#we know you're not actually mad about it

[fookinstevienicks]

everyone mad about "enjoy it while it lasts"

my condolences on your lack of humor please speak to anyone older than 30 at some point

[gingermintpepper]

In my Zeus bag today so I'm just gonna put it out there that exactly none of the great Ancient Greek warrior-heroes stayed loyal and faithful and completely monogamous and yet none of them have their greatness questioned nor do we question why they had the cultural prominence that they did and still do.

Jason, the brilliant leader of the Argo, got cold feet when it came to Medea - already put off by some of her magic and then exiled from his birthland because of her political ploys, he took Creusa to bed and fully intended on marrying her despite not properly dissolving things with Medea.

Theseus was a fierce warrior and an incredibly talented king but he had a horrible temper and was almost fatally weak to women. This is the man who got imprisoned in the Underworld for trying to get a friend laid, the man who started the whole Attic War because he couldn't keep his legs closed.

And we cannot at all forget Heracles for whom a not inconsiderable amount of his joy in life was loving people then losing the people around him that he loved. Wives, children, serving boys, mentors, Heracles had a list of lovers - male and female - long enough to rival some gods and even after completing his labours and coming down to the end of his life, he did not have one wife but three.

And y'know what, just because he's a cultural darling, I'll put Achilles up here too because that man was a Theseus type where he was fantastic at the thing he was born to do (that is, fight whereas Theseus' was to rule) but that was not enough to eclipse his horrid temper and his weakness to young pretty things. This is the man that killed two of Apollo's sons because they wouldn't let him hit - Tenes because he refused to let Achilles have his sister and Troilus who refused Achilles so vehemently that he ran into Apollo's temple to avoid him and still couldn't escape.

All four of these men are still celebrated as great heroes and men. All four of these men are given the dignity of nuance, of having their flaws treated as just that, flaws which enrich their character and can be used to discuss the wider cultural point of what truly makes a hero heroic. All four of these men still have their legacies respected.

Why can that same mindset not be applied to Zeus? Zeus, who was a warrior-king raised in seclusion apart from his family. Zeus who must have learned to embrace the violence of thunder for every time he cried as a babe, the Corybantes would bang their shields to hide the sound. Zeus learned to be great because being good would not see the universe's affairs in its order.

The wonderful thing about sympathy is that we never run out of it. There's no rule stopping us from being sympathetic to multiple plights at once, there's no law that necessitate things always exist on the good-evil binary. Yes, Zeus sentenced Prometheus to sufferation in Tartarus for what (to us) seems like a cruel reason. Prometheus only wanted to help humans! But when you think about Prometheus' actions from a king's perspective, the narrative is completely different: Prometheus stole divine knowledge and gifted it to humans after Zeus explicitly told him not to. And this was after Prometheus cheated all the gods out of a huge portion of wealth by having humans keep the best part of a sacrifice's meat while the gods must delight themselves with bones, fat and skin. Yes, Zeus gave Persephone away to Hades without consulting Demeter but what king consults a woman who is not his wife about the arrangement of his daughter's marriage to another king? Yes, Zeus breaks the marriage vows he set with Hera despite his love of her but what is the Master of Fate if not its staunchest slave?

The nuance is there. Even in his most bizarre actions, the nuance and logic and reason is there. The Ancient Greeks weren't a daft people, they worshipped Zeus as their primary god for a reason and they did not associate him with half the vices modern audiences take issue with. Zeus was a father, a visitor, a protector, a fair judge of character, a guide for the lost, the arbiter of revenge for those that had been wronged, a pillar of strength for those who needed it and a shield to protect those who made their home among the biting snakes. His children were reflections of him, extensions of his will who acted both as his mercy and as his retribution, his brothers and sisters deferred to him because he was wise as well as powerful. Zeus didn't become king by accident and it is a damn shame he does not get more respect.

[lloydfrontera]

'lloyd is very weak now and needs to marry so he'll have someone to protect him'- lloyd has the only grandmaster on the world following him around like a puppy. he has the most terrifying motherfucker on the world wrapped around his little finger. he has the one person in the world who can hit an absolute in the head and get away with it swearing in his heart to protect him no matter the cost over and over again.

lloyd made javier watch him die twice right in front of him just to keep him alive. there is no power on existence that could make javier allow anyone or anything to even think about harming lloyd again.

lloyd is fine

[the-way-astray]

alright everybody can we please stop tagging me/talking about me in the notes of pro keefe/sokeefe posts. i know strieefe has made it so that it's really funny to talk about how much i love him and how much i'm in denial when i say negative things about him under those posts (and that's all in good fun and not the problem), but we have to think about the fact that the ops are just trying to make a positive post and probably don't want a keefe hater in their notes /srs

[fallloverfic]

I love singNsong again reminding people in Side Story that Dokja wanted other people to read TWSA (he wrote reviews and comments! It was his first wish), and he only stopped bothering because people harassed him for it. He didn't gate-keep the story. When he's avoiding talking to Sangah about it at the beginning of ORV, it's because he knows what happens when he tells people about the story, not because he's gate-keeping it from her. He notes he's not proud of his hobby (likely because he's been bullied all through his life, including for reading the thing he loves): he finds it embarrassing to talk about, and better respects her studying Spanish in her free time (learning another language is a generally accepted thing in society). He assumes she won't care or will look at him funny (or worse) for when she learns about the novel he's into.

