#...so the best thing you can do is recognize those biases and then try to overcome them through great effort...

[uncanny-tranny]

You know, I feel like other trans people might get this, but it's honestly kind of refreshing when a cis person has, like, undeniable tboy/tgirl/whatever swag. It's like when you come across somebody who speaks the same language as you and you only find out when they start speaking it, too.

#trans #transgender #lgbt #lgbtq #ftm #mtf #nonbinary #all this to say that we are existing on a rock hurling through space #and this universe is going to collide into another and does it all truly matter in the end? #a lot of this is based on ideas we have about what constitutes certain people and i think it can be a fun observation #so long as you do not inherently ascribe certain traits as being indicative of who somebody Is #it can be amusing when you're SO confident that somebody is a certain way until you realize how Wrong you were #the amusement for me only comes because it's like... 'you tried your best to box somebody and you FAILED lmao' #and in a weird way it's kind of comforting because it reminds me that we all come into this world with bias that Will be challenged... #...so the best thing you can do is recognize those biases and then try to overcome them through great effort... #...so yes maybe i did think that cis dude had tboy swag but. that's not inherently his problem you know? #it probably just means he's confident in his manhood in a way that reminds me of the trans men* i know and love #i noticed that in him and it reminded me of my friends who are trans so i think 'oh! maybe that's why he's giving off those vibes!' #so while i won't treat him any differently before or after finding out i was wrong i'm still going to appreciate the fact that... #...he and i are literally just Vibing on the same planet and we both don't have time for petty arguing about manhood #i'll acknowledge what inspired those thoughts in me but that is Not his problem and that's good and beautiful actually #i don't always mind the tboy/tgirl swag meme just so long as you don't treat it like an Inherent Trans Experience Only Trans People Have #just recognize where those ideas are inspired from and it's fine <3 #sometimes you will be Wrong and that's actually fucking neutral <<3 #anyway rant over i just think this is /generally/ harmless and fun #like astrology. sometimes you just look up your star sign without ascribing your Entire Life to it <3 #i think what i lot of people mean by saying a cis person has tboy/tgirl swag is just that... #...that cis person has an understanding of themself that comes from deep introspection that isn't necessarily expected of cis folk... #...but it is often something trans people do as part of our exploration of gender... #how is this the FIRST POST to reach tag limit... ask me for more thoughts if you want lol!

[hero-israel]

I wanted to apologize again for the rant. I barely remember writing it (which is kinda terrifying). I saw your suggestion to breathe and I’m trying lol. But I saw that it angered a number of people in the notes and I wanted to reiterate:

-I try and fight by finding information that combats the vast array of misinformation and spread the correct information. I’m an anxiety ridden non confrontational person and people online tend to be five times more eloquent than me. So basically all I can do is “spread the word.” The more people see the whole picture, the better, right? With my own mental struggles, I’ll see some horrid information, try and find where it came from and how it spread. When it’s everywhere ( on so many news outlets) and I don’t know what to do, I freak out. The awful Congo rumors are an example. Given the government has pulled back on those words, the best thing to call them at this point are rumors, right?

It’s surreal where I am. I am well aware I’m privileged. I count my blessings, and I worry over those that don’t. (Every story and testimony I hear about the female hostages in particular make me feel helpless and sick to my stomach. So much talk about the crisis women in Gaza are facing, but nothing about the conditions of female hostages. You have to actively search to find out, and it’s usually independent sources spreading the word of what released hostages have said).

And all of the conflict where I am is online. In the outside world, off of the local college campus, (which I think I said. I apologize again, I think I wrote the previous message in a panic,) people are only interested in their coffee. I count myself lucky that I have yet to encounter real life anti semitic situations when I know they’re happening a few hours away from me in larger cities. I am in no financial/economical position to volunteer in Israel to help relocate and aid the displaced in the south, as it came to my attention that there are international volunteers going over. I found out about Stand Together, which I tend to look into. I heard it’s a good organization. And then there’s….Tzedaka? Idk. I just know there are some good Israeli based organizations that give aid, but I can’t remember their names. I’d recognize them if someone said them.

I’m astonished I wrote that much? So I’m going to have to step back. I at least know domestically, I can help by getting the right people elected and combat misinformation. Biden will at least give everyone the freedom to fight with words. Trump would take away freedom of the press and chop free speech in half first chance he gets. I wonder about Nikki Haley, but I’m skeptical she will win the primary.

I don’t understand a lot of what’s going on because I feel like I keep wandering through muck. but I try. When I don’t get what I’ll looking for through news sources, I ask here. It’s easy to tell when news is biased these days and what’s telling the whole story these days. I think I struggle to comprehend how small Israel is sometimes and the idea of everyone being out on the field. (And I understand it’s a privilege to struggle to comprehend such a thing, if that makes sense). I keep thinking there must be people at their homes to fight the government when the government is being stupid, like the protests that happened during COVID, while at the same time I read today about a 95 year old man volunteering to work in the IDF. I try and figure out what’s going on with the regular every day people in Israel, knowing there’s active IDF and volunteers helping the displaced and any Gazans fleeing (though I think the border at the moment is closed, I could be wrong). Is it like Ukraine where quite literally anyone that is physically and economically able to do something is doing something to help?

I read yesterday that a vote may be held? That makes me hopeful. But it’s rare to vote a prime minister or president out of office in the middle of war. And it came to my attention that Israeli politics are as divided as American politics are. I knew they were divided before the war began, as I knew about the two massive protests that happened. I didn’t realize /how/ divided they were until recently. It seems are just more lines drawn in the sand in Israel than there are in the States, and there are more factions and coalitions in Israel. And while there’s not as many lines drawn in the States, the existing lines run deep, and they’re getting vicious. I don’t know how bad the lines drawn are in Israel.

So uh yeah, to everyone, I’m sorry for any misunderstandings. I ramble more than I am eloquent. I’ll take my anxiety ridden butt offline for the moment. I’ll come back better. And thank you specifically for reminding me to breathe

The responses from Israelis on the original post are worth reading.

I didn't have the time or space to address every point of the first post and I still don't for this one, but I can say this much:

When someone is struggling with anxiety, it can leave them prone to doom-spirals even during "normal" levels of bad news. Right now for every Jew except the ~240,000 remaining Holocaust survivors, the news is worse than we've ever seen in our lives. We are all feeling overwhelmed and unsure how to help, how to chip in. If it has indeed reached the level of panic - which you described as severe enough to leave you with "missing" time / actions - it's okay to really take some time off from this, to get help. It's okay to set a literal timer on your phone for how much you engage - to give yourself one hour every other day, and stick to it. No one is helped by a person getting so deep into crisis that they can't function.

You mentioned the programs where people can travel to Israel to help keep farms operational and stuff care packages for displaced families - perhaps you yourself aren't in a position to do that, but could you instead try to encourage other people to do it? Can a local synagogue recommend a phone-banking effort?

The Congo stuff is not a "rumor" - it is "jerking off." Someone idly speculating / wishing to do something which they have neither power nor mechanism to do. It is significantly less real than the time Trump talked about buying Greenland; put it in that context.

Israel is a tiny country, with genocidal fascist militias parked on its northern and southern borders; the reason they can't just pull out of the West Bank is because if not properly managed it would immediately turn into another Gaza but bigger and on top of a mountain range with all of Israel's biggest cities at the bottom. The country is now forced to mobilize for self-defense in a way most Americans can't imagine; if my math is correct, about 4% of the entire population is on active duty within Gaza now, and they all left their families and day jobs behind.

Your prior post asked "can't sensible Israelis stop Netanyahu?" - they've been trying very hard and the outside world has no clue. There were massive protests and riots near-nonstop for a year, including a general strike that shut down the entire country - shut down the hotels and the airport! - that actually managed to get the judicial overhaul postponed. When it did come back, it was in a weaker form (still awful), and then the courts were able to erase the very worst of it and postpone other parts. As an American who has done my fair share of door-to-door canvassing, protesting, and """awareness-raising""", I wish American progressives and centrists had been that successful when it came to, say, the Iraq War, or gun control, or protecting Roe...

There is no imminent vote on the current government (there are municipal elections coming very soon, but those are less important). The next national election - the kind you're thinking of - is October 2026. Which is awful to think about and I sincerely hope the government collapses long before then, as Israeli governments have tended to do for the last 5-6 years.

In general, the most reliable news sources are TOI and Ynetnews, and I listed some good resources here.

I hope this was somewhat helpful and that you are able to reach a better place while still finding a way to defend our community.

