#white people are something else

[kinkystims]

hey so like do y'all seriously not notice that the only people you reblog are white people. do y'all not notice that. do y'all not go hmmmmm lemme see if i can find some black creators. do y'all not go hmmmmm wow i've curated my blog to be a very white space maybe i should change that. is that not a thing that happens to you.

[weallpartyatybcpatricksfuneral]

"girls support girls-" okay but are you normal about queer women? are you normal about BIWOC? are you normal about disabled women? are you normal about autistic women? are you normal about fat women? alternative women? unattractive women? are you normal about women who choose not to shave their legs and armpits and faces? are you normal about butches and tomboys and masculine women? are you normal about trans women? are you normal about trans men? are you normal about nonbinary folk and people who lie outside the gender binary or renounce gender all together? are you normal about women who absolutely despise and detest the latest trends? are you normal about weird women who unsettle you with their interests? are you normal about women who don't wear makeup, who will never wear makeup, who openly dislike makeup and the makeup industry?

[shesgonnachangetheworld]

the thing about taylor swift is that i don't think that every criticism of her is misogynistic, but i do think that even people with legitimate criticisms tend to use misogyny as a crutch, which does not help your case. like i saw a meme that was about her private jet usage that ended with essentially slut-shaming her, and it's like...you could have just stopped at the first part you know? but they couldn't resist, because calling a rich blonde a vapid slut was easy and satisfying. but if you're going to use misogynistic rhetoric, even on "problematic" women, don't be shocked when people think you're a misogynist! it's not rocket science

[thepoisonroom]

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

[snekdood]

There are genuinely people online that instead of actually bringing people to the left, at this point, would prefer that anyone who was previously not on the left but who tries to be *stays* outside of the left, because i guess its just easier to comprehend when the world is put into little shitty boxes you labeled for them instead of actually thinking for once and having the nuance to understand them. Like thats wild to me that theres people who would prefer you not be on the left or not try to be. Yall GENUINELY do not care about advocating for your side politically in any capacity. Its LITERALLY just a clique you've found yourself in. And theres nothing progressive about that or being exclusive, wtf do you think this shit is, a night club? Grow the fuck up, honestly.

[pizzagame4000]

we all know human vigilante… but what about… slightly human vigilante

[loptrcoptr]

The blue eye samurai fandom, for some reason

[evocatiio]

if chibnall was the one writing this season you lot would be talking VERY differently

[bayetea]

seeing non-black people critique rick's portrayal of black characters is interesting sometimes. only like 30% of the critiques I see make any sense to me to be honest

[torchickentacos]

Swinging a bat at a hornet's nest, but I keep seeing the opinion go around that it's insensitive to say that we'll make it through the next 4 years because so many people didn't the first time around. Which, I guess I see the point, but like... do you expect all of us to just be like this for the next 4 years???

I totally get why some people can't feel hopeful, but insinuating that someone else is in the wrong for being able to stay optimistic just isn't productive or, in my opinion, a reasonable expectation. We all react to stressful times differently and not only is that okay, but it should be encouraged that people work through this however they personally need to and in whichever emotional state they end up in.

[deservedgrace]

I don't think that framing "Marginalized™️ Atheism/Deconstruction" and "Cishet White Male Atheism/Deconstruction" as inherently ~separate and distinct~ is super effective (and disclaimer I'm specifically speaking about my experience with christianity, atheism, and ex christian atheists/deconstructors), but also... okay so I was raised in a cult, and cults are oppressive for all its members. Nobody gets out unscathed, everyone experiences the abuse tactics, everybody is a victim. But within the cult there is a hierarchy, and cishet white men are at the top. So while the cult is oppressive to everyone, and everyone is harmed in some way, it is also uniquely oppressive to queer folks, to BIPOC, to disabled folks, to women, etc etc. And the thing that happens to some of those cishet white men is they leave an oppressive cult, where they are considered the "default", and they go into the ~real world~, where they are also considered the "default", and even in atheist/deconstruction spaces, their bodies and experiences are often the leading voices.

