#system watch party

[utilitycaster]

I don't begrudge anyone their campaign preferences, and I think there's plenty of valid reasons to like Campaign 3 the best and this is not directed at people who are genuinely having a great time with it, but it feels like virtually all the nostalgia and wishful thinking I see surrounding Campaign 3 is screaming "you guys want Campaign 2." You want more slow travel and downtime and interparty conversations and slow-burn romance? You wish their main focus was fighting governmental corruption? You want a party that only semi-settles down at the end and keeps adventuring and remains very close? You're frustrated by how everpresent and overarching the moon plot is? You miss when they were just fucking around in a city? I genuinely believe you want Campaign 2, or at best you love a specific ship or a character from Campaign 3 but aren't happy about basically anything else, and would vastly prefer the tone and events and plot of Campaign 2. And I don't really care if you watch Campaign 2, or if you think I'm being annoying here; I simply genuinely believe you'd be happier watching Campaign 2 than Campaign 3 and are so deep in a sunk cost fallacy well you can't see it.

[threewaysdivided]

Gaza is NOT an excuse to sit out this election

I don't usually post about politics on this blog (if anything I try to avoid it since I know it can be a distressing topic) but, to be honest, the upcoming U.S. presidential election has me concerned.

This is going to be one of, if not THE most globally consequential election of our time, and I have been deeply perturbed to see people spreading sentiment that sitting this vote out (or even voting for Trump) is justified by the Democratic Party's handling of the genocide in Gaza.

I was going to write a post about why I think that's really dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric, but then U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders came out and said the same things far better so I'm going to share his video, and some key quotes:

"SOME of you are saying: "How can I vote for Kamala Harris if she is supporting this terrible war?" And that is a very fair question. And let me give you my best answer. AND that is that, even on this issue, Donald Trump and his right-wing friends are worse. In the Senate, in Congress, the Republicans have worked overtime to block humanitarian aid to the starving children in Gaza. [Current President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris] support getting as much humanitarian aid into Gaza as soon as possible. TRUMP has said Netanyahu is "doing a good job." And has said Biden is holding him back. [Trump] has suggested that the Gaza Strip would make excellent beachfront property for development. [...] AFTER Kamala wins, we will together do everything we can to change U.S. policy towards Netanyahu: An immediate ceasefire, the return of all hostages, a surge of massive humanitarian aid, the stopping of settler attacks on the West Bank, and the rebuilding of Gaza for the Palestinian people. AND let me be clear: We will have, in my view, a much better chance of changing U.S. policy with [Kamala Harris] than with [Donald Trump], who is extremely close to Netanyahu and sees him as a like-minded, right-wing extremist ally. [...] AS important as Gaza is [...] it is not the only issue at stake in this election. IF Trump wins, women in this country will suffer an enormous setback and lose the ability to control their own bodies. [...] IF Trump wins, to be honest with you, the struggle against climate change is over. [...] Trump believes [climate change] is a hoax. And if the United States, the largest economy in the world, stops transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel, every other country, China, Europe, all over the world, they will do exactly the same thing. And God only knows the kind of planet we will leave to our kids and future generations."

And now I am going to editorialise a few more points:

Firstly, I want to emphasise that the upcoming election is about damage control and harm reduction, not about political allegiance or moral purity. The point of casting your vote is not to signal support for a candidate, but to cancel out a vote for the more damaging candidate by voting for their opposition in the two party system. Let me be clear on that: under the U.S.'s current first-past-the-post voting arrangement, voting for a minor third party or independent is functionally useless during an election of this magnitude. It is a symbolic gesture that's functionally and morally equivalent to sitting out.

Story time: I come from a country which uses a preferential ranked-choice system and where voting is compulsory for all eligible citizens (a system which lowers campaign costs, incentivizes governments to make voting more accessible country-wide and limits attempts at voter suppression not that right-wing parties haven't tried). Despite us actually having a few substantial progressive third parties, there have been several times where I've sucked it up and voted for the major centrist party specifically to keep the major conservative right-wing party from gaining or maintaining power. We call this vote-them-out and keep-them-out politics - it's pretty much the default approach here, and it should be yours too because the idea of a "perfect party" is a fallacy. When human rights are on the line, pick the least-worst major option. The aim is to cancel out a vote for the other guy. Even with this, we recently lost our state to the major conservative-right party (running on a platform of youth-criminalization and abortion-bans) by a mere 8 percent margin - just in case you want evidence of how much impact a small number of votes can make, and how dangerous it can be to get complacent.