[1863-project]

The lack of media literacy and critical thinking in my friend group is really starting to worry me. I'm not acting like I'm immune here, but aside from our weekly library visits, is there anything I can do to help out?

Hi, anon! Sorry for the late reply, I've been settling into a new job.

One of the things I like to do is when I hear something, I try to verify it from multiple sources. If I can do that, great, and if I can get multiple viewpoints on it, even better! Generally, if someone is sharing information, if it sounds like it's designed to get you angry, it probably is - outrage gets clicks. But to avoid spreading misinformation, you have to look beyond that:

What is the intent in spreading this information?

Is the goal to help or hurt people? Is it supportive, is it neutral, or is it inflammatory?

Does the writer display any biases that might affect their opinions?

And so on.

People are prone to kneejerk reactions, especially because we're human and we're emotional, and a lot of writing is designed to get that reaction out of people before they stop and think. So with news in mind, definitely always keep that in the back of your mind when you're reading - and you'll likely start noticing patterns and biases.

With regards to reading and critically engaging with fiction, it's a little different, but the most important thing is to look at how things are portrayed, not just that they are portrayed. For example, if a story utilizes an ableist trope that leans heavily into harmful stereotypes, it's not the same as a story that portrays ableism as bad and as something that has shaped a character. There's a lot of nuance and grey area, of course, and the example I gave here was very black and white, but the more you practice and flex those muscles the better you'll get at recognizing these things.

Really, the best thing you can do is practice. Practice, practice, practice. And if you're not sure, ask a librarian! They're trained to do this!

#replies

[archivalofsins]

My toxic Milgram fan trait is wanting to normalize being a little hater. Like actually stop trying to justify voting a character Guilty it's so fucking pointless and drenched in hypocrisy it'd be much simpler to say I hate them and move on.

Oh, but Gunsli, you wouldn't do that with a character, would you? Yes, and I plan too. I don't think people understand how little I care about people knowing my biases and exactly why I have them. So, for anyone interested in knowing.

Yeah, I hate Kotoko on an ideological level.

I am not interested in her second song, her crime none of it- I fucking hate this lady. The best Milgram is getting from me is either abstaining from voting or voting her guilty every fucking day of those three months. Bu-but why? Well, I don't really have to explain why I can just hate her like I said. I don't need a reason.

Well, it's because she jumped the other prisoners right- Because she jumped Mikoto and threatened to kill him, right? And you like Mikoto that's your bias, right?

22/12/15 (Kotoko’s Birthday)

Mikoto: Ah, Koto-chan. It’s been a while. Both of us have kinda split off from the group, but how’ve things been? A lot’s happened, but fr now let’s try to get along. I mean, it’s your birthday today, right? I got the feeling nobody else was going to do anything, so I came to celebrate.

Kotoko: ……how carefree. It doesn’t matter, a villain like you won’t be forgiven next time either. And when that time comes, it’ll be the end for you. I’ll make sure of it myself.

Mikoto: Ahh?? Just try and do it, you nutjob. I’ll crush anyone who hurts me…… You’re gonna be totally beaten at your own game……! [TN: The word “me” here uses first person pronoun “boku”.]

Kotoko: Hm. The border between the two is getting a lot vaguer. Your entire existence is a crime. And I will see you’re punished for it. That is what Milgram, and Es, and I have chosen.

Like, Gunsli I could understand if you didn't want to vote her Innocent because of that we all have our favorites we're only human.

Mikoto ain't a bitch like Shidou he can take care of himself. I ain't worried about ya'll girl she ain't about it, she a coward, she needed to order weapons because she really ain't that good. Hope she ordered herself a shield during trial two because she's going to need it. I'm sorry Mikoto better figure it out. Love him but uh nothing I can do about that if he gets killed by Kotoko I'll just be disappointed in him.

Outside of that I already didn't like her before she did that stuff. Well, damn what the fuck did she do? Nothing but be herself. I don't like her. I don't believe she's a good person. I don't think she's doing what she's doing now or did what she did before for anything other than the satisfaction of herself.

I find her mentality a direct threat to my personal safety for various reasons and will not support it. How about any of you guys try growing up and going to high school during the resurgence of fascism? Having people walk around armed with military grade weapons as you're just trying to get a book from a bookstore. All while stating they're going to make the world better through violence and see how you feel about people with Kotoko's mindset afterward.

See how any of you feel about it when you're at the receiving end of constant persecution based solely on how people like you are reported on in the news. Something that is never biased, as we know.

Like she was doing a good thing- To some in some people's opinion! I don't have time to argue about why this sort of mindset is dangerous to people who've never lost a thing from it, and I'm not gonna! I'm tapping out before her trial even starts. I did my investigation already I do not care.

So, everybody can miss me with that she killed bad guys shit because I recognize that I just think she's just as bad as they are and knows it.

I'm never voting her Innocent (Forgiven), it's a kindness I'm even considering not voting her at all. Unless I'm getting something out of voting her that way like a secured Amane and Mikoto Innocent verdict she can kick rocks.

Fuck her, the ideology she espouses, her justifications, the hill she lives on, the hill she'll die on and the horse she rode in on.

The worse sort of person to me is some nosey entitled son-of-a-bitch that comes into my life telling me their actions are going to make the world better by any means. So, if I have a problem with how they do things I can either shut up or they'll shut me up. Because useless weaklings should just be quiet and let themselves be protected by them.

Fuck that I'm not agreeing with that because that sort of thinking ends with people who look like me dead. Someone would have to have me all the way fucked up if they thought I'd agree to letting her of everyone here back out into society. There are enough people like that in my immediate vicinity to my ever-growing discomfort already.

So, yeah normalize hating a bitch for no reason. Normalize not having to explain yourself because I'm not about to hurt my own feelings trying to explain how this mentality is dangerous and harmful to people who don't care. Because they'll never see this behavior as the issue it is.

Simply put it's not about anyone else's ability to understand my reasoning behind my actions. The thing most important to me is that I understand the reasoning behind my beliefs, and I at least put forth an effort to interrogate those. Even if through interrogating those things I arrive right back at the answer I started with.

I at least understand why people like Kotoko at the end of the day and recognize this is my bias alone. While fundamentally understanding how someone feels about any of the characters in Milgram doesn't define who they are as a person or what they're willing to let others get away with in the real world. So, I don't feel like I have to defend disliking anyone or how I vote a character because it's my opinion.

I'm just gonna do what's best for me and keep it moving. If she wasn't a character in a piece of media, I'd care more, but she is. So, I can recognize her good qualities. Those are however outweighed by the multiple red flags and sirens consistently going off every second because of my background belting the words,

WARNING! WARNING! IMMINENT THREAT TO SAFETY!

As though I've entered a fucking sundown town at sunset. There is nothing in me that doubts this bitch would commit a hate crime and is therefore someone just unsafe for me to be around. Avid defenders would be like "Um sweety is it a hate crime to get rid of child abductors and criminals?"

I don't know, has anyone seen the film The Birth of A Nation or looked over the historical context around criminality? Or just read how the news reports on people who deviate from norms committing crimes regularly in contrast to how they report on the dominant culture committing crimes? No, I don't think anyone put that much effort into interrogating the ideology of the good looking subtly gender nonconforming lady.

Because they said oh bad guy bad, news said so- So, they deserve to be killed Kotoko is so right go off girl boss.

So here,

Kellie-Jay & the Neo-Nazis | Shaun One hour, fifty-six minute, and fifty-seven seconds long.

How Police Make Up The Law (ft. LegalEagle) | Philosophy Tube Forty-eight minutes and fifty-six seconds long.

The Hidden Rules of Modern Society | Philosophy Tube Forty-four minutes and fifty-four seconds.

The Americanisation of Blackness. TheStoryteller Twenty-eight minutes and fifty-seven seconds.

Triumph of the Will, or, "Yes, You Might Be a Fascist" | Cinema Antifa Twenty-two minutes and fifty-three seconds long.

How Black Americans Monopolized Racism Foreign Man in a Foreign Land Eighteen minutes and twenty-three seconds.

The Cultural Gentrification of Black Britain | EXODUS TheStoryteller Fourteen minutes and ten seconds.

The Need for Gangs? | TheStoryteller Twelve minutes and twenty-six seconds.

Why You Shouldn't Watch The Birth of a Nation (AND WHY YOU SHOULD) | Brows Held High Ten minutes and forty-nine seconds long.

There's a lot of videos that go over a good deal of the things I think about when considering Kotoko's case and mentality. So, anyone interested can go and take a look over this information and think for themselves whatever they want. I won't be discussing this because a lot of people in my opinion are very willing to cut off their brains and let Kotoko get away with whatever just to make themselves feel good.