The men that leave go from an oppressive patriarchal culture to a far less oppressive (to them) patriarchal society. The white people that leave go from an oppressive racist culture to a far less oppressive (to them) racist society. The people that leave go from an oppressive culture that does not value marginalized voices to a different, less oppressive culture that also does not value marginalized voices. And if you personally do not experience [xyz] oppression, it can be difficult to even realize there are things surrounding that you have to deconstruct unless you listen to the voices of the oppressed. But some cishet white men go from being considered the "default" in an oppressive culture, to being considered the "default" in a less oppressive culture (to them). Their experience of "overcoming systemic oppression" comes from leaving the church, and it can be really easy to fall into the trap that the church, specifically, is the sole oppressor and enemy of everyone.

Of course this doesn't happen in every single case and it's also not exclusive to cishet white men. But those blind spots are why I think it's important for everyone to listen to a variety of voices when they're deconstructing, especially if those voices are talking about oppression you wouldn't have experienced firsthand.

No, our deconstructions are not inherently different, but the experiences and circumstances prior to it often are. It's okay to acknowledge that and beneficial for everybody to listen to each other's experiences.

[faaun]

my research partner and i are huddled in a blanket in paddington waiting for a too-late train i already miss you and you and you

[kvtnisseverdeen]

my favorite thing to do is call palestinian villages/cities by their palestinian name and not the colonized name

its not tel aviv, it's jaffa/yafa

it's not jerusalem, it's al-quds

it's not netanya, it's umm khalid

it's not ahihud, it's al-birwa

and the list goes on and on...

it's important to address palestinian cities by their real names because first prime minister of israel literally stated: "we are obliged to remove the arabic names for reasons of state. just as we do not recognize the arabs' political proprietorship of the land, so also do we not recognize their spiritual proprietorship and their names." and because of this, after 1948, palestinian's began a tradition naming their daughters after destroyed arab villages.

and to add on to this. to further legitimatize the state of israel, european jews literally changed their names to seem more "indigenous" to the land like its so comical

it's not benjamin netanyahu, it's benjamin mileikowsky

it's not gal gadot, it's gal greenstein (laughed out loud at this one)

[northern-passage]

i've shared some of Alex Freed's narrative writing advice before and i recently read another article on his website that i really liked. particularly in branching/choice-based games, a lot of people often bring up the idea of the author "punishing" the player for certain choices. i agree that this is a thing that happens, but i disagree that it's always a bad thing. i think Freed makes a good case for it here.

...acting as the player’s judge (and jury, and executioner) is in some respects the primary job of a game’s developers. Moreover, surely all art emerges from the artist’s own experiences and worldview to convey a particular set of ideas. How does all that square with avoiding being judgmental?

[...]

Let’s first dispel–briefly–the idea that any game can avoid espousing a particular worldview or moral philosophy. Say we’re developing an open world action-adventure game set in a modern-day city. The player is able to engage any non-player character in combat at any time, and now we’re forced to determine what should occur if the player kills a civilian somewhere isolated and out of sight.

Most games either:

allow this heinous act and let the player character depart without further consequence, relying on the player’s own conscience to determine the morality of the situation.

immediately send police officers after the player character, despite the lack of any in-world way for the police to be aware of the crime.

But of course neither of these results is in any way realistic. The problems in the latter example are obvious, but no less substantial than in the former case where one must wonder:

Why don’t the police investigate the murder at a later date and track down the player then?

Why doesn’t the neighborhood change, knowing there’s a vicious murderer around who’s never been caught? Why aren’t there candlelight vigils and impromptu memorials?

Why doesn’t the victim’s son grow up to become Batman?

We construct our game worlds in a way that suits the genre and moral dimensions of the story we want to tell. There’s no right answer here, but the consequences we build into a game are inherently a judgment on the player’s actions. Attempting to simulate “reality” will always fail–we must instead build a caricature of truth that suggests a broader, more realized world. Declaring “in a modern city, murderous predators can escape any and all consequences” is as bold a statement on civilization and humanity as deciding “in the long run, vengeance and justice will always be served up by the victims of crime (metaphorically by means of a bat-costumed hero).”

