#ultimate discourse bait

[basket-of-radiants]

Bribery for @highly-invested. I will draw dumb comics in exchange for discourse. Here's a very serious ship for when you're trying to hook up with your ex-best friend's dad.

[velvetteunderground]

Velvette makes a post absolutely dragging Charlie about her lack of style (“why is the princess of hell always dressed like if a waiter fucked a clown”)

Like all things Velvette posts, it trends- people getting in on the “joke”, posting candid pics they have of Charlie, generally being very mean about her appearance with the barest amount of plausible deniability that it’s all in good fun. It also generates an insane amount of discourse- it’s not cool to make fun of peoples appearances, this is clearly because Charlie prefers masculine clothing, etc. The more people get angry and engage in the conversation, the more the trend of roasting Charlie is boosted.

Things spiral- there’s a backlash to the backlash, people doubling down, arguing that it’s fine, actually, because Charlie is a privileged hellborn monarch, she can handle some jokes at her expense, that she’s not even butch, and like, did you SEE her interview with killjoy, she’s clearly faced worse-

Velvette knows Charlie isn’t really online, that by the time she hears about it, the cycle might even be over, but that’s not the point. Charlie isn’t popular, not beloved- she needs to be reminded that the sinners she’s trying to save can be turned against her like that.

[moiraimyths]

Why do you have characters in a romance game that don’t feel romance, that defeats the whole purpose of a romance game. Why would I want to love someone that I know doesn’t actually feel love??

Good evening to all (excluding the attention-seeker in our inbox),

Over the past day or so, we've received a number of asks on the subject of Robin and Keagan (but mostly Keagan's) aromanticism. As you can see, some of these asks may be good-faith inquiries about the differences between the romantic and platonic routes for these particular characters. Others are very obvious attempts to make us walk back Keagan's demiromantic identity (which will not happen), or are otherwise just trying to give us grief for including arospec characters to begin with. We suspect, given the *timing and repetitive phrasing of the asks, that these are all coming from one person, but since the asks are anonymous, we cannot confirm this. Nevertheless, we have decided to share them with our followers, because going forward, we are going to be increasingly selective with the variety of asks that we respond to in order to limit possible "discourse bait," i.e. questions designed to argue with us rather than allow us to explain our thought process or artistic goals. Inevitably, this may mean that well-meaning but tonally ambiguous questions are not answered out of an abundance of caution, which could prompt genuinely good-faith askers to assume we're avoiding tough questions. This is not our goal, but ultimately, this is not a discourse blog. We're independent artists creating a story that we want to tell, first and foremost. If a decision we make ultimately results in you not wanting to support our game, then you are free to take your leave.

-Moirai Myths

*Screenshots were taken at various times but we have ordered them as we received them.

[paperstorm]

What do you think Jonah should call them then 👀👀 are you team names

Oh boy we love the smell of discourse first thing in the morning. Okay here is the entirety of my thoughts on the situation, which I'm sure people have been awaiting with baited breath (🙄 half the time I'm not even interested in my thoughts)

People can and should headcanon whatever they want and there is truly no need to get upset if someone headcanons something different than you none of this is that serious

Headcanons do not equal canon. You can headcanon that Tommy never had cancer if you want to but it isn’t fair to demand other people acquiesce to your way of thinking, right? I think the show was very clear about telling us that Jonah is not going to call them Dad. That was the entire point of Papa-Bro – the writers went out of their way to make it clear that 5 months in they still haven’t figured it out but they’re trying a moniker that a) is clearly a jokey one that isn’t going to stick and b) very intentionally does not include the word Dad. I am actually not personally opposed to the idea of Jonah calling them something other than their legal first names, I get why that feels a bit formal, but the show purposely made it clear that it's not gonna be Dad. Again, headcanon whatever you want. I totally understand why it can be frustrating when non-canon things are sort of insisted upon as if we all must adopt the same headcanons but ultimately this is all fictional and for every fic that writes this in a way you don't like there will be others more to your taste