People liked to discuss how Futa was radicalized through the Internet yet continue to ignore the clear radicalization of Kotoko through mainstream media. People all over widely accept everything put into mainstream media as true or unbiased. Because unlike the internet people believe mainstream media cannot lie without repercussions. Yet this is not always the case and the fact that Kotoko is so willing to end other people's lives over uncertain or extraordinarily little information based off the bias judgements of others as she continues to do even now is an issue to me and something I do not personally agree with.

Especially considering how mainstream media can be biased and get things wrong. She's just looking at what appears to be a more reputable source, a source with more authority than the internet mob then going it must be true because they said it. Just like how no one fact checked Es when they claimed that they were considered an adult in Puerto Rico and Haiti because why would Es lie? Why would the news lie? When has law enforcement ever forced a confession out of anyone or arrested the wrong person.

As a news article sits in Harrow about the jumping, we know Kotoko did with the police stating they assume the assaulter was a man. Not even going into the news articles that stated people paid to have information buried. But yeah, the information she had is much more concrete than whatever the hell Futa was basing his shit off of.

#gunsli rambles

[commsroom]

another aspect of the way eiffel narrativizes his own experiences shows in his inability to be alone with himself and his thoughts - and what the way he talks to himself says about him. as soon as he’s alone in basically any situation, his first impulse, consciously or otherwise, is to find a way to imagine he’s not. that ranges from things like inventing a character to run himself through the psych eval in am i alone now? (“alone again. naturally. just me and the voices.”) to imagining how minkowski might berate him in super energy saver mode, to the way he continues to talk to hera through the watchtower, knowing it’s probably impossible for her to hear him, to... well. i’ll get to it.

one part of this, of course, is that he is the communications officer, and that’s more than a job title. he wants so, so much to communicate. eiffel never stops trying to connect with the people around him, and he never stops reaching out, even if all he can do is blindly reach out into some endless empty expanse - it’s that persistence he makes (accidental) first contact with, and it’s that persistence that saves his life, in more ways than one. (“well, as long as no one's there, no one's going to mind if I go out speaking.”)

but the other part... think about the role eiffel casts himself in, in all of those scenes. he’s always the one reacting: he created the problem through incompetence. he’s protesting an accusation. he’s observing. he’s incidental. doug eiffel is never the hero of his own story. so while there’s something kind of sweet about the way the crew stays with him in mayday - that even alone his survival is a collaborative effort of all the people he carries with him - i think it’s also telling and deeply sad that he puts his best ideas in the mouths of others. he keeps going for and because of them. they ‘tell’ him what to do, and he does it, and if it goes wrong... then it’s his fault. it doesn’t matter that every step of the process is his own, from idea to execution: he credits his successes to others, but his failures are his own. that’s how he sees himself, and it’s how he worries that others see him too.

and with that in mind, consider this scene from the finale, where eiffel once again defers to minkowski, even when she isn’t actually there:

eiffel draws so much of his strength from others, and in some ways that’s very admirable and one of his best qualities, but where that’s always fallen apart is that he fails to see his own place in it. he doesn’t recognize his own contributions or his significance in the lives of others, and this scene feels so pivotal because it’s the moment he realizes... it’s just him. the negativity, the helplessness, but also the resourcefulness, the quick thinking, the will to survive and to return to the people he cares for, who care for him. this time, he saves himself. and more importantly: he realizes it.

i think there’s another parallel you can draw to memoria. in terms of mayday specifically - that both of these episodes contain these biased perspectives of the others and what they represent for the point of view character, that hera is the voice in eiffel’s head that keeps him from giving up as much as eiffel is for hera, but also. that in the greater context of their character arcs and their shared insecurities and fear of expendability and incompetence: if hera needs to recognize the voice in her head isn’t her own in order to begin to move forward, then eiffel needs to recognize the voices in his head are his own - it’s all a part of him, good and bad, and he brings all of that to the crew and to his relationships.

#wolf 359 #w359 #doug eiffel #i'll never run out of things to say about eiffel. he makes me so . #and there's so much in the finale of eiffel confronting himself #in this scene. in his own mind. as an outsider hearing his own logs #i think you could really expand on that in a post canon scenario #like how much of eiffel's arc has always been about accepting that all versions of him make up the whole of who he is. good and bad #and maybe there's something to be said about eiffel confronting himself + eiffel speaking for others and through others for so long + #the dear listeners speaking through him. in a sense. #and the way he fragments his own identity and tells stories to distance himself. and then becomes an outsider to himself. i don't know.

[transfaguette]

"any queer person can be masculine and fat and hairy and balding and have a wife and kids and if that is also your image of the "Evil Cis Het Men" then you have not actually fully deconstructed bioessentialist narratives. And to do so you have to rid yourself of this idea that cishet men are the antithesis to queer people." Genuine question about this, how would one go about deconstructing said bioessentialist narratives within oneself? Because I think reflexively I might not hold the best views on masculinity but at the same time it feels like something so ingrained that I don't actually know how to pick it apart and question it.

Recognizing you have those biases is the first step, and it's good that you have done that! The next steps are a lot harder and really depends on the kind of person you are. personally I like to question everything- "why do I think this, is there a valid reason to think this, is this idea substantiated or is it a construct of social biases"- and obviously, that's not a very easy thing to answer on your own.

But I think ultimately, it comes down to asking "why *should* masculinity and manhood be ostracized from queerness." There's no good reason why it should be, so there's no reason to hold that belief.

We are all a product of the society we live in and it's natural to have those reflexes. You just need to start asking "why." "Why do I believe this" "who benefits from me believing this" etc.. Especially when you have a strong reactionary impulse. That is the perfect time to start asking "why."

Sorry if this is not the best answer, but it's how I personally break out of that reactionary mindset. And I'm not perfect, either, I'm still learning and reflecting every day. But as long as you are consciously trying to learn and have an open mind, I think you're doing ok.

#asks

[mejomonster]

(The tldr is this is about gender and then versus now) I was listening to the podcast Enterprise Incidents on youtube. The Mudd's Women episode. The podcasters are 2 fans since the original airing, and I like them generally because they're really well informed in screenwriting and directing choices and so to some degree their analysis touches points I find a chunk of star trek type commentaries tend to miss: that optimisitc vision of the future, that star trek's goal was to be progressive but it also at times had flaws of its time (something Im painfully familiar with regarding Rick Berman and DS9 and TNG, so its nice hearing older watchers aware of those flaws from ToS). Now. Its not perfect. In my ideal podcast Id like to find some day (lol) a guy podcaster is capable of acknowledging the influence the spirk premise/fan perception had in some ways (from The Motion Picture thyla, that "i imagine love of men in that time" quote from Rodenberry, the Asimov suggestion to make them a team to help Kirk be accepted more by audience and Spocks individual popularity tying to Kirk was partly a bid to link their popularity). And I dont know that for all the great ideas they have, that they have any idea of the spirk fandom perception (like that quote in academia about slash fiction being the end of the Wrath of Khan if the glass were removed) or how the canon goal of making a duo unit at least created the dynamic that led to that fandom interpretation. But they do touch on many a good thing some less layer-looking people miss. They notice Kirk's actual personality (should be easy but often failed due to cultural perception versus The Show itself), Nimoys acting choices and spocks development into the character he became, the show itself deciding its identity over time and its ventures in various angles until then, what worked and what didnt regarding the progressive future versus the biases of the time it was made. They miss some nuance but theyre doing really in depth so its a treasure trove overall.

Now in Mudds Women, they miss some nuance of a story about beauty and worth that I think... i dont know. I think yeah the writers failed to hit the goal story meant to be told, but i also think outside a women perspective it can often be a miss in such storytelling (yoko taro doing the Singer in Nier Automata is the first time a guy telling a raw story about beauty and its impossible standards, invasive toxic expectations, and self destructive pressures, managed to feel totally on point and realistically managed). So i sort of yeah expect mudds women to need to be viewed Generously to grasp the message, and i sort of yeah expected guy podcasters to at best recognize where the story failed (which they did) but unfortunately not realize all the story was aiming to do (because it does Approach many topics i feel women and beauty standards and ppl who grew up in certain enviornments would recognize as Trying to be a reference to a real problem - the episode does say a fair bit if ur used to looking for those points, but not Super well done so i can see why an audience less used to relating to such points would notice them much less).

