#this includes me. i am not immune to this.

[words-and-threads]

I'm not going to say this doesn't happen in progressive spaces (and reactionaries pretending to be progressive while repackaging right wing talking points....) Also, I think its prevalence is magnified by A. Alt right fear-mongering, B. The way our media landscape carries the loudest and most clickable voices rather than the most common, and C. The vein of gender essentialism running through plain old mainstream society classic to which nobody is immune.

Obviously I don't know a stranger's life. If all the leftists you've met think the SCUM manifesto is the height of political commentary then yikes I am very sorry you've had that experience.

On a more general level, the idea that men are dumb violent animals was just as common in 90s tv as it is in leftist spaces. It's not progressive or controversial. Of course, action movies and ads frame it as either good or at worst an inevitable struggle. In fact the alt right LOVE this idea of masculinity, of raising their sons to be "monsters." This idea was not born on the left or the fringe. It's everywhere.

Combine that with the nebulous nature of any movement as large as "the left" (a nearly meaningless term considering how broad it is) and yeah, you're gonna see a lot of garbage takes. I mean shit, there are plenty of misogynist self-proclaimed leftists. If you wanted to drop back into that echo chamber without the alt right you totally could.

Even if you narrowed to feminists: Andrea Dworkin vs. Bell Hooks. Capitalist vs. Socialist feminists. A century of debate about intersectionality. There is no consensus. There will always be bad takes. And there are lots of leftists and feminists who are trying to unpack that gender essentialism. Many are in the comments on this post. If all you hear from leftists is hate, FIND BETTER LEFTISTS. I have seen a lot of them. I have met a lot of feminist men with wives and girlfriends and female friends who would fight god for them. I do actually want a better world for men, too, which is why I have done a lot of that unpacking and I haven't stopped.

As for fighting for the rights of people who hate you....yeah man. We all have to do that. If I'm against the exploitation of workers, that has to include the ones who would happily beat me to death. Ideological consistency is hard.

Edit on the topic of the original post which we've kind of gotten away from: actual OP you are very right. Part of the issue is the simple fact that since the right is more friendly to capitalism they're going to get more support from the wealthy. Part of it is the simplicity of right wing talking points. Sure they're bullshit, but they're easy to spread and digest and they ask very little of you. Basically the mcdonalds of ideas. And when everyone is stressed and exhausted that big mac looks pretty good. Again this dovetails nicely with employers pushing and stretching us all to exhaustion. For real fuck capitalism.

Buuut to avoid going complete doomer, I do think there are strategies activists could make more use of. Mostly we need to relearn how to use stories and emotion. NOT to lie, but to paint a more hopeful picture of our goals and to focus on those goals when doing outreach rather than just on the problems. I want men to be happy, healthy, and fulfilled. I want everyone to have freedom in their relationship to gender. I want food and shelter for everyone yes everyone yes even that guy.

We also need to push back on the idea that those goals are impossible or unrealistic. We went to fucking space but we can't establish UBI? Why? No seriously, when we encounter reactionary arguments we have to demand they justify their existence first. Push. Give no quarter. Calling right wing creeps weird was a good start because their assertion that everyone agrees with them was tissue thin. Often it only takes one or two people looking at the guy who just said something utterly fucked and going "bro...what?" We need to have confidence in our arguments and stop apologizing or preemptively pulling back. We can't keep saying how unpopular and hard to believe we are and then be surprised when people agree.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[yrrtyrrtwhenihrrthrrt]

All these posts I see with the nerve to say, "We'll be alright, we'll be okay, we'll continue to fight, we'll continue to hope," have made me more weary than the plain truth.

It's over. That's it, it's over. Our country has been taken from us.

The genocide will be invigorated, and any hope of U.S. pressure bringing it to an end is gone. I'm so sorry.

Everyone with a uterus will lose any semblance of human rights they once enjoyed. You can say goodbye to being considered a human being, you can say goodbye to any consensus whatsoever that your very life ever mattered.

Every queer and transgender person will face outright persecution and lose the right to so much as exist as themselves, alongside which even cishet people will lose all right to self-expression.

Immigrants will lose whatever fragile hold they had allowing them to pursue life and happiness in this country and will be forced away from their families, jobs, and loved ones if not worse.

Police abuse against people of color and any political dissenters will be invigorated and their immunity from justice will expand.

The prices will continue to rise and the wages will drop or remain stagnant at best.

Disabled Americans, including any American with any pre-existing condition, will lose all access to healthcare as medical costs will skyrocket and our meager insurance will be stripped of us. We will be left in the street to die.

