#the same excuses. the same horrific actions. the same fucking thing over and over.

[codaynamics]

i really dont get this idea that there's a difference between the two fuckheads, they keep lauding about this change that happened but in my experience nothing has changed in any way in the past two fucking decades, except the weather's getting worse and the economy more so.

and they keep saying things will get better with the one, but she's in office right fucking now, and nothing's changing, so?????? where is it?????

or did they forget that lesser evil is still fucking evil?

where is this support for the country's marginalized when a black muslim man was executed for a crime he didnt commit?

where is the support for your LGBTQ+ siblings when, more than ever, discrimination against us has escalated dangerously?

most importantly, where is this action on Harris's behalf to solve any of these problems when the govt is more focused on killing its neighbors and stealing their land?

can someone show me ANYTHING that something good is being done about these issues on the govt behalf that doesnt boil down to an excuse?

[hexastitchimera]

I wish people understood that, if somebody talks 24/7 about how much they obsessively hate something, it usually means they have a chip in the race themselves.

[shipping-isnt-morality]

I don’t feel like I have anything to say to Zionists anymore except “this is what it sounds like to defend genocide.”

I just - can you hear yourself? I know many of you have studied fascism and the rise of genocidal attitudes. Do you think you’re immune? Do you think being Jewish, or educated, or the descendant of genocide survivors makes you immune? You know better.

My god, if the 20th century can teach us one thing, let it be that humans are great at justifying genocide to themselves and each other when motivated to. No education can inoculate against it. Every excuse had been used before. Every feeling of righteous justification for slaughter has already been invoked.

It is undeniable that there are tens of thousands of dead. So many thousands upon tens upon hundreds of thousands of children dead maimed orphaned traumatized by bombs that Israel dropped, shells that Israel fired, targets chosen by software Israel made.

This is undeniable; I can see it with my own eyes. You can say, this is the reality of war, and I will say: this is the reality of your choices. How Israel wages “war” is a choice. How they go about statecraft is a choice. We cannot and should never accept their justifications that some action of the enemy necessitated this response; they still chose the response.

There was a euphemism in some death camps in Poland: “dirty work”. It was often literally true - there’s horrific stories about the smell and texture of industrial amounts of human ash - but also figuratively; the work of mass executions is more often seen as a necessary evil for the accomplishment of a greater good. It’s rarely celebrated or acknowledged openly for what it is at the time. All of this is very normal in genocide.

I look at my timeline in the past months, at the choices Israel has made for its “greater good”, I have listened to the justifications. What I see is Israelis making the same old tired weak excuses for their own dirty work.

And all I have to say anymore is: this is what it sounds like when you defend genocide. You have not invented a new thought in all of it. “They’re not a real group, they’re monsters, we don’t want to kill them but we have to, we just want them to leave before they kill us all and they’ll try to exterminate us the second we stop killing them” - save it.

Do some fucking reading on other genocides - the Armenian one is particularly relevant - and read arguments from genocide deniers and you will quickly see it is all the same shit. Check out Facebook posts from Myanmar during the genocide and it’s basically indistinguishable from tweets from Zionists today. It’s the same shit, over and over and over again.

Literally billions of people with eyes can see what Israel is doing and call it what it is, because it’s been done before, and all the defensive answers and excuses have been done before too.

This is what it looks like when people defend genocide. Always just like this.

[dootznbootz]

I know we love our morally gray characters. But the internet kinda ruined Circe for me.

Let me explain.

I remember I actually used to really like Circe's character when I first read the Odyssey last year. I loved her as a "helpful antagonist type" character.

But what ruined her character for me was everybody calling her a "girlboss" or just simping for her in a way? But they completely disregard the fact she technically raped a man. (But no one cares about that because male SA victims never get taken seriously, especially in media smh)

Now, I can never experience Circe as the same character because all I see is a terrible person being glorified because of her gender. And then people say double standards don't exist!

Which I hate cause she's a genuinely cool character. (From a writing standpoint)

Circe isn't a bad character let me be clear (in the Odyssey anyway. Cough cough Madeline Mil-) But I just hate how people romanticize her completely ignoring her terrible actions. And to think it's all just because she's a "hot badass female".

And this isn't just about Odysseus either, there's literally a myth where she tries to seduce a man, but when he remains faithful she turns him into a woodpecker-

People can like her CHARACTER, however, they should still acknowledge her bad actions too and hold her accountable. If we can all agree it's shitty what Zeus did to a bunch of women, we can also agree what Circe did to Odysseus was shitty.

Women sexually assaulting men is just as inhumane as vice versa and we have to stop turning a blind eye about it, even if it's fictional.

And I feel like people WOULD actually hold her accountable if she was a male character. Which makes me even more angry.

Maybe this is just a me thing, but I just can't fawn over a character and call them hot when they've done something as bad as some of the things Circe has done.

So, I guess what you could get out of this-

Please stop romanticizing circe.

Hold her accountable as you would any other character.

Don't be so forgiving just because you find her attractive.

Anyways, thank you for coming to my Ted talk and sorry for ranting

honestly yeah, all of this.

I sadly had to block Circe's tag on tumblr because it pisses me off how much people glorify her and/shittalk Odysseus with it. (I trust my friends when they have Circe content lol)

I love Circe as well. She's such an interesting and fun character but how people twist her just fucks with me so much. Also to make HER a victim just for girlbossness? What's so girlboss about having such a horrific thing happen to you?

I said it in a different post but you can thirst for Circe without making fun of her victim. People will call a victim of rape a manwhore or a slut as if what happened to him was a grand ol time. It's genuinely disturbing. He is shown to have PTSD from it (in my opinion) in the Odyssey. This book is ancient and yet it captures that better than anything I've read.

Odysseus isn't necessarily a wholesome, "goody-to-shoes" man. He does a lot of awful things. That doesn't mean that the suffering he went through is suddenly negated.

Even bringing up stuff with female characters, the fact that people will water them down so then they're not "problematic" pisses me off. Women can be horrible, even good women. Penelope is my fave but she's pretty awful in many ways.

Evidence will be right in front of people and they won't care. Crying, begging to go, fear, avoidance, numbness, etc. There'll be excuses anyway. "He's a guy, he's fine with it." "Men are sex crazed, especially back then." "He didn't try hard enough." "He should be grateful."

Honestly? What saddens me the most is that I don't think people will ever really understand what happened or even WANT to because they have their own idea in their head and refuse to see it for what it is. I mean Hades game did it too. It's really sad.

Circe and him weren't fwb. They weren't lovers. What about "heart full of grim forebodings" screams love? He wanted to save his friends and go home.

[bisexualseraphim]

I gotta say, I am seriously fucking concerned with the amount of people here who seem to wholeheartedly believe that the correct answer to the genocide against Palestine is ANOTHER genocide except the other way around. Please stand back for 2 minutes and seriously think about whether you think it’s ever a helpful or just cause to advocate for the deaths of millions of people, especially when plenty of said people are Jews whose families fled there after barely surviving the Holocaust because hardly anywhere else would treat them like human beings or accept them at all since the antisemitism that allowed the Holocaust to happen was not solely in Germany and didn’t magically disappear after the war ended.

Look. The situation is simple when you boil it down to this: Israel is bombing and starving Palestinians like fish in a barrel and doesn’t want to allow aid to Gaza, which consists of a population of over 50% children. Israel allowed the Nakba and displacement of Palestinians for decades and tries to hide it from public view. This is genocide. The Israeli government is at fault for this. Israel holds the power here because they have the power to bomb and starve millions of people and force them out of their homes, and Palestine certainly does not. It’s an utterly horrific, inhumane thing to do with no excuses for it and it needs to stop. This is the simple part that is glaringly obvious for everyone to see and it’s almost laughable for anyone to deny it.

Okay. You’ve successfully identified the main problem and the “bad guy,” if you want to put it in childish simplistic terms. So the question now is: what next? Say Israel agrees to an immediate ceasefire. What do you, impassioned activist on the internet, propose should be done to solve this situation after that? What should be done to free the Israeli hostages? Do you think the UK and the US, two of the most powerful countries in the world who actively help Israel commit its atrocities against Palestine, will ever do anything to help the Palestinians once Israel loses its power, even if better governments are eventually elected? How should the Palestinian land be claimed back? Where should all the Israeli citizens go? Should they all be forced out to Europe and America, even if that isn’t where they originate from, where the already-rife antisemitism has spiked even further since October 7th and Jews who live thousands of miles from Israel and have nothing to do with Israel’s actions face horrific hate crimes every day? Do Israeli children deserve that? Who’s going to pay for their travel and accommodation? Or, should they all be allowed to stay there and live side by side with the Palestinians? Do you think most Palestinians would be happy to remain neighbours with the citizens of the country that has oppressed them so fiercely for over 75 years, even if said citizens didn’t partake in it or in fact opposed it? What about the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Arab or Palestinian? Do you hold the same opinion of foreign settlers in Israel as you do its citizens whom have made a home there for many generations? How do you discern between settlers and “real” Israelis? Do you see any difference between them at all? Why? And what should be done about Hamas, the group that openly calls for the genocide of all Jews around the world and commits war crimes against Israeli citizens? How much of the history behind Israel’s occupation of Palestine are you aware of? Do you think the British government should be held accountable for splitting Palestine in the first place? How would you go about that? Would it be fair to punish the British people for their government’s actions when British citizens didn’t vote for it? How does that compare to your view of Israel and its citizens, and why?

