#violence sucks

[riverofempathy]

I just had a thought about Oppenheimer, about why they used THAT line in THAT scene.

It’s because it makes us uncomfortable.

As it SHOULD. Because out of context, what does that line sound like? “I am become death, destroyer of worlds?”

It’s iconic. It’s cool.

But it’s not. Becoming responsible for hundreds of thousands of people’s deaths is not cool. It’s horrific. It’s disturbing. It’s something that should haunt us for the rest of time.

It certainly haunted Oppenheimer.

That’s the whole point! Of the whole movie! And they didn’t even go as far as they could have. They could have and should have shown the devastation and death within the Navajo people in New Mexico. They’re STILL getting sick to this day!

And yet we still have people today who firmly believe that dropping those bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was the right thing to do. And yet they mourn for the people who died at Pearl Harbor. As if people who die in your own country deserve to be mourned more than those who die in another country. As if those people don’t also have families who wanted them to come home. As if they don’t also believe in fighting for their country, the one that they happened to be born in, which you also could have happened to be born in, if the universe had shifted slightly. And you could have been on their side, mourning their people because they were yours.

It’s all a stupid game. It’s just a tangled web of lies, carefully constructed to fit whatever perspective of the side you’re born on. And we’re never going to get out of it if we keep thinking that war is necessary, that violence is necessary, that we have to protect ourselves against our enemies. But our “enemies” think the same thing about us. And they’re people, too. They think they’re right, too. They want to protect their families, too.

So it’s never gonna end. Unless we ALL work together to make things better, to be empathetic, to see everybody as human, everybody as worth protecting.

And it starts… with getting a little uncomfortable.

[shittysawtraps]

when your friend says “i’m becoming the joker,” reply, “well, i’m becoming jigsaw” to one-up them. do not elaborate on what this means

[purple-worm]

i know that folks from the west are not easily giving into support for palestine because “well israeli civilians dont deserve to die, stop being a dick by cheering for this”

and listen. we understand that very well. we cannot cheer for innocent people losing their lives. but we wouldnt BE here today if this were something that could have been sorted out over a negotiation

netanyahu just last week, w a disgusting ass smug face made it clear at the UN GA that he was redrawing the map of the middle east. he was literally there with a board and a marker pen, shamelessly redrawing a map of israel over palestine. people fucking clapped. there is video footage, goo look at it.

and that’s just what the west is seeing. what the west has been conveniently ignoring, or worse, supporting, is the apartheid in palestine for the past 100 years. what is happening in israel today, theyve been doing exactly that and Worse for a century in palestine.

any both sides argument misses the fucking point because it ignores a whole history of how theyve fucked over the palestinian people. not just outright killing their people but also stealing land and resources and redirecting them to the israeli cause.

but the west doesn’t actually give a fuck about arab countries or its people, in fact actively funds genocide. so eat your shitass opinion about not celebrating the one time palestinians have managed to look like a threat.

as hopeful as we are, we know israel is too powerful and has the west as its ally. but this is what palestinian journalist had to say about it “they have decided to fight and die on their feet, rather than just die on their knees”

another journalist reporting from gaza said “well the people in gaza are used to airstrikes of this kind so they have a standard protocol on how to evacuate and know when to give up, and go down together as a family”

let the enormity of those statements sink in, and then maybe you can fucking talk about both sides.

[umblrspectrum]

I LOVE EARTHMOVERS!!!!!

[hajihiko]

the sketch turned out pretty so here no context its sap night tonight

[dr-wuffles]

Hot take: as a trans woman who has suffered trans misogyny:

Trans misogyny is not an indicator of whether or not someone is trans. We did this shit with gender dysphoria in 2013 and we know it's wrong nowadays. Being trans isn't about suffering for fucks sake.

[mugentakeda]

custody battle or something (for this au)

[cyanorhis]

In terms of “canon-compliant” zutara, I think often about how Zuko’s development is both his redemption and his doom.

Because how come the obsessive go-getter of the show does not fight harder against fate (bryke’s annoying ass) to save his beloved from putting herself into a rewardless martyr-like situation in the form of a marriage that serves as repopulation program? (Which I always thought was ridiculous).