I feel like TK would want to do everything he could to keep Enzo and Gwyn alive and a part of Jonah. This is the man who in 3x08 sat there crying and heartbroken about the idea that Jonah would never get to know his mom, I just can’t wrap my head around that same person then wanting to take the place of Jonah’s biological parents when he loves his mom and stepfather and values their continued place in Jonah’s life. I know that Jonah hypothetically calling TK ‘Dad’ doesn’t automatically equate to TK completely erasing his biological parents, which I hope we can all agree he would never do, but it feels, to me personally!, adjacent enough that I just don’t really vibe with it. But there’s no one single right way to be a family. My thoughts on this aren’t objectively correct, they’re just my thoughts. People can and do think my thoughts are stupid, which is fine.

As I said I am not opposed to Jonah calling them something but I honestly don’t know what! I don’t hate him sticking with their names, since that’s what he already calls them. I also don’t hate him calling them something else, some kind of nickname that feels less formal. But as to what that should be, I have no thoughts 😭 I am so glad it wasn’t my job to come up with those nicknames because I can’t think of anything better than Papa-Bro. I think ultimately I default to their names just literally because I can't come up with anything better.

[neyafromfrance95]

so re: my favorite new delusion that the kiss will somehow be adar kissing galadriel to bait sauron, I remembered this scene happens at some point, either ep 6 or 7.

So Sauron is indeed reacting to stuff happening down on the battlefield during the day. Granted, a lot happens he could be reacting (slightly smirking) about. But the possibility is there. Maybe we're due for another controlled fury moment like he had when those numenoreans told him he wasn't good enough for her lol.

Honestly it's like... Based on story momentum, if Galadriel kisses someone romantically it either has to be Sauron or it's a kiss that's somehow still *about* them (which an Adar kiss would be if he's trying to taunt Sauron in a quick moment on the battlefield).

Or it's simply not a romantic kiss and just a cheek, forehead or hand kiss and this was all just a rumor that spiraled simply because Morfydd teased it.

There can't be other romantic kisses unless Celeborn appears out of thin air. Elrond planting one on her and revealing surprise romantic feeling that ultimately can't go anywhere would be a jarring, momentum killing story turn when the season is meant to be about a "collision course" between Galadriel and Sauron in the finale. If it happens in ep 7 as they're insisting, then the audience is suddenly confused and wondering what that was about instead of focused on the suspense building to Galadriel and Sauron's meeting.

Also notably, they never paired up Rob and Morfydd for the press tour, despite how much screen time Elrond and Galadriel shared this season.

(I truly think this wouldn't even be a conversation if the incel lorebores didn't have a habit of badly interpreting scenes like the face touch in the trailer)

oh nooo, don't feed my delusions even more, they will grow! (please do feed my delusions)

his reaction to the numenoreans joking that maybe one of them is more suitable for gal needs to be talked about more! bc it was the first and only time his mask slipped off and he was about to lose it! bro saw her ankle on that raft and it was jover! suddenly, a mere suggestion that she might in theory be with smn else made this ancient being skilled in deceit almost reveal his true nature! like, when i saw his reaction for the first time, i thought it was so weird and uncharacteristic! then he beat those same dudes to a pulp!

sooo, what i'm trying to say is that, if sauron were to see his warrior queen caged and then kissed by the orc that they both blame their misfortunes on, ohhh boy. it'd be jover for the middle-earth.

and listen, so far the writers haven't given me a single reason to doubt them. even if galadriel is married to celeborn, a sudden switch to their romance would be a poor writing, since the show was about sauron x galadriel relationship from the very start (literally, finrod's speech alluded to it and then celebrimnor's one about silmarils)! same goes with elrond.

also, the whole "the light reflecting your hair reminded me of the love of my life who is lady galadriel, of course" thing was so bold??? i can't believe they did that. so, i'm 90% sure they aren't chickening out after pulling something so sick and obsessive on his part.

so yeah, either it has to do with sauron, or it's a platonic peck that was overblown by the fandom.

and agreed, we wouldn't be wasting our energies on the half of the discourse happening rn if it wasn't for the incel lorebros forcing these conversations to divert the attention from sauron x galadriel.

