#the man from utopia

[universaldoubts]

_ZAPPA_ on tape!

[moongothic]

We all know how a lot of Luffy's opponents have been in some ways premonitions of the type of person Luffy could end up as if something went wrong in his life. For example Moria is what Luffy could've become had he truly lost his entire crew at Sabaody if Kuma had not saved them

And we know Crocodile is what Luffy maybe could've become had Luffy given up on his dreams and become jaded after losing to him. But like, when you think about it, that's not the only dark reflection of Luffy in Crocodile, is it

'Cause Crocodile, despite employing people for Baroque Works, did not trust anyone around him and did not considder anyone to be anything else but an employee to him. And we know he had been planning on taking over Alabasta for like 14 years (at the very least), BW being a thing for only the past four (pre-timeskip)

So like. Did Crocodile spend the last 14 years alone

Like yes he had his workers at the Casino and Robin etc, so he was like, around people, he wasn't like Brook who was in Total Isolation. But on an emotional level, has he not spent the last 14 years all by himself, completely detached from anyone, unable to trust or rely on anyone else?

That is sad as fucking shit, holy hell

'Cause then you compare him to like Luffy and like

Our sweet baby boy was so afraid of being alone that Luffy literally went through hell just to gain Ace's approval despite Ace trying to signal to him he wasn't interested befriending him

And through out the whole series Luffy reiterates time and time again how he needs and wants his friends around because he literally can't live without them, both on a literal "he can't cook or navigate or have fun by himself" level but also on that emotional level

And Crocodile just. Spent 14 years of his life, if not longer, alone.

Sweet jesus what happened to this man

And that just makes me further wonder, what the absolute fuck were Crocodile's Rookie Pirate days like?? Like did he have a crew or was he just yolo'ing it by himself???

Like. Mihawk's never been on a crew as far as we know. Kuma was a Revolutionary, not a pirate, but he wasn't like alone still. Doflaming, Hancock, Jinbei and Moria however have/had crews of their own. So what was Crocodile's deal? Did he have a crew before? Was he a captain or was he on someone else's ship? (Although surely the Government wouldn't offer the position of a Shichibukai to a cabin boy or the first mate, right)

And if he did have a crew, the hell happened to them??

Like we know Crocodile got his ass kicked by Whitebeard, I just find it unlikely Whitebeard would've pulled a Kaidou on Crocodile's crew and slaughtered them, that's not a very Whitebeard-y thing do, right?? ...Unless Whitebeard was just different 20+ years ago and was willing to annihilate entire crews. We don't know. Or maybe Crocodile and his entire crew were like Turbo Rotten from the beginning and Whitebeard figured they deserved to get wiped out, much like how we saw Shanks wipe out Kid's crew at Elbaf. Or maybe Whitebeard saw no reason to have mercy on someone affiliated with the World Government.

That all said, if we wanted to assume Crocodile had somekind of trauma that lead to him viewing people not only as disposable but also untrustworthy, then maybe losing people dear to him like that wouldn't lead to that mindset. Like Moria witnessed his beloved crew die and that caused him to want to create a crew he couldn't die, so he wouldn't go through that emotional trauma again.

Which leaves me to wonder. If something caused him to lose his ability to (emotionally) trust people, and if Whitebeard broke his dreams... Maybe Crocodile had a crew. And maybe they abandoned him when he lost to Whitebeard. Figuring they didn't need a weak captain who was probably going to bleed to death anyways. Or maybe the crew tried to take his head (after Whitebeard kicked his ass), after all, he was already a Shichibukai, anybody who took Crocodile's head could maybe attempt to take that title for themselves if the Government allowed it, and if not, at least gain more fame for themselves.

Either of these scenarios would certainly result in you losing your ability to rely on others. And leave you willing to spend the rest of your life alone. Who would have in them to go through that again.

Or maybe he came out of the womb unable to trust people and he was just yolo'ing it by himself like Mihawk right from the begining, who knows

Regardless I'm just

[vorakh]

sorry disco elysium you will always be a queen in my heart but you made me want to get better, while pathologic gave me at least one mental illness ):

[storywestistrash]

i am actually so tired of the way westerners treat eastern europeans

[ainecdote]

i'm still SO fucking pissed about JACOB ELORDI being cast as heathcliff. like the didicoy is jumping out but also the whitewashing of specifically romani roles has been irritating me like no other recently. on a related note we should kill robert downey jr.

[fideidefenswhore]

Sorry for bothering you but I would like to know ,what is your interpretation of Elizabeth ,Edward and Mary’s relantionship? I heard a lot of stuff and I wanna know your opinion

Also ,the quote about you picking Anne for a girl’s night ,in which book it is ?