Secondly, for those Americans who still believe that not voting will keep you from being complicit in the Genocide in Gaza. Let me speak to you as a White Australian: you are already complicit in and benefiting from a genocide. Multiple, in fact. You and I both live, learn, work and profit on land that was forcibly seized through the murder and dispossession of First Nations peoples, similar to how Palestinians are being murdered and dispossessed of their land right now. When you enjoy chocolate and vanilla, you are benefiting from spices that were brought to the Global West via the colonization of Latin America, and that were historically (and in chocolate's case still is) cultivated by enslaved people. The phone/tablet/computer you are reading this post on is likely made using conflict minerals. I'm sorry, but you don't get to wring your hands over Gaza at a distance and pretend that sitting this vote out absolves you of genocide, while ignoring the ones your (and my) ancestors committed to bring you that luxury. You just don't. And again, as Senator Sanders said, Trump wants to bulldoze Gaza and turn it into Netanyahu's beachfront property development. You don't get to pretend that standing aside and knowingly letting someone else vote for him to do that is the more moral option.

Thirdly I want to point to that last part that I highlighted in Senator Sander's speech. I am not a USAmerican, but this election scares me because of America's global impact. If you are an American voter reading this, you need to understand that your country is too globally influential for you to neglect your civic responsibilities. I was working as a member of my country's national public service under a right-wing government during the Trump era and things got bad. A woman was raped inside Parliament House, video emerged of male staffers masturbating on female colleagues' desks and our then-Prime Minister quipped that it was a "triumph of democracy" that the women who marched in protest weren't "met with bullets". There was the same sort of culture-war mismanagement and misinformation about COVID-19, there were Neo-Nazis, and there was a failure to properly condemn or correct either of those things. Progress towards sustainability and clean energy slowed, and our Prime Minister secretly tried to seize personal control over five separate government departments. Sure, some of that would have happened with or without a Trump administration after all, we didn't need a Republican U.S. President to produce an onion-eating misogynist who hates homosexuals despite his own sister being one but the rest of the world looks to the U.S. to set the tone on what is acceptable in government. When the largest country votes in (or sits aside and lets other people vote in) someone as egocentric, openly prejudiced, corrupt, anti-science, greed-motivated, war-hungry, and dictatorially-minded as Donald Trump, it signals to other leaders that that is the acceptable standard. Even when it's absolutely not. When you choose to sit out (or cast a meaningless symbolic vote) rather than effectively use your civic power as a U.S. citizen, the outcome affects millions of global citizens who never had the option of giving their input.

Finally, I want you to listen to this podcast by Dr Robin DiAngelo and think about what the choice to waste your vote signals to the people around you. To the members of your community who are women, BIPOC, LGBT+, disabled, have migrant parents or who live countries that are effected by American policy (which is all of them, by the way. Y'all are big). We are not asking much from you. Queue for a slightly-annoying amount of time, get your identity confirmed at a sign-in table and then cast a ballot. Tick a box that indicates you'd rather let a qualified centre-left attorney and former senator have a chance of improving things, instead of a dictator-lionizing convicted felon who openly wants dismantle voting systems so that he'll never lose again. That's it. Get yourself to a polling booth and tick a box. We are not asking you to make an effort. We are not asking you to volunteer. We are not asking you run petitions, or call representatives or donate money or do meal deliveries or any kind of community work. Just tick a box. Vote. Anonymously. No one even needs to know what box you ticked.

If that is too much to ask of you, then what right do you have to call yourself any kind of ally? Think about the enormous privilege you are displaying by deciding that you can neglect this, and the fragility you are showing by deciding that a simple anonymous vote is too morally taxing. What reason would we have to ever believe you'd help us compromise on future solutions when you've shown you'd rather throw away possibly the last meaningful vote you may ever get on a Nirvana Fallacy? Why would we ever believe that we could rely on you to help or defend us when you couldn't even work up the courage and stamina to tick a box?

If that's too much for you, then fine. You're a coward, but fine. Just don't pretend to be anything else. And certainly don't hide behind the actual, ongoing suffering of real people as justification for your civic negligence. Do not use Gaza as an excuse to sit out this November 5th.

This website provides information on how to check your registration, register if you haven't, and find a polling booth. So does this one.

Do your duty. Get yourself ready. Go vote.

Then buy yourself some ethical chocolate to wash the bad taste out of your mouth.

[northwest-by-a-train]

.

