#we got milquetoast

[lovelyrotter]

we get the constant urge to just design random characters for like no reason so we can hoard them for potential future ttrpg pcs and we have wayyyy too many tiefling ideas. way too many. but tiefling names are way too fun to think about

[floral-hex]

Haven’t been sleeping well because, and this is the stupidest reason, I’m so full of damnable longing. All I do is yearn and pine and want.

[mocury-moto]

the big jury duty in the sky...

I’m building a dnd class rn called “Just Some Guy” and the whole thing is that they are just supremely bad at combat and ability checks the whole time. at level 20 u get an ability called “Fucking Finally” where u get the level 1 abilities of another class. ur hit dice are d4s and the only thing u have proficiency in is improvised weapons. this is the funniest thing I’ve done in a hot minute

[sextions]

i hate car based infrastructure so badly it’s insane

[dcggone]

i think ill taking an office position at this philosophy club i joined at school. i say that knowing the workload ive already taken on is daunting and a wee bit scary

[slushi-chan]

The umbilical cord Frank Sunderland keeps in his room would be a better protagonist with more personality than Henry he’s so fucking bland

[catboybiologist]

Yay I'm going to get all Political and angry again.

So pretty much every trans American is probably aware of the Sarah McBride situation at this point, but here's the bullet point summary if needed for anyone else:

Sarah McBride gets elected to the House as the first transgender member of Congress in US history.

Republicans predictably flip their shit. They pass internal rules of conduct that prohibit trans people from using bathrooms of their gender and stating that bathroom use is defined by AGAB. It obviously singles out McBride, but I believe there are trans staffers that are also affected.

McBride issues a statement that she will abide by these rules, and pretty much only use the bathroom directly associated with her physical office. She issues a statement saying she "wasn't elected for bathrooms" and will instead fight in issues that matter, with a milquetoast criticism of Republicans for wasting time on this.

Many trans Americans are predictably scared and disappointed by this, especially because this internal house rule is being used as a blueprint for more extensive laws, including a likely ban on trans people in gendered bathrooms in all federal land and buildings (including, notably for me, national parks. Which breaks my heart, but that's a different rant.)

There's been a lot of disappointment and criticism of McBride over this. The general leftist reaction has been criticism. There's lots of people that have expressed disappointment or rage, including Erin Reed, and also more "personality" type people like Vaush and Jessie Gender.

Now.

I'm disappointed too.

But. And please keep reading before chewing me out for being an apologist.

I think we can all understand that McBride is in an impossible situation. If she fights this too hard, then it vindicates the Republican rhetoric that Dems are crazy trans obsessed leftists. But there's a fear that this will only lead to more infringements of rights for trans people. McBride is completely stuck, and is a junior, freshly elected member of Congress who is trying to figure out how to make her voice the most effective.

I am so, so fucking tired of rights being ceded one by one. So I'm disappointed. But yeah, I understand McBride's statement.

But there's just one tiny. Eeny weeny. Minor. Itty Bitty question having over all of this. Just one little concern.

Where.

The fuck.

Are the rest of the Democrats?!?!?!?

There is a PAINFULLY fucking easy solution to all of this. McBride needs backing, solidarity, and other people to speak for her. If she's worried about her voice being effective, and being branded as the crazy trans representative, then step the fucking up, you spineless liberal slimebags.

AOC is the only one that I know of that has expressed any real opposition or anger. Her statements are getting aaallll the airtime.

But the real story is McBride's sentiment being echoed amongst the entire party. This is absolutely some kind of official platform. The fucking grumbling, milquetoast finger waving and "well I don't like this, but there's nothing to be done! Anyways"

Of fucking course minorites are abandoning the left. The message they're sending is "we'll abandon you with the most pathetic of excuses. We don't give a shit." Trimming groups out of their support one by one.

McBride is doing the impossible calculus of trying to be the most effective on the house floor. It's an insane task for a trans woman. And yeah, she got it wrong this time. But where the fuck is the anger for her cis colleagues? Why the fuck aren't people angry and terrified for everyone that let this shit happen?

