#that is the other reason they want to kill liberal education

[solvicrafts]

This is a hard truth that a lot of people don't want to hear, that there needs to be a balance between holding men accountable for their behavior, pointing out injustices that they benefit from, and at the same time encouraging them to learn and grow.

And this goes for any group of people, really, but especially so for young men right now.

I was saying this shit back before the 2016 election and really pissed off a lot of people for daring to argue that we should encourage our allies instead of shaming and alienating them.

"Yes, absolutely, people should support our civil rights because it's the right thing to do, but a lot of people genuinely do not know how much of the world is structured to prop them up at the cost of bringing others down."

I'm going to say something possibly really, really controversial here, especially in the wake of THIS election:

Most people are capable of being empathetic, understanding, and logical, but if you are going to engage with them then you have to have the maturity to commit to reaching them.

At one of the places I worked previously, there was this security guard who worked a few nights at the end of the week who was honestly one of my best friends there. He was a well-educated, very devout Christian man around my father's age, and he was black. For context, I am a young Irish-American liberal Hellenic Polytheist.

We actually got along far better with each other than I did with all of the hippie woo neopagan people I knew there, and he with the Christians there. And that's because we were not only both well educated within our belief systems, we were also really good at meeting in the middle and extending social grace and understanding to each other. We found that our core principles were perfectly aligned, we just didn't always arrive to our conclusions in the same exact ways.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, he was reluctant to get vaccinated, and when we talked about it I was the one person who got through to him. And he told me so. He told me outright, after he got vaccinated, that it was my voice that changed his mind.

I did not do that by shaming him over all of the people he might kill if he caught COVID and spread it. I did not do that by attacking his intellect or scientific literacy. I did not do that by threatening his financial security and pointing out that companies are letting people go for not getting vaccinated.

I did it by acknowledging his beliefs and concerns (especially as an older black man, given this country's history), and agreeing that he absolutely has valid reasons to feel the way he does, but by letting him know that my position on this subject was one of caring about his well-being above all else and letting him know when I got vaccinated and where, and how the process went for me.

Look, shaming CAN be effective in some limited scenarios, and I've done that, too. I've shamed quite a few people on public transit for refusing to let disabled elderly people sit. I am very much guilty of telling a woman that her imaginary friend does not need a seat of their own so that a guy who fell over getting on the bus could actually sit the fuck down.

But when it comes to bigger picture social issues, it's so much better to try to reach people and establish dialogue FIRST. And I know that that is asking a lot. For many of us, it goes against our very instincts.

At the local farmer's market last week, I had a man come up to me in a MAGA hat and I was absolutely braced for a fight. Instead, he eagerly showed me pictures on his phone of the garden he was cultivating. He was almost GIDDY about his plants, about the wildflowers and the pollinators and the fruit and the trees. That man was reachable. He was not there to attack me for being a queer woman. He was there to bond over how cool plants are and had no idea what he was really signing up for.

It's so much easier to condemn people broadly as monsters, and I know it feels much more satisfying and rewarding in the moment. I've done it, too. I was downright obnoxious about it when I was younger. But this is not the kind of behavior that leads to long-term societal growth.

The more we cut off and alienate people, the easier it is for them to fall prey to indoctrination. Exposure and social engagement is our biggest weapon against bigotry and THAT is a major reason as to why the Republican party wants to destroy public education.

I have had an immense uphill battle with some of my closest male friends in trying to keep them from falling down the alt-right pipeline. It's been a nearly two decade endeavor in a few cases, but I have seen those men in my life gradually improve and become well-rounded, empathetic, and educated men.

I guess what I'm saying here is, if you have a man (or ANYONE for that matter!) in your life who is showing early warning signs and/or you believe is susceptible to the MAGA movement, please think about what I've said. It's so much harder to approach them from a place of understanding than of anger and I get that, but at the end of the day, one of those is going to be much more effective at changing their viewpoint.

Lastly, if you find yourself in a situation where you are trying to engage with someone who thinks very differently than you do, here are a few tips and some examples:

1. Acknowledge their viewpoint.

"I understand where you're coming from"

"I think I see why you think/feel this way"

Or even just asking, "I don't really understand, can you explain how you arrived to this conclusion/viewpoint/opinion, etc.?"

2. Offer them an olive branch.

"I see what you're saying, and actually, I think you will find that our opinions aren't too different from each other's."

"You have a point about this, and if I could just build off of that, here is where I am coming from."

3. Address their concerns

"Yeah, you're right, our taxes are already way too high, but if we didn't have to raise them at all and could, instead, take a hard look at how they are already being spent?"

"Wolf reintroduction absolutely could be a problem for farmers if it's handled poorly, and you're right that city people don't understand that as intimately as you do, but what if I told you there's a way we could work this out to your benefit, too?"

4. Thank them for listening! (even if they didn't magically change their opinion right away, you never know)

"I'm glad we had this talk, thank you for hearing what I had to say."

5. Reassure them that you listened, too! (even if YOU didn't change your mind)

"I can't say you've changed my mind, but you've given me something to think about."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[herunswithscissors]

Let me into your echo chambers. Please.

Introduce me to your friends.

I need out of my echo chamber and so do you.

So don't just like. Share it with your friends.

If you liked it don't you think your mutuals might be interested in it too?

Then take 30 sec to check out the OP's blog and see if they are worth a follow.

Tumbler's UI is shit and I ramble, so I apologize that this will be a scroll.

==================

I am a rambler when I write. And for a blogging site, Tumblr is pretty shit for blogging. Almost like it was on purpose...

But anyway, since I ramble, I write to help skimming. I highlight important points you might want to pay attention to and then you can go back to read a bit more context on that point.

So don't be intimidated.

I give every art I see at least a like. Maybe a comment. Because I love to see people express themselves and put themselves out there. And I want to encourage you. And maybe interact a bit. And maybe I was high.

And when I write, I tend to ramble. But I promise that my writing and content is worth the effort and time.

But whenever I see something unique or special or meaningful or especially lovely or just plain weird, I hit that share button.

So, follower beware: I reblog a whole lot and it is part of my content. And my created content might take a bit to read.

And it's not that I'm particularly trying to get your attention. I just play around on here when high.

I just think a wider view of the diversity in this world is better for everyone to have. But more importantly I believe it is necessary to hear from the weirdos.

I find weirdos and I amplify them.

Like and subscribe!

Because you fuckers need to meet each other and see each other's shit. Especially the shit that is different.

We need to see the world outside Normies' Big Media Capitalist curated News world.

I love you fuckers. All so unconventional and weird and whatnot. Most of us keep it together in the outside world.

But we have to find the other weirdos to be weird with. Normies are great friends and I love all my lambs, but the weirdos are my people and we can be ourselves together.

There's a lot of normies that try to be weird to build a fun persona and I'm kind of impressed with you. It takes a lot of guts in this society to pick a fun way of living and stick to it against the tide. You do you.

Just like all the other lovely normies out there. They try so hard to find themselves.

It's due to all having shared interests and hobbies. They all have same politics, same worldview, same income, same race, same shared media and experiences, education, upbringing, and desires and cares, wants, and needs. They just need to feel loved. Like us.

Shalom.