[sammygender]

im new here- is dean abusive?

imo yeah. smarter people than me have written dissections of the way he treats sam & others (he’s also Awful to his psuedo-son jack, but i haven’t gotten to that season yet), i’ve probably reblogged a bunch of them.

he certainly doesn’t mean to be & i don’t say it to condemn him as a person or as a character & i’m still very attached to him & he loves sam very much (not that that makes a difference in whether u abuse someone or not) - but the way he treats sam a lot/some of the time is emotionally abusive and sam is clearly badly impacted. s4 and s8 come to mind as his worst moments also ofc moc era - after that there’s less interpersonal conflict (up to where i am at least) but that’s because sam mostly stops disagreeing with dean not because dean actually gets much better <3 spn is cycles of abuse show after all. family is hell. dean’s learnt pretty much everything about how to behave from his abusive father and as a result. well. cycle continues

[ilkkawhat]

7.21 Ending Happy

[rowanthestrange]

i voted

took me forty minutes to put the x in the box of the party i am literally a member of

successfully rationalised that we’re a new and probably swing constituency so we’ve got to

feel a truly unmatched sense of depoliticised disenfranchised hopelessness

[opens-up-4-nobody]

It's so weird watching fullmetal alchemist in contrast to naruto. Because both are set in fucked up worlds where everyone has committed war crimes, has had war crimes committed upon them, or is a war crime. But I trust that fma fundamentally understands how fucked up everything is, including the sinister qualities of the institutions that allowed this to happen. Naruto understands its fucked up on a surface level, but also glorifies the institution and never changes.

[tuliptiger]

I fucking hate America. You dumb stupid motherfuckers I hate living here. We are NOT getting out of here alive.

I think I'm really understanding curses back in the day. Curse you, curse your family, curse your home and curse every small pleasure you have in your life. I hope they vanish like dust in the wind and I hope you're the only dumb fuck left. I hope you're only left for the amount of time it takes you to realize the events that followed are your fault.

[atlanticsea]

finally watched the ravening war episode and uh. that's the plot? the plot is shadowy secret organisation? in the huge expansive politically unstable continent populated with a multitude of people all trying to influence politics according to their own ego, self interest, and beliefs? in the vastest world we've had in d20 with endless potential for player conflict? we're uh. making them put aside their personal motivations for the sake of a secret society that is orchestrating everything. okay. oh what's that? this plot also undermines all the events in acoc because anything could now have been orchestrated by a secret group? oh okay. well that's great isn't it.

[petefromarma]

thank you this is a safe space for communist fall out boy fans. i love em but hate them and thats okay. i do wish they were better. i think one reason why people act like that in the fandom is they spent a lot of time associating with it and spending money and making it part of their identity which i am guilty of and still do, its almost an attack on them. to rethink what they consume. i think a lot of people just dont want to ever think of letting them go. and i get it it can suck. ofc i am not saying people should let go of them entirely or whatever but realize your faves may not be as progressive as you think they are and to acknowledge that flaw. i think one thing that sort of helped me “grow apart” from fall out boy is deadass making ocs. sure they don’t have a whole fandom or actual media but its honestly helped me a lot with just being able to put in my creative energy into something else besides fob. i still like to dabble in the fob fandom but its nice to have something else beyond fall out boy and sort of a “safety net” if things truly go south if fob gets actually “canceled” if they do something that i truly can’t really be all fandomy over if that makes sense hahaha

i think you're probably right tbh re fans feeling guilty abt spending money on them; a fair amount of western activism revolves around consumerism, which makes sense for a capitalistic society but like i really do wish these people would just get real and own up to the fact that their enjoyment of fob has nothing to do with their politics for better or for worse and if they actually believed that it did they would stop spending money on concert tickets and stop spending money on merch, not as a form of boycott or anything like that (imo most forms of western modern day boycott are ineffective in terms of constituting material change bc they focus on conglomerates; we should boycott bc it is the right thing to do to not pay in to companies that are supporting genocide, not bc we are expecting large scale change to come of it) but because it would be in line with the ideological/moral boundaries they have set for themselves