Aaah, errrm...again, I might update this in more detail later, because I have a lot of thoughts on this. (He said, before going Full Meta Pretentious)

And you are never bothering me. Sometimes I have spoons, and sometimes I don't.

Broad strokes:

Mary had conditional affection for her siblings so long as she did not see them as a threat, and so long as they were not significantly empowered. So, this is why she seems to have had more tenderness towards Edward while he was Prince rather than King, why she seems to have not had affection for Elizabeth until she was disempowered in 1536 (and then, lost it, once Elizabeth was her own heir and very beloved by the people).

She was also holding, as one of the Acts during her reign makes clear, the belief that they were bastards, and she was not. So she always felt an inherent superiority towards them that's underlying the affection...it's a sort of patronizing affection, really. It's not less authentic for being so, just more complex. There's also the likelihood that this has been nurtured by her faction, who seems to have held a long bitterness towards the memory of AB in the existence of Elizabeth, to the literal death-- among Margaret Pole's last words were an exhortation for those in attendance to her execution to pray for the lives and souls of the King, Prince Edward, and Princess Mary...Elizabeth was omitted. Did she believe she was not the King's daughter, or was this an implication that Edward & Mary were the only 'legitimate' children? Had Fitzroy been alive during this time, we could maybe better understand her intent behind this, had he been omitted as well, unfortunately we don't know.

Edward believed himself superior to both his sisters, but seems to have been more patronizing towards Mary, despite being the younger, even before becoming King. There's not an equivalent letter about Elizabeth to the one he wrote about Mary, where he's scolding her for dancing so much and such. But, he's in-waiting to becoming the most important man in the kingdom (arguably, he is that, as his father is the past, and he's the future), and has been told that it's his place to be the moral standard and instruct his future subjects. This is all part and parcel of that, although one wonders if there's some insecurity underlying all this, because Edward was very intelligent, and he wouldn't have been unaware that much of Catholic Europe believed Mary was legitimate.

Elizabeth he's closer to in age, Elizabeth he's brought up with, Elizabeth he's educated alongside. Elizabeth was always more conformable than Mary, and seems to have genuinely revered him both as Prince and as King. So, Edward's affection for Elizabeth was probably less complex than his for Mary (which turned mainly to resentment). On the other hand, he did eventually write her out of the succession, which is where the superiority comes in (although we don't know if he would have done so in any context...had Elizabeth married a Protestant, had Elizabeth had a/ child/ren by 1553-- specifically and 'better', a son-- I think it's entirely plausible he would have made her, at the least, regent to her child in his will).

Onto Elizabeth...Elizabeth believed herself Mary's superior insofar as intellect, and perhaps even her equal or better, insofar as birth. She might have believed that by the terms of her father's Succession Act (one condition of which was, Mary would maintain the Henrician settlement insofar as the Anglican Church-- something Mary reversed), she was entitled to the throne. Mary was both her persecutor and savior: she arrested her, but she also released her. She then tried to place many conditions upon her freedom, including marriage to men of Mary and Philip's choice, not Elizabeth's. Ultimately, she did not disinherit her, and Elizabeth's transfer to power was as smooth as it was, in large part, because Mary relented and maintained her as heir.

They were also all (although not equally) bonded through being motherless, and being completely orphaned at the same time, also, although at very different stages in their lives. Mary is the only one that truly had any memory of her own mother, was this something they envied? Edward was the only one that truly had the memory of his mother openly honored and revered, was this something his sisters envied? For Elizabeth and Edward, it's another bonding point, although probably not ever one made explicit, or actually discussed: they're off-center, they are only half of what they 'should' or 'would' have been, because half of what made them is no longer there. Did they have this sense that neither could escape, of an absent filial imprint, of the palimpsest of what was there before, desperately searching fresh ink? Of absent or unfulfilled identity, of absent maternal protection?

What do you do when your father is your god? How do you comprehend your world when he's not there anymore?

|

That's from an interview of both Julia Fox & John Guy, about their dually authored book, Hunting the Falcon. The quote is about AB, although personally if I said it, it would apply to Anne of Cleves, as well.

[roorowling]

Hoy presentamos: Cerezas extra grandes 🍒✨

Bueno…al fin estoy retomando la confianza para dibujar…si no me da una embolia. Aun debo muchas cosas, así que poco a poco espero volver por aquí y seguir con todo lo pendiente.

