#that person has clearly been radicalized in the worst way

[jewishbarbies]

I'm sorry if this is kinda traumadumping, but I'm so increasingly terrified of the shooter fans. in a discord server I'm in, he came up as a subject, and I had a pretty civil and I think all in all healthy debate that mostly came to the same general conclusion with one of the other people on the server. (that I don't think he should be fandomized or have every bit of his life picked apart, and also the whole thing just makes me nervous because, well, "we must kill The Elites" often ends up more being Jews than actual "elites", but at the same time all murderers will end up with fanbases and people fascinated with their life details. it was all agreed yes, there are dangers, fandomizations happens, and no he shouldnt be dehumanized or deified, in fact i think those things go hand in hand in a sense)

then a third person jumped in and said we absolutely need to deify him, this could "change the world", and basically we should consider this a holy act and take the initiative to "finally get off our asses [and start killing The Bad People]", that he'll be the figure of a religion started by this revolution. fully serious. we've gone from full "glorious revolution [read: christian Judgement Day]" to "glorious revolution with our uniting hero [read: the second coming, which leads to the judgement day]"

I was so terrified I started shaking and almost cried. what the fuck is happening with people? she used to be an absolute sweetheart that always was the comforting "mom friend", I don't know what happened to her...

sorry, I just desperately needed to tell this to someone who agrees the sentiment of "going out and murdering, even most of the 'rich elite', is bad" and you're one of the only people I've seen that really fully agrees with that and is comfortable talking about it

this is exactly the kind of mentality I’ve been worried about. because “let’s kill The Elite” DOES end up at “let’s kill the jews”. it’s also just ridiculous to give yourself permission to kill anyone of any group you like for any reason, but here we are.

it hasn’t even been proven at all that Luigi is the shooter, and imo he’s not. but he would also be considered ‘an elite’, due to his family’s money and connection to the health care industry, so where does that leave us? a lesser elite killed an even more elite? elite on elite crime? if an actual poor person did this, they would not be seeing him as a hero. but because he’s an upper middle class, conventionally attractive white man with a convenient enough sob story, they eat that shit up and believe he’s some god.

the rhetoric is getting incredibly disturbing from all sides and idk what to do. other than commit ourselves to being labeled class traitors by stating the obvious, that this is reckless and incredibly dangerous ideology, idk. we just have to keep pushing back. people don’t have to weep for the ceo, but they need to understand where this insane rhetoric is going to lead us. if we have to be the canary in the mine again, so be it, but if we stop now who knows what will happen.

[lightningant]

Severus Snape thoughts

I've prodded him with my thoughts before but now I need to post through it. Because he's my princess.

I think a lot of what makes Snape so complex (and so compelling) is that he is neither a good person nor a just person. He really is beefing with that 11-year-old. He really did scoff at Albus saying that he would protect Harry because he cares about him. (LMAO, btw). He really is just a horrible guy, which honestly makes his efforts that much more brave and noble!

When we see the Prince's Tale, Severus Snape personally curates his timeline to showcase his bigotry to Harry. He specifically isolates moments where his antipathy for muggles is contrasted with his love for Lily. He does not show Harry his home life, or how much Lily liked him, he is on topic: I hated muggles, but I loved her. And then he isolates a moment where Lily finally explains how troubled she is by his friends, and he cuts off whatever teen drama motivated her to say it. He shows his worst memory again, something he was shaking with rage and fear at Harry discovering. He shows the aftermath of him grovelling.

And after that is the timeskip. His feelings are not relevant. In fact, all of his memories may as well be from Lily's perspective. It is significant that all his memories are essentially from Lily's perspective.

What Snape was showcasing to Harry is that he knows that he was not listening to her. He knows he was being patronizing, that he prioritized his exclusive access to her over feelings, that he treated her beliefs as if they were irrelevant or biased.

Snape took on a patron-like relationship with Lily, teaching her wizarding culture and presumably acting as the source of her incredible potions ability (despite her expertise clearly being charms). He most definitely assumed that in the Dark Lord's new order, people like Lily would be coveted for their magical skill alone, and he would not really care if the Death Eaters executed Lily's parents and sister because they're just muggles.

And then she is murdered for protecting Harry Potter too well. She is disposable. He had to have heard it. She's just a mudblood.

Snape gives himself no excuses in the Prince's Tale. He did not include what he did for her in his memories, because he prided himself in uplifting her star and probably still does, and the memories in that bottle exhibited his shame. He provides no context which might paint himself in a better light. He is giving Harry his remorse, with raw, open honesty. 'Here is where I went wrong.'

Snape's character is that of someone who is bearing the excruciating burden of not only being responsible for the death of a loved one, but silently de-radicalizing himself, all alone, while still on the inside. He lives in his muggle house. He intentionally repaired the link between his current self and his shameful muggle origins in order to acknowledge the way he treated muggles was wrong and the way he treated Lily was unforgivable. He won't even let paintings use slurs.

There is a temptation to polish his image, to say he was justified or uniquely victimized, without acknowledging Snape is messy and cruel has always been fundamentally incapable of empathy, yet he has passionate feelings on doing the right thing. He spent 10 years making an active choice to be a good person, a thing that does not come naturally to him. The point of the Prince's Tale is that it does not come naturally to him!!!!! And he does it anyway!!!!!!

He doesn't want Harry to die because he's the last thing he has left of Lily (🙄), but because the right thing to do, the Lily thing to do, is to not raise a boy for slaughter, let alone her boy.

[sophieinwonderland]

In light of what has happened recently; Every passing day makes it more and more incomprehensible to me that the American electorate voted for clowns like Trump and Vance when there were red flags everywhere. Jesus...

This is something that bears repeating: The Republican candidate being a bully and all around horrible person is a feature to the people who voted for him, not a bug.

Yes, what tipped the balance might have been neutrals who were misinformed into thinking Kamala would be the worst option, or people "protesting voting" or staying home... but Trump's base... the people who have been loyal to him through all of this... they don't see his behavior as "red flags."

The term "sanewashing" has popped up a lot lately in how the media refers to Trump. But I think it started with his electorate first.

There was this idea among Democrats back when Trump was first running that he was too radical to win the Republican primaries. When he beat out all the competition, Democrats would cope by saying "well, look at all the Republicans who didn't vote for him." But it didn't matter because those people did vote for him in the general election.

Democrats have been acting for the last decade like there is going to be something Trump will do that will be so horrible that the Republican electorate will turn against him.

I think that this is because most Democrats are fundamentally good people who expect that even if they disagree with their political opponents, those opponents have some shred of humanity and human decency somewhere inside that will be appalled by what is clearly monstrous behavior.

Democrats and Republicans both project. Democrats are largely good people who tend to project our goodness onto Republicans, thinking Republicans should be horrified by things that are so clearly horrible. Republicans are terrible people who only care about themselves and want to hurt everyone who isn't like them for being different, and project by seeing us as just as vile and nasty as they are.

One example of this that I've seen a lot is the "Russian Bot" narrative. Yes, I'm sure that there are plenty of Russian bots out there. No doubt! But it also seems like a way of shifting blame. An idea that the most horrible messages have to be coming from bots because you just couldn't imagine a real human being that terrible or monstrous.

It's not that all Republicans are terrible either. There are or at least were some good or okay ones.

But remember that moment when John McCain corrected supporters who were claiming Obama consorted with terrorists in 2008 when he was the Republican presidential candidate, and he was booed by his own party at his own rally?

This is what Democrats seem to consistently not understand about the Republican party.

The rot is in the electorate. It always has been. The politicians are terrible and corrupt, yes. But a lot of them are also still representing what their voters want.

What you see as "red flags" are traits Trump's voters WANTED from McCain and he couldn't deliver on.

They like Trump bullying our allies because they see that as strength.

