#the don't-gooder

[hussyknee]

I'm really not a villain enjoyer. I love anti-heroes and anti-villains. But I can't see fictional evil separate from real evil. As in not that enjoying dark fiction means you condone it, but that all fiction holds up some kind of mirror to the world as it is. Killing innocent people doesn't make you an iconic lesbian girlboss it just makes you part of the mundane and stultifying black rot of the universe.

"But characters struggling with honour and goodness and the egoism of being good are so boring." Cool well some of us actually struggle with that stuff on the daily because being a good person is complicated and harder than being an edgelord.

Sure you can use fiction to explore the darkness of human nature and learn empathy, but the world doesn't actually suffer from a deficit of empathy for powerful and privileged people who do heinous stuff. You could literally kill a thousand babies in broad daylight and they'll find a way to blame your childhood trauma for it as long as you're white, cisgender, abled and attractive, and you'll be their poor little meow meow by the end of the week. Don't act like you're advocating for Quasimodo when you're just making Elon Musk hot, smart and gay.

[tswwwit]

I feel like if Dipper were ever reincarnated as a demon, he wouldn't fit in super well with the others. Yes, he's been raised to vie for power and step on everyone in his way using whatever means is necessary - it's the same toxic bizz as when he was a human, appealing to gender norms. He's tougher, scarier, more powerful (than ordinary humans, that is), but when it comes to asserting control - being Evil - he doesn't have it in him. Given enough time, I think he'd grow pretty vocal about leaving living things alone. NOT torturing organisms for the hell of it, or stealing people's souls, or conquering planets. Sure, he's a demon. That's no excuse to be a MONSTER.

It's a VERY unpopular opinion amongst neighboring demons, and rumor spreads fast about the Goody Two-Shoed Activist imp raining on everyone's blood-splattered parade, so much so that it makes it to Bill, who's immediately intrigued. Call it intuition, but only one soul's capable of overriding goddamn demon nature for some preachy bullshit about "Doing Good." Lucky for him, demons occupy the same plane of existence, so all it really takes to verify the guy is a snap of his fingers, and POOF! He's floating right next to him. Sure enough, Dipper's fashioned himself a new and improved demonic form, and it is lovely!

No one likes Dipper's kumbaya "Can't We All Just Get Along" ideology, but Bill's almost instantly smitten with the guy, whoever he is, so he's gotta be at least somewhat powerful. Demons take notice when the all-powerful Bill Cipher starts lending his time (and magic?) to some low-leveler like Dipper. Is he being blackmailed? Are they working together? No. Not possible. Bill doesn't "work" with anyone, save for whatever human catches his eye every few decades. Doesn't look to be doing him any benefit, either. The opposite, even. Lending power to a saint like Dipper only makes it harder to cause chaos, after all. Why would he actively go against his OWN best interest to cater some imp's? It's almost like he's. He's.

A henchmen.

(Bill's also 30% more affectionate the first month they reunite, because he still can't believe that his adorable little human husband came back as the same SPECIES as him! He'd never complain over having a sweet human to squeeze, but one with teeth and claws and cute pointy ears doesn't hurt).

[lunarharp]

thingies

[when-did-this-become-difficult]

im getting dangerously pepe silvia about this ship

[yakketymax]

I can finally pull the curtain off of something I've been working on for the last few months! Teacher's Pet is my concept for an action thriller video game centered around the rescue of seven living puppets from their now crumbling studio (and from an entity far more dangerous than a broken down building...) You (the player) seem to be the only person to have any memory of these characters from a children's game you used to play about going to school and making friends and learning your numbers and such, but when the only thing you can seem to uncover about the vague memory is a cartoon based on it that never got off the ground, you take it upon yourself to visit the half finished address listed before you and investigate what might have happened.

It's here that you meet the one you remember as the teacher character, Eugene Igneous. He needs your help!

And he needs it now.

All art (excluding the logo) and character designs (excluding Eugene) were done by @sylviesparks !!

