporation does not a nonprofit make. It makes you a consumer.

Your response to "tumblr making bad changes" is "give them money for making the bad changes to show that we don't like bad changes!! A reverse boycott'll show 'em!!" You sure about that??? (And some of you are calling this """""unionizing?"""" Put that word back on the shelf.) You don't know what you're doing and you're not listening to the smarter people who have tried to explain it to you. And once again, you're showing that this half baked scheme is more important to you than trans tumblr users. because crab fun.

And @everyone whos clambering over each other to "collaborate with conservatives for a good cause," we already fucking know that you love to do this shit. You are the same people who will say "yeah but theres bad people on both sides!!!" and who wont give up your Harry Potter or your Chick-Fil-A. You will throw us under the bus the SECOND it gets you something you want. Even something as stupid and small as pickle brine or a shitty videogame or fucking "crab day." And guess what. The second all your "shared goals" are accomplished and the conservatives get what they want FROM YOU??? You're going straight under that bus too.

And also, isn't it maybe a little hmmmm. SUSPICIOUS that CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS want to throw money at the site that we've been bitching and screaming at for how unfairly it censors any display of queer sexuality????? They don't have the same problems with tumblr that you do. You think that collaborating with THEM is gonna stop that? Gonna get the porn ban reversed? Gonna turn tumblr into a co-op? Gonna "unionize this bitch?" Hello????

If you must. MUST participate in this because crab oh so fun and tumblr is oh so in need of saving then for the LOVE of FUCK make your OWN POST and STOP PLATFORMING THESE PEOPLE. i don't want to hear "Oh but its a good idea it doesn't matter if a bad person came up with it separate art from the artist lol" if you're not MAKING AN ACTUAL EFFORT TO EXCLUDE THEM FROM THIS. BLOCK THEM. CHECK THEIR BLOGS. BLACKLIST THEIR URLS. ITS EASY.

and then maybe go give your $3 to an actual non-profit. or to an actual leftist independent organization. Or wikipedia. Or inaturalist. Or to one of the many hyperspecific message boards out there who are struggling along on donations from like 5 people. Or maybe, maybe, give your fucking $3 to an abortion fund or to a trans person's go fund me so they can buy food. Or to a womens shelter or a fucking homeless person or to any of the other people who anti-abotion anti-feminist right wing christian transphobes want to stop existing.

My partner is afraid to leave the house alone because people with these exact same political beliefs are in power. People are getting their HRT ripped away from them because people with these exact same political beliefs are in power. People are being forced to give birth because people with these exact same political beliefs are in power. Every day I'm ready to get the news that the state my partner is in is no longer safe and we have to figure out an escape plan. These people do REAL HARM in the REAL WORLD and their beliefs are, tbh, way more fucking insidious and mainstream and tolerated than those of TERFs.

But fun crabs are more important. okay.

[frc-ambaradan]

A few thoughts on Thrawn’s portrayal in Ahsoka

First thing first: I think they absolutely nailed him.

Lars Mikkelsen is perfect and I don’t think there could ever been another actor fit to bring Thrawn alive. We’re talking about the same man who got an Annie Nomitation for his voice performance in Rebels. He knows the character, he knows how Thrawn speaks, the way he moves, he knows how to use silence... and he absolutely kills it!

And, let’s forget about the new canon for a moment, shall we? 

This Thrawn looks like he just jumped out of “Heir to the Empire”. 

Looks like Filoni’s going for the more Moriarty-like, more evil Legends Thrawn. And, as much as I love the new books, that’s the Thrawn we first met and loved, the character who became the standard bearer of the Expanded Universe, one of the greatest villains of the franchise second only to Darth Vader and one of the best characters in Sci-fi fiction. That’s a guy who’s politely conferring with you a moment before and the second later he’s having a tractor beam technician be dismembered by his bodyguard.

Pellaeon never even saw Rukh move. Pieterson certainly never had time to scream. From farther down the crew pit came the sound of someone trying valiantly not to be sick. Thrawn glanced over Pellaeon's shoulder gain and gestured, and the silence was further broken by the sound of a pair of stormtroopers coming forward. "Dispose of it," the Grand Admiral ordered them, turning away from Pieterson's crumpled body and pinning Colclazure with a stare. "The error, Ensign," he told the other softly, "has now been corrected. You may begin training a replacement." Timothy Zahn, Heir to the Empire (1991)

The infinite pauses Mikkelsen makes, with Thrawn just staring at his interlocutor in silence, are so unnerving and so perfectly in character. Pick any page of the Thrawn trilogy where the Grand Admiral’s talking to Pellaeon and you’ll find the same feeling of fear and malaise. 