They like Trump taking away rights from trans people and locking immigrants in concentration camps because they don't have the capacity to empathize with anyone not like them as a human.

They like Trump breaking the law as he sees fit, being accountable to no one and declaring himself a king because they want a dictatorship as long as the dictator is theirs.

And the hardest pill to swallow is that these horrible people who would have gladly supported the Nazis in the 30s and 40s are not bots. There are not some distant enemies. They're your neighbors. They're your family. They're the people who will smile and wave as you pass them on the street.

This is what modern Democrats cannot seem to process. That there is this actual blight of evil in this country that are otherwise normal people, but politically would gladly support the most heinous and monstrous of policies.

[fite-club]

people they/themming TWitch & other transfems will never not be funny. here's a detailed list of all my greatly exaggerated/made up grievances with this user… I'm misgendering her? well how was I supposed to know she was a transfem anyway, even though I know all her posts about transfeminism by heart and have undoubtedly come across her referencing her gender at some point? sure, there is a lot of smear campaigns and harassment against transfems, but mine is REALLY justified this time, trust me /s

like if ur gonna get on ur high horse abt all this, how about the fact her usernames have been taken by trolls who clearly monitor her account enough to know when (one a URL she's never used/advertised on this site, they would've had to gone out of their way to find her other platforms), her account being one of the several unjust tfem blogger deletions by tumblr staff… people were literally going out of their way to find and threaten to report her nsft pics 😭 for ppl who claim to only hate Those intersexist racist privileged perisex white binary transfems, you can see how exactly how frail that reasoning is by the way they treat an unapologetic transfeminist intersex black transfem - as always aggressive, disingenuous, hysterical, and so on and so forth. the amount of shit TW has gotten from these ppl is among the worst I've seen among transfeminist bloggers, it's disgusting

literally. the de-radicalization techniques she taught me were so valuable... the izanami is a great way to demonstrate (if not to the person in question, to others) how transmisogynists will always assume/assign ulterior motives to trans women. like they're doing now, claiming that this trans feminist blogger was actually only trying to harass trans teens or whatever

[mandatory-blog-stop-asking]

your boy is drunk on regional liquorssss you know what that meeeeeans X-Men timeeeee

God I fucking LOVE Kitty Pryde

Imagine you're introduced to this world of heroes and villains when you're so young you're still describing your age in terms of years and months, just because you personally think this will make adults take you seriously. It doesn't but you can't exactly stop committing to it.

Imagine you grow near these legendary characters in politics from both sides of the spectrum and it radicalizes you in a way that neither is quite comfortable with, but you are, because you know you're coming from a place that understands how flawed all their stances are and how even if you can't be the person who fixes everything, someone has to be the person who tells them they're making everything worse.

Imagine that by age 13 you've been locked in battle with both the White Queen of the Hellfire Club and the Master of Magnetism, and you've changed them both for the better because they can't believe their designs have led them into a situation where they have to oppose you, a child with a chip on her shoulder and an almost entirely passive power set, and they change into the most important people for mutantdom in the history of the movement.

Imagine you grow separate from everyone. You find out all the ways you're different. You find out how strong you really are. You find out the Earth can't contain you and you branch out to the universe. And then you find out yes, you could be the Lord of the Stars, you could make it all your own, you could be as bright as the sun, but god damn it, you love politics, you love being an example, you love Earth, you love being you, with all your perfections and imperfections, and no matter what kooky wild situation you get yourself into hundreds of light-years away from where you were born, you keep going back to New York and getting involved. Even when you're depressed, you get involved. Even when you tell yourself you'll stop caring, you get involved.

Imagine you evolve yourself in such a way that both the best and the worst people you've ever met come to you for advice, and you realize they're all the same, and it doesn't matter what you do, you'll always be the compass that guides people.

You go to bed one day and you dream green dream of infinite Earths. In one, you make President, and have a daughter with the demon girl you're so clearly in love with. In another, you're leader of the mutant resistance, and you send Rachel back to the past so they can save a different world, never your own. You're a leader, an example, a messiah, someone fucking reasonable. You wake up with a startle and you realize you're unhappy, or preoccupied, or busy, or just not where you'd rather be, but god damn it all those dreams feel like they're telling you what to do.

Imagine the blonde bitch that tortured you as a child is now asking you to be her right hand woman. Imagine she puts you in charge, and eventually in government, and eventually in a pirate outfit. Imagine she actually had a point. Imagine your entire life, you assumed it's you against her, but that when you grow older you realize it's you and her against the world.

Imagine you're Kitty Pryde. How the fuck can you live up to all of that? How can you keep all that rage inside? How can you keep going? Only a lunatic would keep going. Only a crazy person would keep getting involved, getting into a silly costume, getting called a dumb callsign and going to make speeches and taking it all in stride and working for a better tomorrow.

God we could all be Kitty Pryde. What a fucking character. How is she so perfect.

"what about the slurs" listen she has the pass

[thumperdaetime]

A Gentle Reminder:

if you feel like you're spinning your wheels, and stuck doom scrolling this week -due to the current political landscape. I highly recommend logging off for a bit and seeing if you have the stomach to call a loved one who has political veiws that clash with your own.

social media and news coverage is fantastic for getting info out to people who want to listen, but it is an ineffective tool for actually communicating with people you disagree with.

I'm not a people-scientist but every time i see "yelling at each other online doesn't actually help" and have the energy to look into What does actually help, experts always say that it's empathetic, long term relationships between people that disagree.

so if you have a bunch of nervous political energy and no clearly helpful place to put it right now:

go call your grandmother. talk about the weather, and the way you miss her cooking. give her a real living person to picture The next time a newscaster talks about the radical-left-mob. if you talk to her regularly consider asking what she thinks about the recent political thing. you're not there to debate or prove her wrong or even change her mind. just listen to someone you love confess their fears, and then share your own fears. you are probably actually on the same side when you get down to it. you both want a safe place to live and the people you love to be happy, (most people do) its just you dont agree about how to go about that.

text your little cousin a random meme, when they send back a thing about how voting is a scam, let it go. share a vine to find out if they know the deep lore. make plans to meet up and play whatever video game they're obsessed with right now. and if the vibe is right and its not going to become an argument, try talking a bit about why the whole not voting movement scares you. don't talk down to them, talk like your two friends who respect each other's opinion (Thats The whole goal actually) ask them why they think its a good strategy, collaborate on other activist things you can do together. included them in your politics instead of dismissing their points.

and its not easy, as wild as it is to think about having a deep but pleasant conversation with your worst Uncle. the fact remains that Your Problematic & Uncle is much more likely to speak up for gay rights. if you can get to a place where you enjoy each others company, and you feel safe talking to him about your struggles as a queer person. and to be fair, you are more likely to take into account the effects of a gun ban on the local wildlife balance, if you sit through your Problematic Uncle complaining about how local restrictions made deer season hard to do last year, and now the tic population is up and the food banks are empty.

divide and conquer is a long standing tactical strategy. and we have seen that fascist in particular like to divide people into a hierarchy of ""real people""" and an ""inhuman enemy"" . when we let their rhetoric turn our peers and neighbors into an inhuman enemy, we can loose sight of what we should actually be fighting for and against.

and if you spend all your time yelling at Doug Nobody who was taking an angry shit when you were typing out that essay, you take energy away from the real fight (the systems and actual active oppressors). the best way to stop that tactic is by standing together with people outside of the box you've been assigned (as much as ethically possible). and refusing to let the system make you perpetuate usless infighting.