I am absolutely NOT asking trick questions here or trying to “gotcha!” anyone. I am asking these questions precisely BECAUSE they are extremely difficult to answer, with several of them contradicting each other, and they are meant to get an emotional reaction out of you. I certainly don’t know what the “correct” answers to most of those questions are, and that’s exactly my point: there is no simple answer to a problem that has been going on for decades with such a wide, complex history. Historians and political experts who know all the facts and have studied this shit for years don’t know the answer and it’s honestly insulting to all the people suffering to log on every day and see so many people go “actually 😌 I, a random 20-30 something year old on the internet who isn’t even touched by what’s happening in Palestine, have figured it out before everyone else! Just delete an entire country and all its citizens off the map 😊 This is a moral thing to suggest! And if you disagree with me you’re promoting Zionism/terrorism 😘” There are no simple answers and if you think there is one — and especially if you think that answer is to kick citizens out of the country their family has lived in for generations — then you are both wilfully ignorant and evidently fuelled more by hatred than an actual desire for peace and an end to death and oppression and I don’t believe there is a crumb of sincerity in your activism.

Am I naive enough to think that fighting against oppression and occupation is always going to be peaceful? Obviously not. But you’ve got to think about where and when said violence is actually going to be beneficial, and where and when it’s violence purely for the sake of violence, which is NEVER justified. You can’t advocate for human rights and then turn around and say “oh, but not for you.” EVERYONE deserves food and water. EVERYONE deserves shelter. EVERYONE deserves to receive treatment for sickness or injury. NOBODY deserves cruel and unusual punishment or torture. And EVERYONE deserves to be alive. Those are essential human rights that should never, ever be denied wherever it is possible to give them, and disagreeing with that reflects extremely poorly on you and your principles. Think about what narrative you are pushing when you claim an entire people “deserves” bad things. The constant dehumanisation I see happening in online activism (and far too often in real life too) is actually terrifying and if you want to do some real good in the world, I need everyone reading this to examine their potential internal prejudices, even the ones you don’t think you have, and think about who exactly you’re helping when you express thoughts that perpetuate them, and who you may be harming in the process.

Anyway, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way…

Here are some useful resources if you want to make a difference and help people:

Standing Together (an Israeli movement advocating for ceasefire and peace between Israelis and Palestinians)

Zochrot (an Instagram page that seeks to educate the public about the Nakba)

Parents’ Circle (an organisation run by relatives of Israelis and Palestinians killed in the conflict who advocate for peace)

Operation Olive Branch (a Google Doc of Palestinian families seeking evacuation)

Mesarvot Network (an Instagram page run by young Israelis seeking to refuse the IDF draft and end military violence committed by both Hamas and the IDF)

Other Gaza aid organisations to donate to

[cdroloisms]

forgive me my demons but i see this take so much and it drives me a little crazy . c!Sam is stupid, obviously. He has no self-awareness, he somehow completely misses on the fact that his actions have social ramifications, he has a sense of entitlement a mile high and thinks that everyone automatically should fall in line and agree with his authority just because he decides that he has it. he navigates conversations with the grace of a wrecking ball because he assumes that everyone will agree with him being In The Right and therefore doesn't actually go for much more convincing half the time than "do what i say or you'll end up locked up in an inescapable prison." his moral compass is a roulette wheel and his justifications incomprehensible.

but at the same time, c!Sam is far from unintelligent. like, not just anyone was going to CREATE and then RUN pandora's fucking vault. he made a world eater ?? if there's like anyone on the server that could reasonably create shit to cause mass destruction across the server other than like the literal fucking nukes, then yeah it'd be him, see the world eater again. sure, he makes the craziest fucking assumptions off the fact that he's Right And Justified And The Ultimate Authority And Everyone Should Agree With That, but he's also able to lie and manipulate and gaslight and coerce and threaten pretty much without breaking a sweat if he ever deems doing so necessary for his own goals, and it's not like the methods by which he does so are like, all that clumsy either. like people absolutely bought his whole deal early on in the prison arc, believing him to be a well-meaning, burdened Warden doing Whatever It Takes for the good of the server, which did in large part have to do with how his character talked about the prison to others and such, etc. just because c!sam is crazy bonkers and expects his ex to forgive him chopping their arm off doesn't mean that he's completely incapable of being pretty damn convincing at some points.

and like, even more importantly, his being dumb really didn't make him ANY less intimidating. i'd argue that it made him A LOT WORSE, honestly! just because his moral bullshit is twisted up in knots doesn't mean that he's any less dangerous for it. c!sam is, honestly, from the top of my head, one of the most casual about being violent on the server, purely because he believes he has a Right to it. he believes that people owe him obedience by virtue of who he is. he threw several people into pandora's vault WITHOUT LIKE, ANYONE KNOWING just because he decided that they deserved to be put in prison. he kidnaps a toddler??? c!Sam really doesn't bend himself in half trying to justify things according to someone else's moral system; as he literally does in that one scene with c!Bad during the stream where they investigated Sam Bucket, he literally just. is the epitome of the guy that lets himself do shit because he has a self-written permit that says i do what i want. the only thing getting in the way of c!sam's bullshit is c!sam, and i think that people honestly chronically overestimate how much he holds himself back from horrific violence. he stabbed a teenager to Make A Point about his authority? he repeatedly threatens hannah, one of his own employees, because of things she did while being mind controlled--and then like, uses this to excuse himself of? workplace harassment? in the stream after techno escapes with dream, he literally MAKES UP A REASON to be really fucking angry at dream and then threatens TO TORTURE HIM over it. when new people joined the server he would threaten them with a sword for asking questions about the prison in a way that seemed too 'dream sympathetic.' and he regularly tells people that he would commit all the atrocities again, including ponk, because he's entirely 100% convinced that everything he does is justified?

and a lot of the stuff people hold against him, like. sure, his plan to contain technoblade didnt work, but it SURE DID WORK BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE THAT TRIED, DIDNT IT? like techno would've been decently screwed if he didn't have a statis chamber set up. and well, the situation with dream speaks for itself--he was stuck in there for ten months. a lot of what people attribute to c!Sam's stupidity really does very little if anything to make him less scary--less effective, maybe, but for every time his moral bullshit gets in the way of him getting something that he wants there's probably a few other times you can find where his ability to justify himself out of anything makes him do something fucking ridiculous . anyway i dont even have a point to all of this except c!sam is scary as fuck bro

[anavatazes]

They found Abby TLOU2

https://www.ign.com/articles/hbos-the-last-of-us-season-2-finds-its-abby-in-kaitlyn-dever

Now, can all the ASSHOLES that hate Abby LEAVE the actress the FUCK ALONE! After the immense hatred that poor Laura Bailey received for playing a fictional character in a video game, I am fearful how poorly Kaitlyn Dever will be treated, in particular concerning her connection to Pedro's Joel.

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️SEASON 2 SPOLIERS⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

You are warned. If you don't wanna know what happens, don't go any further.

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

Ok. Now, for that already know what knows what happens in Part 2, Abby kills Joel in a very horrific manner. Not rehashing it, nor do I really want to turn this into another Abby bashing post. Not my favorite character, but I don't outright hate her, and won't tolerate that shit right now. Time and places, people.

I am concerned because of the absolute hate STILL felt for the character, that it will seep over to the actor in full force, much like it did for LB. Many can't seem to be able to separate the actor and character from each other. They still body shame Abby to no end. I've already seen a bunch of comments where they began body shamming the live action actor before she was even cast.

The misogynistic idiots can be ignored to a degree. But what really worries me are the Pedro fans, similar to the Joel fans, are gonna be so pissed when they see Abby kill Joel. And they didn't know it was coming. Some people can remain oblivious, somehow, in this day and age. How feral are they gonna be? How reactionary are they gonna be? Are they gonna be able to separate the actor from the character? And, more importantly, are the rest of us Pedro fans gonna be mature enough to help guide them to a safe place to get their emotions out where it won't be a complete nightmare for KD AND Pedro?!

Because, c'mon, you can't tell me, that when Pedro sees any fan of his hurt anyone that it doesn't hurt him? The big smush pillow that he is? I see so many people passing around videos and memes about how they're not responsible for your reactions to their actions. That may be so, but you do need to be held accountable if those actions are causing harm. A point that is sorely missed those. The Pedro Fandom is overall protective of our Pedro.