As much as people love the narrative of the line wolf resistor, resistance takes coordination, effort, and solidarity. Without that, what would McBride raising opposition even be? One representative against the hundreds of others.

And yeah, of course I didn't expect any better from the Democratic party. But you should be disappointed and mad at your representative, not just McBride.

[gigglingjester]

This might be a me thing but I do not fw how so many women characters in this franchise are hyperfeminine

Like we hardly seen any gnc or masc looking women front and center - just hourglass clones (sans mimzy)

long as fuck eyelashes, skinny arms, same style of milquetoast California millennial fashion

none of them got feet fr except the furrys, it’s painfully traditional

[guidaozongshi]

Naruto's a shonen but I think sasunaru is too complex for shonen fans to understand

It’s not that I disagree with this point, but Naruto as a series encompasses a lot of complex themes that, over time, even Kishimoto seemed ill-equipped to handle. As the story progressed, it veered into a more generic shounen direction, particularly during the war arc, which ultimately led to the ending we got. I’ll probably make a separate post delving deeper into this, but the shift in tone and thematic depth is hard to ignore. While I never expected astute political commentary from a shounen writer, the way the story was written up until the Pain arc had me anticipating at least some milquetoast centrism—not the outright fascistic talking points that emerged later.

That said, characters like Pain and Sasuke, who oppose Konoha, are still written as sympathetic figures with understandable motivation. Yet, many fans ( especially Western fans ) struggle to follow Sasuke’s actions, often dismissing him as irrational despite his logic being clearly laid out in the text. He’s criticized for wanting to kill the Kages, even though the manga dedicates significant pages to exposing their crimes and their role in perpetuating violent conflicts. While Sasuke is undeniably pushed into an antagonistic role, his motivations are far from baseless or incomprehensible. The disconnect seems to stem from both a dislike of his character and an unwillingness to engage with the series on a deeper level beyond the surface-level appeal of battles in a battle shounen.

While many fans might not be able to articulate the nuances of Sasuke and Naruto’s relationship, the general fandom including dudebros widely recognizes it as having a strong homoerotic undertone.

[olderthannetfic]

https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/773030305674199041/this-is-so-petty-and-so-trivial-but-gaiman-got-so

Wanda from Sandman was still the first time I ever saw a trans woman in mainstream fiction who was both presented positively and as a woman rather than as an especially weird variety of gay man.

Maybe it's milquetoast by a younger generation's standards, but a tepid portrayal in a mainstream comic is far FAR more than we usually got.

The fact that the author turns out to be a bag of dicks doesn't mean he can't portray a character with sympathy and nuance.

Any person can do both good and bad things, yes, even someone who does something *really* bad.

--

[may-maple-blog]

so alluria and the garchomp guy's garchomp got along well. it's really rare, but sometimes when breeding pokémon you'll get offspring that share the father's species. we found this guy's egg with the rest of the feebas.

this little guy isn't a hybrid, but he does have some milotic traits from alluria--most notably his soft, brightly colored scales! i really hope he keeps them if he evolves.

this guy still needs a name!

thank you to my friends @milquetoast-appreciator and @certified-togekiss-enjoyer for helping me get a new friend!

[tanadrin]

RE "revolutionary leftists are revolutionary because they know they can't win electorally."

It astounds me a little that there are leftists who think that a communist revolution is more likely to work than, like, fifty years of community-building and electoral politics. Sewer socialism, union activism, and other boring activities have brought much more success in the U.S. than agitation for a revolution.

What I mean is, setting aside the moral concerns (violence is bad, even when it's necessary, and if there are practical alternatives then we should pursue them), I am not a revolutionary leftist because I think we would lose a revolution. For one thing, there is a considerable right-wing element in the country that is much better prepared for this kind of thing, and I think that the majority of the institutions in the U.S. would pick fascism over communism if they had to choose, but also, prolonged violent action is ripe for breeding authoritarianism.