When we let the political fandom (yes i mean the media made around politics and not actual political action) act as a wedge between us and people who could have been in our lives, we end up with weaker support groups and less per review for political ideas. it is easy to believe Q-anon if the only people you talk to believe in Q-anon. the same way it is easy to believe that Taylor Swift is a lesbian if everyone you talk to believes Taylor Swift is a lesbian. sometimes we need a person to stop and say "wait, can you run that idea by me again? it doesn't fit my perception of reality"

and Yes. it is probably unlikely at this point to convince someone who has voted one way their whole life to change their political views before November. but that doesn't mean we dont reach-out ever. there will still be politics in September and October, you will still need a diverse support group, and people you trust to bounce political ideas off of. and if you are as worried as i am about this upcoming election, it is very possible that having a community of people who are okay with working together despite political differences will be very helpful in the coming years. (and holding a meaningful, satisfying conversation with someone you disagree with on a fundamental issue is a huge skill to have if you want to take part in alot of activism, community building, or family gatherings)

a quick list of things Op is NOT Saying in this post:

it is your duty and responsibility to do this thing and you're a bad person for not doing it.

this is really easy and everyone should be able (and willing) to take on the emotional energy needed to do this for everyone they know who doesn't agree with them.

watching news or being on social media doesn't help anything.

this is the best way to help and there are no other things you should be doing with your time/energy.

the conversations will be pleasant and/or will always have a positive outcome.

any beliefs i listed together are some how morally equivalent.

you should compromise your beliefs for the sake of getting along with others.

the best answer is most likely centrist because both sides are extremists.

voting this one time will fix all of the things and you're evil if you are conflicted about it.

voting is the best way for a single individual to enact change in their country.

i love the president, and the candidates, and the voting system, and the two parties, and the electoral college, and the bombs, and the genocide and all the death and corruption and violence its all holding up and being held up by.

we should listen to "both sides" to get a fair and balanced picture of the issue

we should let nazis, and bigots, and fascist talk openly about their ideas openly as if its not hate speech calling for violence against marginalized people.

you Have to go reconnect with your abusers and toxic relationships from your past in the hopes you can convince them to vote correctly.

the current political thing that made me make this post is The Most Important Thing!!! that has ever happened in the whole world over all of written history, and we should all be talking about it for forever, otherwise you're helping the inhuman enemy!!!

things are already fucked so theirs no point in trying to get enough votes.

things will be fine and ok if nothing changes and we just keep on this projected path forward.

i know so much and am so smart and I've solved political discourse and if only everyone listened to me we would have world peace already.

Taylor Swift is a wlw

things I am saying. now. here. at the end of the post:

be kind. go look at the sky. i love you <3

[mightyflamethrower]

By Lloyd Billingsley, Power Line

On August 2, 2023, Tablet editor David Samuels interviewed David Garrow, author of Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a massive attack on Israel and committed the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. In light of those events, and the recent attack on Israel directly from Iran, consider some of Samuels’ own statements during “The Obama Factor” interview:

The sheer amount of political capital and focus Obama put into achieving the JCPOA during his second term, to the near-exclusion of other goals, suggests that the deal was central to his politics. It also carries more than a whiff of the kind of politics in which the American Empire is seen not just as unexceptional, but also, in some ways, as actively evil. It was a politics born out of the confluence of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, which saw a racist war abroad being used to protect a racist power structure at home. That old alliance of civil rights, anti-imperialism, and identity politics made the Democratic Party that Obama positioned himself to lead—college-educated, corporate-controlled—seem cool, allowing it to use post-1960s radical ideology as a language to sell stuff.

In the absence of what was once American journalism, it is hard to know which portrait of Obama’s post-presidency is truer to life: Obama as a celebrity-obsessed would-be billionaire, or as a would-be American Castro, reshaping American society from his basement, in his sweats.

"Touchdown!" 

The election of Joe Biden in 2020 gave the Obamas even more reasons to stay in town. The whispers about Biden’s cognitive decline, which began during his bizarre COVID-sheltered basement campaign, were mostly dismissed as partisan attacks on a politician who had always been gaffe-ridden. Yet as President Biden continued to fall off bicycles, misremember basic names and facts, and mix long and increasingly weird passages of Dada-edque nonsense with autobiographical whoppers during his public appearances, it became hard not to wonder how poor the president’s capacities really were and who was actually making decisions in a White House staffed top to bottom with core Obama loyalists. When Obama turned up at the White House, staffers and the press crowded around him, leaving President Biden talking to the drapes—which is not a metaphor but a real thing that happened. (Samuels’ link)

I have heard from more than one source that there are regular meetings at Obama’s house in Kalorama involving top figures in the current White House, with Secret Service and cars outside. I don’t write about it because it’s not my lane. There are over a thousand reporters in Washington, and yet there are zero stakeouts of Obama’s mansion, if only to tell us who is coming and going. But he clearly has his oar in.  The easy explanation, of course, is that Joe Biden is not running that part of his administration. Obama is. He doesn’t even have to pick up the phone because all of his people are already inside the White House. They hold the Iran file. Tony Blinken doesn’t.

Rob Malley is just one person. Brett McGurk. Dan Shapiro in Israel. Lisa Monaco in Justice. Susan Rice running domestic policy. It’s turtles all the way down. There are obviously large parts of White House policymaking that belong to Barack Obama because they’re staffed by his people, who worked for him and no doubt report back to him. Personnel is policy, as they say in Washington.

Which to me is a very odd and kind of spooky arrangement. Spooky, because it is happening outside the constitutional framework of the U.S. government, and yet somehow it’s been placed off the list of permitted subjects to report on. Which is a pretty good indicator of the extent to which the information we get, and public reactions to that information, is being successfully controlled. How and by whom remain open questions, the quick answer to which is that the American press has become a subset of partisan comms.  What scared me back then was coming to understand that a new milieu had been created consisting of party operatives, the people in the FBI and the CIA who are carrying out White House policy, and the press. It is all one world now. And that’s something people still seem loathe to admit, even to themselves, in part because it puts them in a state of dissonance with this new kind of controlled consensus that the press maintains, which is obviously garbage. But if you question it, you’re some kind of nut.

But historically speaking, Jews are not, or were not, a particularly American obsession, except among some morons and leather fetishists on the right. But they are a major obsession on the periphery of the American empire, where envy and fear of the mythic role that Jews supposedly play in Washington, because of Israel, are defining emotions, regardless of the facts. So how do you talk all this foundation-land, community-organizer shit and then preside over the transformation of the country into a Gilded Age oligarchy? Maybe I just answered my own question: Obama is the Magic Negro of the billionaire industrial complex. And targeting Jews as outsiders and pushing them outside the circle was the way that the Gilded Age oligarchy consolidated itself in America, back then and also now.

[perfectlyvalid49]

I just want to say that your words about feeling like you yourself are becoming radicalized resonated with me. I was already growing fed up with the current state of leftism and this just seems the last straw. The black and white thinking, the purity culture, the blood thirst – I’m just done.

I’m not even Jewish in any meaningful way (my mom hid/disavowed that part of her ancestry growing up in the soviets). I’m just a very mixed queer person whose ethnicity is best described as ‘uhhh.’ But my social circle has always been largely Jewish, and recently many of said social circle have had to up and leave their home country. In many cases, Israel was their only option. So seeing thousands of people who are supposedly on my side thoughtlessly chant ‘from the river to the sea’ just broke me. Seeing people try to prove that it’s not antisemitic has been mind-boggling. “It doesn’t explicitly call for violence against Jewish people.” Well, nor does ‘Jews will not replace us,’ and yet…

I deleted my social media at a really low point, and now that I’m back I find myself mostly following Jewish blogs. And I feel my worldview shifting because where before I had hopes that things that frustrate me on the left could maybe be fixed, now I no longer think it’s fixable.

Sorry for rambling from this Schrödinger’s gentile

Hi Anon,

I’m glad I could write something that spoke to you.

Before this blog became so focused on the conflict in Israel, I talked a lot about US politics, a topic I’ve been interested in since I was in middle school (I’m weird and nerdy – get over it). And to be clear, I’m “old” for the internet, so middle school means the 1996 presidential election, which I remember discussing with my friends at lunch (they were also weird and nerdy, there’s a reason we were friends).