And guys, Thrawn was never meant to be likeable. He’s not a puppy, he’s a wolf. He’s someone to be admired for his tactical genius, to be respected for his abilities; you can understand his reasons and his way of thinking but still he’s someone to be wary of and to be feared. You can talk with Thrawn. He will listen and will understand your point, but once you find yourself between him and his goal, you’re dead.

Not surprisingly, Grand Admiral Thrawn was inspired by General Rommel. And they indeed are very similar (I might say they’re basically clones ^^): both military geniuses coming from the lower ranks of society and raising to the highest ranks of the army by sheer talent and yet pretty much naive when it comes to politics and highly opposed by other high ranking officers driven mostly by pure envy (hell! Rommel was taken in higher regard by the British than by his fellow German high ranking officers! In fact, Rommel kept his rank only because Hitler liked him, just like Thrawn did because Palpatine liked him).

Erwin Rommel and Mitth'raw'nuruodo are basically the same person in two different universes...

Both Thrawn and Rommel are well mannered, honourable and very professional officers, considerate to their troops and respectful of their adversaries and as such highly esteemed by both their men and their enemies. That doesn’t change the fact that they both have their fair amount of atrocities on their shoulders, they work for the most evil governments of their age and both have pretty close personal relationships with the Emperor and with Adolf Hitler. And still. You can fight on the wrong side of history and still be an honorable man.

That said, I’ve read complains about Thrawn's physique and yes, I didn’t like his belly either when he first showed up but that was just for a fraction of a second ‘cause the moment he opened his mouth I was totally sold.

Why? Because physical prowess isn’t Thrawn’s main characteristic. Yes, he’s a very well trained warrior and a martial arts expert, but the reason why he’s such a great character is his charisma, it’s his brain and, if I'm right, the Thrawn we have in Ahsoka is the evil cat- ops, I mean ysalamiri-petting Thrawn ^^.

And guys, people do age, even chiss. Thrawn’s 70 years old, he has every right to get old and look old. And that belly looks like a very deliberate choice to me.

Ten years separate Rebels Thrawn from Ahsoka Thrawn, ten years and an inter-galactical hyperspace jump. People change. And get old.

Also, you must consider the fact that Thrawn was wrapped in the purrgill's tantacles when they jumped into hyperspace, so it's safe to assume that he substained heavy injuries and that his body was heavily affected by it. We also don't know how well he fared while stranded for ten years in an unknown galaxy, meddling with stuff he should stay kilometers away from (let's face it: it never ends well when he starts meddling with the Force or anything he has no real grip or power on).

I don't know, but I don't think chiss are made to fly in hyperspace.

So, on a closing note... is Thrawn's make-up perfect? No.

Is that such a big problem? No. What the make-up doesn’t achieve, the actor’s performance will.

And hear me out, there is room for improvement and I’m sure they will fill the gap. They did with Ahsoka… remember how everyone criticized her lekku in The Mandalorian? That was because of an actual, practical reason, but they did manage to correct it and they did improve it. Ahsoka looks great now. And just how they did with her, they will improve Thrawn’s appearance as well.

It’s impossible to nail something at first try. And it's impossible to appease everyone.

I work as a digital artist and I can tell you that sometimes you just can’t do the best you can, because maybe the budget doesn’t allow it or there’s just too little time to do it (or people just keep asking change after change 😒), but once you’ve got the basis, and I think they’ve got pretty solid basis with Thrawn, to improve the look of him adding details and correcting those little errors is gonna be a much easier job and you’ll, see, he’s gonna look much better in the next season.

Sometimes things don’t need to be perfect to work. And Mikkelsen’s Thrawn works, because it’s Mikkelsen and because it’s Thrawn.

[transmutationisms]

thinking about the 4 humours in succession and logans death...do you have any thoughts on how this has played out in season 4?

as much as i enjoy humoural analysis, and bearing in mind that humoural medicine did occupy certain places in eugenic discourses during the long nineteenth century, i think this particular bathroom scene is better analysed as part of the show's engagement with ideas about liberal capitalism, eugenics, and bodily fitness.

since 1969, historians of biology have argued that darwin's theory of evolution represented a biological transposition of the economic and political ideology of victorian britain. the emphasis on competition, the malthusian population logic, the attempt to ground moral sensibility in a discourse of individual self-motivated actors—all of these things are features of liberal capitalism. darwinian evolution, then, was adopted in part because it was a politically useful ideology by which the operating logic of capital was biologised and naturalised.