Goatse is concerned that "the party" might "abandon or neglect its primary ends," but what is leftism if it is not, at bottom, an attempt to improve the living conditions of all people, et cetera et cetera? To the extent that social democratic parties successfully pursue this end to some degree, they're better than than an ostensible communist party that talks the talk but commits human rights abuses. And, more than the fact that U.S. leftism has some pretty fierce opposition that would probably fare better if The Revolution happened tomorrow, I think that, even in winning, we would lose, because what came out the other end would look a lot more like Stalinism.

I think one thing the hardcore revolutionaries in OECD countries don't realize is that the reason they can't marshal support for their revolutions is that the socialists won most of the issues that were salient in the early 20th century--workers got more rights, better pay, unions were legalized, etc., etc. But it didn't take restructuring the whole political economy to do it, which is immensely frustrating if you believe that any society without your ideal political economy is inherently immoral and impure, so in order to justify an explicitly communist platform you have to rhetorically isolate it from the filthy libs and feckless demsocs who it turns out have been pretty effective within the arena of electoral politics in which supposedly nothing can ever get done, and treat them as of a piece with the out-and-out fascists and royalist autocrats of the 1920s and 30s.

Which, you know. Is not persuasive to most people! Most people understand intuitively the vast gulf between the SPD and the Nazis; they see that, milquetoast and compromising though they may be, the center-left can deliver substantive policy improvements without the upheaval of a civil war or political purges, and this is attractive to people who are not of a millenarian or left-authoritarian personality.

Which isn't to say that communists don't often make important points! It sucks having to fight a constant rearguard action against the interests of capital rolling back the social improvements of the 20th century, and it sucks that liberal governments in Europe and North America have historically been quite happy to bankroll and logistically support fascists and tyrants in the third world against communist movements (which invariably only exist as communist movements because these same fascists and tyrants have crushed more compromising movements and only the most militant organizations have managed to survive).

But I agree with you: communists also talk a big game about how liberalism is the real fascism (what's that line from Disco Elysium I see quoted everywhere about how everybody is secretly a fascist except the other communists, who are liberals?), while also being awful at democracy. Suppressing dissent because your small clique of political elites is the only legitimate expression of the people's will (which you know, because you have declared it to be so) really is some rank bullshit. A system with competitive elections is still, well, a system with competitive elections, even if those elections are structurally biased in certain ways; all the bloviating that attempts to justify communist authoritarianism cannot really obscure the fact that authoritarian systems are cruel and brittle, regardless of the ideology being served.

[tyrantisterror]

Bringing Up Baddie (Working Title) Character Concepts

Hey, remember a while back when I made those posts about supervillain archetypes, one of which inexplicably became derailed to talk about different doctorates people wanted to see put to use as increasingly terrible supervillain pitches? Well that was for a thing! A thing that I'm currently conceptualizing as "What if we took the premise of the famous screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby, wherein a crazy lady ruins a milquetoast guy's life in the best possible way, and did it with superheroes and stuff?" Well, supervillains, technically.

I was getting that list of archetypes together to try and make some pitches, and I basically took it and got some of the kids at the daycare to pitch power combos and motiffs for me, because who would know better what would make for a fun superhero, right? Anyway, here's some of the working character concepts so far:

Reptillion, with the enhanced powers of a million reptiles!

Just a down-on-their-luck schmuck who got roped into being a test subject for some evil super science while job hunting, Reptillion would be the Cary Grant figure in this tale. The power set was pitched by a child, I swear - for once it wasn't me who decided the protagonist should have a reptile theme! Reptillion is The Big Monstrous Guy archetype, a reluctant monster who will be forced into villainy by circumstance.

Scarlet Sidewinder, the venomous and villainous viperess!