So when I say that I’ve been watching other people get radicalized for a long time, I mean it. I’ve watched friends fall into information silos and have felt helpless to stop it. I mean, the best man at my (very Jewish!) wedding is now a trad-Cath who thinks I’m going to hell because I refuse to accept Jesus into my life.

There has always been an antisemitism problem on the left. You can scroll through just about any blog on jumblr and look at posts prior to October and you can see that we were all bitching about it before the 7th. I’m not sure if it has actually gotten worse or if it’s just more obvious now, but we can say they seem radicalized now. Honestly, there’s nothing I can do about it, because they certainly aren’t going to listen to me – I’m a filthy (((Zionist))) after all.

But there’s at least a handful of Jewish people who are listening to me. I’ve picked up a score of followers in the last few months, so clearly you all think what I have to say is worth reading, so read this: I worry that at least parts of the Jewish community are headed down a bad path and I don’t know what to do about it. I know why we are blocking and unfollowing so many – the things they say are hurtful at best and terrifying at worst. But it leaves us in a situation where it’s the same few voices being repeated over and over. It doesn’t mean that we are radicalized, but I worry that we’re headed toward an echo chamber at least, and that’s not good. I’ve left a lot of leftist spaces behind. I’d prefer to not have to do that with Jewish ones as well.

I don’t have a solution other than that we need to be really careful and think about how we’re thinking about things if that makes any sense. The example I gave last time was moving from “you can be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic” to “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” How did we make that move? Was it motivated by logic or emotion? It’s ok to change your stance, but with the way things are I think we really need to think about why we’re doing that, or it could lead to a bad place.

Back to the anon who is losing hope – that’s tough, and I can see why you feel that way. There are two thoughts that I repeat to myself to keep me hopeful. The first is that on a long enough timescale, things tend to improve. There’s lots of small steps forward and stumbling backwards, but overall we tend to move in the right direction. The other is that trying and failing and not trying at all have the same result. Maybe we won’t have a big effect. But if I can tell 30 people and even three of them can tell 30 people and so on, then maybe my words can reach at least one person and help them pull their heads out of their ass. And that’s better than nothing.

[mithliya]

I'm not suggesting there's a winner or an outcome. I'm simply outlining that it's normal for a community to keep discussing things that we disagree on. You might not see the reason why a topic gets brought up because you personally don't care, but others do and have good reason to. Maybe Be the Change and encourage new topics to talk about. But if we agree on whatever you bring up don't expect it to take up as much time as the more controversial topics. It's the same in politics. Politicians debate hot topics, and it's repetitive and annoying. Families go through particular issues and will ruminate on them because it's on people's minds, it's a source of conflict. Motherhood, het relationships and separatism will always be a source of controversy under radical feminism and the topics will never go away. New women come to the movement every day and want to discuss it after seeing an old post. They all revolve around the same issue: Is expecting radical feminists to be radical IRL, when they can be, a problem? How far can the movement go when we enable helplessness and doomer thinking? How seriously can radical feminism be taken when we have women walking around claiming to be one while doing absolutely everything patriarchy expects? In the second wave, women divorced their husbands and kicked habits/routines conditioned by patriarchy. Coincidentally, that's also when radical feminism made a change in the world. We can't even say it's feminist to centre women in your life and avoid relationships with men on radblr or else it's "misogynistic." Come on. Questioning or critiquing gender conformity isn't allowed because it's "misogynistic." It's laughable to not expect "radical" women to do radical things. The movement is being weighed down by inaction encouraged by those refusing to change a thing in their lives.

okay perhaps i wasnt clear so allow me to emphasise. i agree that people can & should talk thru disagreements and differing ideas. but i think the way radblr goes about it makes “overkill” an understatement. at a certain point we just have to accept that everyone has their mind made up and simply move on instead of pushing a debate in which every possible thing to say has already been said. the horse is not only dead, it’s beyond decomposed. like i do agree with u, many ppl do not live by their morals on here and many claim to be radfems but clearly simply by virtue of their lifestyle, they are not. instead of us just stating that n leaving it at that tho, people go through these meaningless tiresome back & forths where they keep talking at each other. at a certain point, all that can be said & needs to be said has been said and we need to simply move on. otherwise we are literally wasting everyone’s time & efforts going in circles when we literally have so many things to discuss! on one hand i get the frustration that a woman who does absolutely nothing radical is calling herself a radfem, on the other i also get feeling disillusioned by that being treated like the world’s worst crime that warrants comments like “lol don’t run to us if he ends up beating u!!” (which unfortunately i’ve seen several ppl make here). it doesn’t encourage women to take radical action and simply ends up making the women Not doing so feel attacked and hate the movement, so like. again who is it even helping?? the approach is simply wrong & at a certain point ppl need to just. agree to disagree. like, if someone makes the 900th “lmao a radfem wouldn’t fuck men so take that word out of ur mouth” it won’t suddenly change anything, if a woman whines about how separatism is heterophobic it won’t change anything either. all it does is cause infighting and people to be defensive and i wish people would simply move on & be normal about it. and perhaps have a new discussion that we don’t have 8 times per year

[hapigairu]

It's astounding to me how cherry-blossom-inferno runs around trying to bash Dimitri to blatant Dimitri fans while warping literally all scenes involving him. There was one where they said he was JEALOUS of Edelgard's reforms, which was a negative twisting of his words that bathes their beloved Edelgard in a positive beaming light... when all he said was he can admire the changes the Empire was going through because of how rapidly they could accept the change (in comparison to Faerghus that struggles more to adapt very quickly, but stability BaD so we need chaotic war, rapid and forced change only, GooD). He never said he was jealous and no other character did, but they intentionally put an Edelgard-positive spin on it by using a more negative word than the ACTUAL word Dimitri used.

Now the narrative "kinda humiliates" him? Actually no, the game has to find a way to follow its own mechanics depending on whether or not you used a certain battle strategy. Every single time they randomly attack a Dimitri fan (for absolutely no reason, mind you, seeing as they clearly do not like him. But then, I guess that IS the reason. They just want to hunt down every Dimitri fan they can find and Teach Them A Lesson In Edelgard Bias), they twist everything possible to paint Dimitri in a bad light. I guess they just really feel better puffing their chest by saying "Dimitri BaD and I can't prove that unless I twist words in the actual games to make him actually SOUND BaD!".

This person literally just exists for the sole purpose of harassing Dimitri fans and without the ability to do so would just dry up and die.

I mean, I totally get your frustration towards this kind of behaviour. As far as I understand, Edelstans have been twisting Dimitri's (and anyone who isn't head over heels over their waifu) words to put him in the worst of light for years now… In a way, I'm glad I haven't been active in the fandom until recently, because at least I was able to play the games without anyone souring my opinion on them with their wild takes and toxic behaviour.

And the idea that Dimitri is BaD because he doesn't want to implement rapid reforms will never fail to annoy me.

I'll go off on a tangent here (ish), but bear with me: Around 10,000 BCE, humans started to experiment with farming and agriculture in certain parts of the world first. Which ones? Well, where food was aplenty, meaning that if this farming/agriculture experiment were to fail, they could still hunt or gather food around. Of course, it didn't occur in the span of a few years, but it was still a radical change. And it wouldn't have been possible in places where food was more scarce. And Faerghus faces a somewhat similar problem in that they can't afford to take too many risks like the Empire can. The country is constantly at risk of famine, civil war, the works. If Dimitri makes a mistake, it's over for him (as shown with what happened to his father) and for too many of his subjects.