[aflo]

Not me being fandom hatecrimed and passive aggressively dog piled on THE fandumb website tumblr dot com by a dumb bitch with a cowboy url and an even dumber bitchass OP with Gigi Studio Ghibli Icon and even stupider tacky shitass tungle.hel pride badge that this self proclaimed "cunt" OP of a shitty tumblruniversitycore shit post willingly put on her blog to match and you two wanna act like you're the ones who better than me for daring to vague about Hazbin Hotel on tumblr dot com on a post that was already about some dumb fandumb discourse about a tungle.hell demon show and feeling safe enough to just tag what I was talking about because I thought that I could trust an even more basic bitch than anyone, not to try to be a fucked up little snobby bitch acting like they hold some kind of higher fandumb ground than anyone else on a post where that bitch OP with a fuckass anime icon is whining about apparently dragging her musty, crusty, ugly, greasy, McMemeShitPoster skinny Leah Michelle Gleeky (since you fave poor taste enough to actually like Supernatural That Much) Funny Tumblr Girly ass to a musty crusty Supernatural Convention that was probs just dashcon (because you know you be suckin' tumblrs whole blue veiny dick when you willingly put a tumblr badge on your blog cause you're that basic), to get willingly hatecrimed by your favorite Live Action Tumblr Blorbo TM, Mr. Jensen Fucking Under House Arrest Stubbed His Toe on Rusty Nail and Died Trying to Remove His Ankle Bracelets or Whatever...

Gurl I could never have taste that mediocre I'm sorry you ether don't eat, or don't eat anything but McDonald's cause you thought that meme was so funny.

And to think I wasn't gonna put this shit on my blog or try to add anything I just knew I was gonna get some nasty, hypocritical, passive aggressive tag typing, shitty memed up response to my addition because originally my only knee jerk response in my head when I saw this was "... Not the #Supernatural Discourse, though...Be kind to yourself.... Don't even lower yourself Sweetie ... Don't look, don't even look at them ... You know Hazbin already has a much sweeter, saner, queerer, kinder, safer fandom environment than the Death by Rusty Nail CW Show.... Just don't!"

But I did... And now I guess I can say for certain that Supernatural Fans TM are just as Mean Spirited and Crusty as their Infamous Shows ending! But It was probably like your entire personality for a while there so what more could I expect? :D

Like I'm sorry your own fandumb etiquette needs an oil can and you're obvi limegreen jelly because vivziepop fans have the power of Mara Wilson, Jinkxx Monsoon, Kesha Rose, John Waters, and probz soon Lady Gaga on our side and all you have is your anime cat icon from an overrated studio and that tacky ass tumblr badge while you forgot what it was like to have your fandom be everyone else's punching bag for a hot minute and you're feeling insecure and treating me like you must've been treated, just for adding to your post about an obnoxious experience with an actor in a tumblr fandom, sharing my own obnoxious experience with an actor in a tumblr fandom. which ultimately was a harmless thing for me to share on a post on the fandumb website that means nothing ...

But it turns out having a much happier fandom experience than yours is what I get when my shows have an actually queer show runner and a bunch of queer icons doing actual queer representation, and admittedly annoying and well meaning alleys that show actual passion about their projects like I'm sorry that your taste is so poor you actually wanted to fuck Dean Wince Emotionless or were queer baited by him or whatever but I'm different, and apparently, the only Actual Cunt on this post right now is me, being brave enough to have The Nerve.