But otherwise normies only want comfort and conformity to get acceptance. So they go along with everything,

and only go to water parks, the mall, and DisneyWorld, eat shitty imitation of Popeyes weekly for Jesus's sake, and do all the Applebee restaurants and dabble in exotic local eateries. They watch sports and play golf or bowl or "manly" shit together and talk sports, women, politics, and work. They look for normal jobs and the normal White/cic-masking BIPOC at work or church count for diversity and as their "many" Black "friends." They go to big well funded fancy museums filtered through capitalism and Western academia and that society.

All of it with a fuck ton of asshole Aristocrats and Billionaire meddling,

bankers picking and choosing, America bullshit, Capitalism and grants making us beg like dogs for centrifuge tubes or explain why my research required fucking printer ink while we rely on desperate and idealistic kids to do all the work basically for free.

The normies just go along with it all and live in the normal Aristocratic-lite society, do normal stuff, watch normal media, and love Disney. The normies just eat that Disney shit up.

They go those normal museums for culture. And while they are there, they look at magnificent art, technological achievements, architecture, poetry, and toys with wheels by ancient civilizations that made ours look shitty and all they see is pretty or weird.

I see before me strange weird things someone saw as common place and wonder how they would have regarded it.

I try to do that with weirdos too.

Weirdos show me a whole new world without the Disney bullshit.

While Aristocrats pump us full of Big Media, Disney, Education Systems, fake high society, fake Masters fake educated Geniuses flown to prominence by their privilege, and fake Comedic Geniuses.

(Van Gough & a few Divincci's and Einstein' or Jim Carrey' excluded)

Fake everything. And once in a while a true weirdo leaks out. And once in a while that weirdo shows up in public.

And that wonderful weirdo is seen as freak of nature. Abnormal by the normies narrow Diversity Standards.

Excluding us even more. Driving our personalities under cover just to get a seat at the table or make a good damn friend. I hate those smug fuckers making us act like them just to get a fucking job a "friend" who won't let you be yourself.

Sometimes I hate them. Most of the time I'm just tired of them.

They just are so boring. I'm so lucky to be faculty at a shitty school. It's filled with weirdos.

You fuckers must be drowning in normies

That's what made elementary, middle, and high school so bad. All the conformity. It was an exqisitely painful narrow kind of homogenous environment dominated by the few rich families in the neighborhood who ruled the school dress code. You wore what they were or you were Out. Outtened of interacting with Their society. You talked what they talked. You laughed at their jokes and only told similar kinds. You can't be too different. Just flavorful enough to get noticed if you're brave. You were "goodlooking" like them. White Sons and daughters of modern inbred high society modern day slavers and over titled middle management. All waspy rich brats. With a few diversity hires being "normal" for dear life.

How is your society now? Is it different now? I'd assume there's a definite ruling society. Who runs it? What kind of people have a seat?

Not the weirdos.

Not us.

We're below notice.

Like these words I write on this backwater shitty blog. Which is one of the few places that let us be weird together in long form and media for free.

So I figure a fake name should be enough to keep my Uber White Evangelical well-educated over-paid middle-manager Christo-fascist trustees running my shitty school from ever finding this page. I doubt they'd even thinking of looking here. Not without a Google hit for my Christian name.

So I'm just me here. And most of you are just you here. And that's refreshing.

There's a lot of normies still on here for fun, but bit most were driven away by the shitty UI, search features, lack of toggles and filters, oversaturation of ads and general derision for the user experience to the point that I think they are doing it on purpose.

You know a similar thing happened at another social media that brings truly diverse people together on more egalitarian grounds. Twitter got fucked up like Tumblr. Elon over paid just so he could be the one to destroy our communities.

(and drive the site Upulie loves to play on into the worst possible version of itself and then into a long depressing death spiral.)

This is Capitalism after all. And who controls Capitalism sanctioned social media? "Geniuses" ™️ like Elon Musk. And his tech bro fanboys and billionaires. No Aristocrat or Aristocrat-lite or their sycophant wannabes wants our shit out there in normies Big Media world.

So they drove the normies and play-actor normies and well-connected away. There's no fame or money here. You can't even go viral. There's just other weirdos without connections. And Will Wheaton. Who is also a weirdo.

I love you all just because. But I especially adore you because you are so fucking weird. But you still love others. Mostly. You are my kind of people. You don't fit in society. You beautiful, magnificent bastards.

And it's killing you acting like a fucking normie all day. It's itchy.

When you're stressed it gets impossible to mask and that gets scary.

I'm lucky to be surrounded by such loving weirdos at work. But they aren't weird weird if you get my drift. They are all conventional in most of their education experiences, interests, religion, Big Media consumption, background, White, and mostly men.

And I'm...? I've never fit in with any society.

Never enough to be even exotic normal for them.

And I've been in some weird societies. I'm just able to conform enough to get by with a buddy or two at work and not freak my friends, family, therapist, or the wife out.

I just want to be me. And that's hard when everyone just wants to be boring and do Capitalism bullshit and preferably do it the luxury way.

They just can't accept my personality being uniquely weird. And they will never recognize my uniquely weird genius languishing in this Tumblr prison of an echo chamber.

But if you are still reading, know that I amplify weirdos and important shit.

This might be a fucking tiny echo chamber Tumblr stuck you all in with me. This might be a really tiny sub chamber just for me. Mine is like the same fucking 10 people in my mentions. But I'm starting to leak out a bit.

Thank you for noticing me.

I hope you like my shit, but I don't give a shit if you don't care for it. (I very much do give a shit. Why don't you like me?! )

Anyway I think seeing the world from the non-normies is important. Knowing more foreigners and strangers and poor and lower SES is important to see the whole world. But you are still mostly seeing the Aristocracy's world. But the real world. To know the real world, you need to hear from the weirdos. We live outside the normie world. We see it from the outside looking in. We observe it. And we live a unique experience that gives us a unique world to share with others and a unique take on our shared world.

Knowing more people who live in totally other worlds is a wise thing to do

And you should all be amplifying whatever is weird or beautiful. But also the more unpleasant important things and local news.

Help us see this world.

The world beneath.

To help us see takes that are truly unique and not rehash of corporate plants and cherry picked normie viral sensations.

Giving us unique understandings of this beautiful world, synthesing the experiences of some truly beautiful people in some really weird or unusual, under represented, or shitty circumstances.

Big Message : Learn from each other, enjoy each other, amplify each other to help us escape these echo chambers. And follow me so I can escape with you.

[starlightbright]

RIP Ricky September they had to kill you because it would have been unrealistic to not keep you on as a companion 😔

EDIT: I've noticed some people taking this post really seriously, so to clarify: no, I don't think Ricky was literally a perfect uwu anti-racist angel. This post was mostly a joke about how he was running around doing companion shit and, most of all, how the Doctor and Ruby both thought he was a hottie. My actual feelings about Ricky are that he's a complacent white liberal. Character reading under the cut if you want an explanation.

I do think the implications of making him unplugged from the racism bubble, paralleling him with the Doctor (man who shows up with knowledge about history and technology and guides the other character through dangerous situations), and directly contrasting to Lindy (including being open to trust the Doctor without second guessing him the same way Lindy and all her friends did) are supposed to be that he wasn't like the other people there and is thus LESS racist since racism comes to be what defines their society. I've seen some people basically ask "then why'd he move to White People City?" but within the text it's actually Rich People City; the reason everyone there is white is because systemic racism financially benefits white people. Making him LESS racist is NECESSARY to giving his death any meaning - because if he definitively would have called the Doctor a slur and walked away, then the Dot killing him quickly was a mercy kill because we KNOW all the other residents are going to die in the wilderness.