So, I want to kindly ask the Fandom, with love, that when we see this shit happening, and especially when it happens when the show airs, (picture lots of mom/grandma finger pointing here, because that's me), to be nice, be mature, ask them to remember what our Squish Pillow would do (even if he is more chiseled and less squishy right now 😉)? Are we adding to his anxiety? We don't need to do that. The man has more than enough for all of us and don't need no more. Nor does he need another fucking excuse to shrink more away from social media!

Besides, I don't know Kaitlyn Dever. I've never heard of her. I look forward to learning more about her, and seeing what she brings to Abby. Do she and Craig make me see what Neil wanted me to all along? Or is it the same old? But I know this. I won't hate her. She's a human being. Very few things on this planet could make me hate her, and her playing Abby is not one of them.

[mdhwrites]

I don't know if you've watched Gravity Falls or been deep in the fandom but I just realized how similar Luz and Mabel kinda are. They're both young quirky girls whose selfish actions helped the main villain achieve their goal (supposedly, in Luz's case) and learn the lesson of facing reality instead of being stuck in a fantasy world where they get everything they want (although Luz doesn't really learn this even though it was kinda set-up for her in s1) (they also have a girl rival with shit parents that the fandom ships them with but anyway-)

I'm not saying this to shit on Luz though, I like Luz. But it mind boggles me how Mabel gets shitted on way more than her does despite being younger, actually learning her lesson, and apologizing for it. It might because they're different shows but I know a lot of TOH fans were/are GF fans because of the creators' relationship so the fandoms aren't that different from one another. It MIGHT be because Mabel trusted Blendin so easily despite the situation being shady as hell (while Luz just thought Philip was a normal human in the demon realm) but to be fair, Mabel was cornered in a moment of vulnerability and she literally didn't even know what she was giving him. Abandoning her friends and family for her own fantasy land while an apocalypse going on was really horrible, I won't deny that, but Luz also pretty much did the same when she chose the demon realm (place she doesn't know anything about with STRANGERS) over her own world in the first episode. Sure there wasn't anything horrific going on in the human realm so her ignorance of it wasn't as bad as Mabel's– BUT THEN in TTT she thinks of leaving everyone behind by staying in the human realm while the Collector was doing who knows what???

I don't know, this might be kinda petty, I haven't rewatched GF in ages, but I just think it's unfair Mabel gets more hate than Luz. I feel she's had more character progression compared to the latter and at least she always got called out when she did something wrong and learned from it.

So take all of this with a grain of salt because while I've heard a little of this discourse, I haven't watched a lot of Gravity Falls (recently tried again and found myself not loving the first episode if I'm honest) and have never been a part of its fandom. However, this is a chance to talk about why Luz is so liked and 'relatable' to so many because it is not hard to figure out why people like Luz. Why? Well... A lot of it comes down to framing and how the two shows see the two girls.

Gravity Falls sees Mabel as a tweenage girl.

The Owl House sees Luz as the embodiment of what a teenage nerd wishes they were/could be.

Those are VERY different goals and framing.

One, Mabel, is going to be INCREDIBLY fallible. Neither her or Dipper are anywhere close to perfect people because... Well, they're teenagers. They get way too into certain things. They're awkward when it comes to those obsessions. They're awkward about how to deal with change, consequences, etc. like that because that's just the age they are. They're figuring out the world and are going to run face first into it and that will be awkward, clumsy and often destructive without any sort of excuse besides they didn't think the consequences through. That's kids for you.

The other is... More idealistic. Luz doesn't face real consequences for testing her boundaries and is always bailed out. When she fucks up, she always does it with the best intentions and/or no one actually gets hurt. People coddle her and always make concessions to her desires with minimal push back and always end up on her side unless they're just a REALLY big meanie head. She always makes peoples' lives better, she never gets real criticism or ridicule for her interests and is always accepted by the right people for those interests. Always given more and more for being her quirky self!

A lot of this for Luz is because she's an audience surrogate and TOH wants the audience to feel good about themselves. It knows that a lot of nerds will be the ones watching it and leans in. This is actually contrasted by the fact that, well, Mabel isn't the audience surrogate or the absolute primary character of Gravity Falls. Her role is more complicated versus Dipper who IS the nerdy one who's closer to being the audience surrogate.

Just to really drive this home: People on my Discord have talked about this and one of the biggest 'crimes' as seen by a lot of the fandom is that Mabel causes Dipper to lose out on his dream of researching with Ford and staying in Gravity Falls. I could even see some arguments of things like "He's planning a future!" or "He's making the world better!"

But... Let's shift the framing for a moment from "Mabel caused Dipper to give up on his dream" to "Mabel made sure Dipper chose reality over fantasy." After all, his desire was to throw away his friends, his family, EVERYTHING to just continue hanging out with this one old dude and studying the weird phenomenon of the world, an inherently isolating job. He gets to go on this big adventure and follow his intellectual drive... At the cost of reality and everything he has known.

So why don't people get upset at Dipper for trying to do this? Well, there's a lot of potential reasons that I can't really narrow down without watching the show. It may have just been framed as a positive while Mabel's is framed as negative. It could be that while Mabel's is just a generic, girly fantasy that not much of the core audience actually wants, Dipper's is the cool, smart fantasy that is totally not just a fantasy, but a CAREER. Or it could go back to the root problem: Because Dipper is closer to the audience surrogate, closer to the main character, there is a bias to inherently see his actions as good. We could literally watch two characters do the same thing and we will root for the main character simply because that is who we are trained to root for.

A great example of this from TOH is how Luz is allowed to get mad at people for lying to her but not the other way around. She literally attacks Eda and gets the two captured in Titan, Where Art Thou? because Eda lied to her and she is supposed to feel justified in this anger to make the tragedy angle work. Meanwhile, there is ONE time when anyone gets mad at Luz for lying and honestly, the framing and reactions cause it to end up feeling much more like it was just for a prettier scene change during Reaching Out. After all, Amity still wants to fix Luz's pain before Luz even apologizes for breaking her word by lying. So why doesn't anyone call out the hypocrisy here? Why is NO ONE allowed to get upset with Luz about this?

Because she's the main character. Because we are trained to root for her and, well, Luz also is the one we are told to want to be. She is the every nerd. She is meant to connect to a very wide net of outcasts who feel like they don't belong and wish things were different. Wishes people weren't mean to them or didn't get mad at them when they made mistakes. That just let them be the hero of their own story.

So of course, they don't want Luz to be yelled at, even when that is the actually human and reasonable thing for someone to do. They don't want to question what she does so when the show gives them an excuse, or they have to go to reality if the show itself doesn't give an excuse (This is why people emphasize Luz's age and nuerodivergence to excuse her while bluntly ignoring Mabel's age when it comes to her actions), so that they don't have to recognize that Luz does some REALLY shitty things, especially in the back half of the show. It is simply more convenient for the narrative they want out of the show for Luz to be this way.

And that is okay from a casual standpoint. A lot of fiction is escapist. There's nothing wrong with wanting to jump into a world where you're never actually wrong and never in trouble. Where your angst is always met with hugs and understanding rather than actual human emotion. That's how media works. Most mass appeal products are escapist. It's part of why the Isekai genre is SO prevalent right now because it is one of the purest forms of escapist fiction out there, especially due to modern isekai tropes.

But if you're going to talk critically about something, escapism is very rarely a good jumping off point for it. It will make you ignore a LOT about the work because it's uncomfortable for you to ask questions about it. I'm not talking about "Why does this world have magic" sort of things mind you. I'm talking about, say, "Why does this character get so many power ups, so easily, and with little effort in earning them?" When you want escapism, the pacing won't bother you. If you're actually looking at themes and payoffs, it will bother you a LOT. And yes, this does tie into TOH because if you want to be Luz, getting the glyphs feels great! If you actually interrogate the story, you go "Wait, they hadn't actually done like... ANYTHING with her not having magic in a magical world and she already gets a spell? And two of these spells she does literally nothing for. Arguably three since she is put into timeout as a punishment and gets the glyph I guess for being a bad person." That TOTALLY is good storytelling and makes sense with positive themes and proper explorations of its own ideas.

*sigh*

It's a rough push and pull and it can make it so people, even if they like the show, who disagree with the popular opinion, the one that usually lifts up the audience flattering elements the most, are just in a rough position where they hear the same opinions over and over again. All while knowing that if they speak up, they'll be stomped on.

Just like Mabel was while Dipper was raised into the spotlight. At least by the fandom.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[garyfischy]

Oyasumi Punpun: a Rant

Oyasumi Punpun is like the Elliot Rodger manifesto for weeaboos. Boy that thinks he's the only person that's had anything bad happen to him gets raped and beaten, goes around raping and beating and murdering women. And it's all justified because of the horrible life he led. If you read any of Inio Asano's other mangas you can tell this is not a flaw or an oversight in Punpun's writing- Asano is a bitter misogynist and it shows in everything he writes. Bullies, abusive mothers, are all bitchy, unlovable hags. The only good women in the world of his manga are underage prepubescent girls.