So of course he has to take a slow but safe approach. Do the Edelstans want him to throw caution to the wind and implement reforms that are not the priority for the people of Faerghus? (Well… if the Kingdom ends up in disarray, it'll be easy picking for the Empire who would then civilise these barbarians /s)

And it's not like we haven't a myriad of real-life examples of how hasty "revolutions" and annexations of countries were utter failures (mind you, I count impoverished and still not independent territories as failures as well, like Puerto Rico or French Guiana).

As for the narrative humiliating him… lol. Wow, Faerghus (a country with meagre resources to begin with) is struggling against the Alliance on the Eastern front after being spread thin due to being invaded from the West by the Empire and the North by Sreng, who would've thunk? And what does it say about Edelgard's army who got yeeted off Leicester in the span of a few battles in Part I and who can't seize Arianrhod because a Crestless general is too competent for her many canon fodders? Not to mention the Alliance was about to win the Gronder field battle until Almyra forced them to retreat. And Dimitri (Sylvain too ofc) caught Claude off guard several times, compelling him to find a way out through brute force. But Dimwitri dumb, Clod clever. Sure.

But that's kind of a problem with these games; there are too few setbacks so it always feels like your army is able to coast through battles with remarkable ease regardless of the route you've chosen.

Now, I've barely (if at all, really) interacted with cherry-blossom-inferno, so I don't know how often they waste their time reading posts about characters they clearly dislike.

But to play the devil's advocate a bit (because, as much as I find their reasoning bonkers, it'd be unfair of me to diss them after reading like… a handful of posts/comments from them without giving them the benefit of the doubt. Hey, look at me pulling a Dimitri "Enlightened Centrist" Alexandre Blaiddyd); maybe they're trying to have a discussion/ (not unhealthy) debate, but they have trouble conveying it? Like, I find it hard to express myself and can come across as blunt or rude sometimes, which is unfortunate for all parties involved. And at least (I know the bar is reaaaaaally low), they don't harass people off social media like a certain toxic pistachio as far as I'm aware? Please do correct me if I'm wrong though! Even as a complete outsider, I'm still angry for the people who got harassed, insulted, etc. by this guy who should know better.

Still, it's fair to be annoyed at cherry-blossom-inferno for butting in discussion just to pull some kind of Akshually.

Ultimately, it's sad that these people can't find better things to do than… this. If I spent half as much time "debating" like they do, I wouldn't have started to learn the flute or read this many books. The world sucks enough as it is, so why waste your time trying to make people feel bad about themselves for having certain tastes instead of doing literally anything else? Write, read, draw, run, make people laugh, play music, sing, help a charity, watch movies, play games, learn a new language… anything!

I really hope one day they'll realise how awful they can be and that they'll try to do better. Starting with apologising to all the people they hurt.

[nikofortuna]

Poem: The End

The disaster inspiring this poem is a plague. It’s much less descriptive of the actual event than it is of the feelings of the author, which as I mentioned before is my character. Additionally at this point everybody engaged in the roleplay event has been planning to start a rebellion against the person who has been causing all of the disasters.

The End

Time and time it happens again,

Disaster strikes and locks us in,

Snow and Flame make heads spin,

Tides and Strain seek to win,

As if living was the greatest sin.

At leisure it takes away our kin,

While supplies too are running thin,

We are left to bury the fallen men.

Is it our fate to perish in this plague?

Or is there a cure so that we may endure?

It spread from high up reaching the sky,

But only grasps at the ones that bow far down below.

Stoking fires-

Burning incense-

Stoking fires to purify the bodies,

Burning incense to cleanse the souls.

So it goes ashes to ashes

And dust to dust.

With death we had many clashes,

Now we have to do what we must,

If only to survive at last.

Starting the analysis with the title this time!

So the title alone already reflects how thoroughly done my character is with the current happenings and it has been gradually radicalizing him with this disaster being the last straw in that regard.

Right at the beginning there is a bit of a recounting of the four previous disasters, how often they are occurring and how many lives are cut short every time. The first and last verse lock in every other verse in this stanza between each other through their rhyme scheme, which illustrates the lockdown the people have been experiencing in some way every disaster. Those are also the most important verses as every other verse except those two could be cut and the core meaning of the stanza would still be preserved.

The whole stanza feels a bit less flowery at least to me, which is supposed to showcase how upset my character as the author is that he speaks so directly and clearly.

The next stanza is a lot more flowery in contrast, in part because it has to be in a sense. Verses three and four clearly allude to the illness originating from the palace but only taking the lives of the citizens. It is just vague enough that my character could plausibly deny that the emperor is meant here and just say he means the Heavens instead.

The rhyme scheme in this stanza is a bit different from what I’ve done so far as the rhyming bits are within the same verse each. There are also two parallels to be found here with the subjects standing directly in opposition to each other in both cases. The first two verses set things up with the cure standing against the plague, which then makes it quite clear that the emperor is standing against the people. This verse set up also uplifts the people since structurally they stand in the same position as the cure.

As always we’ve got my favourite poem structure with another double parallel! Two things of fire with one big and the other small and two aspects of a person that are being made clean with those fires being set alight respectively.

In the last stanza the first half is obvious given that those verses are well known and refer to the death that has occurred again. Meanwhile the second half alludes to the citizens of the Crimson Empire rising up against the emperor, who at best is letting them die without interfering and at worst is the direct cause for all of this death. And with it being the only stanza with an uneven number of verses it signals a clear end.

[forever-a-misfit]

7.15.2023

wow, shit is crazy. 

this is the first time in YEARS that I hop on my laptop & immediately decide to check my tumblr. dont get me wrong, i still have the app on my phone & check it every now & then; but i feel like its not the same experience as it once was when i was younger.

i went through my blog, pictures & hashtags. wow, how i’ve changed. clearly ive grown a lot & continued with my progressive & radical ways hahaha. i was such a baby back then talking about “wild” ideas while everyone continued to soak in their ignorance. basically no one has a chance anymore. you either grow or leave me alone.

anyways.

i’m not here to rant, this post is more for my personal time capsule than it is anything else. i doubt anyone will read this anyways, i just be talking to myself. unfortunately girl, A LOT has changed. just last week one of the worst moments of my life happened. i really lost 1/2 of me.

there are seriously no words for that kinda loss. the funeral’s not till August & i’m terrified of what ill become after that day. the mourning period seems to have passed but i really think im going to break down all over again when that day comes.

idk what else to really say here, but i needed to write something & get it outside of my head for a while. it feels nice to hear those “clickity clacks” from the keyboard hahahaha. i do wish i had the strength to journal it all out but sadly my wrist still be buggin. at least i still have tumblr. man tumblr was really THAT GORL back in the days, i miss her :( i used to come on here to post whatever bullshit i liked, had online mutuals for YEARS & was so young & carefree. now this fucking bag of bricks ripped open over my head, it made me feel the pain that my teenage brain thought it had already experienced.

there’s always the good & the bad to growing up. i’ve finally reached the level of being a woman that i’ve always wanted to. happily single for idk how many years now hahaha. been at my job for 4 going on 5 years (even though that might change soon) but sadly i haven’t gone back to finish school. man i miss college. i also really miss the great friends i met there. i hope theyre doing well. the downside to all of this is: life really smacked the shit outta me recently that nothing i’ve learned & gone through can help me out in this moment. yeah yeah yeah i know i’m strong or whatever, but like????????? 

okay now it’s starting to sound like a rant HAHAHAHAHAHA i be lyyyying

okay okay foreal now. if you managed to read all this thanks. i dont know if anything made sense but as i mentioned before, it’s for me & my digital time capsule. 

also, don’t come at me for not capitalizing certain words/letters, i’m not here for a fucking grade hahahaha if you’ve seen my previous text posts, most aren’t properly typed out anyways. idc

well Phia i hope shit gets better. <3

[ 7.6.19** - 7.5.2023 ] te voy a extranar 

[reggiespoon]

Been pondering recently how to square the supposed personality of Robespierre with the fact of his personal influence. I'm aware Thermidorians have muddied the water here but consider:

Appearance: ordinary. He was physically unimpressive. Leaving aside the vexed issue of pieds-du-roi, he was either of average height or a bit (but not significantly) smaller than average. He was slim, pale, and fair, with light brown hair and green eyes. He wouldn't stand out in any crowd of northern Europeans, then or now.