He learns bit by bit to acknowledge and make up for his mistakes. He respects Katara above all else. He fights fair. He does not guilt-trip her nor treat her like a reward. He loves her. He gave his life for her. He would not have survived had she not been the exceptional person she is. He supports her decisions no matter what. He listens to her.

So when she tells him about her ridiculously good and selfish intentions of pandering (once again) to a non-celibate Monk who wishes to have her mother his children for the sake of airbending and his supposed affection that was born out of the self-insert of narrators who give way too much importance to childhood crushes for one’s babysitter, he might argue but he can’t help but love her and respect her decision, both horrified by the cruelty of fate (aka bryke) and filled with admiration for the person she has always been.

If Orpheus loved Eurydice too much not to turn back when she tripped behind him, then Zuko loved Katara way too much not to validate and support her terribly selfless decisions. Because how dare him be selfish and want her for himself. And how dare him tell her what to do after years of war.

It is terribly tragic because on the other side, a part of her wishes he had fought harder.

A “villain” turned “hero” sometimes can mean the upholding of ideals made by two men who enjoy shaming young girls for their choice of love interest. Sometimes, the lack of a “villain” to whisk away the princess from the “hero’s” hands means said princess will remain unacknowledged and forgotten in a narrative that turns it into something of her own volition, a narrative that ignores everything a beloved female character represented for the people she was made to represent (by their own words, must I say). It leaves the realm of picking the love interest (which honestly could simply not ever happened in any form and would still be better than this) and enters the realm of once again giving a poor treatment to a female main character who quite literally Drives the story from its beginning.

And just like Orpheus and Eurydice are doomed by fate, Katara and Zuko are doomed by Bryke. And surprisingly, Katara gets the worse of it.

[lord-squiggletits]

One of my favorite parts of phase 2 (and indeed one of the few moments I resonated with IDW Prowl) was when the neutrals were coming back to Cybertron and Prowl said that he refused to let Autobots be pushed aside and overruled after they were the ones who fought for freedom for 4 million years (the exact wording escapes me atm).

And I mean, that resentment still holds true even once the colonists come on bc like. As much as it's true that Cybertron's culture is fucked up, and as funny as it can be to paint Cybertronians as a bunch of weirdos who consider trying to kill someone as a common greeting not important enough to hold a grudge over.... The colonists POV kind of pissed me off a lot of times, as did the narrative tone/implications that Cybertronians are forever warlike and doomed to die by their own hands bc it just strikes me as an extremely judgemental and unsympathetic way to deal with a huge group of people with massive war PTSD and political/social tensions that were rampant even before the war?

Like, imagine living in a society rife with bigotry and discrimination where you get locked into certain occupations and social strata based on how you were born. The political tension is so bad there's a string of assassinations of politicians and leaders. The whole planet erupts into an outright war that leads (even unintentionally) to famine and chemical/biological warfare that destroys your planet. Both sides of the war are so entrenched in their pre-war sides and resentment for each other that this war lasts 4 million years and you don't even have a home planet any more. Then your home planet gets restored and a bunch of sheltered fucks come home and go "ewww why are you so violent?? You're a bunch of freaks just go live in the wilderness so that our home can belong to The Pure People Who Weren't Stupid And Evil Enough To Be Trapped In War" and then a bunch of colonists from places that know nothing about your history go "lol you people are so weird?? 🤣🤣 I don't get why y'all are fighting can't you just like, stop??? Oh okay you people are just fucked up and evil and stupid then" ((their planets are based on colonialism where their Primes wiped out the native populations btw whereas the Autobots and OP in particular fought to save organics. But that never gets brought up as a point in their favor)) as if the damage of a lifetime of war and a society that was broken even before the war can just magically go away now that the war is over.

Prowl fucking sucks but he was basically the only person that pointed out the injustice of that.