Throughout Downfall, Goodnight Punpun, Dead Dead Demon's DEDEDEDEstruction (yes i read all of those. i wanted to give him a chance so bad.) women are always positioned as mindless foils to the protagonist. women that crave sex are disgusting whores. prostitutes are ugly, but the protagonist still sleeps with them. Fat women are disgusting. Mean women are ugly caricatured beasts, and kind women are perfectly molded, underage girls. Characters that proudly self-identify as pedophiles (Punpun's uncle, the otaku in DEDEDEDEstruction) are positioned as the rationalists, the Reddit Atheists, the ones too smart for the idiocy of the normies. The breath of "reason" in an insane world. The most obvious example of this isn't even in Oyasumi Punpun with the pedo uncle;

it's in DOWNFALL, which is about an 'intellectual' manga artist that hates the braindead 'normies' that like his manga. he only makes it for bottom feeders like them. he's above those human scum. The self insert protagonist rapes a woman too because she pissed him off. That's life! C'est la Vie! Men just do that kind of thing sometimes!

I am fucking sick of indie scenes treating punpun like the most deep, meaningful manga ever and jacking off about how smart they are for "understanding" it. what is there to understand? asano themself said punpun isn't supposed to have a coherent plot or meaning, that it's just supposed to be nonsense because real life murders are nonsense. it's just an excuse to write a sloppy, disheveled story, with little care put into the world that the protagonist inhabits.

this isnt very organized. im just full of hate for inio asano, and i cannot believe this bilge is touted as some of the most 'intellectual' manga of our time.

here's some quotes from an interview about punpun

and here's an incident where a teenager killed a young girl and wrote punpun quotes all over the wall at the site. **AT NO POINT AM I IMPLYING DIRECT CORRELATION OF A HORRIFIC CRIME AND A FICTIONAL COMIC. You've seen that kind of thinking with, say, the boy that killed himself after playing Doki Doki Literature club- it's more likely someone willing to do that was drawn to media that discussed those themes rather than yknow, being directly inspired

..However, it is still interesting to note similarities in ideology/motive. In the same way the religious beliefs of killers often come into discussion (ie the Dena Schlosser murders- how did the ideology/community she was surrounded by influence her already declining mental state? Noone would argue christianity itself caused the murders.) , I think it's interesting to note Punpun's influence on the killer. ***I AM NOT SAYING PUNPUN WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MURDER. the person involved in the killing was already suicidal and mentally ill, thus they probably gravitated towards manga with those themes.

but if the manga influenced his actions that much, I think it's interesting to look into the ideology of the manga itself and what ideals it promotes. ***I AM NOT FUCKING SAYING PUNPUN CAUSED THE MURDER BEFORE I GET ANY COMMENTS ALONG THOSE LINES

note to self if i clean this up; make it more structured with my gripes about his manga; ie separate sections for misogynistic depictions of women, why i dont think the nihilism works, and bad writing with clear favoritism for certain characters and author self inserts (Platinum End also does this!)

[idohistorysometimes]

A reminder for people regarding current events

(source: I am a political science and history major specializing in extremism, radicalism, and conflict and Ive also worked at museums for many years)

You can support Palestine WITHOUT being anti-Semitic. Not only do Palestinian Jews exist, but Israel also isn't Judaism, its a country. Judaism isn't a massive monolith and not all Jewish people are connected with Israel. Critiquing the actions of a government and military does not mean targeting random Jewish people in the name of the Palestinian people. Being angry at and harassing random people does not help solve the issue. In fact, it compromises the cause because this isn't a "Muslim good Jew bad" issue.

Do not just blindly support every single thing relating to Palestine you see. Make sure what you are donating to and who you are following are truthful. At the moment not only have Neo-Nazis hijacked the "free Palestine" movement simply to have an excuse to harass Jewish people more openly, but a lot of those donation links being posted are NOT going to aid people in Gaza or being displaced by the shellings. They are scams. That money is going to a scammer's bank account The same thing happened when the war in Ukraine kicked into full swing and when the protests in Iran broke out. VERIFY WHO YOU ARE DONATING TO AND WHO YOU ARE FOLLOWING. MAKE SURE WHO YOU ARE SUPPORTING IS BEING HONEST WITH THEIR INTENTIONS. PEOPLE LIE. Nazis only care about Palestine because they want an excuse to be anti-Semitic. As soon as this is over they will go back to being Islamophobic. Palestine is a means to an end for them. And scammers will always scam no matter how tasteless it is.

It is ok to take a break from the doomscrolling. I am specifically talking to those from Western countries who have gotten extremely invested in this conflict despite having no personal or cultural ties to it whatsoever. This is a complex conflict that has been going on for longer than some of your parents have been alive. Does this make it good? Hell no. And yes, people are suffering. They will be even when you turn your phone off. But doomscrolling and driving yourself to the point of crippling depression watching war footage and reading what is going on will not help them or you. You alone cannot and will not fix this. Support how you can, but remember that it is not up to you to fight all of the worlds battles and shoulder that weight. You do not have to constantly be engaging with this subject in order to help.

Do not talk over people living in these areas because you feel passionate about what is going on. You are not them. You do not know more than a Palestinian person about what is going on in Gaza. It is not up to you to constantly be inserting yourself in the conversation and saying what should or should not be done.

Do not shame people for saying they don't know enough to comment on what is going on right now. Not everyone is a terrorism expert. Not everyone is proficient in Middle Eastern studies or the history of Israel and Palestine as nations. You probably are not either if your only real engagement with this topic comes from the last month or so. Its ok not to know what is going on. Its ok not to fully understand. Not having a comment does not equate to lack of support or empathy.

None of those other news worthy social issues have stopped. The protests in Iran are still going on, the Uyghurs are still being oppressed, Ukraine is still being shelled and invaded, those at the US border with Mexico are still being horrifically mistreated. What is going on in Palestine does not replace those issues. And when the next event comes along, whats going on in Palestine wont magically just stop. All social issues are important. This isn't a game of which group is being shat upon worse.

Tiktok is also, just universally, a horrible place to be getting info from. It is brain rot the app.

This issue has been so greatly bastardized in the West its fucking exhausting. None of this slacktivism on behalf of photo edits and really stupid discourse is helpful or healthy for those engaging in it. Palestine needs freed, but a 13 year old from Wyoming isn't going to do that by calling a random Jewish person a slur or by spamming comment sections. This isn't a simple issue. People simply living in an area are not inherently evil. State actors are. Governments are. Support how you can and listen, I mean truly listen, to Palestinian people when they tell you how they are feeling and what they need.

And for the love of all that is holy and just in this world: put down your phone and stop doomscrolling.

You cannot be an effective agent of change if you spend more hours a day engaging with internet discourse on a subject you know little about and or watching horrifying war footage and making yourself severely depressed than you do sleeping or conducting your own personal responsibilities you have. Yeah, you are privileged by the fact you are not in that situation. Yes, those people are suffering. But making yourself suffer in kind isn't being productive or helping them. Comparative suffering is stupid and not helpful either.

Thank you.

[tinky-dinky]

Your takes on Lyanna are objectively correct and her actions did set up what would be the eventual War of the Five Kings lol. The fact that there is pushback on this from those Lyanna apologists is hilarious to me as it is objectively what happened. She gets treated with such kid gloves by fandom it drives me crazy. The only characterization we have of her is her bitching how she doesn't want to marry Robert because he can't 'stick to one bed' and has a bastard child already and then she runs off with the married crown prince who has a true wife and two trueborn children at home. The fact that she died as a result of giving birth to her bastard affair baby after bitching about Robert's bastard is one of the more hilarious examples of karmic justice in the books lol.

100% agreed with you, my dear nonnie.

The fandom doesn’t hold Lyanna accountable for her decisions and actions because she’s a child….and yet the Stark children are all held accountable for their actions, despite all being younger than Lyanna.

I haven’t seen a single person say Robb isn’t to blame for the consequences of his decision to marry Jeyne because he’s a child. He’s a year, maybe two, younger than Lyanna.

I see a lot of people demonise Robert pre-Rebellion, and it seriously irritates me. Before the rebellion- so when Lyanna was complaining about him sleeping around and fathering bastards- he had one bastard, Mya Stone. Who was born somewhere around a year after Robert watched his parents die. If you factor in travel time from the Stormlands to the Vale, it seems Robert left the Stormlands as soon as he could and almost immediately fathered Mya. Given he later takes to drinking and whoring to bury his pain and grief over Lyanna, is it not possible he was doing the same with his pain and grief for his parents?

Another insane thing about the fandom I’ve seen is people excusing that show!Lyanna named her son Aegon, seemingly to replace Rhaegar’s literally just brutally murdered baby of the same name. Rhaegar gets blamed for this, even though he was dead. And had been dead for some time. There was no reason for Lyanna to stick with his name choice unless she agreed with it. Which, given she also agreed to marry Rhaegar in and hide out in the kingdom his wife was from (jesus christ poor Elia could these two have been bigger assholes?!), does not seem out of character. But that is show!Lyanna of course.