La pregunta es: Porque el bra de Roo es antibalas? Porqué Frost esta en el piso? Porque me da flojera traducir esto? XD nunca lo sabremos…

A parte…mama coneja pertenece a un juego…y su creador tiene un estilo…curioso xd

El juego se llama: The man from the window

O el mañoso de la ventana…

Estará ese mañoso espiando a Roo y a Frost? Hmmmmmmm

[let-them-fight]

nothing has ever itched my brain harder than when super eyepatch wolf used music from u m a m i’s interface during what the Internet did to garfield

[raylangivins]

i actually never want a stripped down cover version of any song on earth. if anything, i want funkier covers of slow songs.

[vamptastic]

like literally yeah fuck the democrats awful shit happens under the powers that be no matter who is in office but when provided a choice between awful and still awful but maybe better for you personally i think picking the latter is fine. the 'third option' of communist revolution is not going to be prevented because you voted for kamala harris, and if you think the democrats will change their strategy in any meaningful way because they're losing the votes of communists, you're fucking stupid. this is a choice made purely to make you feel better for not commiting an act that is technically immoral but functionally does nothing, good or bad. i can understand that my very utilitarian mindset is not universal, and that this minor contradiction of morals can be quite distressing but quite frankly: get over it. y'all need to resolve this moral quandary and make a logical choice.

this is the third election in my lifetime where a bunch of online leftists posture about their hatred for the democratic candidate, drive the votes for them down, say it doesn't matter because true change will only come through revolution, and then do not fucking revolt like, even a little. the march towards fascism is going to keep fucking going in the absence of major change so maybe we can be either a little more proactive about said major change or we can try to make fascism slightly more livable, but fucking pick one.

[nukacoola]

To whoever just sent me that ask angrily summarizing diluted facts abt each faction and saying that somehow I don’t know those most basic ideas abt the game factions bc I like fo4 I’m gonna b real I’m not reading all that hope you didn’t spend too much time on it okay luv u byeee <3

[fuiru]

A 44 year old man goes to a K-Pop Concert

I promised you a report on the K-pop concert that I, a 44-year-old accountant, went to a couple of weeks ago with my wife and daughter in Toronto. So here it is.

The band we saw were Ateez. They're my daughter's favourite band and my wife's second favourite. I know most of my mutuals are similarly aged like me and may not be familiar with them so let me give you a brief primer on Ateez.

Imagine the most attractive eight men you can think of, just unfathomably beautiful specimens of aesthetic perfection, and make them sing songs that somehow combine the subjects of 'dancing like nobody is watching' with 'we live in a dystopian hellscape that we must all work together to overthrow'. Give them an ongoing music video story lore that literally nobody - not even the band themselves - understand, so that online discussion of their visual motifs looks more like the fevered rantings of a conspiracy theorist, complete with speculation about alternate realities and time being a Moebius strip. There is also a giant sand timer, for some reason.

That's Ateez. That's what you need to know.

Now, K-pop concerts are very different to the gigs I've been going to for the last 28 (!) years. There's no support act, for a start. Also the band perform for like, three hours, with breaks for costume changes and interpretive dance. Furthermore, hanging above everything is the constant looming threat of mandatory military service.

So this being my first such concert, I wasn't sure what to expect. What happened was difficult to explain, but I will try as I am already six paragraphs into this write-up and I'm too invested to stop now. Here goes:

In his Wicked + Divine comics series, Kieron Gillen places modern pop icons as deities, feeding upon and gaining strength from the worship of their fans at the altar of musical performance. I thought I understood that metaphor. I thought I understood it AS a metaphor. I was wrong, because that night Ateez WERE Gods with a capital G and we were their worshippers, a crowd emanating adoration (in the religious and non-religious senses), bestowing strength upon them and gaining their strength in return.

If that sounds weird, it probably is. But as pointed out above, I have lived over four decades and never yet experienced anything like the overwhelming passion of that crowd, the utter abandon with which they conveyed their love for the band.

"But Fuiru, what of the actual music?" you ask. Thinking back, there was a moment in one of their songs - I can't remember which - where I watched the stage, and the people around me, taking it in, and I thought, "Man, I just love Music". But that doesn't answer your question, sorry.

Ateez's music is bloody great. As a tiresome indie/rock/metal kid I'm resisting the urge to add the usual tiresome indie/rock/metal caveat of "...for pop music" because honestly that does it a disservice. They have some genuinely amazing songs. Halazia is an absolute fucking masterpiece that descends into furious hardcore breakbeat. Bouncy is a big, brash racket that somehow is also a perfect pop song. Utopia, Wonderland, and Guerrilla are similarly superb. The obligatory boy band slow number is represented by Dancing Like Butterfly Wings which will make you cry because you will forever associate it with your twelve year old daughter being pointed to and waved at by her favourite Ateez member (Seonghwa) because of her Seonghwa-branded lightstick.