THAT SAID, I also don't think he was a progressive anti-racist. Do you know what Ricky actually is? A white liberal. He might disengage from the White People Bubble, he might not be outwardly cruel to black people, but he's still surrounded by people who are and benefits from a system where ONLY WHITE PEOPLE ARE RICH. The culture might be fucked, but he still benefits from it without doing anything to actually fight it. It's like how many a white liberal will read about the history of slavery, feel sad about it, and then be uncritical of prison labor. If Ricky was meant to be progressive, there'd be something, ANYTHING in the text about how he's tried to educate his followers on their society's problems, but it got deleted. He is COMPLACENT.

That's sort of the point, I'd say, since the theme is about how priviledged white people put themselves in a bubble of people like them and choose to look away from what's wrong in society. Those people become complacent at best with no effort to actually speak out or change things. Hell, even within the text, Ricky SEES a problem others are looking away from (the slugs eating people), but only tries to fight it by making a TikTok about it and becomes complacent again, accepting that people are just going to be eaten.

So tl;dr: no, I don't think the white liberal kid literally would have been a companion. I think if you stuck him in the Ood episode, for example, he'd have shaken his head when he found out about their plight, maybe made a TikTok with sad music playing over footage of them, and then said "welp, nothing else can be done." I think it's FUNNY to imagine another companion that the Doctor and Ruby both are giggling like schoolgirls over.

Also I kind of thought he was ugly - no offense to the actor but the makeup they had him in combined with the lighting and closeups made him look way older than 27 so he gave off this uncanny "how do you do fellow kids?" look.

[sissa-arrows]

Thoughts on the dumb pro-colonial argument that the Algerian War of independence was not worth it because post-independence Algeria is poor, dangerous, fell into civil war, was ruled by dictators, and not so prosperous? Or any similar BS (like people describing South Africa was more prosperous under apartheid compared to the corruption and instability of the present).

1: Algeria is not poor.

2: Algeria is not dangerous. The borders with some countries can be dangerous areas but that’s because the west destabilize these countries.

3: The civil war was supported by outsider BECAUSE Algeria was recovering from 132 years of colonialism and the West didn’t want us to recover they wanted to control us so they encouraged other SWANA countries (Morocco and Saudi Arabia for example) to arm the terrorists and to send terrorists. The civil war was horrible it’s actually the reason why I was born in France cause my grandma was scared to lose a son to the civil war like she had to the war of liberation so she asked my dad to leave. But despite how horrible it is Algeria came out stronger because we are the only country who actually got rid of terrorists and we had to do that while keeping the US and Europe far away cause they kept insisting on sending troops but we didn’t want them to cause we knew they wouldn’t leave afterward.

4: Algerians fight when they are not okay with who is ruling them. If they aren’t okay with one of the so called dictators no worry the people will protest and kick him out.

5: You don’t recover from 132 years of colonialism just overnight and certainly not when you have a decade of civil war in the middle. Algerians born in 2002 are the first generation of Algerians since 1830 who were not born during a war or didn’t live through a war in their lives. Taking that into account Algeria could be doing so much worst. Things are getting better so while the country is not as prosperous as I think it can be it’s still doing good and will keep on doing better Incha’Allah.

Lastly and more importantly. Anyone saying that “liberation wasn’t worth it because the country was more rich/better under colonialism” is a huge piece of shit and a racist. Because it was better only for the colonizers. For the indigenous people it was not better. People saying liberation is not worth it also have no clue what colonialism actually is. Colonialism is what’s happening in Gaza and all over Palestine right now.

What I know is that no matter what people think of the situation in Algeria right now, indigenous people are not dying of hunger, they are able to go to school, they don’t have to fear white supremacists militia, they can work on their own land without fear, they can vote, they are seen as humans, they can travel freely in their own country, they don’t get killed for going to the beach… all these things were not possible under colonialism. I will add that people who think fighting for freedom and liberation is not worth it also don’t know what dignity is. Ask my paternal grandpa who lives in Algeria and lived through colonialism and he will tell you “I would rather spend the rest of my life sharing bread and water with my people than have the French come back” ask any Algerian who lived through colonialism to tell you and they will tell you the same thing. And it applies to so many people not just Algerians. Go tell a black man who lived through apartheid in South Africa that it was better before and you’ll see their reaction.

P.S: I am NOT throwing shade at anyone but I also invite people to look at a map of Africa in terms of hunger, wealth, education, life expectancy… People LOVE to target Algeria and South Africa more than other African countries saying they were doing better under colonialism/apartheid meanwhile they are always among the countries doing best in Africa. It’s no accident if they are also among the countries who fought the hardest and who actually kicked out the colonizers. It’s no accident if the countries who are doing so much worst in the continent because the colonizers never truly left are not mentioned as much as Algeria or South Africa are.

[thewinter22]

hi, since you asked genuine questions here's a few explanations:

on oct 7th, hamas broke into israel and murdered, tortured, raped, and kidnapped over a thousand people. it wasn't just a little event. it was the largest slaughter of jews since the holocaust. and it wasn't just jews that were killed, it was arab israelis and bedouins. if you want to learn more, I recommend watching "screams before silence" it's free on youtube BUT huge trigger warning for graphic descriptions of rape and torture. there aren't actual pictures/videos of the rapes in the documentary but there are many eyewitnesses and victims who share their stories.

https://www.screamsbeforesilence.com/

secondly, the term "zionism" doesn't mean what most non-jews think it means. it is a movement started by and for jews, and it is the belief that jews should have a nation in their ancestral homeland (israel). it doesn't mean that all palestinians should die, it doesn't mean that israel needs to solely be jewish (ethnostate). israel is extremely diverse with many different religions and ethnicities, it just has over 50% jews making it a jewish state in the same way that most countries are christian or muslim etc.

gaza, in contrast, has 0 jews since 2005 when israel left gaza.

hamas is a terrorist organization and has a very strict "education" system mostly consisting of teaching children how to become martyrs and shoot guns. palestinians learn from birth to hate jews and israel. hamas's entire ideology is built on jew hatred. for that reason, it is extremely hard to get a ceasefire because hamas keeps rejecting it. bibi netanyahu, who I don't personally like, has agreed to most ceasefire deals, but hamas hasn't. that's why the war is still going on. and let's not forget, hamas still holds many israeli hostages captive.

the reason jews don't feel safe in queer spaces is because currently leftist queers do not acknowledge these facts. they create "anti-zionist spaces" on campuses and in their own communities. 90% of jews are zionists, so when you're anti-zionist, you are inherently antisemitic. anti-zionists have vandalized synagogues, attacked synagogues, raped jews "for justice in palestine", stabbed random jews, and worse. people shout "globalize the intifada" which really just means "globalize genocide of jews".

the fact that so many queer people refuse to believe us when we say we are in danger, say we deserve it even, is why jews don't feel safe in queer spaces. most of us are fine with a state of palestine, but we don't want hamas as their leader because they are a terrorist organization with a goal of killing jews. jews have been a part of so many liberal movements (a black jew founded blm, many jews stood up for gays during the aids crisis, etc) and are still rejected because of backwards misinformation. our problem isn't with palestine or palestinians, our problem is with ignorance and hate that so many leftist spaces are now full of.

if you want to help jews feel safe in queer spaces, acknowledge their pain, acknowledge that hamas is bad, listen to jews when they talk about this conflict. so many queer and leftist ppl treat this conflict like a fandom, it's crazy and disgusting. most of them only learned about this conflict through social media a year ago. listen to jews and don't exclude us from your spaces just because you are too arrogant to look at the other side. that's literally all we're asking.

some instances of anti-zionism being violent and antisemitic:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67145473

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20240619-french-teens-charged-with-anti-semitic-rape-in-attack-condemned-by-political-leaders

https://www.jns.org/anti-zionism-is-just-antisemitism-misspelled/

https://www.axios.com/2024/01/10/antisemitic-incidents-hamas-israel-attack-2023-adl

thank you for asking, and thank you for reading.