I’ve seen suggestions that Lyanna will name Jon a northern name (begging the question of why, then, Ned would change it?). Like Brandon, to honour her brother. The one who died a horrific death directly because of her choice to run off with the married prince. Delightful.

As for the subject of the War of the Five Kings, I feel the need to clarify as one idiot did claim I blamed Lyanna directly for it, when I did not and do not. I do blame her (and Rhaegar) for the Rebellion, the ramifications of which led to the WOFK, those being:

- No ‘kidnapping’, no dead Rickard and Brandon, meaning either Rickard or Brandon would be Lord of Winterfell and Brandon would be married to Catelyn, not Ned. This, of course, changes things dramatically.

- No Rebellion, no King Robert, no forced marriage to Cersei. Robert doesn’t father a billion bastards and isn’t murdered. Cersei…may well still have twincest bastards but wouldn’t be queen, wouldn’t put one of said twincest bastards on the throne, no execution of Ned.

- No Rebellion, no dead Elbert and Denys Arryn, no marriage between Jon Arryn and Lysa Tully, no manipulations via Baelish. Without Lysa to convince Jon to elevate Petyr to higher positions, Baelish can’t kickstart wars or fuck people over so much.

- No Rebellion, no exiled Targaryens, no dragons, no tyrannical pyromaniacal dragon queen and potentially a sane Viserys.

- No Rebellion, no dead Elia, Rhaenys and Aegon. No rebelling from Dorne.

- No Rebellion, no death of Quellon Greyjoy, likely no Ironborn rebellion, hopefully less messed up Theon.

I could go on. The ramifications of Lyanna and Rhaegar’s selfishness and stupidity run deep. But I think I’ve made my point.

[2q5b]

VAYAKHEL

By Ezra

March 7th, 2024

In five parts.

א

In my early teens I wore a gold star of David necklace at all times, which my grandfather gave me. It wasn’t an heirloom. It was new and shiny. For me, it was a symbol of my connection to my grandfather and to Judaism. It was also, on one level, a symbol of the state of Israel, and that was fine with me. Throughout my teenage years I subscribed to a fairly uncomplicated Zionism. I understood the state of Israel to be necessary for Jewish survival, and I didn’t look much into the details. The concept of Israel was just one of the notes in the stately concerto of American Jewish life. My necklace was very dear to me. My grandfather was old, and had narrowly escaped the Holocaust.

I no longer have the necklace. I misplaced it at some point in my teens. My shame and dismay at losing the necklace was overwhelming. I didn’t mention it to anyone. I just privately carried my sense of myself as a fuck-up who loses important things, who didn’t deserve jewelry. Instead of the necklace, I wore the shame of having lost the necklace, under my shirt, over my heart.

But I also knew that it was just a piece of gold jewelry, nothing more.

ב

Our parasha this week is largely a description of the building of the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary in which God has promised to dwell, the ritual center of the first Jewish community, the group of escaped slaves walking through the wilderness on their way to a promised land. The meticulous instructions were already given in a previous parsha, weeks ago. But now they are carried out, in just as meticulous detail, every necessary action reiterated, but this time in the past tense instead of the future tense.

Every generation of this book’s readers asks the same question: why this repetition? It is almost comical. The most detailed and, let’s be honest, boring description of anything in the Bible, and it’s all repeated a second time. But Gertrude Stein comes to mind. “There is no such thing as repetition,” she wrote. “Only insistence.” And each insistence is its own. Each insistence comes at a different time, in an altered context.

The contextual change between the instructions for the Mishkan in parashat Trumah and the building of the Mishkan in parashat Vayakhel is earth-shattering. In between the two, the Israelites build and worship an idol, the Golden Calf. The people’s first collective sin. Moses intercedes with our infuriated God and obtains communal divine forgiveness. He goes back up the mountain and encounters God even more intimately and intensely. Some new relationship between God and the people has been established, but the Israelites are reeling from shame. Can the national spiritual mission really just continue as if nothing has happened?

Our parasha is not a repetition of the details of the Mishkan, but an insistence. We have failed tremendously, in some ways irreparably. And yet the work we have to do is still not done: the work of building a home for God in the physical world

ג

Never in my life have I seen the Jewish people so deeply morally degraded as we are now. Israel has responded to the horrific October Hamas attacks with months of overwhelming violence and destruction, killing tens of thousands of people with no clear positive result. Opportunities to bring hostages home safely in exchange for a cease-fire have been repeatedly refused. I do not absolve Hamas for the atrocities they’ve committed. Neither can I excuse Israel’s atrocities, far greater in scope and human impact. We are watching some of the most terrible humanitarian crimes ever committed by Jews in Jewish history.

This is a spiritual crisis for the Jewish people. It involves us all whether we like it or not. The monstrous acts in Gaza are grievous sins of the Jewish collective.

But these sins are being committed by the state of Israel. Jews are not the same entity as the state of Israel. The distinction is crucial and it must be crystal clear. The tendency to equate all Jews with the state of Israel can and does cause deadly anti-Semitism. And there has been an enormous uprising of Jewish dissent against the state of Israel’s ongoing moral travesties. 

         And yet the symbol I wore on a gold chain over my heart as a teenager is also on the tanks that roll through Gaza, killing civilians and destroying their homes.

ד

Jewelry is a mysteriously persistent motif in this part of the book of Exodus. The Golden Calf is built with contributions of jewelry, gold earrings are melted down to build the idol. After the people are punished, jewelry appears again. God tells Moses that the Israelites will still go to the Promised Land, but God will not go there with them. This is when the enormity of their sin really seems to register with the people.

וַיִּשְׁמַ֣ע הָעָ֗ם אֶת־הַדָּבָ֥ר הָרָ֛ע הַזֶּ֖ה וַיִּתְאַבָּ֑לוּ וְלֹא־שָׁ֛תוּ אִ֥ישׁ עֶדְי֖וֹ עָלָֽיו׃

When the people heard this terrible thing

they went into mourning,

and no one wore his jewelry.

Jewelry is emphasized in three successive verses. Next God commands them not to wear the jewelry, though they’ve already removed it. And then the situation is grimly, insistently summarized: the children of Israel stripped themselves, vayitnatzlu, of their jewelry. This is the same word that was repeatedly used to describe the Israelites’ acquisition of the wealth of their enslavers in Egypt.

Some legitimate splendor has been lost. The jewelry they once deserved and triumphantly wore has become unacceptable. They’ve given up any claim to splendor, to a narrative of beauty and victory. They’ve chosen the path of disgrace, and now they can see it. They feel like fuck-ups who don’t deserve jewelry.

There is a well-known midrashic tradition that women did not participate in the Golden Calf. It is based on two verses in the Golden Calf narrative: first Aaron asks the people to give him the gold earrings in the ears of their wives and children, but the next verse says that they “broke off the gold rings that were in their own ears and brought them to Aaron.” Aaron addressed only the men, and they gave the rings from their own ears, not their wives’. The midrash hears this as female refusal to participate.

In contrast, this week’s parsha has an unusual emphasis on female participation. In the narrative of the communal contribution to building the Mishkan, women are specifically mentioned four times. And the first thing they contribute is their jewelry.

וַיָּבֹ֥אוּ הָאֲנָשִׁ֖ים עַל־הַנָּשִׁ֑ים כֹּ֣ל ׀ נְדִ֣יב לֵ֗ב הֵ֠בִ֠יאוּ חָ֣ח וָנֶ֜זֶם וְטַבַּ֤עַת וְכוּמָז֙ כׇּל־כְּלִ֣י זָהָ֔ב

“The men came in addition to the women; anyone whose heart moved them brought brooches, earrings, rings, and pendants —gold objects of all kinds…”

Rashi, commenting on this verse, cites the Talmud, which identifies the last item, “pendants,” chumaz, as referring to gold jewelry women wore on their private parts. They even gave their clit rings to make a home for God.

It’s not the jewelry, then, that God rejects. Not the gold. It’s that you can’t decorate yourself in gold if you’re going to spit in God’s face. It is an insult to wear a Star of David while you’re murdering the poor. Such a symbol becomes a disgrace. 

In contrast, the clit ring of a righteous woman is welcomed as part of the glorification of the Holy One on earth.

ה

It is my practice to pray once a day. There are three daily prayer services, but I pray just one each day, whichever one I am able to. I talk to God, the infinity that causes existence, as if we knew each other.

Weekday prayer always includes prayers for forgiveness for sin, most of which are spoken in the first person plural. “Slach lanu avinu ki chatanu,” we say. “Forgive us, our father, because we have sinned.” No matter how much the state of Israel is on my mind these days when I think of Jewish sins, the prayer is not “they have sinned.” It is “we have sinned.” Praying for forgiveness collectively, as a unified people, means that I can’t ignore the worst actions of my fellow Jews. I cannot dissociate from those actions or fully disown them. The consequences of those actions implicate me. They demand some response.         After the Golden Calf crisis, Moses’ first act of leadership, the first verb ascribed to him, is the name of our parasha, “Vayakhel.”