[thesporkidentity]

I am. So tired

my cat is STILL sick and won't even SNIFF her favorite treats like fresh scrambled egg and ping pongs between needing to crawl inside my ribcage and needing nothing to touch her at all, and nothing the vet does ever seems to help her with eating or her GI issues but if she's not eating still by tomorrow morning they said call them again. the only reason she's not still vomiting and diarrhea-ing blood is that there's nothing left to come out because she's NOT EATING. and meanwhile I'm ALSO still sick and taken my maximum doses of everything for the day and I'm STILL in pain and my eyes won't focus and I can't concentrate from sentence to sentence but I still have to coordinate biopsies and surgery referrals for myself on top of my other existing chronic illnesses and honestly I thought I'd managed to beat back the suicidal ideation, I've only had a few instances at the worst times since 2014, and yet HERE WE ARE AGAIN because technically none of these problems would exist if I were just. Dead. Being dead would be so relaxing. I would like to die. And I just would like to get a fucking break. Just a single fucking break for me or the creatures I'm responsible for because I can't deal with ALL of us being sick at the same time, and literally NO ONE CAN HELP ME because she hates every other living human except me so I can't even ask anyone else to feed her while I'm laying down because she won't even TRY to eat for anyone else

[swindlefingrs]

i really like thinking about how Carrik and Shadowheart settle down for a spell in Reithwin near Halsin. there's enough that needs doing so it keeps the three of them plenty busy. Shadowheart gets to be around all those animals, Carrik is there to re-establish Selunites, Halsin is tending to his sanctuary and seeing Carrik as often as he can

and then Shadowheart and Halsin begin to fall for each other and Carrik could not be happier about it

[avalonships]

Do they match eachothers freak

[fullmetal-scar-simping]

It's funny when someone responds to you claiming you're just repeating their point, meanwhile they missed the part where I talked about them failing to grasp that being upset about the Nazi association to Amestris while saying all fascism is bad and that the Nazi association means people have "misunderstood" the moral of fma and thus "proves Arakawa's" point is attributing ignorance to the critics while falsely claiming Arakawa's work as consistently anti-military (it absolutely isn't).

But I shouldn't be surprised.

[whitestopper]

Looking back, there's a really delicious karma in BBC leaning into the Chuu as the lovable do-gooder image to draw in the public, only to have it blow up in their face when no one took their claims seriously.

[bitchy-peachy]

Witchy talk:

Being a left-hand path witch doesn't mean I'm incapable or unwilling to help others, including strangers. I will bless those who helped me with eternal gratitude so all their future endeavors will be smoother.

[autisticbee]

haven't dan vs posted in a hot minute but I just wanna say I do think dan has the potential to grow as a person & in my mind he does at least somewhat

[tgammsideblog]

Tgamm S1 Ep 12-B ¨The Don’t Gooder¨ episode analysis

Molly notices that Andrea is stealing her credit for the acts of service she does, at first Molly tries ignoring it but eventually it gets over her head when Brighton school comes up with a charity competition...

Episode writer: Cynthia Furey

¨The Don’t Gooder¨ is an episode a bit hard to talk about because it has one more than lesson one can get out of it and it has an interesting development for the main characters. Much like ¨Mazel Tov, Libby!¨ and ¨Monumental Disaster¨ this episode tackles some complex topics for the demographic it is intended to.

For starters, the most clear lesson here is about helping your community for the sake helping others and making the world a better place. As Pete puts it, that itself its own reward. This theme is represented in both ways with Molly and Andrea. With Andrea she represents people in social media of this new era that do what it is usually called ¨performative activism¨, that is that they pretend to care about a cause but in reality they don’t care about the social issues they are claim to be helping with. Sometimes this done for the sake of gaining attention or commiting fraud. In the episode, Andrea does this to gain attention from her followers and specially to impress her parents, who rarely pay attention to her.

In Molly’s case, she cares about the issues she is helping with and she wants to make the world a better place. However, the issue comes when she lets jealousy get the best of her and she starts to get too competitive with Andrea. She believes that Andrea cheated in the school competition and gets obsessed with proving to others that Andrea is a ¨Don’t Gooder¨. She tries breaking in the Davenport’s house to find some proof of her ¨rival¨ cheating. So, it isn’t longer about helping others for the sake of doing good, it turns into who can win and jealousy for a trophy. At first it’s easy to understand why she gets angry since Andrea is stealing credit that should go to her, but over time Molly gets carried away and shows a wilder side of her much like she did in ¨Ready, Set, Snow!¨ Near the end of the episode she reconsiders her actions and stops trying to expose Andrea since winning isn’t longer important for Molly.

The episode concludes with this lesson that doing activism or charity should be done with the intention of helping others rather than turning it into a competition or who gets the most credit out of it, something that it’s relevant for our generation.