But the podcast said something this episode i found so refreshing. They mention how mudd explains how the venus drug works: it makes you "more of what you are" makes men more strong and aggressive, women more soft and feminine. Basically its a line about idealized traditional gender roles when ToS was made. And the podcaster mentions yes as a teen first watching (when we probably most feel a pressure to fit in, still most likely to believe society expects us to meet it and rewards that standard) it sounded like the drug made u better. But that in the life he lived, with the family he had, he had never been raised to think he had to be strong or women had to cook or any of that strict expectations. Then they talk about how the discussion of gender has grown so much in these years, and trans people of course can live more openly, and they say the question in society is like what does it mean to be a certain gender anyway.

And the guy says. Well i always thought and strongly think, when i say im a man, it means nothing. Because a man can be anything. Anyone can be any way, like any things, do any things, look any way. Being a certain gender means nothing beyond "im that gender."

And god how refreshing that was.

Growing up, in the 90s, yeah i felt to some degree those gender roles and expectations somewhat pushed as a teen: when girls start being pressured to wear makeup (by ads, movies, peers, trying to please crushes, avoid insults etc) and boys start being pressured to be strong (bullied for not being, attacked for being perceived as less strong by any number of reasons they get singled out by peers, movies and ads telling them their lack of strength is their reason for any failures etc). But like. There was ALSO a big push growing up, that i saw, of girls can do anything. Girls can cook or do construction, can wear dresses or play sports, can wear makeup or none at all, can have long hair or chop it off, can go into STEM or childcare, can marry or never marry, can be the career head of home or a stay at home parent, basically: anything, all of that or none of it or anyrhing in between. That was the direction of progress anyway. Guys were a bit behind (and oh of course bullying with their own peers limited their options of what wasnt ostracized) but we were seeing more acceptance of intelligence as equally desireable and acceptable to strength (at least for adult men), more media glorifying the nerds, more examples of a bigger variety of men with more niches that could still be considered ideals. And the result of that in some ways was good, i saw more guys my generation more accepting of their love of painting, cooking, wearing makeup, more guys who didnt body shame themselves as much, who didnt feel belittle themselves if they were stay at home dads or made less income, more who talked about their emotions than my parents generation ever did, more genuine friendships than we ever saw during toxic-teenage-pit when the strict standards weighed heaviest. The ideas were moving toward what is a man? Anything he wants. What is a woman? Anything she wants. What is a person? Anything they want to be. What is your gender? Whatever you feel it is. And it doesnt need to match up to Any preconcieved notions or box to be "justified" because no gender has specific strict traits it must include. Yes we still knew society had "ideals" for genders that it pushed, and that traditional and conservative thinking people held themselves to. But for people in general? What is your gender? What I feel I am. What must you do to Be that gender? Nothing. Anyone can be anything as any gender.

And god it was so refreshing hearing someone say that again. What does being a man mean? Nothing. Because a man can be anything. Anyone can be anything. Theres no box a person fits into, no box of traits any gender must conform to in order to be valid. A person can be anything and do anything and have any traits interests looks, and be whatever gender they are.

I dont know if its the way the worlds medias been shifting (so opinions we get stuck hearing more of), or cause i see trans people so often expected by society to conform to those stricter gender ideals with this weight of threat and isolation if someone in the majority finds reasons to attack (but in the end they always might, the whole thing is theyre fucked for attacking to begin with). But its like. God i miss when gender meant in my head only: what am i? What do i feel good calling myself? What feels like home. Cause im me, and me is not changing to appease some strangers. (Though i am to some degree, we all do even cis people do, because those stupid old ideals are widespread enough all ppl face some punishment or threat if they deviate from the strict boxes, despite no one fully fitting them). But like. If im me and i can do anything, what feels like home? Thats all it is to me. I miss seeing it that way. I miss when i didnt see quite so much of the looming strict standard pushing so hard on everyone to conform more. To try and force all people to cut themselves down and confine themselves to roles that serve what anyway besides littling all of us, oppressing all of us in limitation. (I mean. I know why it spreads. Maybe conservative voices are louder now about their ideal gender roles then when i grew up, or maybe its louder cause im an adult now. It doesnt mean they have any point.)

You are a person. You can be anything. Your gender is whatever you feel it is. Your gender does not inherently define your life and what you can do and be. Whatever forces we feel, remember whatever brings you joy is okay to be. Its okay to be you.

Like. Yes a person of a specific gender can define it very specifically in what that gender means TO them. How They define it for themselves. But that definition isnt universal and there is no limit to the definition of what a specific gender's people can be. A woman can look any way have any life any interest any traits any values. You can't define a woman as specific things and not others, a woman is as broadly defined as there are so many unique women in this world with so many varied unique experiences selves lives. Any gender is not universally always a confined list of traits, because theres all kinds of people with all kinds of traits of specific genders. What is a man, anything. What is a woman, anything. What is a nonbinary person, anything. A genderqueer person, anything. Any specific (or unspecific or undefined) gender person, anything. People are so varied they have too many unique traits to be always these X Y Z things and never these A B C things. Youre the gender you are cause its what feels right to you. But your definition of your own gender For u isnt universal to all people of your gender, cause people define their gender all kinds of different ways and people of your gender can have any traits in this whole spectrum of being alive.

This is the podcast btw:

And if you do know of a podcast that is aware of spirks influence on/from tos please send it my way.

#rant #star trek tos #this is about gender btw. the podcast said #what does it mean for me to be a man? nothing #and like that resonated so hard for me. #it wasnt meant in the sense of u not having a clearly defined internal definition of Yourself as a gender #but rather: every man is different. the way he personally defines his gender is unique to each. #the traits hobbies looks interests values skills each man has is all unique. and so what is a man? anything. so many things #the entire range of things. a gender cannot be defined in any strict terms #becayse there is no limit to what a person of a specific gender can be like can do can look like and so on #and god it felt good to hear that reminder #Youtube

[raccoonfallsharder]

Hi! I just wanted to say I've been reading through Window Across the Galaxy - inching forward but reading it - and the way you write Rocket is so damn good. Though maybe I'm biased to hell and back because that is also exactly how I pictured pre-vol. 1 Rocket, haha.

The switching perspectives offer so much. I love how much they are misunderstanding each other.

Your work is inspiring me to want to work on my own wip OC fic. I've only just finished reading chapter 2 but I'm so hooked on Jolie and Rocket's tale. I love all these little snippets we get about her and her career as an artist/appraiser/restorer is so interesting.

A few questions, I know there are a lot of little references to the comics here and there, some I recognize from my own forays into reading those, and when I don't, I look it up because honestly, you add so much flavor and life to the worlds you write that I feel the need to know more. For the stuff that isn't a reference or at least a direct reference (as in a product from a known planet), how do you decide on names and other specifics? I personally long to do that in my writing but struggle with thinking things sound believable.

My other question is do you have any tips for writing Rocket? I know technically he hasn't said anything yet where I am in the story - semantics really, lol - but even through his thought process it sounds so much like him.

friend. sunshine. dewdrop. every time i see a comment or message or ask from you, i get giddy as a six-month-old puppy. you are SO kind and generous and I appreciate your words & support SO much

i’m gonna (try to) answer your questions behind the cut because I am a wordy bitch. also these questions are hard because i don’t often think about HOW my brain works so i will do my best.

but first i wanna say that i am SO excited & honored to have encouraged you to work on your own oc fic! if you end up posting here pleeease tag me ♡ and if not that’s okay too. when i started Window i thought it was going to be just for me and honestly it freed me up to do whatever the fuck i wanted, at my own pace, and that is part of what has kept it fun for me.

K BUCKLE UP THIS IS LENGTHY

so in terms of the shit I just make up (Glortho’s Equation, Spartaxian sugardrops, various fruits and foods and soap and recycling-compressors and other general NONSENSE). this is a layered process.

Almost everything I make up, I try to root in a canonical environment/planet, and I want it to make sense for the characters to HAVE it.

so eg, recycling-compressors came about because, like, they just need a practical way to store or get rid of trash. Are they jettisoning it into space every cycle? Dropping it on a landfill planet? Rocket’s comics-canon disdain for Earth + mentions of intergalactic human lifeform rights policies that Earth doesn’t honor leads me to belief that MOST space-folk embrace more sustainable practices. could be a recycling planet, but i didn’t want them needing to travel there every eight rotations or whatever so i decided having a compressor would allow them to have longer gaps between unloading. but like, you could do ANYTHING. maybe most intergalactic packaging is made from products that can be burnt as a clean universal fuel or something ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

similarly i wanted my best raccoon boy to have access to fish. but since he’s a broke-ass bounty hunter 90% of the time, it’s gotta be something inexpensive/accessible (or stealable) - which means it’s probably a cheap export from a planet with a lot of water. Hello, Morag (and the resulting Moraggian moonfish). Sometimes I’ll reference something already canonical in connection to something I fuckin made up just to increase the sense that all these things interplay with each other (zargnut-crusted moonfish sold by a street vendor on conjunction).