The Kate Hepburn figure in this story was always going to be a Harley Quinn expy of some sort, and when a reptile theme was chosen for the protagonist, it felt only fitting that the deuteragonist would share it. Also, like, snake-themed Harley Quinn knockoff is very much in my wheelhouse. Figuring out her hairstyle has proved to be the biggest challenge - I tried a lot of looks that fit her punk personality, but they kept obscuring the viper eye-horns on her domino mask, which I feel are a more important detail (supervillains shouldn't downplay their motiffs!), so I ended up going with a pair of sidewinder-esque pony tails instead. As both Harley Quinn and Kate Hepburn's character in Bringing Up Baby were before her, Scarlet Sidewinder is The Wildcard archetype.

Scarlet Sidewinder is, of course, the test subject of an earlier version of the Reptillion super serum, one that only focused on snake DNA and didn't give broke shapeshifting powers to her. She initially wants the Reptillion serum for herself as a way to upgrade, but when the protagonist gets injected with it instead, she decides the next best thing is to have a partner in crime with those complementary powers instead.

Konglomerate and Dr. Gibbons, corporate apes!

I decided I want this to be the sort of comic book superhero pastiche that fully embraces how silly the genre can be, and one of the key ways to signal that is to just have, like, a LOT of apes running around. Like how The Umbrella Academy comics just have sapient/civilized chimpanzees make up around 35% of the background characters, and also one of the characters had his severed head grafted onto a space ape (both of these elements were downplayed severely in the TV show for those of you who've never read the comics). Two of the main antagonists would be Dr. Gibbons, a mad scientist who is trying to help humankind evolve into a superior species, and his boss/financier Konglomerate - they'd be The Evil Genius and A Normal Businessman archetypes, respectively, and the ones responsible for mutating both Reptillion AND Scarlet Sidewinder.

Nebulord the cosmic conqueror, Killer Rabbit the pandimensional prankster, and Lugnut Louie the professional killer robot

Just going to throw these three (well, four I suppose, but ignore the Interceptor for now) together since so much of their concept art ended up sharing the same sheets. They're all... not quite allies of Reptillion and Scarlet Sidewinder, but somewhat helpful in their own way as fellow supervillains go. Nebulord is meant to be a big cosmic threat in the vein of Galactus or Darkseid, with the caveat being that in-story we'd mostly see him off-the-clock and dealing with petty day-to-day grievances. I wanted him to feel very Jack Kirby-esque, though I think ultimately it's just a shallow imitation of Kirby's style. He would be the Foreign Tyrant archetype, with a dash of the Planet Eater thrown in.

Killer Rabbit is a Mr. Myztptlk knockoff - I had listed "Killer Rabbit" as the archetype name (i.e. a villain who looks cutesy and nonthreatening but is actually terrifyingly powerful), but my students ran with that and suggested an Alice in Wonderland theme, which I thought was actually a pretty fun theme to play with for such a character. I mean, it's not exactly new ground - there are LOTS of Alice in Wonderland themed supervillains, most of which suck ass (including you Mad Hatter!) - but the whimsical surrealism with a dark undercurrent that Alice in Wonderland embodies DOES fit well with a pan-dimensional imp who uses their godlike powers to fuck with people out of boredom. To keep from retreading the MANY other supervillains who just stole Alice in Wonderland character names, I decided to make Killer Rabbit the name of this character instead of just their archetype.

Lugnut Louie is an old pro, sometimes working as his own boss, but more often than not as a high-ranking henchman. He's the Anything But Retail archetype with a dash of the Big Monstrous Guy, since it's hard for a big ominous murder robot to get jobs that aren't villainy related.

Queen Vespidious, leader of the Hive Mind!

To fill the Mind Taker archetype, I decided to go with the whole "hive mind" bullshit and have a bee/wasp-themed villainess who inducts civillians into her Hive with mind-controlling royal jelly. She also has a loyal second-in-command who'd be a spider-themed villain named Tyrantula - of course, being a spider in a relationship with a wasp, Tyrantula is very much the sub in this relationship.