So don't fucking tell me to "hold onto hope" and don't you dare fucking tell me "we will be okay." Who is we? It isn't me, or any of my friends or loved ones. There is not a single person I know that doesn't fall into at least one of the above-mentioned categories. Not one person in this country am I acquainted with who has neither a functioning uterus, nor ANY medical condition whatsoever, nor is an immigrant or from an immigrant family, nor is a person of color, nor is a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Think about it. Do you?

So, in God's name, who the fuck is "gonna be okay"? Anyone lucky enough to survive? Anyone who lucks out and manages to avoid a dangerous pregnancy (which will be soo easy once we lose access to birth control, I'm sure), or manages to stay under the ICE's radar, or manages not to be pulled over by a pig who needs to take out his rage over his wife surviving her last beating, or manages to not get sick or injured ever again? That's somehow not as comforting as people think it is.

And as for the genocide, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so, so sorry that my country has once again failed the people of Palestine. I hope all the people who abstained from voting because Kamala wasn't pro-Palestinian enough feel really good about themselves when they watch countless more children being slaughtered as Israel is bolstered in its capacity to accelerate the genocide beyond any level we've seen thusfar. I'm so, so sorry to my brothers and sisters in Palestine. I'm so sorry that we failed you.

This isn't to say we should stop fighting. But the time for hope and handholding and singing kumbaya is over. Compassion and love have failed, today has proved that. Violence is our only option left.

[ouiouimochi]

We should kiss

pairing/s: jiro kirisaki x reader

genre/s: romance, comedy(?), plot of convenience

wc: 800 ish words

warning/s: wonky phone format, no beta we die like zenji sigh, plot holes but you pretend you don't see it, medical shit I say here may or may not be true— but pls do not immediately believe it, PC never catches a break, itty bitty minor spoilers up until episode 9, characters may be ooc

note/s: ngl if yuri sees this, he'd call me a quack and make a point that studying in the med field as I am now just proves how much of a quack I am— 🦆

sigh I should be reviewing but then inspiration struck me

⁠ *✧⁠˖✦ـــــــــــــــــــــﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـــــــــــــــــــــ✦⁠˖✧*

You stood there absolutely confused as Yuri continued yapping about… something. What the actual fuck was he actually saying? The teal-haired male kept droning on while using fancy scientific and medical jargons.

You just nodded every now and then to show you were listening, but you were just doing it out of courtesy if you were being honest. You understood a few but couldn't piece together what he was trying to say.

All you could make of his blabbering was “saliva”, “immunity”, and “Jiro”.

Speaking of which, the other male cut in— you were unsure if it was for your sake or it was just his nature to do so, but you were grateful nonetheless. Until you visibly grew even more perplexed at the stoic male’s words.

“He means to say that we should kiss.” Jiro’s garnet eyes gauged your expression as a barely noticeable smirk crept itself up on his lips. Whether he meant to rouse certain reactions from you or not, you were sure he was snickering behind that deadpanned countenance.

Yuri makes a very disgruntled noise, “That's oversimplifying things, but as concise as always— nevermind that, I've hypothesized this would greatly improve Jiro's overall health.”

You weighed your options, however the Captain of Mortkranken was not yet done as he crossed his arms over his chest.

“Consider the debt you owe us paid when you participate.” His use of ‘when’ instead of ‘if’ solidified the case that you didn't have a choice in the matter at all.

It didn't help that a phantom presence made itself known to you.

“My dear, a loveliest lady such as yourself shouldn't be forced like this even if he's my little brother…” Zenji’s voice dripped with concern, but it made the decision to decline even harder since you kind of felt bad.

You sighed and shook your head, briefly making eye contact with the ghost to reassure him before meeting the eyes of the Mortkranken ghouls.

“Fine.”

Jiro calmly approached you and immediately rested a hand on your lower back. Before you know it, you were eye level with his tired and attractive face. Your eyes widened in surprise.

“Wait, now?—” You last heard a dramatic gasp from Zenji, getting cut off as the tall, usually apathetic purple-haired man just casually locked his lips with yours.

Time slowed as his tongue slipped in to take advantage of your shock— you were just too stunned to kiss back even if you wanted to. You were just screaming on the inside at what was happening.

“Jiro! Jiro!! What on earth are you doing?!?!” Yuri's flustered response echoed loudly in the room, basically screeching at the taller ghoul.

“Is it not optimal to immediately test out a hypothesis when created?” Jiro voiced out logically after pulling away from the kiss, still holding you closely as his eyes looked at his captain’s before locking with yours. You swallowed a lump in your throat.

Your mind was swirling, your whole face basically heating up in embarrassment. You did not expect him to do that at all— in front of an audience well he didn't know zenji was there no less.