Basically anyone writing "let's gatekeep ORV" posts because of the anime announcement or because they dislike the manhwa or some other weirdness, y'all are the villains in the scenario.

The literal climax of the story is about sharing ORV with as many people as possible. What story were y'all reading?

[here-there-were-dragons]

i'm seeing three times as many people bitching in the tag about the very idea that someone might not like this breed than i see people actually expressing unambiguous dislike for this breed

[blonde-and-cat-suc]

If Adora and Catra both did crap to hurt each other then why do I never see comics abt Adora feeling like crap and feeling bad for hurting Catra

[anaer]

i really do hate jjk

[horsemage]

I think we should bring back basic etiquette lessons such as shutting the fuck up when you’re watching a movie in a group that is not exclusively your friend group 🙂

[keelanrosa]

terfs when a study shows literally anything positive about trans people/transitioning: 'hm i think this requires some fact-checking. Were those researchers REALLY unbiased? Because if they were biased this doesn't count and if they weren't knowingly biased they probably were unconsciously biased, woke media affects so much these days. Have there been any other studies on this? Because if there haven't been this could be an outlier and if there have been and they all agree that's a bit odd, why aren't there any outliers, and if there have been and any disagree we really won't know the truth until we very thoroughly analyze them all, will we? Were there enough subjects for a good sample size? Did every single subject involved stay involved through the whole study because if they didn't we should be sure nothing shady was going on resulting in people dropping out. Are we 110% sure all the subjects were fully honest and at no point were embarrassed or afraid to admit they didn't love transitioning to the people in charge of their transition? Are we 110% sure none of the subjects were manipulated into thinking they were happy with their transition? In fact we should double-check what they think with their parents, because if the subjects and their parents disagree it's probably because they've been manipulated but their cis parents have not and are very unbiased. How many autistic subjects were there because if there weren't enough then this doesn't really study the overlap between autistic and trans and if there were too many then we just don't know enough about what causes that overlap to be sure this study really explains being trans and isn't just about being autistic. How many AFAB subjects were there because if there weren't enough this is just another example of prioritizing AMAB people and ignoring the different struggles of girls and women and if there were too many how do we know sexism didn't affect the results. Was the study double-blinded? We all know double-blinded is the most reliable so if this one wasn't that's a point against it even if the thesis literally physically could not be double-blinded. Look i'm not being transphobic, i want what's best for trans people! Really! But as a person who is not trans and therefore objective in a way they cannot possibly be, i just think we should only take into account Good Science here. You want to be following science and not being manipulated or experimented upon by something unscientific, right?'

terfs when they see a study of 45 subjects so old it predates modern criteria for gender dysphoria and basically uses 'idk her parents think she's too butch', run by a guy who practiced conversion therapy, 'confirmed' by a guy who treated the significant portion of subjects who didn't follow up as all desisting, definitely in the category of 'physically cannot double-blind this', completely contradicted by multiple other studies done on actual transgender subjects, but can be kinda cited as evidence against transitioning if you ignore everything else about it: 'oOOH SEE THIS IS WHAT WE'RE TALKIN BOUT. SCIENCE. Just good ol' unbiased thorough analysis. I see absolutely no reason to dig any deeper on this and if you think it's wrong you're the one being unscientific. It's really a shame you've been so thoroughly brainwashed by the trans agenda and can't even accept science when you see it. Maybe now that someone has finally uncovered this long-lost study from 1985, we can make some actual progress on the whole trans problem.'

[cuteniarose]

I'm bored and can't sleep because of cramps so I decided to mess around with an incorrect quotes generator using the latest OCs @katkastrofa and I created that I unfortunately cannot talk about in detail here because I'd get nerfed in an instant:

[pa-pa-plasma]

i don't think i'll ever get over how people treat kids that aren't good in school as worthless no matter what. "oh it can't be that bad" my guy idk how to tell you this but the last time i went to a normal high school the principal called me into his office to brag about how he failed me in all of my classes before the semester was even finished & i should quit while i'm ahead cuz i'm too stupid ("officially" diagnosed as such by a school counselor & a psychiatrist!!) to succeed. & this is considered normal

[blujayonthewing]

so in juniper's campaign we've just found ourselves in a high-stakes situation that I as a player do frankly find stressful and am anxious about, but hey hi also the DM was like 'okay here are the exact mechanics of how this is going to work because I don't want to surprise you with serious repercussions, also here are all the options you will have to try to do something about the situation-- [affected player] what do you think? honest feedback, I don't want it to feel unfair, I want to be clear that I am not just trying to kill your character, and if it ends up being badly balanced we can revisit it down the road' and oh my god I could COLLAPSE and WEEP with gratitude

[maeamian]

I wish there were better ways to discuss outrage that didn't rely on the same language we use for surprise. It's very tiring to complain about something horrific or that sucks wicked bad and get 'and this surprises you?'