Sometimes I do the opposite. I try to imagine what a product from a planet would look like. eg Indigarran beeswax. I thought, what would Indigar export? It’s this gorgeous planet with a cathedral/palace/place of devotion made of glass. if i - an aesthetique lol - had a glass cathedral, I’d want that shit lit up with candles. Can you imagine how gorgeous that would be? Glimmering everywhere. That’s how i spent too much time dreaming up Indigarran beeswax ceremonial candles for a throwaway line somewhere deep in Window I think ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I also figure because of Kree imperialism in this region of the galaxy, a lot of shit is probably Xandaran. Relatedly if it’s a product associated with wealth, I’ll use Xandar or Spartax (also Atraxia but I think I made that planet up lol). I’ll use Asgard occasionally too but less often because it’s supposed to be at the other end of the galaxy. So if I’m referencing a luxury item, it USUALLY comes from one of these places.

For writing Rocket. I think @aliasrocket recently wrote something about this and I agree with like, every flawless thing they said. I listen to a lot of Rocket clips. I try to hear each spoken line in my head in his voice. Some verbs will end in a hard -ing, and some in a soft hanging -in’. I might also use a conjunction (even if it’s not a “usual” conjunction). Sometimes I use something like a liaison in French (I don’t know if there’s a word for it in English, but I basically smush two words together). Moreover, I’ll go back through Rocket’s dialogue on reread and just make sure I don’t go more than like 1-3 sentences without some kind of word-softening. Some examples:

“What’re you laughin’ at me for?”

“Why d’you wanna do that?”

In third-person narration from Rocket’s perspective (non-dialogue) i still try to use these sporadically, but nowhere near as often because I am trying to separate narrative voice from speaking voice just a little.

I also try to consider rocket’s frame of reference for everything from his perspective. What does he know about because he’s seen it? Heard of it? How did he see or hear it? did he learn about it from a fellow prisoner in the Kyln? Someone he did a job for in Conjunction? An alien refugee on earth? Iron Man? Did he steal it? Make it? Buy it? Was it given to him and by whom and why? How trustworthy is his source? How trustworthy does he think they are?

…

OKAY. wow if you made it to the end of this novel you are IMPRESSIVE and I hope it was at least a little helpful. if you have any other questions I will be flattered and happy to answer them and I’ll try to less fuckin wordy. ♡

you are a gem & a blessing & I hope your fanfic-writing brings you JOY

#writing rocket raccoon #worldbuilding #raccoonfallsharder asks #rfh asks #rfh writing advice

[elistodragonwings]

Yes, stories can normalize things, for better or worse. Knowing something is fake doesn’t mean our subconscious won’t learn and internalize what we’re seeing. After all, horror films wouldn’t have the ability to scare us if our minds on some level didn’t respond to fiction as though it were real. It’s hard to imagine we don’t also unintentionally take in biases and other negative values.

But that process does not exist in a vacuum. People don’t mindlessly and passively have values normalized like by some magic force. Context matters – how something is presented, not just if it exists, combined with a person’s experience and knowledge determines what does and doesn’t get normalized.

Banning everything that might be bad won’t stop things from getting normalized because society can’t control what any individual person gets from a story in the first place. What society can and should do is teach people how to engage critically with stories and with their own perception.

We call out stories that are sexist or racist or ultra-violent or overly-explicit, we call out patterns of bias across a genre, we call out commonly negative depictions, not to ban them but to bring them to people’s attention. To get people to think about what it means that we’re telling stories like this, to discourage people from passively consuming media, to encourage creators to think differently about what they’re making. Because yes, media can normalize things, but it also is a reflection of the already-normalized values and blind spots of the culture creating it; trying separate this chicken-and-egg situation is impossible.

Even if everyone could agree on what stories are or aren’t harmful, no stories can be perfect because creators are not perfect. If you do manage to sanitize everything to the most uncontroversial state, you’re left with nothing that challenges people to grow.

More than that, you can’t both ban something AND teach people to think critically about that thing they’re not supposed to see. Harmful things will always exist, but if people don’t know how to recognize or engage with them, they’re more likely to have it become normalized for them because they won’t know any better.

If you want to ban “bad” content rather than teach people how to analyze, then where’s the data? Where are the studies that say this top-down blanket approach is the best strategy? Where’s the research that shows that people who write violence are more likely to commit violence? Where’s the experts in social change and harm reduction that define what kinds of stories even are harmful? Or are you just looking for a shortcut, a simple authoritarian fix to a complicated social problem of why people do bad things? Because I promise you, no one is a pedophile or a rapist simply because they read about it in some books.

Stories can and are used to teach values. To TEACH values. To try to ban books and information in order to try to passively shape social values is completely backwards from how progress works. When a story truly no longer fits with contemporary values, it doesn’t need to be banned. It decreases in popularity on its own.

An example from my own life:

I loved the Dragonriders of Pern series in high school. Some were in my school library, some were in my regular library’s adult section, and some I bought. These books were written from 1969-early 2000s, and so unsurprisingly, some of the relationships depicted are, let’s say problematic. Some I recognized as not ok and some I did not. And yet none of those problematic depictions got normalized for me. What DID get normalized? The possibility of a society where gay men not only existed but had a respected place in society. Sure, looking back now, their depiction is…not great. But they were there and it was normal and fine. And that was important because nothing else did that for me until many years later.

Why did that stick and nothing else? Because I came to the series with progressive values, an open mind for different ways of thinking about people, a desire for stories that showed me something different, and an awareness that science fiction often is written as social commentary and imagining what could be. Someone who came to the books with different perspectives would have gotten something entirely different from it. Some might even find this too painful and harmful to read. Those are all legitimate reactions.

Should the series be banned for showing lack of consent? Gay stereotypes? The fact that gay men exist? That abortion in this world is simple and not a big deal? Because some people will find these books personally harmful or upsetting?

Or do we let the books exist, available, as we teach people to think about their values and how to analyze both stories and the world around them? As we let individuals decide for themselves what helps them and what hurts them?

#book bans #censorship #purity culture #critical thinking #education #social progress #elisto

[shadowshrike]

Early morning thoughts because I can't sleep (apologies if they're a mess):

Setting aside the obvious boost that comes from being a classically attractive wicked vampire elf with a beautiful voice, tragic backstory that is executed in a very real way, and entertaining manner of speech, I believe one of the reasons Astarion's stories get such a strong reaction from so many people is because his narrative has several distinct threads beyond the obvious. Each possible path presents different problems and perks with satisfying but contradictory conclusions - a brilliant trick of CYOA writing - and that dissonance is part of what causes so much fandom fighting. We each value different things based on our life experiences or just what we enjoy in a story. It inspires visceral reactions from the player.

Value honesty in your friends, your own safety, and consent above all else? He's probably not going to spend long in your camp without a stake in him.

Value bodily autonomy, absolute freedom of choice, and the ability to speak freely without fear of repercussion? Ascension might make the most sense for you.

Value the emotional healing process, the hope of becoming a better person, and learning to accept and move on from a crappy life rather than doing 'whatever it takes' to get what you deserve? Him staying a spawn is likely the most satisfying choice.

Of course, we all exist on a sliding scale of values, especially when playing with fiction. People who value honesty or consent highly may let him stick around because they hope he can learn to be better. Someone who values absolute bodily autonomy and confident speech may choose to have him remain a spawn because they believe with time and some DnD magic to cure vampirism, he can reclaim those things eventually a healthier way. People who believe in the emotional healing process and becoming a better person might even go for ascension because they believe his ability to walk in the sun and speak his mind bluntly are essential for him to heal rather than be dependent on others in the long run.

This sliding scale is also part of why people fight. Throwing him out or killing him for attacking or biting you is seen as an overreaction from someone who has a higher tolerance for boundary pushing. Ascending him is equated with irrevocably dooming him for those who want to change his view of the world (and himself) for the better and believe ascension will inevitably lead to abuse of his paramour and whatever spawn he creates. And keeping him as a spawn can feel to some like you're like taking away his freedom so completely by refusing what he wants and forcing him back into shadow that you've trapped him in a new, 'nicer' but similarly insidious cycle of abuse with a "savior" figure that he isn't emotionally mature enough to recognize as controlling his life.