Oratorical skills: lacking. He wasn't a great speaker, like Danton or Mirabeau. He had a quiet voice which he struggled to project in large spaces, and it was allegedly strongly accented in some way that marked him out as Not Parisian. I wrote a whole other post about Robespierre's accent and I stand by my personal headcanon of Scousepierre because it's hilarious, but regardless, this wasn't a beautiful or powerful or otherwise compelling voice.

Writing: mediocre. This seems unfair, but whilst he has very eloquent passages in his speeches, even McPhee allows that Robespierre often committed the twin autisms of rambling and repeating himself (same, bb ❤️). He wasn't generally witty, pithy, or to-the-point.

Political stance: consistent but not extreme. Clearly something that exasperated his allies and delighted his enemies, for whilst he was a tireless advocate for The People, he refused to cater to either conservative or radical arguments about what The People wanted/deserved. He wasn't a hawk or a demagogue. Thus Thermidorians arguing that he was Too Far Left and Too Far Right simultaneously as justification for murdering him. We don't know which direction he's taking this country, but it's definitely the direction you (dear People) don't like, trust us.

So how did this ordinary-looking, unimpressive-sounding, rather boring man inspire such radical devotion across the entire nation, in large cities and tiny villages, north to south and east to west, when he himself never travelled outside the well-worn route between Paris and Arras, never married, didn't really socialise, and should by all rights have been an anonymous cog in the Revolutionary wheel, unknown in life and forgotten in death?

It can't be simply his honesty and integrity, because frankly if honesty and integrity inspired radical devotion in politics, we'd live in a very different world.

How did someone so fundamentally unassuming come to embody the Revolution for so many? And why did they feel so passionately about someone whom even sympathetic(ish) historians describe as having basically zero charisma?

I think the zero charisma thing is - must be - a legacy of Thermidor.

Nobody loved Robespierre anyway because he was a monster, but even before his monstrosity, he was dull. A boring monster! The worst kind! We have saved you from his tyranny.

I think he actually must have been one of those rare people who have real charisma - in the sense of something divinely-conferred; a quality mysterious and indefinable, divorced from mere personal charm. Nothing we know about the man suggests someone who could attract a large following, and yet his personal influence was disproportionately powerful. Robespierre should, according to all descriptions, have been a non-entity, a footnote in the biographies of others. Instead, he's one of the giants of history.

[nylloth]

You seem like someone who also has a document with theories about Viktor, haha.

Arcane Viktor doesn't have time to think about politics, he clearly despises the elite because no one helped him and he most likely faced scorn (doesn't want to go on stage, he's not expected to). He knows how he is treated. But he wants to help others and that's his main goal. Science! Progress! A utopian world where everyone is helped and everyone lives a better life because of inventions. Regardless of the political side. MH, on the other hand, obsessed with transhumanism. In the diver story, he is quite radical in his methods. In any case, he never tried to fix the cause that harmed Zaun, he always tried to save people or change people without getting into political reasons. You also have to realize that Arcane Viktor was not radical. When he lost Sky he refused to experiment, if it had been MH he would have seen that loss as appropriate for progress. Yes, hurtful, but acceptable. So what will Arcane Viktor do, if there's an void involved….. it's pretty bad. While Viktor may still be driven by the same sense of “helping people” and “changing the world”, the results could be devastating. Radical ways, but he himself doesn't know it's radical.

I have a suspicion that Piltover and Noxus will unite against Viktor. Viktor would be the only one who could influence the so-called “Arcane”. Among the mages there right now, it's just him and LeBlanc. I don't understand what other reason they might have for hiding him so actively. I'll be very surprised if he joins Piltover because he should have a serious fight with Jayce. And Viktor can't reject his ideals or he wouldn't be MH. Also you say “they are loyal to him”, if there is an void here, it's worse! It's much worse, they are all sheep to the wolf. Void affects people. Viktor influences people. Not just as a person, but because of his magic type. My biggest fear is Viktor won't know what he's doing. You see, MH always knew what he was doing. It was his conscious choice. But with Arcane Viktor, it's all “coincidence”. Say, maybe he's just helping people, and somehow Arcane gets activated (let's say not by him) and something starts happening to people. Worst outcome for the character's arc.

arcane, populism, and why viktor is the odd one out (yet again)

as a piltover-anti, a silco criticizer, and a pacifist, i am very very interested in how arcane presents not just the political undertones of both topside and the undercity, but the characters/dialogue through which they communicate those undertones. allow me to use some political science bro lingo to air out some thoughts.

long, long post incoming.

there are 2 ideological struggles at war throughout s1 (and i can predict that the struggle will carry over into s2): neoliberalism and populism - in their broadest terms since we're talking ofc about a fictional show dealing with surface level political machinations. by neoliberalism, i mean a focus on the social, political, and cultural structures of a polity (piltover, for our purposes) refocused into a strictly economic vacuum. and by populism i mean a unifying belief that the existing political systems of a polity fail to adequately represent their constituents, so the masses choose to rally around a specific gripe or issue, i.e., class discrimination, xenophobia toward immigrants, etc. this, in turn, forms a populist party or movement. an applicable example i can think of would be Nasser's Egypt in the 1950s.

*i know these are weighty topics with very real world implications! i just want to separate the theory to apply to our favorite fictional world.

the political struggle in question is put forward immediately by piltover, who, though presented as a technocratic state, embodies crucial neoliberal ideals emphasized especially by up-and-coming counilor mel medarda, much like how fresh-eyed american economists blew up the economic scene in the 1980s with a revival of capitalist, free market enterprise. take how she seizes the advent of hextech, for example:

she quickly sees hextech's potential yet not from the solely intellectual standpoint that jayce and viktor do - for her, it is profitable, literally and in terms of international relations. her goal is for piltover to prosper, but she has no rose-colored glasses on; prosperity means capital gain, and she's willing to override piltover's political and social systems to achieve her goal. an important caveat is that she draws the line at ambessa medarda's progression into militant authoritarianism, which deserves a whole post of its own!

piltover's populism moment will come later. first, let's unpack silco, who is probably arcane's most blatantly political figure, and a masterclass in the merits and failures of left wing, class-based populism.

silco, having been spurned by the classism and xenophobia that piltover's elite proliferate, and assisted by his rampant shimmer operation, fills the vacuum that vander's pacifism opened up. though silco's methods are unilaterally cruel (argue with the wall), the undercity clearly invested faith in him at some point, especially as vander's credibility as a guiding figure wavered over the years. he was fighting alongside vander for zaun's right to exist as their own independent body. in other words, he was uniting the undercity toward a common cause because the existing political system failed their constituents. to quote councilor shoola: "they may not be our preferred constituents, but they're still our people."

the track record of populism in our real world frequently ends in the ruin that silco himself brought upon the undercity. the kingpin is too dedicated to self-preservation, sees himself as too central to the movement, which prevents both compromise and/or a necessary armed revolt (insert your own politics about self-determination here). see italy's right wing populism party, Lega Nord, as a real-time example of this phenomenon.

but arcane makes an interesting plot decision with jayce, a very unexpected and "unwilling" contributor to piltover's abrupt dip into right wing populism. the showrunners love foils!

in arcane lore, i think it's safe to say that jayce's moniker "the man of progress" is pretty tongue-in-cheek. both he and viktor have a bemused tone about it in the run-up to his speech, and jayce is taken aback by heimerdinger's insistence that he deliver said speech. but the glowing, savior-esque imagery can't be ignored, nor can jayce's quick switch into his councilor role, no matter how reluctantly he makes it.