Knowing that, what’s the world we want to build? What are the themes and moral compass points we use to align our game?

This is a relatively easy task when working with a licensed intellectual property. In Star Trek, we know that creativity, diplomacy, and compassion are privileged above all else, and that greed and prejudice always lead to a bad end. A Star Trek story in which the protagonist freely lies, cheats, and steals without any comeuppance probably stopped being a Star Trek story somewhere along the line. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, takes a more laissez-faire approach to personal morality while emphasizing the large-scale harm done by men and women who strive for power. (No one comes away from watching Game of Thrones believing that the titular “game��� is a reasonable way to run a country.)

These core ideals should affect more than your game’s storytelling–they should dovetail with your gameplay loops and systems, as well. A Star Trek farming simulator might be a fun game, but using the franchise’s key ideals to guide narrative and mechanical choices probably won’t be useful. (“Maybe we reward the player for reaching an accord with the corn?”)

Know what principles drive your game world. You’re going to need that knowledge for everything that’s coming.

[...]

Teaching the player the thematic basics of your world shouldn’t be overly difficult–low-stakes choices, examples of your world and character arcs in a microcosm, gentle words of wisdom, obviously bad advice, and so forth can all help guide the player’s expectations. You can introduce theme in a game the way you would in any medium, so we won’t dwell on that here.

You can, of course, spend a great deal of time exploring the nuances of the moral philosophy of your game world across the course of the whole game. You’ll probably want to. So why is it so important to give the player the right idea from the start?

Because you need the player to buy into the kind of story that you’re telling. To some degree, this is true even in traditional, linear narratives: if I walk into a theater expecting the romcom stylings of The Taming of the Shrew and get Romeo and Juliet instead, I’m not going to be delighted by having my expectations subverted; I’m just going to be irritated.

When you give a player a measure of control over the narrative, the player’s expectations for a certain type of story become even stronger. We’ll discuss this more in the next two points, but don’t allow your player to shoot first and ask questions later in the aforementioned Star Trek game while naively expecting the story to applaud her rogue-ish cowboy ways. Interactive narrative is a collaborative process, and the player needs to be able to make an informed decision when she chooses to drive the story in a given direction. This is the pact between player and developer: “You show me how your world works, and I’ll invest myself in it to the best of my understanding.”

[...]

In order to determine the results of any given choice, you (that is, the game you’ve designed) must judge the actor according to the dictates (intended or implicit) of the game world and story. If you’re building a game inspired by 1940s comic book Crime Does Not Pay, then in your game world, crime should probably not pay.

But if you’ve set the player’s expectations correctly and made all paths narratively satisfying, then there can be no bad choices on the part of the player–only bad choices on the part of the player character which the player has decided to explore. The player is no more complicit in the (nonexistent) crimes of the player character than an author is complicit in the crimes of her characters. Therefore, there is no reason to attempt to punish or shame the player for “bad” decisions–the player made those decisions to explore the consequences with you, the designer. (Punishing the player character is just dandy, so long as it’s an engaging experience.)

[...]

It’s okay to explore difficult themes without offering up a “correct” answer. It’s okay to let players try out deeds and consequences and decide for themselves what it all means. But don’t forget that the game is rigged. [...]

Intentionally or not, a game judges and a game teaches. It shows, through a multiplicity of possibilities, what might happen if the player does X or Y, and the player learns the unseen rules that underlie your world. Embracing the didactic elements of your work doesn’t mean slapping the player’s wrist every time she’s wrong–it means building a game where the player can play and learn and experiment within the boundaries of the lesson.

[faunandfloraas]

Nothing funnier to me than a fansite that horrifically white washes pics of the guys until they genuinely look like walking corpses but then will have DO NOT EDIT in all their captions like baby.... if there's anyone here who should have the editing software taken away, it's you...

[goaliekisses]

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr6hQLTPprE/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Geno!

SPRING HAT LUNCHEON?????