Jiro had the gall to laugh, allowing his normally unbothered personality to crack as he enjoys making fun of you as if it became his favorite pastime now. He licked his lips.

“Y-you heathen! Get a room and don't include me in the hypothesis testing!!!” The teal-haired ghoul expressed his distaste of the blatant display of intimacy right in front of his face.

Yuri turns away to pinch the bridge of his nose as he clicks his pen, pointing it at you still in Jiro’s arms— you didn't know why he was still holding you. Any longer, you feared you might grow comfortable.

“You, out. We have reports to record.”

And such you find yourself absentmindedly walking back to your dorm. Your fingers ghosting your lips, remembering the kiss. His lips were surprisingly soft. The way he held you wasn't uncomfortable either. And his lips—

You shook your head to rid yourself of the thoughts.

⁠*✧⁠˖✦ـــــــــــــــــــــﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـــــــــــــــــــــ✦⁠˖✧⁠*

‘It’s just another experiment.’

Too bad you actually enjoyed it.

sigh

taglist: @ryescapades (hi wifey even if u dunno this fandom *cri*), @minasfwoopyponytail , @akiakabane18 , @rottenzombrainz , + anyone else who wants to be added

[hilacopter]

some folks are gonna hate me for this but I think people get maybe just a teeny bit too riled up about characters being ooc in fan content/fanon

[walks-the-ages]

I think you need to reread the post without making the assumption that I am some ~ bratty annoyed gen Z who's personally insulted by the insinuation my generation might be bad~ the way you seem to have read it.

Which is a very .... interesting stance, as though other people can't care when a group they're not a part of is demonized?

"your peers in your age group are fascists/queerphobes/not immune to radicalization" is me pointing out that this is an issue in every generation--

Because humans, let alone generations, are not monoliths, and no one can be truely definied by what decade they were born into.

The person in the screenshot is positioning that Gen Z is somehow uniquely fascist, posted just hours after Trump won the election, ergo, blaming Gen Z, a collection of 14-to-27 year olds, for uniquely being the reason Trump won.

By my pointing out the ages and "generations" that Trump, Joe Rogan, JD Vance and Pewdiepie are in, including the Millennial Generation I myself am a part of, I am pointing out that

Not every generation is monolith. Every group of people has some bad eggs, and they don't come from nowhere.

Gen Z is not "uniquely fascist" because the fascists who are currently the biggest names in politics are from 4 generations previous, thats how age works

I am in the same generation as Pediepie and JD Vance-- a Millenial. Surprise! Not all Millenials magically have anywhere close to the same ideology, because that's not how that works!

Anyways, I would type more out here in response, but I see now in my notifications that you're out here defending Cryptotheism for normalizing AI art and blocking people who call them out,

because you are somehow under the impression that "calling people who use AI art out" means you're somehow incapable of "calling out the companies who make this in the first place" and like.

newsflash asshole.

People who call out people for using AI Art are the same people who also call out and protest against companies that are scraping all of our data and art and prose in the first place. I am flabberghasted that you think these things are somehow mututally exclusive to each other.

Cryptotheism used an AI image generator to make a big old "Joke post" that flopped immediately, and then when people like myself explained how and why this was bad because when a big-name blog like themselves uses their platform to post AI art for jokes, it normalizes ai art and makes it a more accepted part of the public consciousness, because "it's just a joke, chill out" has apparently never been used to normalize horrible things before, ever! (sarcasm) they blocked me and edited the post to gaslight people into thinking people in the replies were just "crazy" so they could flood the post with a million new notifications from their thousands of followers so that they wouldn't lose anymore followers from people realizing they supported AI Art.

All they had to do was say "shit, my bad, you're right, I didn't think of it like that. Sorry guys." and move on.

But nope, they doubled down because they didn't want the rest of their followers to realize they support AI art.

Anyways, have fun being blocked.

I am not sure what else you expected from your stalking my blog to argue about ai art and generational conflicts from the completely wrong sides, of all things.

I see people have decided to start demonizing Gen Z as somehow being uniquely responsible for the rise of Fascism in the USA, "gen z needs to reckon with its radicalization problem" like hey OP! Are you going to "reckon with" the people in OUR generation and our parent's generation doing the radicalizing?

"you are not a morally pure and superior generation come to save the world" LITERALLY WHAT GEN Z PERSON HAS EVER SAID THIS?

Like, excuse me??? You're really so caught up in a fake generational conflict you're gonna claim Gen Z is some monolith claiming moral purity?

You're not gonna talk about how literally all of the worlds problems are shoved onto the next generations shoulders from the day they're born and how we, the previous generations, always forcibly uphold them to rigorous, unobtainable standards or villainize them completely??

Get this shitass post off my dash.