jayce is confronted by 2 forces that he seeks to combat in his quick tenure as councilor: internal corruption and an ineffective governing body. the latter goal is inspired almost solely by viktor, playing into jayce's naivety as a fresh-faced political figure, but this will be especially important to note later on. the innocence he offers up to mel is quickly erased, transformed instead into an uncomfortable - and inexperienced - militancy:

important in the bridge scene to my analysis is the populist "out group," or the designation populists give to those whom they actively oppose, and this opposition serves as their basis for organization. in this case, it's the undercity (keep this in mind for viktor's role!!).

jayce's combined frustrations at the unrest in the undercity and the council's (namely heimerdinger's) refusal to act, to both save viktor and to deal with the undercity's looming violence, motivates him to act like silco for a short time. unsatisfied with the status quo, he unites a likeminded individual, vi, along with the enforcers, to undercut the political system he feels is unable to represent its constituents or act in an effective manner. however, UNLIKE silco, jayce's realizes the inevitable cost the method of violence has and refrains in the end. he returns to the council and capitulates to some of silco's demands in the name of a peace piltover and zaun always thought impossible.

jinx's complete undoing of this underscores the failures of populism, especially as an extended movement over time. she wasn't accounted for. it's common sentiment at this point that she didn't attack the council for political gain. she was not invested in zaun's independence. she did it out of her and silco's twisted parental bond, and thus undid piltover's brief instance of compromise and compassion.

so...where does viktor fit into all this? and what are his implications for neoliberalism vs. populism in season 2?

viktor is neither wholly within nor wholly outside the populist outgroup - though jayce unintentionally shoves him back there in the pivotal bridge scene. furthermore, viktor also makes use of piltover's technocracy. he seems to have had a "raise yourself up by your bootstraps" history in arcane, contrary to left wing populist insistence that neoliberal ideals make this impossible.

this compounds as a double alienation for viktor, who also is straddled with the complications of his disability. a lot of his story is searching for a fellow in arms, if you ask me, and he had that with jayce until the pendulum swung, hence his return to singed.

if we stop there, viktor represents the failing of these 2 very flawed political ideologies. he fits nowhere and arcane uses him adeptly as a symbol of the failings of binaristic ideologues and systems. but let's speculate some more!

i'm convinced that viktor, due to his ambiguous 3rd party role in the story so far, will be one of the central villains (if not THE villain, if you allow me to be admittedly hopeful/biased) in season 2. consult the innumerable very well written theory/meta posts about the subject for more details, but one piece of evidence i want to focus on is this inherent physical, cultural, and ideological separateness that is innate to his character.

can we see him allying ever again with piltover, knowing that there's a split incoming? even without outside knowledge of league lore, singed's damning prediction ("if you take this path, they will despise you") cannot go unheeded. alternatively, then, can we see viktor allying with the supposed jinx-as-revolutionary side? no. personally, i see him as becoming increasingly unwillingly to compromise his a) immediate survival; and b) his ideals, especially after being endlessly sidelined in his attempts to express them in acts 2 and 3. he's also just a loner, guys.

there's some controversy on this point, but i'm convinced that the finger-printed cultists/followers we saw in the s2 trailer are devoted to viktor. starting with the shimmer addict he touched in the teaser, he is accruing a following all his own. and since noxus is here, touting their authoritarian militancy to replace piltover's outdated liberal ideals, nothing that jinx's revolution OR viktor's following does can be apolitical. to organize and to fight is survival under s2's raised stakes.

there aren't any binary spectrums when it comes to political theory in my opinion, so i am prepared to witness viktor introduce an entirely separate totalitarian narrative into arcane. where it will surely lack in militancy, it will make up for in its domination of the arcane. my biggest speculation is that, as they always do, piltover will fold and compromise at the last minute, perhaps yield to noxus, and invest wholeheartedly in taking down viktor's BBEG cultist regime. and by isolating his narrative repeatedly in s1, the writers planned this out expertly.

even if i'm wrong about viktor as third party, i like to think my observations still stand about the specific and qualifiable political divisions between piltover and zaun. the biggest hole this leaves for me is the question: will arcane ever take a stand? they seem very averse to making a blatant political statement, but i think their pervasive anti-police thread makes it clear that we're not meant to sympathize with piltover yuppies or their seasoned, jaded councilmen. let me know your thoughts!

also, as a jayce fan and a fan of arcane's overall story, none of this is meant as a CRITIQUE of him, mel, or silco. as silco said, "we all have our parts to play." i believe arcane's very greatest strength is their archetypal storytelling, and these distinct character roles are crucial to the success and vibrancy of the story.

if you read all the way to this point - ily <3

[eyecicles]

I don't know if you've already answered this but: I think we all agree that Kira's ideology is flawed but can you please highlight the reasons for it being so? (Apart from the obvious one being: killing people is wrong.)

I have lots of thoughts on this, but one thing that makes this a bit difficult to answer is that Death Note isn't realistic enough in some regards. I very much doubt that Light's actions would, for example, really be that effective as they tell us in the story. And that's okay, because it's not a scientific study or anything close to it.

So in the story, the main problems are moral ones. Not just because “killing people is wrong”, but also because Light acts as an absolute global authority—whether people want him to do that or not. Certainly no one asked him to do that. Those are the points clearly communicated by the narrative.

Beyond that, and what doesn't seem to matter in the story, are problems such as:

1) Light spends too little time thinking about why humans commit crimes.

What he says here is obviously extremely simplistic and fails to consider, well, everything that makes people act "evil". This brushes the huge role society plays in the most vague manner I can imagine, haha.

You can, of course, never hope to learn how to fix an issue if you don't even try to locate the source, the root of it. That's why scientific research, empirical evidence and learning from history is so vital in the real world. People have tried to simply brand certain groups of people as evil and tried to get rid of them—for various reasons—for centuries, and not only weren't we ever successful, this sort of thinking is what got us the worst atrocities.

2) Light never seems to consider the fact that all countries have different definitions of certain types of crimes and how they get reported. This is one of the reasons certain countries seem to have an especially large issue with one or several types of crimes, even though those crimes in question aren't necessarily committed at a higher rate than on average. If he truly wanted to know for sure if the person he killed is, in his eyes, evil, he would have a lot of studying to do. Similarly, he realistically would have a hard time finding the names and faces of people he wants to kill in certain countries. To be fair, this issue is never addressed, so we don't actually know what Light thinks about this. Or if he cares at all, if his actions still have the desired effect.

3) What about people who got wrongly accused or framed? That’s an issue every criminal justice system has to deal with, but it would still have been nice if we had seen Light give this some thought. He aims to do better than the criminal justice system, after all. (But I suppose he mainly just wants to be more radical.)

4) How exactly would he guarantee that everything he’s done isn’t undone pretty much as soon as he’s dead? Even if he had been able to choose a successor who perfectly executes his wishes, for how long would that there have to be perfect successors? Similarly, what would happen if the Death Note got destroyed? It’s possible that Light had something in mind and that we just don’t know, but it’s still a fact that a system that relies so much on one instrument—the Death Note—which can be destroyed, is very shaky. Enduring social changes takes a lot of group effort. But at least he recognises that people as a whole need to rethink how to deal with “evil” people, so he knows it’s not just on him. He even counts on people coming around to support and help him, as soon as they see how he makes the world a better place, allegedly.

5) If “evil only gives birth to evil” is true, what does Light want to do about people who do evil things that are perfectly legal? Now I know that Death Note touches on this, but there are thousands of ways in which you can indirectly hurt people or even get them killed with your actions. And ironically enough, people who do that knowingly but legally harm society in a much larger way than those criminals Light kills. It kind of comes down to my first point though, because while Light has contempt for people who get rich of the suffering of others, he never questions what allows those people who act like that in the first place.