So OP, the next time you feel so holier than thou to make fun of a person on tumblr dot com talking about their experience with a show about demons, while you're also talking about your experience with a show about demons, please consider closing out the Cringe Fandumb Website we're both using right now, touch your feet to the grass, and while you're on that grass, please touch your feet to the same exact rusty nail your Precious Ankle Fuckboy did and die. :D

And if you're too lazy to do that much, at least get your little cowgirl over yonder in the tags who mumbled at me for demon fandom discoursing on your post about demon fandom discourse, to have her little Striker Helluva Boss Moment and try and track me down and assassinate me for you by feeding me cookies with rusty nails in them. Since you'd apparently like me to disappear so badly. ;)

Because I think that's the only way to get me Shut The Fuck Up Hazbin Hotel Fan TM. Us Hazbin Hotel Fans aren't gonna be shutting fuck the up anytime soon. Not sorry. ;)

Also not sorry to break it to you OP, honey.... But you know being a Supernatural fan making fun of a Hazbin Hotel fan is like you're Toby McGuire Spider-Man and I'm Tom Hardy Venom over here, right?

Same Thing. Same Concept. Almost cut from the same cloth. Only my cloth is a little bit more high quality, a little more flashy, a little more fashionable, certainly more explicitly queer fashion, and again, just a little more comfortable to be in because it's made by people who actually have a heart, soul and passion to put into their work. Too bad the people cutting your cloth didn't have a heart and neither do you or your friends now . ;) ♥ X.O

😨

[justrustandstardust]

Can I ask your opinion on answer to this : https://www.tumblr.com/gojuo/742796780522061824/is-satosugu-a-queerbaiting-ship?source=share ?

for reference, this is the post anon is talking about. feel free to check it out for context before reading my response.

this person is basically saying that stsg cannot be romantic because there is no romance depicted between them onscreen; all of their interactions are meant to be regarded through a platonic lens because it's never explicitly indicated (in canon) to do otherwise.

this goes back to the whole idea of "projecting" queerness onto geto and gojo despite them being queered already, which i've touched on before. i'm going to respond to this person's ideas in two main parts: 1) queerbaiting and 2) canon, alongside the idea of "shipping".

as an idea, queerbaiting refers to the marketing technique employed by creators and publishers to increase a media's appeal, achieved through teasing a queer connection between two characters romantically unentangled in canon. queerbaiting dangles the proverbial carrot in front of the audience only to snatch it back with forced love interests or open declarations of brotherhood. it operates along the binary of friends/heterosexuals and queered/romance, dangling the carrot in front of the latter only to resolutely plant their feet in the former.

shockingly, i actually agree with this person— gojo and geto are not queerbaiting because they are queer-coded. the blatant difference between baiting and coding is that the former uses the appeal of fetishism as a marketing mechanism and the latter employs subtextual traits, literary devices and narratorial mechanisms that are recognizable as queer without being stated outright.

queerbaiting is always negative; it operates through stereotypes and functions to create the illusion of representation to ultimately reify the sex/gender binary. queercoding, on the other hand, functions in a more neutral space to create all forms of representation. (although western media has historically queercoded villains, which is an example of negative mechanization).

when engaging in discourse around queerbaiting, it's important to remember that queerness does not present uniformly across borders and time periods. when we seek open declarations of love as affirmations of queerness, we are seeking western representations of queerness, which are often founded in romantic love. the person who wrote this post is engaging in a solipsistic analysis from a western perspective, a perspective of which too often assumes the 'default' in anglophone fan spaces.

gojo and geto are not meant to be interpreted through a western lens because they are not borne of the west. applying a western conception of queerness to them as a barometer is unfair, incongruous and downright disrespectful to their characters. it's akin to shoving a box into a circular hole and declaring the box at fault for not being able to fit. simply because gojo and geto do not fit your static conception of queerness does not negate the core tenets of their characters that can only be understood through a queered lens, albeit a non-western one.

this brings me to my second point, which regards conceptions of canon and the practice of shipping. this person applies the same binary to fandom/canon spaces as they do sex/gender, dichotomizing jjk media into 'source' materials and 'fan-generated' content, much of which they relegate to the "stsg shippers [that] forc[e]their headcanons down your throat and manipulat[e] you into believing that shit".

a guiding principle amongst purists of any media is that there is "original" and "unbastardized" content, and then there are fan "mutilations" of said content that come after. they maintain a sanctimonious attitude and imply that people who engage in bastardizing media therefore understand the "source" content to a lesser degree (a requisite qualification to engage in mutilation).