Thank you for the answers. I was worried people were going to call me ignorant, which I admit I am up until now, and is exactly why I want to learn more about something I never really looked into more deeply because of the various opinions on all sides making it hard to decypher anything objective. It's hard to believe how terribly queer spaces are treating jewish people. Which is not to say I don't believe you. Quite the opposite. I am just shocked. Thank you again

[hyenabeanz]

Can you dumb motherfuckers stop trying even now to SHAME people into voting how you want and instead talk about the good your candidate will do instead?

Fuck.

Democrats, liberals, and "leftists" can't read the room or strategize their way out of a wet paper bag.

Even now, with Biden out and Harris as a prospective new nom, I'm already seeing "yeah our guy sucks but <insert fear tactics here>"

That is not how you get people to the polls for your candidate.

That's why Trump is a threat. He is saying "this is what I'm gonna do." His followers and campaigners are going "this is what he's gonna do." THAT is what the average voter cares about. Is what he says he's gonna do lies or terrifying fascism? Yes. But when people are scared, insecure, full of despair or frustrated, they want hopeful things to cling on to, promises of change and action, what their candidate is gonna do for them, not "they suck but they suck less." And while wildly misplaced and sick, an action plan is what Trump promises, and his followers spplaud. So this shame shit isn't going to move them.

And as for those who are educated enough to see Trump as the horrific mess he is and will never vote for him, but not satisfied with the other option, shame STILL doesn't work. Because despair kills motivation. And "we suck slightly less" is just despair fuel. Why bother if everyone sucks? And no, a litany of horrors isn't motivation. We live in a litany of horrors, that ain't special. Again: Despair = hopelessness and helplessness = why bother?

Some of you may be too young to remember, but for those who aren't: Think of the Obama campaign. He wasn't some amazingly progressive angel with all the best policies (some were horrible.) But he was a hell of a speaker who promised hope. fucking learn from history. That promise, that fire for hope, got so many young people to the polls. It energized. And he won in a comparative landslide.

So Ok, you got rid of the guy who elitist donors and insufferable people on the Internet said they wouldn't vote for. K. Fresh start. Kamala ain't no Obama in terms of gifted speaker, but those of you talking about her NEED to treat this like the new opportunity it is, and start talking up the reason to be hopeful for Kamala Harris.

Here's a starter for you, for one of the big ones:

Harris has already been vocally more critical of Israel than Biden was, and did so much sooner. Has she said Free Palestine, abolish Israel? No. Of course not. No one in this election is going to. It's not gonna happen. So your options here is someone who has said they want to give Israel enough aid to turn Gaza to glass, or someone who at the very least acknowledged back in March that Israel's conduct is unacceptable. She doesn't have the personal connections to Israel that make her have a soft spot for people ordering war crimes.

I've already spent too long this evening writing this considering I mostly use Tumblr for fun stuff vs. my other social media, but that's how irritating some of y'all are being. I'd love to see and challenge others to reblog and tack on more of the reasons to vote FOR the presumptive nom here, vs. voting against the toupee'd terror.

[tuxebo]

I just came back on here and found your blog much more different, just more confused ngl.

With the election thingy, would you rather elect Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?

I do see that thingy, I’m not American or anything and more just wondering what you would choose.

I heard my friends talking about Donald trump wanting to set it back to the like 1950s, (sorry if I got the information wrong), I don’t know much either about Kamala.

Yes, very different. Things are getting worse in California, and really bad in Colorado with a Venezuelan prison gang (Tren de Aragua TDA) taking over Aurora. They are stealing cars, homes, raping and killing citizens. The police are not doing anything. The governor is denying it. The national guard is not being called in. Nothing.

Many of us believe during election time, the gang will prevent them from voting, too. It is getting to the point where embarrassment is not enough of a reason to remain silent. Also, I was liberal for like the majority of this blog's life, so take that as you will.

Anyway, what do you mean by setting it back to the 1950s? I am not legally allowed to vote yet, but to answer your question, 1000% Donald Trump. Not only is Kamala Harris a force of evil, just as much as her vice president Tim Walz (whose own family does not support him,) but voting blue has gotten California to the point it is in. The average studio apartment costs $1,000,000,000, homelessness is at an all time high, the drug crisis is also big here, as well as crime.

Walking the streets are unsafe in many areas, it has become more than an eyesore, but a safety issue. Not to mention that despite this, they are trying to make it very difficult to concealed carry, which is out 2nd Amendment right.

The blue votes these things in, then get upset when they actually have an effect. Some even leave to bring those stupid votes elsewhere and ruin everything there, too. The democrats are same party that advocated and fought for slavery, mind you. Their foolishness is why Texans and other Southern states don't want us, even though a lot of us won't try to ruin their states. We can barely live in California, but we have to fight for our home.

As for Kamala, I could talk about her shenanigans to Sunday. From propaganda being the leading tactic of her campaign to keeping black men behind bars past their release date for free labor here in California.

The same lady who says we should spend OUR taxpayer dollars on illegals' healthcare, when many Americans can barely afford it for themselves and their families. Free healthcare, free education, free housing. If we can do all that for them, why do we still have veterans, the men and women who've fought for the country, barely making it by or out on the street? They don't matter to her, though.

She is just as incompetent as she was when Joe Biden was voted in. Speaking of, where did Joe go?

[pumpumdemsugah]

Why do folks act like you can only acknowledge sex-based oppression and the reality of human sexual dimorphism if you want trans folks to die? Why are we acting like white folks made up ‘male’ and ‘female’ when every human culture knew what a male and a female was before colonialism existed and patriarchy has existed way before white supremacy did? Why?

It makes me uncomfortable bc you’d get labeled as a terf for saying this but the average irl person that isn’t chronically online holds these beliefs and still believes in trans rights and uses preferred pronouns. Hell, I have two nonbinary friends who recognize the reality of sex and sex-based oppression. I personally both recognize sex and believe that trans women have a place in our fight for women’s liberation. So like. Why are folks on the internet acting like it’s impossible? What is going on around here? Because I saw a (19 year old) person say ‘sex based oppression isn’t real socialization isn’t real yada yada yada that’s white colonial bullshit and if you believe otherwise then kill yourself’ and my eye twitched.

and it gets on my nerves bc most of the ppl saying this shit are Westerners! If they went to a non-West country and said this shit, I bet my left tit that they’d be looked at like they’re insane!