You CANNOT blame the rise of Fascism and more specifically Trump winning the election on Gen Z, we are not playing this shitass game again.

YOUR peers in your age group are fascists.

YOUR peers in your age group are queerphobes.

YOUR generation is not immune to radicalization !

You do not get to sit there and act like fascists, queerphobia, and right-wing radicalization is a unique problem among "kids these days".

Joe Rogan is Gen X born in 1967.

Pewdiepie is a Millennial, born in 1989

JD Vance is another Millennial, born in 1984

Donald Trump is a Baby Boomer, born in 1946.

You gonna sit there and tell me Gen Z have a unique problem with radicalization when the people who are radicalizing them from young ages were born in the 40s and 60s and 80s??

Nope.

Shut the fuck up and stop spreading this stupid fucking post.

Try having a productive conversation where you're not blaming an entire generation ranging from 14 years old to 27 years old for every single one of your problems with the politics in this country.

The oldest members of Gen Z have literally had to deal with Trump their entire adult lives, and the youngest were just 6 years old when he became President in 2016.

Gen Z is not a monolith who uphold themselves as being "morally superior to the ones who came before" and if you honestly believe that then you've already succumbed to your own fucking fallacy of blaming "kids these days"

You do not get to blame Gen Z for Trump becoming president again because you're so desperate for someone to blame.

With more than eight million members of Gen Z becoming eligible to vote in the 2024 Presidential election, a new era is coming in politics: the Gen Z wave. In an independently conducted survey by The News Record, 42.9% of college students who engaged in the survey are registered as Democrat, 42.9% as Independent, and only 14.3% were registered as Republican.

[masteraqua]

before we realized

[chaocollective]

i really like that literally every artist i see on this site gives sniper a mullet. we really understood the assignment. oh that reminds me i have speeding bullet furry art i need to post

[curufiin]

Discourse in silm is literally 50% people flat out refusing to admit that everyone is at least a little bigoted including themselves. and 50% of just people making up other people to be mad about

[wolfsbanesparks]

*politely raises hand* Ayo do you have any thoughts on if fear toxin is even anything to worry about in the face of the Courage of Achilles?

Like Billy Batson would obviously have a terrible time if he’s exposed to it but would Captain Marvel, setting aside the fact he doesn’t need to breathe, be fine?

I don’t have a penny to give but I request thy thoughts.

Hey there!

So my answer here is two fold:

Technically there have been canon comics where Captain Marvel is affected by fear toxin (Shazam #12 i believe), bringing his greatest fears as Billy to the surface despite him being powered up. There have also been other non fear toxin induced events to a similar effect.

But to be perfectly honest, the comic I'm thinking of largely included him being affected by fear toxin as an excuse for a more experienced Batman to save the day and highlight his own inexperienced fighting style.

So as with most things, Cap's immunity to toxins (including fear toxin) varies based on what the writers want to happen in their story.

Personally, I think that he should be immune to standard fear toxin or at the very least be able to power through the hallucinations because of the courage of Achilles. I mean what's the point of having supernatural courage as a power if you can't overcome a chemical to induce fear? Especially if perfectly ordinary human Batman can do it with sheer willpower?

Mostly I think a lot of people have the tendency to downplay Cap's abilities while at the same time hyping up Batman and his rogues. If Cap's powers are actually understood and respected by the writers there really shouldn't be much to worry about with fear toxin (unless there's a a team up with a magical villain enhancing it or Billy is caught in it before he can transform. Then we might have an interesting story).

So that's my two cents on the subject! I'd love to other people chime in!

[artkaninchenbau]

Jumping deeper and deeper into the unknown, Even within such nonsense and incoherence, There should be a piece of truth buried~🎶 Ghost Game's finale aired today, and I'm sad to say goodbye to The Baby Boy and the rest of the gang. I loved these characters so much, I'm gonna miss them ❤️

[scionshtola]

me the past two days: idc about the new dragon age stuff at all

me now discovering lucanis from tevinter nights is a companion: i might be listening

[faggotry-enjoyer]

oh i'm definitely gonna lose some friends for this one huh

[musical-chick-13]

I think. I think there's still a lot of "Well I don't want to be like THOSE girls," even among plenty of adults who truly do genuinely care about feminism. And I just want to say that trying to assure someone who is attempting to parse all of that out with "Oh, don't worry, YOU'RE not like One Of THOSE™️ Girls" does not........actually help.

[popstart]

every single time i do a td ship chart without fail it looks like rainbow vomit all over the canvas. tried to make it look any amount of serviceable and readable but idk at this point i just love drawing 100 meaningless lines on a canvas

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: February 17

“DYWTYLM” by Sleep Token