in polarizing fan content and 'source' content, purists willfully blind themselves to the true essence of media— it does not exist independently of the imagination of the populous, it is made and continues to be made of the populous' imagination itself. once created, each re-imagination is not adjunct to the 'source' material but rather an extension of it on an equal ontological plane.

functioning less like an island in the ocean of our worldly milieu, media is more of a current, pushing and pulling on different sociocultural forces and being shaped by them in return. regarding it in a puritanical manner is a perversion of its nature because media does not merely live in the world, it becomes the world around it.

this person divorces so-called 'fan' content from 'original' material, and derisively declares that "Theories you read? That's fandom. Art you reblog? Fandom. Memes you consume and regurgitate? Fandom. Sending me asks about JJK? You're engaging in fandom". in doing this, they fundamentally do not understand that the two are inseparable because they are co-constitutive. jjk is fandom, and fandom is jjk.

fan culture is not supplemental to 'source' content; it a manifestation of media achieving its intended purpose, which is to join the world that bred it. fandom is perhaps the highest form of intellectual engagement with jjk because it executes the understanding that media exists within the world and not outside of it.

the things fans create are not inferior or antithetical to the 'source' media; however, i'm not saying that they're all inherently favourable either— they can be anything because they can just be. media invites itself into our world and in doing so, sends an amorphous invitation back. when you pompously declare that "in canon there is no romantic love between those two and there never has been", you slap the hand that extends itself to you and defy the maxim of media: it is not prescriptive, it is participatory.

when people acknowledge that gojo and geto are queercoded and choose to understand their coding in a romantic context, they are not "forc[ing] their headcanons and misinterpretations of the material down everyone's throats". they optimize media's purpose and reach back towards the waiting hand of fiction instead of isolating jjk and forcing it out of the creative medium that birthed it. "shipping" is one form of engagement amongst many, and is a reductive term that belies the intricate textual analysis required to arrive at its conclusion.

one key dimension of the "shipping" discourse is that it's mainly conducted by people who aren't men. men, in principle, are used to dominating every discursive space. to them, it is utterly flabbergasting that people who aren't them might have more insight into their favourite media than they do; nuanced and complex insight at that. compressing the discourse about stsg into "shipping" is reductive and disregards the complex conceptual and narrative analysis conducted to reach the so-called "shipping" conclusion, a practice which requires analytical capabilities that elude the men who deride them.

maybe the people who are "annoying as fuck" are not the "stsg shippers" but the people who insist on interacting with jjk in a purely prescriptive context, clinging to a vacuous relationship with their favourite media and removing themselves from its most authentic, intellectual and enjoyable facet in the process.

[thehylianidiot]

Obligatory Spriggan 12 Headcannons Post

I have a list, and I only have one story idea I can explore this stuff for so I'm going to post a list instead:

Zeref first heard of Spriggans from Mavis. However, since he's not exactly an expert on fairy lore, he might have...misinterpreted a few details when he decided his Emperor alias should translate to "ugly fairy."

Once she found out about it a century later, it frustrated Mavis to no end. Seriously, it's a miracle once revived she didn't immediately grab a book on fairies and march right up to Zeref solely to lecture him on how many inaccuracies he made to his face.

Larcade...is actually fully aware he is Etherius. In fact, the idea that he isn't valued and just a stepping stone for END's creation is a massive insecurity of his. The fact that he broke down on being told he was a prototype wasn't because of what was being said but *who* was saying it.

That said, Larcade was once a human child who took a liking to Zeref and Anna on their travels...and ended up dead during a particularly brutal dragon attack. It was the one of two successful human-etherius resurrections Zeref had ever done.

Larcade and August were the Gray and Natsu in Alvarez's baby days. They had to rebuild the palace a few times due to their bickering.

Larcade knows about August's parentage, which is part of why he flaunts the whole "I am His Majesty's son" thing. Unfortunately for the century's worth of drama, August never took the bait.