These people can say this for the same reason they hate radical feminists but recommend radical feminist Audre Lorde, they don't read or comprehend, they regurgitate talking points and see Black women not as academics or peers but tokens to invoke without knowing what they believe. It's arrogance, self righteousness and anti-intellectualism mixed together. Non-western cultures now all have the same ideas about gender that all support whatever some white American says. I think what's crazy is how incredibly racist the entire thing is and ahistorical. It's shrunk the experiences of everyone else so white western losers can feel more complex

I do not trust white people that bring up Black women to talk about gender in the modern sense because they always get racist and make shit up

Social media has melted everyone's brain so much everyone is making extreme claims grounded in wish fulfillment . Online liberals are acting and pushing the idea that sex is fake but the Blacks are just built different with one body plan. Please ignore that because human beings spend most of our time in Africa, African people have the most genetic diversity compared to every other group in the world . White people think complexity only applies to them. They did this before with race science and they're doing it again. Educated white people without expertise are making shit up

Male & female is fake but big negro bone is real and that research about bones, race and osteoporosis, I've read it, it doesn't say what online people say it does, you're just racist. It's projecting body insecurities onto Black women as inherent qualities of our bodies so their white body is normal and a problem that was a them thing is an us thing but this isn't racist and demeaning. Online liberals want us to be a permanent Other so they feel normal then claim it's solidarity not racial hierarchy by another name. The dehumanisation of enslaved Black women is brought up not to talk about slavery but to Other the bodies of dead tortured Black women and ask the living ones to agree because they said magic buzz words. Online people don't bring up slavery to talk about what white people did but to add sex characteristics they want Black women to have and rewrite history. Slave master didn't think Black people felt pain so performed surgery without anesthesia on enslaved Black women that needed to be held down because someone that needs to be held down commonly is a sign she doesn't feel pain. Slave masters knew they were chatting shit.

Talk about how WOC don't fit the gender binary because of white supremacist dehumanisation has become talk that our bodies are wrong and weird and that's why. The blame for shifted from white people's racism to, of course the non-white have wacky body plans. Do they even think we're people? Conservatives and dumb dumbs acting like the sexual dimorphism in human beings is extreme ( it's not ) and that's why male and female artistic gymnastics is so different. Not training or history and using it as a cover for mockery and sexism so now regular men are challenging actual female athletes ( and losing ) under the delusional being male is enough

The online left and right are so are stupid about this but everyone ends up affirming centuries old ideas about race and women. What's annoying is people that say sex is fake aren't being truthful, it's fake for white people as they transcend language but the crudely made Others, we're bigger and badly made and that's why they're normal. Solidarity though

Why does it need to be explained that Blackness isn't a sexed quality or characteristic ? It's unbelievably offensive. None of these people are as intellectually curious as they claim they are. None of them have read anything about slavery, colonialism or feminism. They saw a post.

[gepgep2]

The kind of politics we have now where the left is represented by this kind of Obama-Macron-style centrism, where you're both for the market and for bureaucracy at the same time, it's kind of horrible right? The only possible appeal of that kind of politics is 'well at least they're not nazis.'

So what they want is for the left to be this kind of mishmash of bureaucratic market centrism, and the right to be outright fascists. To set the ball rolling in an actual left direction will make that centrism look utterly unappealing.

In France they sometimes talk about the extreme center, and I think that's a fitting phrase. It strikes me that what's called the moderates are the most immoderate people possible. And the reason why they're so uncompromising I think, is because they realize they don't have a lot of positive arguments, they're not really for anything. I mean, somebody like Obama- the reason he worked is because he looked like the kind of guy who would have a vision. He acted like a visionary, he had the intonation, he had the way of standing and looking into the distance like he really believed in something.

And it shows you something about just how much visionary politics has been killed. It didn't even seem to occur to people to ask what his vision actually was. Because it turns out insofar as he had a vision, his vision was not to have a vision. He believed in pragmatism and compromise and so forth. And that's what the center has been reduced to, it's become this pure set of performative symbols. And at the same time you get to feel morally superior, which is ultimately what centrism, what liberal centrism is all about- the ability to feel better than other people.

So there is a kind of symbiosis whereby the right wing pretend to be stupid, like George Bush II sort of perfected this. Like, 'I'll act like a yokel, all of the liberals will make fun of me as an idiot. Everybody who resents the cultural elite for having monopolized all the good jobs will look at them sneering at me and say "yeah, I bet those guys feel the same way about me as they feel about Bush. I'll vote for Bush- hahaha, stick it to 'em"'

That shtick, Trump is just doing a more extreme version of the same thing. Johnson's doing the same thing. You act like an idiot, the people who are the educated elite make fun of you, and it works! Now who's really the idiot right? People keep falling for the same stupid trick over and over and over again.

So there's a symbiotic relationship between these centrists, who are just sort of sneering elitists, and these guys who are the scam artists who pretend to be yokels, who pretend to be idiots, or pretend to be fascists- theyre not even real fascists, kind of phony fascists- they are trying to set up a situation where those are the only two viable political choices, because they both feed off and compliment one another.

David Graeber

[six-spot]

United we stand, divided we fall…

I don’t care on which side of the political spectrum you identify. The threat to our democracy is a clear and present danger!

A 🧵 Buckle up it’s a long one.

This is not a fight about 2A, it’s not about abortion, it’s not about education, it’s not about sexual orientation, it’s not about taxes or immigration or about healthcare. This fight comes down to a religious minority, trying to push its narrow views upon our country.

The Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 threatens to dismantle nearly 250 years of progress toward equality for all. And I for one am not going to stand for it.

We must unite against the GOP with Joe Biden as the nominee. He cannot be replaced on ballots without being challenged. “Protest” voting for other parties will sign the death certificate of our nation. The same thing happened in 2016.

A very brief history. Zoroastrianism was founded around 3500 years ago. “Zoroastrianism…held that a messiah would come at some future date…to redeem humanity in an event known as the Frashokereti which was the end of time and brought reunion with Ahura Mazda…

These concepts would influence the later religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” https://www.worldhistory.org/religion/

This monotheistic view of religion has existed for less than half of recorded history and many religions still have pluralistic beliefs. #Christianity has done nothing but oppress people since its inception. And now a very narrow interpretation of it is being weaponized against us.

It’s a disease that spread throughout the world, literally killing millions of people as missionaries spread disease from one continent to another. It didn’t matter how many indigenous people died as long as they believed and converted.

Ancient rulers seized upon the opportunity to adopt the religion and thus take power and wealth* from the people. Sound familiar? Wars have been fought for control of territory around the world.

*This was the 2nd goal of missionaries.

And now a sect of ultra-conservative Christian Nationalists threatens to end our constitutional republic in favor of an authoritarian state.

They’re trying to divide us even further so they can win. We CANNOT let that happen. Moderate, Liberal, Progressive, Libertarian, Conservative, it doesn’t matter, we will all suffer equally if Project 2025 succeeds.

They have been chipping away at certain liberties for 8 years already. It’s clear that they only have self-serving goals to make the rich richer and to oppress citizens like in other authoritarian regimes.

It is truly terrifying to see dystopian novels coming to life before my very eyes. These conservatives fear change and clearly believe that liberalism is the root of all evil.

On the contrary, education leads to enlightenment and free thought, so “liberal” thinking is really just how they demonize those who are educated and have opposing opinions or beliefs.

One example from #Project2025 is that “conservative” republicans have been trying to strip funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting since its inception. @NPR & @PBS are run by CPB.

Why? Because they educate people & allows them to adopt beliefs that oppose theirs. They lament that no republican president has been able to do it. They argue that most viewers are liberals & that not enough conservative programming is offered so it should be shut down. Boo hoo😢

How about that educated viewers use their common sense and reasoning to conclude that stories from 2000+ years ago are not fully relevant to modern society? 👩🏼‍🎓👨🏽‍🎓

Science is not theological yet conservatives want to apply theology to everything. The world isn’t flat. Evolution & Climate change are real. Vaccines save lives. The USA was NOT founded as a Christian nation. If not for free thinkers, we’d probably still be living in the Iron Age.