וַיַּקְהֵ֣ל מֹשֶׁ֗ה אֶֽת־כׇּל־עֲדַ֛ת בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֲלֵהֶ֑ם אֵ֚לֶּה הַדְּבָרִ֔ים אֲשֶׁר־צִוָּ֥ה ה’ לַעֲשֹׂ֥ת אֹתָֽם׃ 

Moses then congregated the whole Israelite community and said to them: These are the things that Hashem has commanded you to do.

Vayakhel, he congregated them. The word is from “kahal,” community. He treated the people as a single entity. He didn’t divide the Israelites into those who sinned and those who abstained. What they needed to move forward after a disastrous national failure was to think of themselves as one group, with important work ahead of them. They are told to observe Shabbat, and then they are asked to contribute gifts to the building of the Mishkan.

Not everyone committed the sin. But everyone is called on to heal it. 

Living my comfortable American life, reading the news, seeing the images of mass starvation, bodies blown apart, neighborhoods turned to rubble, I have felt so powerless to respond. But this is incorrect. Being powerless to prevent destruction is very different than being powerless to respond to it.

The Jewish people have the work of rebuilding ahead of us, the work of healing the damage we have done. Everyone is invited to contribute to that healing. Anyone whose heart moves them.

[carriesthewind]

Alright, so now that I’m slightly calmer:

This thread sucks.

The most important way that it sucks is, obviously and as previously stated, the Fucking Audacity of This Man. Especially because, in lecturing people about how to take responsibility, he completely fails to actually take responsibility for any of his actions. Notably, although he calls himself a “former very shitty person,” his “naked” thread fails entirely to mention the actual horrific shit he did.

Without context (which his twitter followers presumably mostly do not have), the natural reading of this thread is that all of Andy’s “shitty” behavior was lying and making excuses about work that he half-assed and procrastinated on because of his ADHD. I do not believe that people who have done terrible things need to be constantly bringing them up and apologizing for them. But calling this a “naked thread” about his past mistakes and what he’s learned from them only serves as a continuation of his pattern of glossing over and refusing to take actual responsibility for his past.

This is made all the more offensive by the last few tweets in the thread. He (correctly) identifies that sometimes people will feel compelled to apologize for and justify their behavior when they didn’t do anything wrong. He again (correctly) identifies that this behavior can have many causes. He carefully does not state, but (correctly) implies that one of the reasons for this behavior can be because the person apologizing is a victim of domestic abuse. Then, with full plausible deniability, he does not state, but very clearly implies, that his past bad behavior was because he was the victim of domestic abuse.

This is unconscionable. One of his long-running narratives has been that everything bad he did with Bit of Earth was to please Abbey, because he was so afraid of disappointing her. The fact that he is continuing this narrative is outrageous. That fact that he does it in such a way to (continue) to imply that he is the real victim, especially in the context of a thread allegedly about taking responsibility, reveals that he is still the same “very shitty person.”

With all that said, even if we take this thread at face value, ignoring all of Andy’s history: it still sucks. Like his many regurgitated social justice takes, the framework of the discussion is correct. And it’s a topic that I really care about: the distinction between reasons and excuses (or as I prefer, explanations and excuses), what it means to take responsibility, how to apologize, how to move on and improve, especially when the explanation for a harmful behavior is related, at least in part, to mental illness/disability/neurodivergence. Broadly speaking, Andy isn’t wrong…but in the particulars, he is (offensively) wrong in some very important ways. It’s like his old traced art. He isn’t saying anything original, but instead tracing over the work and explanations other people have provided to match his fandom self-serving narrative. But because he is only tracing, recreating the aesthetics, he reveals he doesn’t understand (or care to convey) the underlying anatomy of the argument. That process leads to fundamental flaws in his final project. But unlike bad art, here he is arguably doing something more dangerous: providing advice on really important, and sensitive, topics.

As some personal context, I am autistic, but was not diagnosed until my mid-twenties. As a result, I didn't learn appropriate strategies to deal with…well, a ton of stuff. Because of this, there was a substantial period of my life where I had frequent screaming meltdowns. I did not have the tools to mitigate or even recognize them for what they were. Often, the advice and tools I was given (by genuinely well-meaning people who had no reason to know any better themselves) just made things worse.

If you have never been around someone having a screaming meltdown, it isn't a fun time. Suffice it to say, I have some experience with unintentionally hurting other people. Experience with needing to apologize, and learning how to do it meaningfully. With having to learn to understand and navigate the differences between explanations and excuses, especially in the context of a disability that I did not even understand I had. With taking responsibility (or failing to take responsibility), of understanding and improving myself. And with being taken advantage of, with having intention and malice grafted onto me, of having people decide that I could be denied boundaries or help or agency or compassion because they refused to believe my explanations were anything but excuses, that because I couldn't "be normal," I must not be taking responsibility.

So I care about this a lot.

I’m going to start with the thing I find most personally upsetting in this thread. Namely, Andy’s statement that "Even during a meltdown, panic attack, or psychotic episode, ppl make choices they are responsible for." As I understand it, Andy is not autistic and has never had (or claimed to have had) an autistic meltdown. And so kindly: FUCK OFF speaking about things you have no experience or expertise in.*

*(I cannot speak to the experience of having a psychotic episode, but I would not be surprised if he is being wrong about those too.)

Am I responsible for what I do during a meltdown? Yes (for reasons which I will discuss more below). But that’s not because I’m making choices.

In my experience, meltdowns aren’t uniform, so it’s not that I never have any control. But my control and ability to make choices - much less rational choices - is severely limited even at the outer edge of a meltdown. And if it gets bad enough, I essentially loose all control.

For example: when I am melting down, I will bite and scratch myself. I do not choose to do this. I have very limited control over it. One time (post-diagnosis), I was on an airplane and started to have a meltdown. I employed every trick I had to not bite or scratch myself because I was very scared that doing that kind of visible non-typical behavior on an airplane could lead to Very Bad Results. Because I did not fully disintegrate into a meltdown, I was able to stop myself from biting or scratching. And I was so proud! I was able to keep control of myself!

That pride lasted until I got home, and saw my forehead. I thought I had been hugging my knees the whole flight to keep control. In reality, I had been bashing my head against my knees until my entire forehead was red and bruised. I hadn’t been in control. I hadn’t even been able to notice what I was doing.

So yeah, I take some real personal fucking offense to this asshole pretending to be an expert lecturing me about the “choices” I am making during a meltdown.

Instead, I do what I can to mitigate things in advance. Generally speaking, I try to make sure I can recognize and divert a meltdown before it begins. Failing that, I have learned how to mitigate them so I loose as little control as possible. I keep my surroundings as tightly controlled as I can, plan out pathways to isolate myself as quickly and as simply as possible if necessary, avoid situations that are likely to trigger a meltdown. It doesn't always work, but I have them very rarely now, and almost never to the degree I had them when I was younger.

Because, as I said above, I am responsible for things that I do in a meltdown, even though they are rarely choices, even when I have a good explanation AND a good excuse. Because ultimately I am the person doing them. And even when I am not in control, if someone gets hurt because of my actions, the passive voice is a lie - I still hurt them. And because I can’t control what I do in a meltdown, I can - and must - make the choice to do my best to control and mitigate them in advance, so I don’t get to the point where I hurt other people.

And THAT’S where Andy really goes wrong in this thread.

First, he fucks things up where he says that an excuse is “the opposite of taking responsibility” because it “absolves you.” He says this because Andy does not actually understand (or care to understand) the distinction between excuses, explanations, and responsibility. An explanation may completely absolve the person of any wrongdoing, but the person can still take responsibility. Consider the example of an excuse Andy gives. “There was a total highway shutdown.” He says this would be meant to convey that you are not responsible. But that’s not necessarily true. Let’s imagine you are saying the statement “there was a total highway shutdown” to explain why you weren’t able to attend an event that was important to someone else. You would not be at fault. You wouldn’t have done anything wrong. But you still might recognize that the person was harmed by your absence, however unintentional. And you might consider it your responsibility to find some way to make it up to the person. And providing the person with the explanation of what happened - making sure they understood you didn’t intentionally not attend, that it was outside your control and you would have been there if you could - would be part of taking responsibility!

This is because taking responsibility isn’t (just) about personal guilt, motivation, or control. It is about the harm that another person suffers, even if it isn’t your “fault.” I am responsible for the harm I did to others with my meltdowns, even before I had any way to control or understand them and was acting with the best abilities I had. (And likewise, the people who overrode my boundaries and triggered or worsened my meltdowns are responsible for the harm they did to me, even when they didn’t mean to hurt me and were doing their best to help with the information they had.)