It's all very relative, and that's what makes it fun. Players reacting to Astarion's approvals/disapprovals, following a romance vs non-romance narrative, knowledge of 5e lore, and having a strong versus weak relationship with him can all drastically change the experience of his story. And with open endings, it's easy to tidy up any values that might be important to us but underrepresented in Astarion's fate. I think that's actually a huge strength to his story: we don't know if he gets better or worse when he survives to the end and you make that Good or Evil choice. We can guess based on contextual clues, our biases, and in-game lore. But ultimately, you get to choose for yourself whatever future you like best, even if that's him leaving the party.

So for those who can stomach all the paths and enjoy a bit of literary exploration of competing narratives, I highly recommend you try all the different options for Astarion (and the other companions, but especially him) rather than sticking with one. You'll need unique playthroughs for context, but it's so worth it. The writing and acting have phenomenal breadth with tons of subtle shifts that can happen depending on what you choose.

Just please don't harass your fellow players or Larian employees about whatever preferences you have in the end, okay?

#astarion #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #this isnt really an analysis or essay #random thoughts

[schraubd]

Loose Cannon

Judge Aileen Cannon has been assigned to oversee the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump.

I've seen enough high-profile political cases to be familiar with a very specific script that gets written about the judge assigned to the case. Pretty much without fail, you'll get a passage that reads something like the following:

Judge Smith is a veteran judge who ascended to the bench after fifteen years in the U.S. Attorney's office. He has a reputation for being no-nonsense and demanding a tight ship at trial that includes rigorous questioning of attorneys on both sides.

"He doesn't tolerate a lot of guff," said one attorney who had practiced before him for many years. "You won't agree with all of his rulings, but he's universally respected."

This template is so common I've begun to wonder if it's reflex (not every judge can be "no-nonsense"!). Which makes it all the more striking that nobody -- nobody -- is writing lines like this about Judge Cannon. They weren't writing them even before she went 100% YOLO in trying to block the Mar-a-Lago investigation; they certainly aren't writing them now.

Since the news broke, I heard folks suggest that Cannon was only assigned to the preliminary aspects of the case, which appears untrue. Then I heard other folks assert that Cannon likely will be forced to recuse herself from the case. And honestly, I'm dubious about that too. 

To be clear: Judge Cannon absolutely should recuse. Her conduct in the Mar-a-Lago case suggests that she's so completely in the tank for Trump that there's no possibility that she'll be perceived as impartial. But if she was the sort of person who could be shamed into recusing just because it's the right thing to do, it wouldn't be as much of a problem if she didn't recuse.

The fact is our judicial system is not well-equipped to handle a problem like Cannon. The problem is not that she was nominated by Trump -- two of the three 11th Circuit judges who bench-slapped her Mar-a-Lago catastrophe into oblivion were Trump appointees. The problem is that Cannon, specifically, is a complete hack who's decided that her job as federal judge is to be Donald Trump's offensive line.

For very good reason, our judicial system starts with a healthy presumption of impartiality on the part of its judges. We don't let either party force out a judge just because they don't like their lean. Recusals are easiest to justify when the judge has a direct financial stake in a given controversy, or when they're close personal friends or associates with a party. These sorts of connections give everyone a face-saving option -- the problem isn't actual bias, but the appearance thereof; one could be as pure as driven snow and still agree that it is a sound policy to not preside over a case where your best buddy is being charged with a serious crime.

Unfortunately, other than the fact of her nomination Judge Cannon doesn't have those concrete ties to any party here, which means that there's no hiding the actual issue on the table. Judge Cannon needs to recuse because Judge Cannon is, in relevant respects, incompetent. I say incompetent not to suggest that her mistakes stem from ignorance rather than malice; rather, an important part of Judge Cannon's job is to administer the law fairly and impartially, and she has demonstrated herself to lack competency in that dimension of the judicial role. Hence, she cannot be trusted and is not qualified to preside over a trial like this one, with a defendant for whom she's already shown herself to be incapable of adjudicating impartially.

But once again, if Judge Cannon was the sort of person capable of recognizing that shortcoming, she likely wouldn't have it. There's no clear face-saving out where one can disclaim actual bias but recuse for prudence's sake, and there's no universe in which Judge Cannon agrees "I was so egregiously wrong in the Mar-a-Lago case that one can't help but infer I was biased." Which means it is up to an appellate court to make that determination for her, and needless to say, that's a very awkward proposition which appellate courts are going to be loathe to undertake. 

Appellate courts are not prone to saying "this case must be stripped from this district court judge because this judge is in general too biased to handle it." The closest one sees to that sort of ruling is when a case is stripped from a lower judge after repeated obstinance in refusing to implement appellate orders, and that is exceedingly rare. Even assuming that the Mar-a-Lago reversal should count towards such a showing in the criminal case, the problem with Judge Cannon's ruling there wasn't really that of repeated lower court disobedience of superior court mandates. It instead stands out because of Judge Cannon's absolute, rancid lawlessness. But again, our system is not well-built to account for the possibility that an Article III judge might as a general matter -- not due to financial stakes or personal connections, but purely as a matter of ideology -- be congenitally incapable of ruling in accordance with the law.

It's a similar problem to the situation with those single-division Texas judges. The thing everybody knows and everybody is thinking -- that the problem is that these judges are utterly and completely in the ideological tank such that law simply doesn't matter for them anymore -- can't be uttered out loud, at least not in a formal proceeding. On the outside, everyone knows that's the problem. But in a filing, you can't come out and say "judge, our basis for recusal is that you're a lawless hack." And since that is, at the end of the day, the problem, whatever alternative basis you try to hang your hat on will ultimately be a poor fit that probably won't end up justifying recusal. The structure of Article III life tenure means that placing a hack like Cannon on the federal bench is an irreversible mistake.

So count me skeptical that Judge Cannon will recuse herself, and count me skeptical that any superior court will force her recusal, at least immediately. Unfortunately, the reality is we're likely stuck with Judge Cannon and whatever hijinks she comes up with to justify torpedoing this case -- at least for the foreseeable future.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/qbk4rVJ

#crime #Donald Trump #judiciary

[palms-upturned]

Same anon from before. No, I still truly don’t feel like any of this is enough. I don’t trust myself or my own judgement to make the right decisions on these things and rely on whoever I believe falls into the category of “more right than not” (you would fall into that!) because I just want to not get yelled at. I want other people to be liberated too so I recognize that it’s not about my feelings but to that end I also believe I shouldn’t matter here and as a privileged person just be told (1/2

(2/2) What to do by people who know better than me. I know I’ll never be perfect or do enough so why shouldn’t the better among us just force us into a revolution right now? I’m too trapped by my job to be able to do local organizing. All the protests happen either while I’m at work or are already happening when I didn’t know it. People say to either take time for you or spend all your time on educating yourself and organizing but where does that leave my life? Worthless, I think. I wish someone Would just tell me so. Tell me yes or no; am I living correctly or not? Am I properly dedicating myself to what truly matters or not? I don’t want a revolution that happens after you and I are gone. I want one yesterday. I want one where we actually, ACTUALLY LEGIT force people to change their ways. Like, “sacrificing all your excess clothes and frivolus toys to the efforts” kind of force. I fucking hate living in this grey area where we could be trying our best but be unknowingly commiting evil At any time. I’m sorry, that was a lot. Just…I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what that says about me if I wish we just had hard and fast, unflinching RULES about how we should be acting right now and people to enforce it instead of being left to wade through our own flaws and imperfections and internal biases. I wish I could have them surgically removed and make myself a perfect fighter for justice

Well… I don’t really know what to say other than I’m sorry. I know it’s not enough and will never feel like enough. I know that uncertainty is painful and so is living under structures that we didn’t ask to be built. I don’t think that wanting to escape those things says anything particularly bad about you. I think all of us do. But the revolution didn’t come yesterday, and things just are what they are… At some point, you have to be able to make peace with that. Not to the extent of accepting the way things are, but to the extent that you can still see value in your life and in putting in the work to change things. Whatever work you can do.

Knowing whether or not you’re doing the “right thing” can only come from your own convictions. Those will solidify the more you learn and act on them and see the results. That, I think, is how you cope with the uncertainty. You do what is within your power, and you believe in what is within the reasonable scope of your observations. Even if there really was someone who you could rely on to tell you how to live correctly and what truly matters, you would still have to have a reason to personally believe that they were “more right than not.” I know it sucks, I really do. But you have to let go of the fantasy of being able to just give the reins to someone else. You have to see yourself as someone capable of conviction.