Most people want to be part of a group & religion is the most common way to achieve that goal. We are conditioned from birth to believe what we’re taught and not question it. This is how racism & bigotry continue to thrive along with political ideology.

Morals are morals. They aren’t inherently conservative or liberal. You are either kind to others or not; you follow the rules or don’t; you tell the truth or you’re a narcissistic pathological liar. It’s that simple. That is all that’s required to define a good person.

The notion that sexuality has anything to do with morality is utterly absurd, but this is what conservatives argue. They LIE to justify taking rights from anyone they don’t like. They fear what they don’t understand.

They oppose abortion because it’s a numbers game to them. They think more babies = more followers. Well, we’re already seeing that no abortion = higher infant mortality. So that myth is busted.

Much of the Project 2025 platform directly attacks the Biden administration and seemingly relies on data that is short-sighted at best. I’m sure many of the arguments for or against the many chapter topics are false-flags to make it look balanced.

I hope someone is trying to fact-check the book, as many of the end notes are just commentary or references to current laws. Statistics are cherry picked to support their claims.

Even my 16-year-old understands the implications should departments like education and health & human services get shut down or changed from what they currently are. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

If you made it all the way through, thanks for reading. Please share because our lives depend on it. We all need to #VoteBlue2024 to put an end to the GOP madness once and for all.

Fin.

[the-eternal-quest-for-balance]

Let's not bullshit each other. This is going to seriously hurt like hell, in a good way. The Communist Democrats never believed the good hearted, kind, loving, well meaning, people of the United States had the guts, the stones, the character, to suffer the pain of the innocent they [ The Communist Democrats ] took advantage of. They didn't think we had it in us to hurt and endure it until the job was done.

They were WRONG. I'm calling out ALL you heartless, soulless, Communist, Liberal, virtue signaling, Democrat cowards. You imported people desperate for hope, desperate for a future, desperate to escape the hell hole of existence YOU wanted to recreate in America. Along with the socially destructive, the dregs as it were, you needed them to light the fires, cause the fear, kill maim and destroy so you could rush in with the saving solutions of Communism, which was the ONLY way you could make that happen.

YOU ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE for the pain and anguish, hurt and heartbreak, that WE, the innocent you made criminals to get here, and the decent American People who kept begging you NOT to do it are going to have to suffer while you try to shirk the responsibility YOU have for causing all this.

DAMN YOU, DAMN EVERY one of you for destroying lives and dreams and bringing such suffering to a Nation for your own morally corrupt personal self interest. Sit dawn and shut up, YOU caused this. You are to blame. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE. And the big boy's and girls are going to pull up their big girl and boy pants and fix this despicable shit show YOU CAUSED.

A lot of us, in foolish and misplaced compassion invited this to happen. Our better nature betrayed us. How about we all grow to fuck up, be reasonable, mature, ADULTS and not allow this Communist, higher education, destructive, STUPIDITY to ever happen again.

Please

[ofsappho]

I have complicated feelings about the COD fandom fetishizing “barracks bunny” because of the sexual violence that women in the military face.

LaVena Johnson, Ana Basaldua Ruiz, Vanessa Guillen, countless other unnamed women. All of these soldiers were murdered or “committed suicide” after being raped/sexually assaulted/sexually harassed in the military.

The barracks bunny stereotype is a violently, murderously misogynistic stereotype that gets women killed.

And not just women in the military - wherever troops go, sexual violence, trafficking, and femicide increase.

A Marine at Camp Pendleton abducted a 14 year old Indigenous girl after purchasing her from an unnamed pimp and keeping her in the barracks to rape her! He kept her on that base for 24 hours before she was rescued and last week was charged with sexual assault. Military bases are highly guarded places. How would he have been able to keep a child in the barracks to rape without the knowledge and collusion of his fellow soldiers?

(Read more here)

Indigenous women and girls go missing and are found murdered at astronomically high rates because of racism, colonialism, and systemic abuse of Indigenous women/girls under both of those things.

The objectification and fetishization of Asian women by Western men is the direct result of Western militaries sex trafficking Asian women and girls in Asia before/during/after WW2 and forcing them into prostitution. Once these Asian women had been forced into prostitution, they had no other choice but to keep doing that and as time went on, this created a sex tourism industry in Asia specifically for foreign white men.

(Read more here)

In some cases, Western soldiers even took over the disgusting sex slavery camps the Japanese military enslaved Korean women/girls in during WW2 and kept those women imprisoned to serve the Western soldiers who were there to “liberate” them.

I could write a whole separate post about the sexual violence experienced by women and girls in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and other places in the Middle East at the hands of Western soldiers. That wasn’t very long ago and it’s still going on today! We remember!

(Read more here)

(And you might be like: ofsappho, why do you care? I care because I have immediate family on both sides that survived Japanese occupations during WW2. I care because my family was directly impacted by the US chasing out the Japanese from Manila and what they did after. I care because there is a history of violence/abuse in my family of American soldiers exploiting native Filipina women. Real people, real women are affected by this issue and have been for decades.)

What I want most of all is for people to educate themselves on this. There’s a reason why these issues are hidden, overlooked, covered up, not spoken about, and that’s to enable this systemic abuse and permit it to go on.

If you are still able to stomach writing about barracks bunnies after researching this, then that is your choice and I accept it.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Robert Reich:

Yesterday, Joe Biden spoke out against antisemitism. I’m glad he did. But I also worry that by speaking out against antisemitism without acknowledging what has sparked the student protests across America, he is conflating those protests with antisemitism.

By and large, the protests are not motivated by antisemitism. There may be some antisemites among demonstrators. Protest movements are often ignited by many different things and attract an assortment of people with a range of motives. But after many talks with demonstrators and faculty, it seems clear to me this protest movement is centered on moral outrage at the killings of tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza, most of them women and children. Many of the demonstrators are themselves Jewish. Jews have been involved in these protests for the same reason Jews were so involved in other social justice movements — such as the struggles for women’s rights, worker’s rights, civil rights, voting rights, free speech, and LGBTQ+ rights. And against the Vietnam War, apartheid in South Africa, and the Iraq War. The oppression that Jewish people have experienced for hundreds if not thousands of years has taught Jews the necessity of standing up to injustice — whatever its form and whenever it appears.  

Yesterday, House Republicans continued their hearings on antisemitism. They called public school officials from three of the most politically liberal communities in the nation — Berkeley, California; New York City; and Montgomery County, Maryland. Their hearings on antisemitism in higher education helped topple the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania and pushed Columbia’s president to promise a crackdown on campus antisemitism. Her crackdown led to the arrest of more than 100 protesters at Columbia and a further surge in student activism there. House Republicans are politicizing and weaponizing antisemitism. They are using supposed antisemitism in education as a means of pursuing their cultural populist agenda, which for years has denigrated universities and public schools. They are also intent on splitting liberal Democrats over the war in Gaza.

[...]

I was reminded of this by the Antisemitism Awareness Act, passed in the House of Representatives on May 1, by a 320-91 vote. It would codify, for the purpose of enforcing federal civil rights law in higher education, a definition of antisemitism that includes rejection of Israel as a Jewish state. The bill also adopts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which includes “claims of Jews killing Jesus.”