Brandish, Invel and Ajeel were The Trouble Trio when they were kids.

Brandish outscored Invel in the law exam. Brandish occasionally rubs it in and Invel tries to ignore it ever happened.

Could Brandish have become Chief of Staff? Actually, yes. Did she decide being head of the agricultural division would net her infinite ice cream and was thus the better position? Also yes.

Ajeel grew up with extensive political training from his grandfather but he was a bit of a battle junkie so he signed up for specialization in Alvarez's military instead.

Meanwhile, Invel's family comes from a long line of ice-themed generals, but much to their chagrin he tried to distance himself from that in favor of legal discourse. His ice-armor trick from his battle with Gray was actually his family's specialty.

Invel purposefully gets his glasses frames a size bigger than they should just so he had an excuse to push them up his nose bridge more.

August took Brandish in after she became an orphan, and so she really looks up to her adopted grandfather (poor gal in 100yq on vacation's probably with the lingering guilt of stabbing him thinking it led to his death). She may act aloof but any bad word about the Wizard King and she will threaten to shrink you and drop you in a bathtub.

Speaking of which, since August was essentially the de-facto second-in-command, technically Brandish may or may not have been third in line for the throne. She just made sure to start her vacation before anyone noticed that detail.

Diamara's God Takeover was the result of an failed sacrificial ritual by a group of cultists. Just saying, Vistarion Castle sure does bring in a lot of orphans (now why does that seem familiar to a certain guild in Fiore...)

Post-war, Ajeel decided to take that running gag everyone made seriously and officially remodeled the war room into an orphan daycare.

Bloodman's anti-magic aura slowly killing everything within radius originally led a very depressed etherius. Once he stumbled on the etherius once and found some rather uncomfortable similarities to his own experiences with uncontrollable life-stealing curses, Zeref offered him a position within Alvarez.

Yajeel, August, and Makarov would have gotten along in a the-responsible-elders-are-causing-destruction way and you cannot tell me otherwise.

If baby August had been raised in Fairy Tail....he and Makarov would have been THE ultimate destruction duo that would give Pretch heart attacks with sheer level of destruction caused by their antics.

[aretheywlw]

welcome to aretheywlw! 💕⚢

name is pretty self-explanatory! you just vote on whether you see xyz character as sapphic/wlw or not. GROUND RULES:

do not start shit. just don't. i will nip any kind of discourse, bait, or unnecessary conflict in the bud to the best of my ability. you come at me being rude and/or accusatory for any reason? blocked, deleted. you start acting aggressive to others over the polls, or say inflammatory shit in the notes? blocked, deleted. at the end of the day this is my blog, not anyone else's, and is just one in a sea of many others like it. if you can't handle something then i advise you to block and move on as well.

submit through the askbox! all i need is the character's name and the media they are from. attaching a canon image of the character is appreciated, but not required (but please let me know if there ARE no canon images of them). adding "propaganda"/evidence for them being wlw is appreciated, but not required. anonymous asks are off to minimize assholery, but i will answer character submissions privately and won't reveal who sent submissions unless i am asked to @ you in the post.

when i say "canon", what i roughly mean is explicit, word-of-god confirmation and/or no intentional evidence to the contrary. i am fully willing to admit that the matter of "canon" can definitely get shaky, that this definition isn't perfect, and that this is more of a guideline i'm quickly setting for clarity than what reflects the entirety of my beliefs regarding character identity status

you can submit characters who are canonically any gender! it doesn't matter if they're a woman, a man, or even nonbinary in canon. note that plenty of nonbinary people are sapphic/wlw, and i trust that any submission of nonbinary characters is meant in good faith. i will not tolerate actual attempts to misgender or erase nonbinary characters.