And believe me, I know how frustrating it is to deal with the limits. I am also annoyed at protests always happening on weekends when blue collar workers don’t get to have the day off to attend, including me. I’m annoyed at how many events I don’t get to go to because nobody requires masks indoors. I’m endlessly angry about how much time and strength I waste on my full time retail job just to be allowed to live in some degree of dignity when I could be putting that energy toward organizing. I hate how many layers there are to this beast that makes organizing inaccessible to the people who need it most. And I hate the limits of my body sometimes, too. But it is what it is and it won’t get better if we don’t accept it for what it is and work out what to do about it.

Regardless of any “value” that someone could assign your life, you have a right to be here like anyone else. And you are not as powerless as people would like you to think, nor as powerless as you would probably be relieved to think. We have an obligation to do what we can to improve things, and for most of us, there’s a lot more that we can do than we know. But there’s still a lot that we can’t do. And it’s so despair inducing at times like this, but we can’t let that stop us from doing something.

I know you’re probably just venting and I don’t really know what I can say to make any of this easier. I also don’t necessarily think it’s true to say that I’m “more right than not.” But I’ve hit suicidal rock bottom before and I don’t wish that for you. I know it hurts to work toward an ideal world knowing that we likely won’t live to see it if it even comes to exist at all. I know it hurts to know that our lives are dependent on the exploitation of others in ways that we can’t currently entirely avoid. But in the same way, our lives support other lives. And we can strengthen that support so long as we live and try. That’s what gets me through.

#asks #anon

[bbygirl-aemond]

You may already be aware, but I actually found ppl going back and forth on Reddit about a post you'd made on here (re Viserys being a shite parent). It's under r/HouseOfTheDragon in case you ever wanted to check it out. I just recognized your name, as I follow you and it was shared as a screenshot from here.

lmao i will never get over how wild reposting on the internet actually is. that fucker has over a thousand comments and i had no idea until you told me just now! literally made a reddit account to try to add my voice to the din just to encourage people to discuss on the original platform so i can see but tbh people on reddit are a lot meaner than tumblr so i won't be mad if it doesn't get too many upvotes.

reddit's responses to this post is such an interesting case study in the polarization that's happening everywhere online. i get SO MANY accusations of being wildly biased from supporters of both "teams" all the time and it's funny because like am i too team green or too team black bc i can't be both right? mostly i think it's because people get really defensive when you criticize a character and assume it means you hate them. like bruh we are adults with big girl emotions can't it be a little more complex than that?

when i say i think viserys is a bad parent, i'm not saying it as team green propaganda. i've said before that rhaenyra is the rightful ruler and that i absolutely adore her as a character (let's just say aemond isn't my only babygirl). there's a reason i've written 100k+ words of fanfic designing a political scenario where she'll be able to happily rule without any of her children dying. spoiler alert: it's not because i hate her and think she's a bad ruler. and she's far from the only character on team black i love: daemon, jacaerys, lucerys, and baela all come to mind.

it's also really interesting to me that people see my opinion about viserys and, even though i literally did not mention rhaenyra, assume that i'm somehow shitting on her. it just goes to show how much they stand blindly by one team or another. that to criticize one member of their "team" feels to them like you're criticizing every member. like baby, i'm not the one making it about teams: you are! honestly, i understand why the team mentality was a good marketing move, but it really has been the death of critical thinking in this fandom. there are aspects of both that we're meant to root for, just as there are aspects of both we're meant to hate. none of these people are objectively morally good, and that's what makes it interesting, so why are we trying to pretend otherwise?

so while yes, i don't like viserys, why would i extend that dislike to rhaenyra? it's not like she forced him at gunpoint to do the things i'm criticizing him for lol. in fact, i think viserys did her just as dirty most of the time. i have another post in the works about this, but he neglected her for her entire childhood, groomed her best friend and dealt with telling her in the worst possible way, and made her heir in a bid for her affection yet did none of the actual work to honor her as a ruler. he could have made her his hand but instead he made her pour his wine?

now, again, just because we dislike part of something does not mean it's all bad. do i think viserys is generally quite a bad parent and person? absolutely. did i also cry ugly tears in the scene where he forces himself up from his literal deathbed to defend his daughter? yes. these two things can coexist.

also, because reddit is reddit, there are a bunch of comments that just miss my point about alicent and aemma entirely. i've already responded to those in a post here so i won't beat a dead horse too much. but to paraphrase: viserys married alicent because he liked her specifically not for duty or he would've married someone who wouldn't horrify the entire small council; and aemma didn't need to be alive and conscious for the pain she was put through at the end of her life. the things he did to his wives weren't necessary and i don't think we should be pretending they were.

lastly, it's really funny to me how many people incorrectly assumed i was a man in the comments. i'm genuinely the girliest girl to ever girl in real life (makeup jewelry and tits to the gods, sorority girly, the whole nine yards, i love it) and it gave me such whiplash. there's a joke to be made here about trying to weaponize male privilege somewhere.

#hotd #house of the dragon #viserys targaryen #viserys i targaryen #viserys #viserys i #rhaenyra targaryen #rhaenyra #alicent hightower #alicent #aemma arryn #aemma #show #books #team green #team black #hotd meta #meta

[brineffxiv]

Descending via the Thirty-Third Facet, we arrive in Merryall Agronomics.

There are no gleaners in the immediate vicinity, yet the workers are just as harried. Time to investigate!

I ask around a bit and perform some menial tasks, and eventually find myself on this little hilltop in front of these pretty glowing flowers. Which I know are Important because of how the camera lingers on them.

A passing botanist sees me admiring them, and stops to inform me that these flowers are like mood rings and their colors reflect the ambient emotion - right now they're a dull grey because of the anxiety and stress the workers are under. Despite knowing why they do the thing they do, no one has been able to get to the bottom of how. We also don't know where they come from.

Interesting. I am sure this will be relevant eventually, but I cannot imagine how.

We spy Erenville from a distance, arriving presumably to give the report he mentioned to his superior. We bet this superior is a forum member, and resolve to eavesdrop.

Krile is worryingly distracted by the flowers.

Y'shtola... turns us into toads. So we can spy better.

I. Was not aware this was a thing that could happen.

Alphi-toad and Ali-toad!

Omg I am losing it.

TOADS.

...Okay. Okay.

We find Erenville meeting with a forum member, and it seems he has a bone to pick with them himself.

A momentous duty they were charged with? And open acknowledgement of the Final Days? Jackpot.

While walking away Erenville notices us, and recognizes us instantly, lol.

Returning to Y'shtola we split up to find Krile, who has turned back due to not feeling well. I find her back at the flowers, where she picks one and casts a spell on it to keep it from wilting before giving it to me.

Uh... "She?" I think I can hazard a guess which She we're talking about.

Hello again, Hydaelyn.

Yes, I had gathered you were unable to save the First yourself. That wasn't my issue. My complaint was about your lack of communication. Surely you could have spoken with your champions as you are with me now. You could have told them what needed doing; you could have asked them for help. Failing that, simply speaking with them would have eased their suffering, instead of ignoring their pleas as you did.

...I forget if I learned about the aetherial sea through the game or if one of my friends let it slip by accident that that's where the dead go. Hmm. I suppose it doesn't really matter.

...Are you telling me that the sea is separate between the reflections?

I mean. I suppose that makes sense. I had just assumed it was all one thing. But... Oh, of course that makes sense. Or else the shards of the sundered souls would have the potential of meeting themselves and getting mixed up. Then, that means that those who die in a shard are forever trapped there, regardless of where they originated.

Thank you, then. That was... surprisingly considerate of you. On behalf of Minfilia, of Thancred, of the rest of my friends. Genuinely. Thank you for bringing her home. The idea of her separated from those she loved and who loved her in return, for eternity, is a horror I didn't know I had to consider.

I can think of several who died, but none who are both natives of the Source and not your enemies. Who else did you bring back...?

...Wait. It's not Emet-Selch, is it? Is that why he's narrating??

Gah. I don't know if that actually makes sense or if I'm just a horribly biased fan and can't not think about him. Why would Hydaelyn do anything to aid her mortal enemy? But, only Emet and Elidibus were natives of the Source, and Elidibus got absorbed by the Crystal Tower...

*sigh*

This is a mystery that will only be solved by progressing the plot. I will just have to live with not knowing for the time being.

You mean I'm not tempered? Is that what you're saying? Or is it that you won't impose your will over mine?

I will try. It's what I always do; try my best.

And then She is gone, and Krile is herself again. Not that I'm not glad Hydaelyn is finally communicating with us... But I am leery of seeing those blue eyes on another of my friends. I can never forget what happened to Minfilia.

On that we can both agree. Why She feels the need to be so cryptic is a mystery to me.