Andy, in his aesthetic regurgitation of responsibility, recognizes the outlines of this principle, which is why he says even if your behavior is caused by mental health issues, you still have to do the work and stop doing the bad behavior. But he doesn’t actually understand it.

Consider the example of a “reason” that Andy provides. “I’m sorry I broke it, I didn’t see it there.” But this sentence could be offered as either an explanation accompanied by a taking of responsibility, or as just an absolving excuse. There are plenty of explanations for why “I didn’t see it” that wouldn’t be my fault. There is no suggestion of either fault or of taking responsibly in the sentence. The only difference between this example and his example of an “excuse” is that he tacks on an “I’m sorry” at the beginning. But simply saying “I’m sorry” (while often an important element) doesn’t actually mean someone is actually taking responsibility.

(This is a bit of a side issue, but his panic attack example is also bizarre and demonstrates a lack of understanding of the issues. Mostly because the relevance of the panic attack in the apology depends on what “I called you,” and in what context. If you call someone a slur, for example, because you didn’t realize it was a slur, the panic attack is irrelevant, but the explanation that you didn’t realize it was a slur is actually pretty important to the apology, so the person knows that you were acting in ignorance, not malice or disrespect. If you intentionally say something cruel or dismissive, the panic attack is irrelevant; what is important is the deliberate action to hurt the other person. If you would never normally say something cruel but the panic attack motivated you to act in unusual ways, addressing the panic attacks would be an important part of taking responsibility to make sure it never happened again, and so might be part of the apology to explain what steps you are taking. But taking responsibility would still mean, first and foremost, recognizing and addressing why you were willing to engage in cruelty. However, if you were having a panic attack and your brain and mouth weren’t working in conjunction so words got smashed together and you said something insulting or inappropriate without meaning to, then the explanation of what happened is a critical part of the apology, so that the person knows you don’t actually think or mean the insulting or inappropriate thing. The fact that Andy is apparently either uninterested in or unable to recognize these distinctions is evidence 1) that he has no business giving advice on this topic and 2) that he doesn’t actually care about the harm to other people. The importance of knowing what exactly “I called you,” and the context in which it was said, is immediately obvious if you are centering harm. Because that’s the actual harm! Andy is not centering harm. His version of “taking responsibility” focuses solely on the aesthetics of apologies and responsibility, not the actual work.)

And the biggest example of his failure to understand what taking responsibility actually means comes, of course, in the context of excusing his own bad behavior. He says that his “ADHD makes it easy to procrastinate and half-ass work,” and that before he learned how his brain worked, he lied and made excuses about it. This is, within the context of the thread, the version of his history he wants to present to his audience. This is the thing that made him a “very shitty person.” But hey! Failing to complete work - or completing it badly - because of ADHD is not (necessarily) shitty. Lying and making excuses about it was bad, but maxes out (in the scenario he is presenting) at not taking appropriate responsibility (and also he was scared and had reasons and therefore it wasn't not really his fault). And certainly apologizing, paying refunds, and accepting lost opportunities is not shitty behavior. In the context of his behavior that he describes in this thread, the actual really shitty thing he did was continuing to take commissions and promise work when he knew he had a problem, when he knew (or should have known) he would not be able to complete the work as promised and commissioned.

To wrap things back around to the personal context I began with - as I said above, for a long time I didn’t know I was autistic, and I had no ability to mitigate or even recognize my meltdowns. But in my early twenties, I started to realize that there were some patterns to my meltdowns, and that there were things I could avoid or do to mitigate them. And more importantly, things I could do mitigate their effect on the people around me. And sometimes I would choose not to avoid things even when I knew there was a greater risk of it triggering a meltdown, putting other people at risk of harm, because I was selfish and willing to prioritize my wants or needs over others. Or (both before and during this time) there were times I failed to properly apologize to people I hurt, because I didn’t feel like I knew how (and didn’t bother to make the effort to try to figure it out), or I was scared of addressing it head on (putting my anxiety above the other person’s hurt), or angry because the other person had pushed past my boundaries but weren’t willing or able to admit they had hurt me too (as if the harm they did to me somehow canceled out the harm I did to them, removing my responsibility in the process). It was and is not shitty of me to have meltdowns - they are outside my control. But failing to do what I could to mitigate the harm in advance? Failing to apologize properly afterwords? All of those were shitty behaviors.

That doesn’t mean I was a bad person. I made some mistakes and I made a few selfish choices. And part of taking responsibility was realizing what I was doing wrong, and stopping doing it. One correct thing Andy says is that everyone has done shitty things. We all make mistakes, we all act selfishly. And I am going to guess every single person has, or will, spectacularly failed to apologize at least once in their life. But part of doing the work, of learning and growing, has to be recognizing what you ACTUALLY did wrong.

Even within his own framing in this thread, Andy fails to recognize or take responsibility for what he actually did wrong in the context of his failing to complete work properly because of his ADHD. He doesn’t admit to knowingly over-promising. Instead, he solely blames his ADHD for causing him to fail to deliver in each individual case. He aesthetically frames his ADHD as an explanation because he says “That’s on me, ADHD or not.” But just like his example of “I’m sorry I broke it, I didn’t see it there,” in practice, his ADHD functions as excuse with a perfunctory apology tacked on, because it was outside of his control until he “understood how [his] brain worked.” There is no reason to believe he wouldn’t engage in the same bad behavior going forward, because he refuses to actually take responsibility. For example, he’s currently offering a bunch of costuming services while he is out of regular work due to long COVID. But what trust can people have that he’s not over-promising now, when he fails to acknowledge he was doing anything wrong by over-promising before?

And finally, Andy caps off his failure to understand these issues or to convey them appropriately by repeatedly referring to people as “shitty people” rather than people engaging in shitty behaviors.

There are absolutely contexts in which it isn’t a problem to refer to others or to oneself as a shitty person. You may notice, for example, that I did it right before the cut in this post, to make a point by using Andy’s own language and descriptors of himself. However, one time it is not appropriate to refer to individuals as a “shitty person” is in the context of THIS thread, a thread ostensibly as least partially about why it’s wrong to just say you’re inherently a shitty person when you do bad things. Andy repeatedly criticizes people who say, “because I suck” or “I guess I’m just fucked then” when they make a mistake. He says that sentiments like this are the reason he made the thread. That people have the ability and responsibility to change their behavior. Which is true! I agree with him there!

But the idea that some people are “shitty people” contributes directly to the thought processes he criticizes. It frames people who do shitty things as a kind of person, rather than people who engage in certain types of behavior. The idea that the world is divided into “shitty” and “not shitty” people can make it harder for people to recognize the harm they have done and take responsibility. After all, if the explanation for your behavior is not an excuse, if you did something bad, doesn’t that make you a “shitty person”? So there can be an unconscious incentive to reach for excuses, to absolve yourself of blame - which in Andy’s conception also means absolving yourself of responsibility.

I sincerely hope none of Andy’s twitter followers take this thread to heart. Or to the extent that they do, I hope they are able to extract the truth from Andy’s borrowed aesthetics and reconstitute the regurgitated valuable elements. And as always, I hope there are no vulnerable people following him that will see him as a trustworthy source of expertise and guidance.

Andy, who is well known for his fauxpologies, lectures people on how to apologize and take responsibility for their actions without making excuses.

[cajunroe]

victorians ascribed the petunia with two conflicting meanings. it was said to represent anger or deep resentment or it could convey the message, “your presence soothes me.” a conflicting message for those perhaps not secure or aware enough in a relationship to know the difference. they could also be used as an intentional deceit by the giver to imply one meaning or another. though usually meaning would be designated by color, the intention could remain hidden if the giver chose to do so. a wise warning, maybe, that even if we think we know others’ intentions, not everything may be as it seems. sometimes the most devastating things can be hidden behind the glamour of something nice.

[clouds-rambles]

hey bestie i was hoping to request xiao, venti, childe and zhongli where the the reader and the character have just had an argument + the reader needs time to calm down from the argument. omg maybe the reader comes back with a gift to apologise

Ask and ye shall receive <3. I’m the kind of person who needs time to relax and process the situation after an argument. I’m always too worked up (read angry) to kiss and make up straight after an argument.

Pairings; (Separate) Xiao, Venti, Childe, Zhongli x reader

Warning(s); breif mention of a wound, alcoholism, swearing

Keep reading under the cut!

Xiao

You’re probably being too harsh on the guy

You had just come back from a tough mission with a few more scrapes than you normally come back, a nasty cut in particular situated on your shoulder was what caused the argument to kick off in the first place

In hindsight the argument started from Xiao’s concern of you getting hurt worse but you were too tired from the commission to really read it as concern

But boy now do you feel bad. You both went your separate ways for the evening and in the morning you still haven’t caught sight of your partner. You eventually go around Wangshu Inn and ask if they’ve seen Xiao.

You get told that he’s out for the day, apparently he caught wind of something manifesting in the mountains. So, you suppose that it’s high time to make an apology gift

And what’s a better apology gift than your partners favourite food? Because your arguments are often few and far between you don’t mind making Xiao almond tofu since it’s not something you’ve associated with apologising

Though you’re aware that the sweet snack means nothing if you’re not sincere with your apology. 