That might just be me, though.

So in summary: being a 44 year old dad at his first K-pop concert rules and you should endeavour to partake in the experience if the opportunity arises.

Finally, for any Atiny reading this: my bias would be San or Seonghwa but my wife and daughter said they were taken so it’s Mingi. My concert outfit (designed and created by my offspring) reflects this.

[oarfishing]

Alright, I'm sick of seeing TERFisms on my dash, so here's a handy list of TERF dogwhistles and talking points to think about before you reblog a post.

I've seen a few of these before, but it doesn't hurt to make more. Especially when we're seeing a lot of radfem rhetoric popping up in LGBT spaces from people who might not know better.

SCREENNAMES: these are terms that commonly appear in radfem usernames across the web

rad or radical

fem or femme

vulva, clit, uterus, womb, ovary, vagina, etc.

febfem

anything along the lines of "angry woman"

xx or chromosomes

wombyn, wimmin, womyn, etc.

LGB

feminist

BIOS: things that show up in radfem bios

♀ or ⚢

febfem

female separatist

female, human female, adult human female

xx

something along the lines of "the scary feminist you were warned about"; being an angry woman, being sick of being silenced, being an evil woman, being an angry lesbian

detrans (NOTE: detrans people are absolutely not always transphobic)

dysphoric female

males/men do not interact

LGB✂️

misandrist

feminist (NOTE: again, very few feminists are actually terfs, but this is commonly in terf bios alongside some of these other terms)

TERMS: terms that radfems use in their circles

TIM - trans-identified male, a way of saying transfems, trans women, and other trans people

TIF - trans-identified female, same as above but the other way around, less commonly seen

DSD - disorder of sexual development, a way to avoid saying intersex and to categorize intersex people as "still male or female" (you might see "males with DSD" or "females with DSD" for example)

females or males instead of women and men

alternatively, women and males to dehumanize men

"peaking" or "peaked" - referring to becoming radicalized as a radfem or TERF

womyn, wombyn, wimmin, wo**n, and any other spelling that takes "man" out of the term woman

mentally ill men/women

sex-based oppression

gender critical

"TIRF" - trans-inclusive radical feminist (don't be fooled by the name, they're very much not)

TRA - trans rights activist, derogatory

sex-based rights

female separatism/"women's land"

WBW - womyn-born womyn

autistic girls/children

troon - (ridiculous) slur for trans people

RHETORIC: general ideological themes in radfem rhetoric

men are inherently more violent than women

women don't or rarely rape men

(woman on woman rape is ignored by almost all radfems)

being nonbinary is a way to "stop being" your assigned sex while still acting as your birth sex

lesbians are not attracted to men/penises and can never have sex with men/penises (otherwise, you're bisexual)

men can and will never be lesbians

there is no such thing as a bi lesbian, only lesbians and bisexuals. labels are rigid and sex-based

all of the world's suffering is driven by men

women would be better off separate

an all-female society is utopia

sex is binary, and intersex people are "glitches" or "still male or female but DisorderedTM"

men should expect to be feared by women

female/female relationships are safer and more pure than straight or gay male relationships

men and women are more different than similar

intersex people should not be allowed in sports

intersex people and trans men are never in men's sports

terrible world events wouldn't have happened if women were in charge

men are stupid and aggressive

being a man is not a positive thing

men's problems are lesser than women's

penises are disgusting and vaginas and vulvas are beautiful

trans women are performing at being girls

trans men see themselves as above lesbians

attraction is sex-based

porn is rape

porn is inherently violent

watching porn makes you predisposed to inflicting abuse

BDSM is inherently violent and misogynistic

transitioning children (whether socially or medically) are being abused

"bitch" and "cunt" are slurs against women

only gay men can say faggot and only lesbian women can say dyke

When you see a few or more of these together, RUN! It's a terf.

[theyjustadmitthathuh]

If you’re wondering or looking for an excuse to try this out, I will be the first to vouch that radical feminism and living by those beliefs has increased my happiness 10 fold since I started. It was only a couple years ago that I was once again supporting Some Dude and trying to maintain friendships in which I came painfully second.

Within a year of cutting the leaches from my life, not creating any new male relationships, sustaining only those male relationships which were required (such as for work or a friend’s husband), and generally putting women first in every aspect of my life and giving their (and by virtue of theirs, my own) voice more weight than any man’s voice, I achieved more stability and genuine connection than I have ever had in my life.