imo engaging with art/celebrity in a capitalistic society is a net neutral, for the most part; simply saying this among the most radical of accelerationist twitter grifters would get my head chopped off for paying attention to a band instead of the glorious revolution that's supposedly forming amongst russian soldiers doing genocide in the donbas or whatever but unless leftists want to actually get serious about global suffrage then idk what to say lol people are going to look to art as a coping mechanism and continue to pay in to these systems bc it helps them survive mentally/emotionally. now that being said that's why i think it's hypocritical and grotesque to participate in faux outrage against a band that you like by doing pretend activism bc none of these people actually give a shit that fob do business with/are friends with zionists, they just want to look good in front of their friends for caring about the right thing at the right time. if their disgust was genuine they would quietly drop them and move on but they're more invested in their own comfort than doing what they perceive as being right. so i guess to clarify i don't think spending money on and paying attention to a band with milquetoast lib politics is inherently materially harmful; what i do believe is actively harmful to the cause you claim to serve is when you put on a performance for a few days because the band you like fucked up in a way that can't be ignored and then never talk about it again and go back to pretending that pw is a radical leftist and not a run of the mill democrat. like if you're just going to stop talking about it eventually don't even bother bringing it up in the first place lol

i support you tho i do think OCs are a good idea esp if you want to pull away from engaging with IP tbh and i think just a good thing for enhancing your writing/creativity in general

[notbeyondbirthday]

Just jumped in the joe biden tag and the latest post is THANKING HIM FOR STEPPING DOWN.

IMAGINE THANKING GENOCIDE JOE FOR ANYTHING

Fuck you bootlickers fr 😭

[thegoblinpit]

Me? Trust the government?

[anarkittyuwuuniverse]

"In the depths of the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration rescued capitalism by creating social provisions that assisted white, urban, industrial working-class households headed by male breadwinners, because it feared they could be radicalized by the socialist and communist Left, destabilizing the State and the capitalist economic order. Ten years of progress in American civil rights, beginning with the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education , stemmed from Washington’s desire to present itself as a champion of freedom and democracy in the face of what it viewed as a global rivalry with the Soviet Union. The Great Society programs of the 1960s were propelled by the Johnson administration’s “guns and butter” strategy to shore up support for its war in Vietnam and its desire to contain the urban uprisings of the period. Today, no other superpower provides a countervailing force; labor unions and erstwhile social-democratic parties like the Labour Party in the UK, Germany’s Social Democrats, France’s Socialists, and—marginally—the Democratic Party in the United States have been co-opted and driven into a defensive posture; and an ever more precarious economy has forced individuals to focus ever more intently on keeping themselves afloat materially. The pattern has become predictable: parties of the Left are raised into power by the support of the working class and the precarious middle class; as their operatives become more professional and technocratic and the parties themselves acquire more hierarchical power structures, they move to the right. Eventually, we find them implementing milder versions of the same policies pursued by the Right, from promoting the corporate global trade agenda to “reforming” social services, generally in the name of achieving political consensus. Thus, the Left lends its hand to the reproduction of the State, which is then free to bail out the financial sector, deregulate the extractive industries, and encourage property speculation at the expense of the urban poor and middle class. To insulate the propertied class’s investments, the State facilitates, or at least turns a blind eye to, the sheltering of assets in offshore tax havens and condones a fast-growing, ancillary market in citizenships and residencies for the rich." -The operating system: An anarchist theory of the modern state

[franeridan]

not to be obvious and repetitive but bro......i really love one piece so much

[todayisafridaynight]

sat here thinking of the ichigang playing mario party and i was like 'i should make a tierlist of how rgg characters play mario party' but wouldnt you know it my brain is huge

[agios-rio]

[being a hater about AOS under the cut]

Currently watching St4r Trek (2009) for the first time... And I'm at a loss for words at that awful, awful, awful characterisation of Spock. What the absolute fuck. And Sarek. I get that it's an AU but there ain't no fucking way that makes sense in any universe. Heart-to-heart talks? These two? Spock & Sarek's relationship is so delightfully complicated in TOS and here they just... Got along? Spock talked about his feelings? With his father. Like that's a normal thing to do

Also I didn't think it was possible for K/S to have little to no chemistry, yet here we are. I'm not even gonna talk about the Uhura thing. I don't get how you can cast one guy who's gay and one who is Chris Pine and make the entire thing so violently heterosexual. They made it so straight that there's nothing left between Kirk and Spock and that destroys the entire point of these characters, doesn't it. And the whole "Star Trek is a love story" thing.

Also Kirk... Man. What did they do to him. The rebelliousness & daddy issues weren't even the problem, those could've been interesting, if there had been anything at all to contrast that. But there was nothing behind that facade, I don't know how he made it through the plot (or whatever you'd call that) without showing even one character trait besides 'cocky fuckboy' and 'guy who's just there for some reason.' Again I get it, AU, but...

I absolutely loved Pike tho. So I got that going for me, which is nice