this is why it's so significant that logan is what we might call a social darwinist. he, too, claims to value competition and domination; he devalues those he perceives as weak; even his speech is littered with comparisons to the animal kingdom, and the way he tells it, nature is a brutal domain in which the only law is rule by force. he's essentially making the same linkage as above: arguing that his own dog-eat-dog, competitive, anti-social political morality is simply the rule of nature. it can't be changed, it's a naturally existing system, and the world has always been this way and always will be.

so, the fact that logan's own body is deteriorating for his entire presence on the show is highly significant. we meet him losing control of his bladder, and he dies with his hand in karl's shit. i've written elsewhere about bathrooms on this show as sites of social marginalisation and waste disposal. and in the kingdom logan has created, the operating logics of eugenics and ableism mean that he's unable to face his own bodily decline as anything other than a depreciation of value. even as the founder, waystar has no use for him if he's not able to live up to his own standards of masculinity and able-bodiedness. he has spent his life reducing the world to market logic, and his own definition of strength no longer applies to him. hence, his death is relegated to the shitcan on a private jet.

liberal capitalism creates death: the migrants and women who were thrown off waystar cruises, the labourers squeezed on starvation wages, everyone politically un-personed when capitalists team up with fascists. logan ran his empire on this logic, because it was profitable, and of course, he and waystar exist within a larger capitalist system that also operates on this logic. his death—as a body that has been rendered worthless and useless by the eugenicist logic of his own kingdom—is a microcosm of the way capitalism operates on ableism.

[herrmit]

not to start shit but. tell me you didn't understand princess jellyfish without telling me you didn't understand princess jellyfish

[daddytoki]

gintama is to japanese history what hamilton is to american history.

[lavenderselkie]

Actual southern preacher's daughter chiming in because LMFAO. Y'all cannot be serious -- people honest to Goddess pay real money to see a grown male caterwaul about pretending to have the first fucking clue what the child abuse growing up female in poor christian rural towns is like? LOL. ROFL, even.

[noxious-fennec]

aromantism & cannibalism :0? (plsplsplsplsplspls)

THANK YOU alright so.

Cannibalism is a a need, a hunger; a visceral desire, at the expense of another, that is as physical as it gets. It's also not a very common form of desire, which nicely juxtaposes it's symbolic place in my fiction as shorthand for romantic attraction.

with the base assumption that the hypothetical "you" is neither cannibal nor keen on being eaten alive: Being desired by a cannibal is to be wanted intrinsically in a way you have no way of accessing much less returning. if you love this person, don't want them to go hungry, the guilt would be tangible; what a waste to be loved so strongly for nothing in return. how cruel to keep loving someone just shy of how much they love you. What if you enjoyed the attention, the validation of being desired? wouldn't that be callous? Would you give yourself? your body to become fuel with you trapped in it, your future at the mercy of their hunger? What if they desired someone else but not you, wouldn't you feel jealous, left out, less than? Say they wanted you to join in the act instead: could you force the flesh of your fellow man down your throat for them? or would you just be exhausted, drained of life as you force your body to digest what it's not built for? how long would you last before they realise you're a poor imitation of the real thing? As the cannibal in this dynamic, your desire is visceral and wholly moving, it's so strong it doesn't leave room for anything else, and the only way to express it is at its object's expense. But you can't understand why they wouldn't want your love if they claim to love you. is your love so defiling, impure? you don't expect them to become a cannibal, but it's natural to you, couldn't they try? or is your all not enough? wouldn't you be justified asking for a little more?

Cannibalism is a metaphor for the horror of a desire that traps you in it. it's a metaphor for being left behind. it's a metaphor for obsession, for the violence of being alive and raw and scared and intimate and it still being not enough.

[itspileofgoodthings]

yes to SOME of the rhetoric that says we have an idealized completely unable to be fulfilled view of romantic love that raises it far beyond its position over every other kind of attachment and relationship; no to most of it though

[moretheta]

feitan dumpster baby fodder

[stephantom]

“I Found Out” by John Lennon just came on on shuffle and I was freshly hit by the scathing delivery of I’ve seen through junkies / I’ve been through it all / I’ve seen religion from Jesus to Paul.

(Sorry, yes, I’m on this bullshit again.)

[dokidaikon]

they're playing the worlds stupidest game of straight chicken. beard couple but antagonistic. i love to see it

[bestworstcase]

i love it when people rb old posts of mine and i reread them and i’m like

oh this

um

this is a lot longer than i remember it being