By living as a model of what I believe, I have led other women to cut men from their lives beyond the truly necessary, and even though none of those women are radical feminists, they have all told me in detail about the remarkable change in their lives and how much happier they are now. Many of them have told me how excited they are to never date again now that they know what life could be like.

I went from the lowest point of my life, to supporting and housing other women as they move towards a better future. It blows my mind everyday.

You dont have to live in a woman only utopia to make pockets of paradise. You just have to put women first.

[captainjimothy]

personally i do think julian bashir is trans, but not in a way that sublimates his genetic alterations into a trans allegory. i think he's disabled and trans at the same time, but i think his rebellion against his parents--the symbolic death of his old self with the name change--that's not about gender, for him, at all.

it's about the incredible violation of autonomy he experienced as a disabled person under the knife of a eugenicist society. it's about the need to reclaim some, any, of the agency that was so completely stolen from him by his parents.

it's about discovering that his entire self was deconstructed and reconstructed, without his knowledge or consent, for the express purpose of being less of a burden on his parents.

because let's not forget that the death of julian's old self was not his decision. it was his parents who killed the old self and created a new one.

let's not forget that human society in star trek is still recovering from the eugenics wars--that just because it's post-scarcity doesn't mean it's a utopia.

let's not forget the multiple episodes where bashir is forced to confront the fact that his "success story" is truthfully a gross reminder of how deeply his society (and his family) hates disabled people, not only shown in how they tried to fix him, but also in the fact that the process so rarely works as intended, yet is still done anyway--and the failures and the ones too far gone to save are locked away! with no connection to general society, and only the bare minimum provision for their physical needs, with no privacy and no autonomy!

and let's not forget that julian sees these people and is torn between the empathy he has for them, and his urge to fix them. and he goes through with this urge on Sarina, "fixing" her to conform to his idea of what she ought to be, treating her as a problem to be solved, objectifying her via "my ideal woman was trapped in this disabled body/mind and i saved her," thus continuing the cycle of violence, because even he can't conceive of a world where the disabled do not need to be fixed. where the violence done to him was wrong. fuck man

[catididnt]

Burning Man is less about “eat the rich” and the complete disregard for the natural environment that those attending have embraced while claiming to be so about community. (How can you claim to be community focused when your chosen location degrades the equipment of the people who attend? They’re very self-selecting about who attends without saying they are. Even the cheapest tickets require like $2K once you add in everything.) 

It’s more like the libertarian town that got invaded by bears. I felt for the original locals in that - only there are no locals at Burning Man. Everyone decided to be part of an event to “burn the man” despite how much they now cater to influencers.

“Eat the rich” is the wrong battle cry, but I don’t think we have one that gets more nuanced. You want to go after the people who are using up the resources at an unsustainable pace, that are setting the bar and selling out everyone else for their own enjoyment - How do we sum that up?

Anyway, check out https://www.jetfinder.com/burning-man-festival/ and their recommendations! 

I’m aware most of the 72,000 people there are not “private jet” rich, but pretending Burning Man doesn’t cater to “$500 is a rounding error” rich is silly

Seeing the notes on posts about the Burning Man Debacle™ and for fucks sake I am taking the phrase 'eat the rich' away from y'all until you can CORRECTLY IDENTIFY the rich

Rich is 'arrived by way of their private jet', is 'dropped $500k on a submarine ticket', is '$500 is a rounding error'.

'$500 dollars for a nine day event they must all be rich white people' no you reactionary rotten potato that is actually an entirely reasonable price for an entirely normal person to pay for an annual event! $500 over the course of a year is approximately equivalent to one big takeout a month! Being able to afford that doesn't make you rich it makes you probably not poor! The 'rich or poor' narrative is a false dichotomy that completely excludes the fact that 'richness' or 'poorness' is a SCALE! It's not fucking categorical! You don't one day magically flip a switch and go from 'poor' to 'rich' or vice versa you see incremental changes over time! Wealth distribution is a (these days, admittedly, rather wonky) motherfucking BELL CURVE! . The fact that capitalism is driving more and more people to either extreme of said curve is just evidence of a broken system, but it doesn't change the fact that most people should have a decent amount of disposable income!

The fact that many people don't have said disposable income doesn't magically make the ones that do 'rich' it makes everyone else poor. And the people at fault for the massive and growing percentage of people living below the poverty line are not the ones managing to stay above it, it's the fault of the actually rich, the ones stealing our time and our health and our wages and our future in pursuit of a number on a screen. And the rich are the only people you're helping by hating the people struggling slightly less than you.

When it comes time to 'eat the rich' you're going to be murdering dentists and librarians and scientists while the actually rich point and laugh from a safe distance as you solve their problems for them.