Although the bill was initiated by House Republicans, much of the opposition to it has come from the Christian right, which wants to be able to continue saying that Jews killed Jesus. [...] But antisemitism can’t and shouldn’t be legislated away. Once we start defining what views are impermissible on a university campus or in public schools — for getting a job, receiving research funding, or getting promoted — we’re back in the era of Senator Joe McCarthy and communist witch hunts. And once we start conflating antisemitism with protests against mass brutality, such as the slaughter in Gaza, we invite blindness to injustices in which America is complicit.

Robert Reich nails it in this piece about antisemitism and college campus protests. The protests at campuses across the country are not motivated by antisemitism, but anger over Israel's genocide campaign in Gaza.

The Congressional hearings on antisemitism in colleges serve a purpose: to politicize and weaponize the definition of antisemitism and to generate anti-higher education sentiments.

[rotationalsymmetry]

I love libraries.

One time I found this book in the library -- I'll just go to a library and wander around the shelves and grab a book that catches my interest -- called "why people die by suicide" by someone who both has a relevant professional background and who had a father who committed suicide, so he was pretty invested in figuring out why. As was I.

People. The book didn't talk aboht chemical imbalances. It offered up two main reasons why people want to kill themselves -- perceived lack of belonging, and perceived being a burden -- and talked about the difference between someone who wants to die and someone who goes through with it, which is largely about how much (I think he meant physical) pain they've already been exposed to -- suicide is a very extreme form of self injury, and people generally have guards against self injury unless something has happened to take them away. Which is part of why past suicide attempts, even ones that didn't have a realistic chance of ending in death, are the main predictor of suicide, basically sometimes people need to start small and work themselves up.

This very much checks out with my own experiences. Sort of peak wanting to die for me was when I was 21, it's not exactly that things had gotten worse relative to my teenage years (my teenage years sucked) but suddenly now I was supposed to be an adult and I went abruptly from succeeding at high school with flying colors, to failing miserably at doing the sorts of things adults are supposed to do. And agonizingly conscious of how much my college education, which I was not paying for, was costing. And at the same time I was having attempts at connection that were failing. Lack of connection, feeling like a burden.

And overall, the two things that most reliably affect how much I want to die are being in a relationship or not (and if I'm in a relationship, whether we're in the middle of a big scary conflict)c and whether I'm working or not. That's kind of settled down now that I haven't been working since early 2016, apart from a small amount of transcription, because I've mostly made peace with being disabled and not being able to do that shit, but I'm able to do that because I'm married to someone who does in fact earn enough for both of us.

It was also pretty huge when I went from assuming that being able to talk about very personal stuff had to happen within the context of a very close relationship with someone who'd always be there for me to talk, to realizing that actually a discussion group of near strangers worked very well for that as long as there was some mechanism to let me take my time and not get interrupted. Absolutely liberating. As a side note, I'm not in a group like that right now, but...I gotta say tumblr's been largely filling that role. Tumblr in Reddit. I get to go off about whatever and take as long as I want and no one interrupts me, and maybe strictly speaking it'd be better for me to be face to face with people listening and taking it in, I don't know, but just being able to get it out where at least in theory other people can read it is still pretty huge.

and private journaling is lovely and I very much needed that as a teenager, but I think there is a different quality when it's not private. But is anonymous :-)

[eclipsecrowned]

30 for truthful tuesday. [looking at you autistically, microphone in hand] // @umbralined

Pupper wishes to get Kadi in trouble. Kadi will gladly get in trouble over this one.

There is a specific breed of mun, often belonging to a certain demographic but it happens regardless of income education race or gender, who think their muse is God's gift to the community. Whether you find them here on tumblr, in the badlands of forums, or among your discord experiences, it is inevitable that you will meet someone who just cannot handle what their muse actually is.

In their own head, usually because they are hella projecting onto the muse, this muse is the best thing since sliced bread. They are a near perfect copy of the mun -- let's use our former friend [REDACTED] as an example.

All her muses were able-bodied middle class east coast American women who came from military families and were proudly straight Americans whose brand of liberalism was just conservatism lite. And because that muse is so much like her -- and pick any of them, Beth, Elaine, Charlotte, even in fantasy she'd just adapt Veerle or Adamaris to be the super special white gurl foreigner -- this muse is perfect.

This muse does no wrong. Everything this muse does is cool, funny, badass. Everything this muse does is right, even in instances where the audience tries to call out obvious racism, homophobia, classism, unchecked mental illness. This is not a critique of the character's behavior/the biased writing, but of the creator herself, because the muse is a funhouse mirror of their player. Fuck you. She's going to write what she wants to write.

Except it stops being about just their muse. Suddenly, it's about you as a collaborator having a muse. Here's the role your muse has been pigeonholed into. Here's the script. Here's how in awe or cruel they are to her blessed muse. Here's what your muse is allowed to be -- remember when she'd veto my muses having disabilities or poc love interests as if that was her call?

It's no longer collaborative. It's the Beth/Elaine/Charlotte/Veerle/Elysande show, and we're just living in it. Our muses are there to talk about how cool she is, how women want to be her, how men want to make babies with her. And if you play a villain, the men obsess over her and the women want to torture her. No one can be objective about the character. Who could be objective about God's most perfect creation?

And it gets worse. The creator, totally unchecked and unable to be held in check moving forward without having an actual IRL mental breakdown, is further assured of her own skill. Her muse is perfect. The war crimes ensue, sometimes metaphorical and in [REDACTED]'s case actually for real in universe. The apologia of 'well if my muse did something bad they did it to someone worse,' except they as grown adults are unable to admit their character is capable of doing any wrong. If you are among other partners doing a plot, they refuse to be on the sidelines of it.

The relationship as collaborators and as friends becomes unsustainable because you are dealing with someone who refuses to be reasoned with, and will forever be the villain when they retell the story because you wanted a shared platform, not to be an accessory to a muse you can no longer stand.

I've been on this site since 2012 and I have seen many such muns high on their own muse's farts. Literally if you give me the most special and important heroic muse without an iota of nuance, whether Canon or OC, I'm checking out. I've seen canon serial killers be idealized as 'good people' due to possessing either the lifestyle their writer has or desires, and canon abusers be excused as 'well I mean, his wife is annoying.' I have seen OCs, many times, hold entire servers and communities hostage to their whims, whether as moderators or as simple members of a group. I can name 6 separate incidents across 12 years, and it always goes nuclear, scorched earth, kills communities and friend groups and servers. I refuse to play.

And again, fiction =/= reality, but the way people handle certain themes or concepts can say a lot about how they'll be as a collaborator --

[bnhaobservation]

Why Tōya and Himiko were saved and yet weren’t: observations, ramblings and speculations

So an answer I gave to an ask about Enji triggered an interesting discussion between @certainaestheticfictionmuffin and @hotdiggitty95 that overall made me ponder...

...on how, in the end, Tōya doesn’t feel saved. Yes, they saved his life, as he didn’t blast himself and the others away, but Tōya is still filled with anger, he’s not smiling, even when his father admits he’s sorry, even though the visual might make him seem like he’s crying (Tōya can’t physically cry but the manga had many ways to depict him making him look like he’s crying even when he’s physically not),

he’s still claiming he hates everyone and wants everyone to die… opposite to Himiko, who’s smiling and wanting Ochako to live and… she’s dying.