Uh oh. (And here I will cut the post, because this is getting quite long.)

#ffxiv liveblog #rhesh'a tag #krile baldesion #hydaelyn #y'shtola rhul #alphinaud leveilleur #alisaie leveilleur #erenville #TOADS #baseless speculation #thoughts on lore

[incarnateirony]

For those wondering if the die-hard antis will finally pack it in if we get canon Destiel in a way even they can't deny--I wouldn't hold my breath. If they are forced to accept canon Destiel they'll just make up some bogus reason for why it is 'homophobic, achsually', just like they did with Cas's confession and with Carlos.

It's the sunk cost fallacy. These people have created a whole identity and a community, such as it is, around hating Destiel. They will never, ever reconsider. As for canon, let me tell you: I come from a het ship fandom where the couple kissed on the mouth on screen and the antis were writing thinkpieces about why it was a 'friendly kiss', or a 'kiss of gratitude'. So even if the coconuts do collide, brace yourself, cause even that won't be enough.

What I'm trying to say is, let's make our win what we can get on TV, not what we can get the antis to admit, cause that's a lost cause. Let them wallow in their crackpot theories and metas and just enjoy TW :)

Tale as old as time. Whether that be the No Romos of X Files Mulder and Scully that platsplained their marriage and kid; the raging homophobes arguing with the memory of Diana Ross and the drag queens that inspired her about what I'm Coming Out is "actually about" in the youtube comments TO THIS DAY, and so on.

It's a goalpost--and frankly, dogwhistle even within "shipping fandom", some true bitters and others manipulators like 2po and their groups with the agenda in your ask--that I've warned about for many years.

In many ways, it's already been run out. Names like 2po, or jess of Mary Sue, that pretended to be so very in the know. Yelled I was delusional, claimed they had better access to Bobo to know his intent than I did (Jess.) But I could spend a week listing the reasons I knew what I knew was Real and a Fact no matter what they screamed, and not be done. And it was real.

They spent that time revving old shippers into attacking-down their low visibility text, making up some fandom noise rule that, if it isn't so loud it can't be argued with (imaginary point), it's subtext, and anything low visibility was "settling"--an attack whistle used to send hellers at me when I said Berens was putting his best faith work in for us, and even if he couldn't run it, to respect what he pushed and weaved through into textual canon, even if quiet.

After all, he almost quit season 14. Wayward was toast, his contract was rolling. He only signed again shortly after Ouroboros, maybe within a month. Because he'd been convinced to stay even while Yockey burned out and left an empty throne, to run that ball on a spiral someone recognized his endeavors on and further sort of mapped the way. On a gift. To a friend. To ride that spiral till the end so we might go where no one had been.

Covid crashed many dreams, including his second sprint. But not everybody gave up. But all those years, this whole damn time, this forged mistruth about the authors. These lies and filth and biases that buried this, and continued to bury this. The propaganda that spews from 2po to make, say, hellers feel like they're the second class citizens now.

But even by the end of SPN, we had all but won without covid giving Singer time to jam the game. Berens had the rest of the room with him. And even when we scraped our knees we got the most unlikely ally imaginable. A jensen ackles that couldn't sleep, couldn't let go, couldn't move on. a jensen ackles that knew dean winchester's story wasn't done, and was now deeply haunted by the way things ended with Castiel. He'd had his own enlightening, staring a universe-shaking performance in the face and adding the pieces together. And Jensen Ackles... 404ed and forgot his lines, barely muttered anything adjacent to the script, and wept on the floor. And into the winter.

And this entire time. People are still tearing him apart. Even as he hires the most powerful possible LGBTQ advocate to run his entire company, someone the president of WB even fears, able to unleash all of the gays of DC on the WB with a trigger pull, if Glen Winter isn't enough to back them down in general. Not that there IS a "them", because Zaslav's management leaves Jensen and Renee in charge.

That old world is gone. Big scary network and studio changes happened but we're still here, no matter what false prophet doomsayers said. And the gays have the reigns and there's nobody to tell them to stop, and jensen's the one slapping the horse on the ass now and telling Robbie to ride faster.

For those that really have foraged out the truth of transitions in the last 4 years or so, it's clear as a bell what's going on. But people like those you describe thrive on relevance created by people being compelled to argue them in mass, rather than laugh them off for absurdity. They did it with Mulder and Scully and they're doing it here in the middle of The Great Destiel Sprint, all from imagined perspectives in their minds.

These perspectives have failed them again, and again, and again, but like you said, they don't course correct. Sunken cost. And that cost is that, they have years of sins against them. It's not even just about the ship. These people spent millions, these people sent threats and shards and weapons to people, they've doxxed actors and fans and entire servers alike and felt righteous about it. And in the end when it Is What Is Is, even if they were to accept it HAPPENED.

The ability to process the meaning after--and that they are, in fact, the Akrida, and the unwanted locusts being flushed out--that'll just join the mountain of other things under the rug, with each person setting their embarrassment tolerance threshold of how stupid thy'll make the long term no romo arguments. Even as the showrunners constantly remind you the old series was bromance but THIS one is romance. It says it on the tin. And the posters. And the promos.

I have a feeling a bunch WILL leave, because some will hit their limit on how stupid they're willing to present them as in public. I expect a bunch of them to end up ripping each other apart, then it'll settle and the sad, sad last stragglers will make whatever new mewling sounds of denial, but we won't hear the starving strays, they're getting trampled by the clown parade worse than mufasa in the gorge.

[rollercoasterwords]

i think a huge problem with the whole “fanfic doesn’t need to alone with your own moral code” argument is that people are using if to defend things like racism. and that i don’t get. sure everyone has different morals but hurting marginalized groups especially if you don’t belong to that group is objectively wrong. i think it goes past just morality

hey! i think i understand where you're coming from, and i talk in this post about my view on the best course of action if you are concerned that a fic is genuinely perpetuating harmful stereotypes or rhetoric. it is very late at night for me so i don't have time to write another entire essay, but just one thing i want to say before i lose the thought.

i tried to make it as clear as possible in my post that i think good art is a conversation. this means good art will sometimes engage with difficult topics in a way that may make you uncomfortable, and as long as it's properly tagged, it is up to you whether or not you read it. do i think people should put effort into researching and sensitively portraying topics that they have no personal experience with? absolutely. but because fanfiction is a hobby and is often not thoroughly edited and whatnot, people are inevitably going to fuck up. i think, because fanfiction is meant to be a community, it's important to go into it giving each other the benefit of the doubt and assuming that people are trying their best. for me, when i come across something that i find offensive or inaccurate, i typically assume the person is uneducated or has some internalized biases they need to work through, and not that they are actively trying to perpetuate harm.

however. that being said. what you're referring to is racism. with everything i just said in mind, i'm going to assume we are on the same page about what racism is here--which means actively feeding into a harmful stereotype or rhetoric, rather than just discussing racism within the context of the story in a way that may be triggering for some people on a personal level, but is properly tagged and warned so that each reader can make the best decision for themselves about whether they are in the right headspace to engage with heavy material (does that make sense? hopefully i am explaining that difference correctly.)

if we're talking about racism, in that context, then that falls outside the bounds of what i said in my previous post about morality and art. that is because racism, by definition, is doing the thing that i said bad art does--it is presenting a set of moral guidelines and telling you to accept them as truth. it is not a conversation; it is not inviting critical thought; it is pushing the narrative of white supremacy and expecting you to agree with it. racist art is bad art. full stop. and it is bad art because it is not a conversation, it is a fucked-up set of moral guidelines.

for me, personally, when i am evaluating like....the morality of a piece of media, what i come back to is the question of conversation. i am wary of any art that tries to sell me a narrative as absolute truth and expects me to swallow it. but i am open to engaging with topics that make me uncomfortable, as long as they are presenting those topics in a way that is clearly meant to make me think critically and ask questions and draw my own conclusions. when i say fanfic doesn't have to align with your moral code, i mean that i think it is okay and even healthy sometimes to read about characters who do and say and act in ways that are shitty, but that give us something to think critically about and reflect difficult realities in our own lives. i do not mean that fanfic should be like....imposing a shitty moral code on you, because i don't think any art should be doing that. but there is a difference between those two things, y’know? and it's important to learn how to suss out that difference and recognize it when we engage with any form of media.

#hopefully this is coherent #and clarifies what i mean about moral codes in my last post #it is. 1:21 am for me. so #also as usual these are my own personal thoughts and opinions #nobody has to agree w me #etc etc #i am only ever seeking conversation #not trying to start arguments or declare my perspective as Ultimate Truth #ranting and raving #ask