The second theme would be when we let justice be turned into a quest for revenge, which is what Molly does when she tries exposing Andrea for ¨cheating¨ in the school fundraising. It’s quite interesting the way it is executed because Scratch is the one who encourages Molly to get back at Andrea at first but later he regrets it after seeing how everything gets out of control. It’s one of those scenarios that show that Scratch isn’t always a good influence on Molly and he can encourage some of her worst behaviour. His role in this episode is pretty good, seeing the exchanges he has with Molly, leading her to ¨teach Andrea a lesson¨. This characterization of his comes from him being protective of Molly and disliking when other people try taking advantage of her. This leads him to get more angry than Molly probably does, at least before Molly comes up with her plan.

When Molly is about to show everyone that Andrea bought the bar nuggets instead of selling them, she picks up that the reason Andrea was doing this was because her parents don’t give her the emotional attention she needs. This makes Molly feel sorry and decides to lie to cover up for Andrea, a gesture that she herself appreciates. And it’s a rather unique way of ending the conflict considering Andrea doesn’t get fully exposed. I would argue that it is a good ending because it fits with the themes of the story and it’s mostly in character for Molly to sympathize with even with people she doesn’t like. Although it isn’t the conclusion some would prefer, it does makes sense both for narrative and characters.

The third lesson a person can get away from ¨The Don’t Gooder¨ is how we sometimes overlook things we have by paying attention to what other people have. Molly mentions a few times how ¨Andrea has everything she wants¨ but near the end she learns that Andrea has neglectful parents who aren’t there for her and Molly appreciates that Sharon and Pete are loving parents who don’t act that way. This ¨reveal¨ (which was explored in ¨Saving Christmas previously) explains Andrea’s overall behaviour. Why she is always trying to get attention in social media, why she doesn’t pick up social cues and doesn’t appear to have real life friends or genuine friends. Her parents aren’t there for her, which makes her trying to find that attention somewhere else, in this case being social media. One complain i have is that the ¨reveal¨ in this episode feels rushed. It only last 10 seconds and it doesn’t get more time to get explored. It doesn’t let the viewer to process the information fast enough to get what is happening.

On last point, the song sequence for this episode is nice. It’s better than the previous segment, ¨Game Night¨. While it’s not amazing, it works just fine for the scene it is playing in. The whole sequence involves Molly selling the nugget bars and showing how Andrea does nothing to sell them. There are some funny moment of Scratch sabotaging Andrea’s to help Molly to win.

In conclusion: ¨The Don’t Gooder¨ is an episode that does well at developing the main characters in different ways, it teaches some good lessons and it has unique ending that fits with the story. I like how one can take away more than one thing out of it and it was nice to see Andrea getting a deeper exploration to her motives and her behaviour. It’s pretty solid.

[wild-at-mind]

God help me...is the good leftist meant to like AI or not now?

[shrozie]

[thesporkidentity]

mostly good news, qualified

okay, we finally got all my lady's meds (transdermal thank god, she literally will not take oral meds, and i have EXPERIENCE giving oral meds she just would rather die than swallow them). she finally started eating again after a little over 3 days without food, even if she is still being picky about it, and she hasn't thrown up or pooped any more blood after around 12 hours after the first meds. i'm still having to clean her, but less often and she's significantly less smelly which was making both of us unhappy. (waterless foam that doesn't require rinsing, my beloved, i wish you'd existed 15 years ago when the orange monster had his last few years)

so yeah. touch and go for a bit there, but i think she's turned the corner and is stabilizing. the meds are...hoo boy expensive...but cat expenses are one thing i'm willing to ask my parents for help on, and they are willing to give that help, so it's still within our means.

there are two prospective prognoses, but the vet says as long as the current treatment is working it's not worth the $3-4k in testing fees to get into the nitty gritty since the first-line treatment is the same. she says she's seen similar problems/severity in cats of this age and the timeline to live with it is between 6 months and 2 years, so there is a time limit, but it's not definitely immediate. so we just hope that since she's responding well to treatment that we get closer to the 2 years. 15 years is still too soon, but it'll be 5 more than i got with special k, so i'll be grateful for them

still kinda want to kill myself a bit, but allowing myself to acknowledge it rather than pretend it wasn't there helped a bit, and a few full nights of sleep will help as well because it's been a rough few months