The Copycat/shapeshifter archetype would be filled by Octomime, a woman with the color changing skills of a cuttlefish and the body-morphing skills of a mimic octopus. Octomime can copy anyone's physical appearance so long as they're roughly human-sized, but her inability to speak means the disguise only works so long as no one notices she's being eerily quiet. She's a deadly supervillain despite that flaw, though, in part because her durable body and deadly tentacles make her a force to be reckoned with even when she's been discovered.

aaaand I've run out of images for this post, so I'll add the more unfinished concepts in a reblog.

[sillimancer]

it's the villagers. the villagers didn't really get any quality-of-life updates or new features like other elements in the game (e.g. the camera, decorating your house). I kind of expected that, as the rest of the games got more advanced, the villager AI would too. maybe there would be a more robust friendship mechanic that would influence the likelihood of a villager deciding to move out. maybe the villagers could interact with each other more and do things like complain about the neighbors they don't like, making villager compatibility a factor in how you decorate your island. there could have been more little side quests, like getting signatures for petitions, or planting certain flowers around a villager's house. now that there's a cooking mechanic, there could have been a monthly potluck event where you like, spend the week before finding out what everyone wants to bring and gifting them the ingredients they need.

but we didn't get any of that. the NH villagers are basically just walking and talking decorations now. they do have new little behaviors, like doing their little hobbies or sitting down, but they don't have anything to do with you. they're animatronics acting out cuteness. they don't even have all that many new lines; you can cycle through everything a villager is going to potentially say to you pretty quickly if you talk to them every day (which the game encourages and rewards, implying they wouldn't want you to get bored with it, so this move is particularly baffling to me).

and we players treat them like decoration too. there are basically two reasons to covet a particular villager: sentimentality and looks. they're funko pops. they're funko pops and they could've been so much more and frankly I'm disappointed!

wait hold up I think I just finally figured out why I don't like animal crossing new horizons

[nothorses]

May I ask why you think Biden stepping down and Kamala being the candidate to be 'good news'? I'm still voting for whoever the Democratic candidate is ofc, but I worry this move threw away the average swingvoter who may have been swayed towards voting blue. I don't see how anyone who may have been okay voting for Biden by virtue of him being an old white dude is gonna be as nice towards a brown woman. I mean, people were too sexist for Hillary, the most milquetoast white woman imaginable. I'd really like to hear your perspective.

Biden has been polling like shit for months, and basically fucking everyone has been calling for him to step out of the race for a while now. It's been the opinion of political experts that he doesn't have much of a shot in this election for a variety of reasons. The vast majority of his own base is incredibly dissatisfied with his stance on Palestine (an understatement), and numbers have been reflecting that he was going to be running against some truly miserable odds because of that.

It is genuinely the best option for him to step out of the race. Literally just about anyone else has a much better shot at winning than Biden did. Kamala included! There was a press conference a while back where someone actually asked him if he'd step down if Kamala polled better, and he said he wouldn't. Which is extremely worrying, because it demonstrates that he may have been prioritizing his own personal ego over the importance of keeping Republicans out of office this election.

I don't like Biden, and I really didn't like his odds in this race. Nobody else did, either. The fact that Obama came out and said Biden needs to step down is indication enough that this happened because the situation is really that dire; you have to remember that Democrats are all about Doing Things By The Book, especially in the last 8-ish years when it's been useful for them to be Rule Followers in contrast to the tantrum-throwing chaos machines that Republicans have been. If there was even a sliver of hope for Biden to stay in the race after being chosen in the sad sham that the primaries were this election cycle, they would have kept pushing just to stay within the bounds of convention.

I was ready to push for Biden regardless, because keeping Republicans out of office is priority #1. But I've been saying for a while now that he needs to drop out (just... not on Tumblr, where the dominant conversation is "does voting for a flawed political pawn make you personally responsible for everything they ever do, or should we abstain and let the fascists hijack our government and kickstart several new genocides for the sake of personal moral purity" and I don't think that kind of nuance would be well-received).