And then from then on out most of the characters from other colonies like Caminus and wherever else are going "i fucking hate you and your conflicts" w/ people like literal-nobody Slide and various Camiens getting to just sit there lecturing Optimus about how Cybertronians are too violent for their own good and how their conflicts are stupid, with only brief sympathetic moments where the Cybertronians get to be recognized as their own ppl who deserve sympathy before going right back to being lambasted.

Like I literally struggled to enjoy the story at multiple points because there was only so much I could take of the characters I knew and loved being raked over coals constantly while barely getting to defend themselves or be defended by the narrative so like. It was just fucking depressing and a little infuriating to read exRID/OP

[calypsolemon]

Everyone on this website talks about the choice to not have children to end the terrible cycle of familial abuse or whatever but I feel like nobody on here wants to talk about the more mundane and pressing reality of wanting children but being paralyzed by the understanding that bringing them into our current society inherently means traumatizing them in some small way simply because there are no good options.

Like. Dont want to put a child through public school because public school sucks, but homeschool is isolating and private school is not an option for ppl with no money. Dont want to raise a child with a forced gender but attempting to raise a child neutrally may socially isolate them or cause authorities to question your parenting methods. Don't want to raise a child in an isolated suburb where they have nowhere to travel independantly but affordable housing with ample room for families in city environments are basically nonexistent.

It can be hard not to feel judgemental of yourself for wanting to bring a child into the world at all under these conditions. Unlike with refusing to continue the "cursed bloodline" or whatever, there's just no personal pride one can take in deciding not to have kids because the world would force me to make choices that hurt them irregardless of my desires.

[thisgingerhasnosoul]

I've been trying and trying and trying to get back into fandom shitposting and metas and writing—escaping and finding some enjoyment in being here, but I just… can't. Fandom seems so unimportant now. What's the point of getting invested in any it? None of it's real, none of it truly affects our lives. And it doesn't change the real world; it doesn't change that so many people have died and are dying still—or that those I thought would protect Jews are engaging in the very tactics the Nazis and so many before them used to justify their genocides against us. I'm struggling to find the motivation to do anything besides wallow in the pain of losing family members, the slaughter of my people, and the danger posed to me, personally, within the diaspora. To be honest, finding any joy in life feels futile and wrong.

And this is why I'm so angry at all the random goyishe fandom blogs posting about how evil white Israeli colonizers control the world and are lying about what happened to them (but also how it would totally okay if had happened, since they deserve it). Because these supposed progressives? It's all performative bullshit for them. It doesn't affect their lives in any actual way. They can post about how (((Israelis))) are the real baby killers; they can deny the murder of Jewish children and rape while in the same breath claiming it would be justified if it was true. They can parrot every Nazi talking point in all but name, from Blood Libel to Holocaust Denial to the Elders of Zion, and still believe they are on the side of social justice. Then they can go back to their petty fandom drama feeling good about themselves and forget all about it, while everyone I love and everyone like us suffers the consequences of their actions for years to come. We'll live with the trauma and the pain and the loss—and they'll go on with their lives feeling morally superior to the people they intentionally, callously hurt.

Just... fuck them.

[letters-to-rosie]

I think one thing that people can sometimes lose sight of is the reason we say ACAB isn't because all cops are terrible people on an interpersonal level (though a lot of them are lmao). It's because the raison d'être of policing is, above any protecting of the populace that happens, keeping the masses in line with the interests of the powerful. It always has been.

This applies to Arcane, too. At the end of the day, the Enforcers exist to enforce a set of laws and a social structure that immiserates and prematurely kills an entire population. The first scene of the show is about that.

So it's not against ACAB to enjoy a character that is a cop, but it is... perhaps naive to think that good apples will fix a system that at its core is about oppressing the many for the benefit of the few. Until that raison d'être goes away, policing will never be able to do anything else at its core.

[queerstudiesnatural]

Fan favourite characters I dislike poll

[elizakai]

i love the MTTRIO because they are all judgy hypocritical little shits living off of spite and appy juice

[unspuncreature]

anakin in lingerie WIP

[sasukeblunt]

THE FACE OF LOVE'S RAGE

emma rebholz / the mountain goats / samia / azra t. / ethel cain / unknown / crimson peak (2015)