THE ONLY EXCEPTION TO THE ABOVE is characters who are CANONICALLY transmasculine, and/or nonbinary in a way that CANONICALLY excludes womanhood (nonbinary with specifics just not given is okay, for example kris from deltarune). please don't submit characters who these apply to!

characters who are canonically lesbians or bisexual women shouldn't be submitted as every single poll option but one would become redundant. however, characters who are canonically sapphic/wlw but NOT specified as either lesbian or bisexual are more than welcome!

depending on the canon identity of the character, some options may be removed. for example, a character who is canonically sapphic/wlw will not be given a voting option that says they aren't attracted to women, and a character who is canonically transfeminine will not be given a voting option that says they aren't a woman.

if a character is NOT canonically transfeminine, you can still specify that you are submitting a transfem reading/version of the character, and i will specify this in the poll and treat that particular submission the same way i'd treat a canonically transfem one. this is different from just submitting a canonically male* character without specification, as the latter leaves room for disagreement while the former focuses entirely on the transfem version of the character - "hey, do you guys agree this character could be a wlw trans woman?" VS. "let's say this character IS a trans woman, is she wlw?" (*canonically female but not canonically transfem characters can still be submitted as transfem readings, this is just the more common scenario in my experience)

if i ever unknowingly disregard a character's canon identity in a way that breaks the rules i have set, please let me know! i never intend to do this and i will always verify as best i can, but mistakes happen.

whatever submissions ultimately go through are up to my discretion, and i don't have to justify myself. this shouldn't really be a problem, though. if i find that i don't want submissions of a particular character or series, i will simply write a clarifying post and update this point.

i am not very motivated and i have a lot to deal with and prioritize in general, so my posting schedule may be quite inconsistent. don't worry about that at all, i will always get to it eventually!

that's all for now! thank you for stopping by 🫶

sapphic divider by @aquazero! last updated: 11/14/2024

[mariacallous]

If there is one certainty of social media in 2025, it’s this: Rage clicks rule. Hyperbole, hate, cheap shock—it’s all par for the course—and often rewarded with virality.

But Sez Us, an app just launched by veteran Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, believes it’s possible to change that by punishing users who shitpost for the sake of provocation.

The timing may be just right. America is entering an age of oligarchy with a rising wave of right-wing extremism taking hold of global politics. Platforms like Truth Social and X now operate as effective propaganda machines, recasting culture-war issues over immigration, DEI, and trans rights as boogeymen in President Trump’s new vision of America, which is really just a very old version of America. As the next era of social media comes into view, emerging platforms also have an opportunity to rise to the moment. Can Sez Us, which is positioning itself as the antithesis to X, facilitate a better way forward?

“If you bring back responsibility, ownership, and reputation, then suddenly all the incentives that we have in the real world are back,” says Yevgeny Simkin, Sez Us’ cofounder and chief product officer.

Even as online discourse has devolved into rabid spectacle, platforms like Bluesky have shown there is an appetite for a more civil kind of conversation. Rather than boosting any post that’s getting rage clicks, Sez Us uses what its creators call a “reputation engine,” a feature that allows you to rate another user’s posts on the platform across five key areas: approval, influence, insightfulness, relevance, and politeness.

On the app, ratings determine a user’s reputation score and overall visibility. The higher the score, the more reach you have in the community. Users control who replies to them based on a person’s score, with low-scoring users penalized by having less influence. All posts are visible but you can block users from replying to you, for example, if they don’t have high-approval ratings. Ultimately, ratings are designed to deprioritize engagement based around viral moments.

“It’s not about the moderators coming in and saying ‘you’re bad,’” Simkin says. “It’s about the community saying ‘we don’t like what you’re saying.’ Then I know that I have to temper how I say things. I have to be more polite. I have to be less bombastic.”

In the race to perfect social media, there has never been a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to moderation—for those who still bother with it. Scale can make this task even more difficult as a platform’s user base grows. For Simkin and his team, the idea was to build a platform that would “bring to the fore all the ways in which social media should be running rather than the way it has been,” he says. “The camel’s back was broken by the straw of Elon [Musk] buying Twitter,” and suddenly a whole new world seemed possible.

The fracturing of Twitter, since rebranded as X, kicked off an arms race among techies who had all sorts of ideas about the next phase of social media, and how to define it. It was during this period, in 2022, that the concept for Sez Us was born, grounded in the lofty goal of bringing back civil discourse.