I use my grandparents as a litmus test in a lot of this stuff, because they are very much the Typical Liberal Democrats, and their opinions on these things tend to fall in line with the majority of voting Democrats. They absolutely loved Biden in 2020, long before he was chosen as the candidate. They don't anymore. Seeing them lose any and all enthusiasm for voting for this corpse of a man was evidence enough to me that we needed someone else. Ideally someone people can get excited about, because I think folks have mostly lost the perspective we had in 2020 when Trump's nightmarish presidency was fresh in everyone's minds, and served as motivation enough to get to the fucking polls- regardless of who the Dem pick actually was.

From what I understand, Kamala is actually polling better than anyone else right now. I have my fears about voters' racism and misogyny too, but if she's doing well in the polls, I wonder if maybe there's some other factors counteracting that. She's also got name recognition, and the general impression of Being Qualified (because she's been VP already, like Biden was), and Being Likeable (because she comes with the general positive associations of the largely successful Biden presidency, without any baggage of perceived responsibility that Biden himself carries- like Biden did with Obama). She's been flying under the radar while still reaping the benefits of positive associations, and people know who she is. That feels like a good combination, but I don't know enough, and I haven't read enough into it to make any decently educated guesses.

That said, I don't really know as much about who the other potential candidates might be, either. I've heard Pete Buttigieg's name tossed around, but nobody liked his ass back in 2020 and idk if that's actually changed at all. I just know that every politically-knowledgeable/politically-active leftist whose opinion I've heard on the topic has been citing Biden dropping out as the literal only hope for a non-Republican to win this election, and I'm really fucking excited to see that come to fruition. I just hope the Dems pick someone who really does have a good shot.

As a sidenote, I also really hope this marks a shift in how they make decisions, too. It's become increasingly obvious how out-of-touch Democrats are with their voters, and Biden 2024 was just the latest and greatest indicator of exactly how bad that's gotten. The fact that the party has been able to make such an unconventional decision in response to what their voters actually want gives me a little bit of hope that we might be able to influence more change with them going forward than we have been.

[psychotrenny]

Got a really awesome reminder that the whole "Saying milquetoast liberal stuff in an put-on folksy voice" routine long predates any microblogging website. It's almost sad that Mr John E. Barry, founder and editor of the Victor Press newspaper of Victorville (California, USA) and writer of the paper's Desert Sage Says column, died back in 1995. Because he would have done numbers on Tumblr writing shit like this (placed below the cut for those who value their braincells)

ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH to an old feller like me has ben kinda a hero, like her husband. Her book, "North to the Orient", was the finest travel story I ever read. Her "Listen! the Wind" was another book a old country coot like me could spell out an' understand. BUT SHE'S wrote another book called "The Wave of the Future" an' it ain't a very big book, but I ain't never read nothin' outside a sheriff's sale notice that said more an' said less! HOW COME? Mrs Lindbergh I know has learned to respect Germany. The whole world respects Germany's power, just like any fool would respect a desperado with two guns stickin' in your face. But there my respect for Germany Ends BECAUSE HITLER has the strongest army in the an' kin prove it, don't make me feel any more friendly to National-Socialism. Anne Lindbergh may write that they is world revolution goin' on but but I'll ask anybody to read Anne's new book an' try to explain it to me. What I got out'n it was: well, so the world is goin to hell an' when our present system of government is through, then what? US COWPOKES out west here kin look at Europe an' watch it, but ef'n they tries to pull their fancy ideas around here, they'll really find out what a fight means ALL WE NEED is to git mad, good an' mad. An' I for one is mad about this weak, half-worded kind of stuff what might mean yes, might mean no. WHY WRITE an' print ANYTHIN' ef'n it don't say nothin'? Anne Morrow Lindbergh never said nothin' in her new book, only that she was afraid! WELL-OUT HERE IN THE WEST WE AIN'T

Edwin Corle (1941) Desert Country, Duell, Sloan & Pearce