Still, besides all that, we can’t deny that Light’s plan work out pretty much how he intended. I’m sure some finer details don’t matter much to him, since to him the ends justify the means. He just needs to kill enough bad guys in as many places as possible to change the world, basically. And Death Note isn’t a political story, so I do get why they haven’t touched upon certain issues.

It’s also very possible that Light, after getting officially recognised as an authority worldwide, would have worked with world leaders to get to the, uh, bureaucratic side of his plans. In any case, terrorising the world until enough countries accept him and his new order is something he almost achieved.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Is It Really That Bad?

The 90s were alternately an amazing time for comedies and an absolute wasteland of garbage best forgotten. Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler both rose to prominence during this era, and both thrived in their niches, delivering some of the most well-liked movies of their careers. But it was still the 90s, and the ugly side of comedy of the time was always ready to rear its ugly head. For instance, in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, we have the infamously transphobic finale, the joke the entire film has been building up to and is so shockingly bigoted you’d think it was written by J.K. Rowling. But bad comedies were just like that back then, and even good comedies could fall victim to it.

We’re not talking about a good comedy gone bad, though. We’re here to talk about a film with a solid  1 on Metacritic and that obliterated the careers of its two leads: Bio-Dome.

At one point, it was supposed to be a much more serious film about slackers being trapped and forced to survive in the titular structure, but you know how studio executives can be, and so the film was transformed into a totally radical 90s slacker grossout comedy filled with sex jokes, farts, and other tasteless humor. There are also rumors going around that this was originally supposed to be the third Bill and Ted adventure, but those are just rumors, albeit ones that you can see how one would believe considering how this film rips off that dynamic duo while cranking their idiocy and homoeroticism up to 11.

Whatever the case, what we got was absolutely torn apart by critics, and ensured Pauly Shore would never rise above doing anything more than direct-to-video garbage for the rest of his career, and turned Stephen Baldwin into the black sheep of the nepo baby dynasty that is the Baldwins, ruining his career which then led to him becoming a born again evangelical Christian whose daughter married Justin Bieber (which is still a massive W compared to inspiring GamerGate or actually murdering someone). It’s also the film that Weird Al decided to use to describe the miserable plane trip in his song “Albuquerque,” and the way he refers to it makes it clear the film is worse than the plane exploding in the second worse aviation accident to happen over New Mexico in fiction.

(This one being the worst, obviously).

But hey, maybe the critics were just being too harsh to this dumb comedy that was clearly meant to be enjoyed by stoners. With my tray table up and my seat back in the full upright position, I strapped on in and took a look at Bio-Dome to see if this comedy has a few laughs in it, or if it really is that bad after all.

THE GOOD

Well… The soundtrack is pretty good. They’ve got a lot of solid tracks on it, and Tenacious D actually briefly shows up for a cameo. It lasts maybe three seconds, but it might be the best three seconds in the movie.

There’s also a montage set to “The Safety Dance” near the end of the movie, and it might be the single genuinely funny sequence the film has to offer. I thought a few of the gags in it were pretty good, and it’s the only time the protagonist's goofy idiocy felt charming instead of revolting. And then it leads into the climax of the films, which is actually decent because there are actual stakes instead of random vignettes of these idiots dicking around. Sure, it’s decent by the standards of the rest of the movie, but credit where credit is due.

Finally, William “Walter Peck” Atherton plays a character named Dr. Faulkner, a guy who absolutely fucking hates Bud and Doyle, and thus he becomes the most sympathetic character in the entire film. You will be begging him to kill these two morons by the end. It helps that Atherton is the only person in the entire movie who is actually trying to act.

Yeah, that’s it. Time to shift into Hater Mode.

THE BAD

The fact the entire movie hinges on these two idiots is a joke, and not a particularly funny one a that.

The 90s was littered with all manner of idiot duos, most famously with Dumb & Dumber, but Bud and Doyle are easily the nadir of such characters. The big issue is they are not merely lethally stupid to the point they fuck up a massive science experiment—no, they are horribly unpleasant people. They bumble their way through the titular bio-dome, ruining the work of the scientists at every turn, but that’s not even the real problem. No, the problem is that despite having two girlfriends they supposedly adore, they not only constantly flirt with the women scientists in the dome, and even worse they crawl into their beds while they’re sleeping and start feeling them up. Ah, the 90s, where you could have your protagonists sexually assault a woman and still expect people to sympathize them while playing the violation off for laughs! Ah, but it’s okay, because they feel really bad about it, guys.

Aside from that vileness, the jokes are just as juvenile and pathetic as you can imagine they’d be. You have fart jokes, pee jokes, sex jokes, Baldwin eating Shore’s toenails… Stuff like this has its place and can be funny, but this is really the only humor the movie has. There isn’t more clever than some lame fart a stoner can laugh at while high off their ass.

And maybe this could be forgivable if anyone was actually fucking trying. There are two types of bad acting in this movie: hammy, camera-mugging idiocy (our two leads) and bland, wooden delivery (the female scientists). No one in this film seems like they cared at all, and honestly, it’s not hard to see why. What is there to even give a shit about? Out of the two leads I do think Shore is probably the “better” of the two, but this is better in the sense that being kicked in the balls is better than being shot in the back of the head execution style

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Look, I went into this with an open mind. You all know I’m not above enjoying some nasty, trashy comedies; two of my all-time favorite films are Freddy Got Fingered and Little Nicky, the former film especially being one I hold in high regard. But… No, this one legitimately is as bad as it’s made out to be. Weird Al must be thanking his lucky stars that plane exploded over Albuquerque so he didn’t have to sit through the rest of the movie.

Like, in the movies I mentioned, there’s at least something to latch onto. Freddy Got Fingered is essentially the greatest troll in history, with Tom Green blowing a studio’s money to make the most bogus gross-out comedy ever, and in some bizarre ways it has some artistic merit. And with Little Nicky, there’s some entertaining villains, decent jokes here and there, and just a slew of memetic lines. Bio-Dome has absolutely nothing like that; it’s just two obnoxious, unpleasant characters being played by actors who definitely can’t salvage the material delivering the stupidest gags and jokes imaginable for an hour and a half. This really is the most bottom of the barrel lowest common denominator garbage you could scrape up.

Even still, I can’t particularly say it’s the absolute worst comedy I’ve ever seen, mainly because there wasn’t much expectations it would be good. It stars Pauly fucking Shore, the only guy from Encino Man who will probably never win an Oscar as long as he lives, it being dogshit was expected compared to something like The Love Guru or even The Master of Disguise. Those films starred genuinely talented comedians, while this movie just didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, this is still one of the worst comedies ever made, but it really was something I expected would suck even if I really hoped it wouldn’t.

I honestly don’t know how this managed a 4.4 on IMDB; I get there are some lunatics who actually love this movie, but there can’t be enough to pull this out of the bottom 100 gutter, can there be? It shouldn’t have higher than a 2.5, and that’s just being generous because there is nothing about this film that is so good enough that it deserves higher. 

But that’s also the thing: As bad as it is, it is utterly unremarkable. It’s just the epitome of bad 90s comedy, and while it is the worst among that crowd, it doesn’t really stand out in any notable way other than sucking really hard. This is a film bad in the most generic ways possible, and I think that’s part of why it has fallen to the wayside in terms of “worst movies of all time” lists these days. Like does it deserve to be there? Sure, but there’s just a lot more vile and offensive comedies than this to pick from. This is just a generic bad comedy at the end of the day.

If you want to see the concept done right, and shorter to boot, just watch the episode of Johnny Bravo entitled “Biosphere Johnny,” which is a parody of this film and does every single thing this movie tried to do and better, proving once and for all Johnny is a true Chad.