So, although both Shōto and Ochako managed to stop Tōya and Himiko from killing people we can see that on one side we’ve Shōto, who managed to save Tōya’s life but not Tōya’s soul and from the other we’ve Ochako, who managed to save Himiko’s soul but not her life.

I’ll add to them Shūichi, who’s not saved at all. Shōji managed to stop the uprising, so he saved people… but he didn’t save Shūichi’s soul as he didn’t reach him at all, and he was left lying on the ground of the hospital. I like to think he won’t die but who knows, the Quirk All for One gave him might have made more damage than good.

So…

PREMISE: What follows are merely my speculations. I’m not Horikoshi, I don’t know the end of the manga and my theories are as worthy as the ones of everyone else. Also this isn’t absolutely to be taken as a critic to Shōto and Ochako (or Shōji as he gets mentioned too). Those three kids did the best they could with what they had. If they couldn’t fully save their Villains, if all this might seems unsatisfactory, and indeed it is, it’s likely because it’s the whole point, because it’s up to the main character, Deku, to save Tomura/Tenko’s life and soul both, as well as stopping the destruction, accomplishing the perfect saving and Shōto and Ochako’s only partial success is only here to remark how hard what Deku wants to do is, so that we’ll be all properly impressed when he’ll accomplish this.

Now though… what’s needed to save someone completely?

I’ll start in a roundabout way.

BNHA in a Shōnen and Shōnen generally have along with the purpose to entertain readers with a good story, also an ‘educative’ purpose.

We might end up thinking the lesson is that Deku will solve the problem that the League of Villains has created, stopping the desperate state Japan has slipped into but it’s likely not that. Why?

When the story starts and for a long while during the story, the status quo that All Might established was in place. The status quo got destroyed only much later on, with the Paranormal Liberation War. Yes, when All Might retired it was weakened but it was still in place. If Deku were to rewind the damage the war has caused, the world would go back to how it was when the story started.

In short, while All Might changed the world and started an era of peace, Deku wouldn’t be able to change the world, he would just manage to maintain what All Might has created.

In the same way as One for All is a power that each user make grow, Deku also needs to improve the world. The story has to end not with a world that’s how it started but with a world that’s IMPROVED.

It’s only by improving the world that you can save the League body and soul.

In fact the reason to be of the League is that it was created with the purpose to CHANGE THE WORLD. Tomura/Tenko explained it well. The world rejected the members of the League, so in return they’re rejecting it. Since they felt destroyed by the world, they are destroying it.

As Himiko summarized is ‘win or lose, live or die’ or, if you prefers Tōya’s words, society is ‘reaping what it sow’ with them.

Tomura/Tenko, Tōya, Himiko and Shūichi couldn’t fit in the world they were in.

Basically the League and the Heroes are fighting for the survival of two different world, the League wants a world in which THEY can live and all those who previously rejected them will now be rejected, the Heroes wants the previous world, which ironically was the one in which the people who rejected the League would be accepted and the League would be still cut out.

It’s still ‘live or die’.

When Himiko explains why she chooses to die she points it out. She believes it’s the world the League will create the one in which she would live easily and with live easily she means, as a normal person.

Ochako’s way to save her would be to visit her in prison and make her those blood donations until Himiko were to die. Now true, Himiko did commit crimes by now and she should be punished… but the point is… if the Heroes win the world will go back on being the same. She’ll go back on being a freak for everyone except Ochako.

Even if she could rewind things and resurrect everyone she killed, erase everything she has done, it’s just Ochako who accepted her (yeah, we know Deku and the rest of U.A. would likely follow but that’s for us to know, not for Himiko at this point in the story). She would have one person by her side, which would make the world a little kinder but… it would still be very hard for her to fit… and anyway she views that chance as not worth pursuing. A life in jail after a life of misery by being rejected by the world isn’t something worthwhile.

And there’s a huge irony in this because, differently from Tōya, Himiko didn’t want to die, but doesn’t want the only person who saved her to die as well. Likely she could have saved Ochako just by giving her some of her blood, she didn’t have to try give her it all, she choose to do so because she now can’t live in a world where the League win but there’s no Ochako nor in a world where Ochako is there but there’s no place for her.

And now we move to Tōya.

Tōya is saved physically, which is always what his family does with him, they worry he won’t burn himself and doesn’t worry about his psychological wounds.

This time though, they try to address the pain inside him, Shōto by acknowledging how impressive Tōya’s fire was, Enji and Rei by apologizing to him. Why it doesn’t work? Partly because it’s too little too late, which is what Tōya had thought when he realized the family was looking at him but decided to blow up anyway, but mostly because the answer is written already in chap 1 & 2. When Inko apologizes to Izuku, all Izuku can think is that he wanted her to say something else. Tōya feels a failure, his Quirk burns his body, which makes impossible for him to be a Hero. His parents look at him and apologize for their mistakes but doesn’t erase his sense of having been a failure. Where Ochako accepted Himiko and made her feel normal by telling her she has the cutest smile in the world, they, same as Inko early on, didn’t.

I’m not saying they don’t love Tōya, just that what was given wasn’t enough to soothe his psychological pain.

So, where Ochako was the one who always worried about making everyone happy and therefore worried soothing Himiko’s psychological pain, the Todoroki always worried about physical pain and couldn’t save Tōya’s soul.

Mind you, Ochako wanted to save Himiko physically as well, she didn’t mean for Himiko to die, she didn’t try to kill her, she did all she could to also not hurt her and the Todoroki wanted to also save Tōya’s soul, they’re looking at him, they’re apologizing but, same as for Himiko, they aren’t interested in creating a world that would accept him.

Natsuo says from then on it would be hell for them.

Again, it’s not a point of ‘but Tōya had killed people and deserves to be punished’, it’s a problem of ‘if we could rewind everything and get back to before Tōya were to decide to murder people, Tōya’s Quirk would still burn him and he would still be judged not Hero material'.

The Todoroki as well aren’t trying to create a world that would accept him the way he is.

It’s something that gets lost in the west, where we appreciate diversity, but in Japan there’s a big deal in conforming with everyone else.

Tōya and Himiko aren’t rejected at random, or because they’ve bad parents, but because they’re different.

This is still the world that said that Izuku couldn’t be a Hero because he was Quirkless, Tsukauchi remarks it by saying there’s no point in All Might facing All for One Quirkless because he can’t win and instead there’s A LOT of point. Because All Might showed that, even Quirkless he could hold the battle for a long time and make considerable damage.

He wasn’t garbage, something useless that had no place in the Hero world. It was never All Might’s Quirk that made him a Hero. It was All Might all along. And, in a way, what All Might is doing, will start to change the world because he’s showing the world itself that a Quirkless man can be a Hero. And his act in a way change the future as everyone starts to pray for him to survive.

And now it will be probably up to Deku and Bakugo to realize the perfect score. All Might opened the way, they will probably manage to save Tomura/Tenko’s body and soul not by returning everything to the status quo but by working so as to change it, so as to improve it in a way.

At this point it won’t matter if Tomura/Tenko will get into a jail or not, because society will be changed and the goal he wanted to archive (changing the world) will be archived.

Deku will accomplish saving his body as well as his soul by giving him a world in which a person like him could fit.

I like to think that, when Deku will accomplish this, it will turn out that Himiko didn’t die and that this new world is also a world in which Tōya can fit (as well as Shūichi) so that all the League will be saved body and soul regardless from what will happen to them afterward. But maybe it’s just me.