My outrage is not dependent on surprise, it is dependent on my moral code being violated, which happens often enough that I do not find it surprising, but also, I refuse to be numb to my morals.

[star-mum]

had an argument with my sister on the ride home from my friend's :-:

[hazbinbabbling4ever]

I can't be the only one who's tired of the "Everything is Problematic™" culture that we're currently experiencing, right? I'm talking about the "call out" posts where people say shit like "if you still like Harry Potter you're a transphobic asshole and worse than JKR!". This over simplifications dilute the meaning of "transphobe", and the actual transphobes benefit from the loss of importance that this accusation carries.

People think they're being so intelligent when creating these ever-changing, pointless rules: "don't buy from Zara, or you support genocide!", "don't listen to Taylor Swift, or you endorse climate change!". I've heard it all. If it takes so little to be labeled as such a horrible person, people will dismiss the whole problem. How can they take you seriously if you say these things un-ironically? Also, it's uncanny how these radicalized """activists""" sometimes overlap beautifully with the far-right wing politics. Take anti-shippers who want to police fanfictions: their idea of "regulation" (censorship) aligns perfectly with the far-right bigots.

And if a problem is just mildly severe, to show you care about it you don't need to get Big Mad. There is a whole sea of annoyance in between silent acceptance and full blown rage (which is rarely productive if not directed wisely). I'm wary of performative rage over trivial matters, because it rings hollow, like the person is more interested in virtue signaling to their peers than actually doing something concrete about it. Even if it's a Big Problem, raging left and right can be powerful but short lived.

I think this is the problem with today's activism: short lived bursts of rage don't cover it. You need to work, work, work. Even silently, even with no social recognition. Activism shouldn't be a stage where you perform an angry speech, everyone claps and you're now Morally Sound. That's how far right wing nutters operate: get Big Mad about every thing (whether big or trivial), Perform your Anger, rinse and repeat. The difference is they probably know what they're doing, creating a climate of perennial anger. They know how to direct that anger to the vote. They make a mountain out of a mole hill so that it's easier to solve the made up problem, thus creating cohesiveness. Meanwhile, left wing "activists" making up new rules and moving the goal posts are just creating problems whose solution just furthers the divide. Finding enemies everywhere, inside and outside of our circles, is not useful*.

That's why this left-wing "activism" often morphs into a witch hunt: people feel powerless, so making up new rules to follow and hunting down the "infidels" gives them the illusion they're doing enough. Take the campaign against JKR: boycotting anything HP is not enough, the goal posts are moved every time. Now you're promoting transphobia if you partake in HP's fandom (almost no one talks about why JKR is fucking problematic anymore, so the "normies" will hear this kind of outlandish shit and dismiss the whole matter as internet pishposh).

Instead of keeping up the battle against the actual transphobes, which can feel frustrating because they seem untouchable, you settle on hounding anyone who doesn't adhere to the made up rules that become more and more strict. Or even worse: you don't accept someone's help against the terfs unless they adhere strictly to the made up rules.

Eerie how on one side they're ready to accept actual human violation rights, meanwhile the other side can't even accept that some people are against terfs but may still like HP, and so schism after schism happens. That's why left wing activists lack cohesiveness. They can't accept you're not a bad person or a terf if you think slightly different from them. No one collaborates with the other anymore.

HP is just one of the many examples that describe this mechanism. Apply this to all modern politics and you've got the root of the matter. ---

*Ironically, far-right wing nutters are more cohesive because they tolerate anyone in their group, they act like One Big Solid Unity against the rest of the world. That's why you'll see terfs shack up with nazis and misogynists, if it means they will get rid of trans people. Chilling to the bone, but their strategy is effective in keeping their ranks united, because at the moment they're only lashing outside, not inside. It'll of course be a harsh wake up call when the leopards eat their face lmao. Also, what I'm saying is not "tolerate Actual Bad People to win a battle", but: "get angry at the Actual Bad People, don't invent new enemies!" ---

I don't know how to end this, and it's not lost on me how complaining about complainers makes me a complainer too lmao, but sometimes a rant is just a rant and you need to vent.