So what’s more sincere than sitting at the highest balcony of Wangshu Inn and wait for Xiao. You don’t mind how long it takes for him to come back just as long as you get to apologise

He comes back just after dusk and you pour your apologise profusely and tell him you understand that he was coming from a place of concern

Xiao is a little distant a short while after the apology but soon you’re reassured that he accepts it when he places his hand on the table for you to take hold of

The two of you sit in silence sat hand in hand while Xiao eats his tofu

You watch him eat with a grin on your face, sometimes just watching the Yaksha sit still and do his thing is enough to keep you in a trance for the evening

-

Venti

Maybe you got into an argument because you’re concerned over Venti’s drinking habits, sure he’s an immortal god but doesn’t he worry about his liver?

Sure the argument started because you’re worried about the archon but boy does he make you angry with his non-sensical thought processes

Venti is the kind of guy who wouldn’t let you leave without settling the argument

Even if the happy medium isn’t actually going to bring any change into the questionable drinking habits

But this argument just feels a little different, you’ve had the same conversation form months but nothing seems to change

You’re not even sure if Venti has actually listened to anything you have said to him about it

So you tell him “Do what you want, but you’re sleeping on the sofa tonight” yeah you just resigned him to sofa treatment. As much as you hate it you’re far too heated to just kiss and make up right now

So the night passes and you wake up with the cold space beside you, you’re confused until you remember the previous nights events

Though your unusual silence in the room doesn’t last long, you presume Venti sensed that you’re awake because you hear a knock at your bedroom door, you’re surprised that Venti is actually here and that he hadn’t sulked off to Windrise where you had originally planned to apologise to him

As you open the door you notice your partner stood before you with a bunch of hand picked cecelia's and dandelions and an apologetic look on his face

You’ve never known Venti to speak so fast he apologises profusely for causing you such worry and promises that he’ll try to drink less, he mentions that he doesn’t wish to give up his Friday and Saturday drinking nights but he’s willing to tone it down during the week if it stops you worrying 

You thank him sincerely and find a vase to put the flowers in

You hug Venti and apologise yourself for being such a worry wart and causing such a big argument

“I’m glad I have someone to worry about me, I don’t know what I’d do without you” You can’t help but swoon at his flowery words and grin at him before the two of you start off the day

-

Childe

It’s a bad habit he has, when you try and talk about something serious with him he constantly cracks jokes at the situation. Which in its self isn’t the worse thing in the world, even you crack jokes to lighten the situation but at some points it goes too far

And today is too far, what started off as a disagreement about where you were going to eat lunch ended up in a full scale (mostly one sided) argument in Childes office about how he can’t take things seriously

You, of course, know this to be false. You’ve seen him in action against his foes and bank business but just in this moment when you are so angry about the situation those rational thoughts go out the window

And what does the bastard do? He cracks another fucking joke

“Is this what I am?” you ask finally reaching the catalyst of your temper “A fucking joke?” 

And boy does the exclamation comes to a surprise to him. No matter how frequent your use of curse words you’ve never directed them at him so it catches Childe by even more surprise

“[name] I’m sorry I didn’-” he tries to apologise

“You didn’t fucking what Tartaglia? Want to make me feel like a joke? Cause you’ve been going down that road at every fucking disagreement we have” you cut him off in a fit of rage “Sleep in your own fucking bed tonight” you add before storming out his office

He tried to follow you out the bank before he was stopped by a fatui agent about some urgent debt collection, so he never got to apologise immediately

And that’s how the next couple of days go, you’ve taken most of the time to cool off and avoid anywhere Childe might be hanging about, your plan works better considering said harbinger was out of Liyue Harbour for a couple of days

Though on the third night Childe appears at your door, he doesn’t bring any gifts, just himself. Childe enjoys gifting things to you so he doesn’t want you or him to associate gift giving with apologies. You’re more than thankful for this

Childe apologises before you even have the chance to invite him in and takes your hand and wholeheartedly promises to try and not make jokes when you have a disagreement

You also apologise and agree that, in hindsight, you blew things out of proportion. You reassure him that he’s a hardworking man and that a few out of place jests make everything more bearable to him.

You invite him inside for some tea, your bed isn’t as cold as it was tonight

-

Zhongli

Disagreements with Zhongli never seem to get any further than that. The archon likes to listen to you vent your frustrations over a cup of herbal tea and usually that calms you down and everything is settled before supper

But every once in a while you’re a little high strung. For instance this time you’re running on a total of 5 hours sleep over the last 4 days. Sleep deprivation could possibly be your middle name at this point 

The only thing you want to do when you get back from your restless trip from Mondstat back home is to just sleep the next few years 

But the sweetie that Zhongli is he quizzes you about your great to horrific trip

Zhongli pulls all the stops he readys some dinner for you and draws a bath when you get back. He even gives you a small lecture about how you’ll feel terrible not washing before going to bed

But with your tired ears, eyes and brain it feels like a personal attack in your entire self “I’ve had it up to here with bloody hillichurls for 4 horrific days, all I want to do is pass the living hell out thank you”

Replace the bloodys with fucks and that’s probably more accurate to what you said

Zhongli is taken a little aback, being an older traditional man it’s unbecoming of anyone to use such sailor language. And thus the male lectures you about it

You take that as about as well as you expect, you don’t respond to him and favour walking out the room, barely getting undressed and collapsing on your shared bed

You wake up the next morning (though when you peek outside it seems like it’s after noon) disorientated. You don’t actually remember coming home the previous day 

Then the memory resurfaces of you yelling at your spouse and regret washes over you

Surely the gift you had prepared for Zhongli would be good enough as repercussions of yesterdays outburst

You see Zhongli in the dining room, to the untrained eye he looks like he’s in a normal mood but to you, you can see his brooding emanating off of him. If you dare point it out Zhongli will deny that he even broods in the first place

He’s the first to greet you without turning around. Rightfully so, he’s still in a mood. So you just profusely apologise for your outburst

You explain that you were running on next to no sleep and while that doesn’t excuse your outburst it certainly explains it. If your spouse so wishes to ask how your trip was you would comply much more now since you’ve had a good sleep behind you. 

You then change the subject to the gift in your hands, some rose tea. Something Zhongli had mentioned when you were courting all that time ago. 

The man sits you on his lap and explains to you about how it was out of place of him to assume you’d be in a talking mood immediately after your travels. You reassure him that under normal circumstances you wouldn’t mind talking about it, you promise that you will do everything in your power to not let the previous night repeat

You then bring out his gift, rose tea, which he had mentioned wanting to taste a little while back, and before long you’re back in the cycle of Zhongli profusely explaining to you some random subject (in this instance rose tea) before you go off to make dinner where you finally share the details of your travels

Hope this is okay! <3 I kind of went a little ham with the Childe and Zhongli one in comparison to the other two hope you don’t mind lmao <3

[akari-hope]

I’ve seen a number of people confidently call Catra a legitimate mass-murderer & I’m genuinely wondering- where’s the evidence? Like, correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t we see her evacuating Salineas without physically harming anyone? (Obviously she helps Hordak destroy it & that’s horrific, but citing that as evidence of her being a mass-murderer seems like a massive reach. Am I missing something? (Also, do you personally blame her for Angella’s death? I’m conflicted there.)

i've been mulling this one over, and honestly i'm coming down on the side of "no" for a couple reasons.

like you said, we don't actually see civilians die. that's a trend in the entire show to my knowledge (though it's been a hot second since I watched the whole thing, so if someone wants to correct me then by all means). destroying homes certainly isn't GOOD, but it's a far cry from straight up murder. and if we're going with the argument of she's killed SOLDIERS then...so has adora for that matter. and glimmer. and even bow. it's a war. excusing killing bc one side is "good" doesn't really cut it for me. imo, people should either condemn both or accept that it's the situation at hand. but i think it's wrong to act like catra is somehow the worse offender in that regard.

as for angella, i don't blame catra. i never did, and tbh it surprised me when i found out people did. and yeah, maybe i'm biased there. i understand catra extremely well, and while i don't AGREE with her actions, i understand why she opened the portal, and i honestly could see myself doing the same in her situation; she was NOT in a stable mental place, and fucked if anyone would be making good decisions in her place. i was never really attached to angella, and to me she made her choice - a very clearheaded and noble one. so her "death" wasn't really emotional for me. also, iirc, she's not technically dead. trapped, yes, and maybe that's worse to some people. but i think the crew said at one point that the end of season 5 was originally going to include angella coming back (if someone has a reference for that, please do share). so, technically Not Dead. i could see catra blaming herself for it and feeling guilty! i think her nightmares in season 4 pretty much confirm that. i can see how people are saying that catra is to blame bc she caused the situation, though unwittingly. but as far as me, i don't blame catra for that. i blame her for many things, but not that.