Returning constructive debate to online discourse is important to Simkin. “I have a particular view on freedom of expression and freedom of freedom because I’m familiar with what it means not to have either,” he says. In 2022, as the Russia-Ukraine war escalated, Simkin, who was raised in Soviet Russia before immigrating to Canada, built Samizdat Online, an anti-censorship platform that allows citizens in totalitarian societies to read news by banned outlets without fear of being tracked and persecuted.

Similar to Bluesky, another new-ish app that has emerged as an alternative to Elon Musk’s X, Sez Us does not own any of your data. It was built using a decentralized social networking protocol, which allows users to move their assets and content across platforms. Bots are kept off the app through mobile verification. Low scores likewise prevent bots and individuals with bad intentions from gaining traction.

“Numbers aren’t the holy grail of this thing,” says Akshay Gupta, the chief operations officer. “Just because you have a massive score doesn't mean you're winning on the platform. It just allows people to know what type of reputation you have.” Even if that is true, reputation scores do ultimately matter in the end. The lower the number, the less reach a user is allowed.

When I mention to Simkin and Gupta that the idea behind its moderation-based scoring reminds me of an episode of Black Mirror, they push back. “We’re not defining what’s civil. It's the Overton window of the community. Whoever is there gets to participate and then those metrics will move,” Simkin says.

Many startup founders have tried, and failed, to design their own version of a digital Elysium. The main obstacle working against emerging social platforms that have launched in the past three years is TikTok. They don’t have its cool, reach, or strange wonder. But that is also their advantage. What the next age of social connection calls for—one of the many things, at least—is not more super platforms but instead purpose-driven communities. It calls for digital rallying grounds of all sorts, ones like Reddit but also like BlackSky, a Bluesky community for Black users, which already mirrors a version of what Sez Us wants to accomplish.

“No new endeavor is going to be dead on out the gate,” Gupta adds. “We’ve got an intention. We have a North Star. And we’re starting to see the behavioral elements of it work. Disagreements are great. We’re not stopping anyone from coming on the platform.” All backgrounds, religious affiliations, and political perspectives are welcome, they say.

It’s hard to know if any of this will work. Right now, Sez Us only has 10,000 active users. And Simkin has measured expectations for what they can accomplish. “I’m not looking to improve humanity,” he says. “That’s somebody else’s job.”

By incentivizing healthy discussion, he says, the plan is “to move technological discourse to a level where people can engage as themselves. The key is to help everybody recognize that we're actually not enemies.” Whether a critical mass of people wants that remains to be seen.

[thegreymoon]

Do you think Mo Ran deserved his redemption? I have seen some takes that saying Mo Ran deserved a redemption arc is victim blaming. What are your thoughts on this? He did get karmic retribution as Mo Ran 1.0 and 2.0 but I wonder if he truly deserved it

Hey, nonny!

Victim blaming? LOL, what even? Of all the ridiculous things I have heard regarding this particular discourse, this takes the cake!

MO RAN IS THE VICTIM.

Not only does he deserve redemption, one might argue that he doesn't need redemption in the first place. Just the other day, I was talking to someone who had a problem with the flower as the central element of the story and they said, "Why give him a redemption arc if he doesn't need one?" From their point of view, the narrative had pulled a bait and switch and failed its own premise.

But here is the thing, though, 2ha is not really about redemption, or at least not entirely. Mo Ran's growth is a part of it, sure, but this story is more about healing, about a man who had been enslaved, brutalized, traumatised and dehumanised coming back to himself after he was made into a monster against his will. He was never evil to begin with and nobody deserves that retirement in the mountains, playing house husband to the man he loves and being loved in return, more than he does. Even the brothel slaughter that one might argue he committed while still in possession of his right mind happened when he was driven to extremes by what was done to him, which, again, was also enslavement, brutalisation, trauma and dehumanisation. And yet, despite all this, Mo Ran still pays the ultimate price for what he'd done in his altered state, even though he had not been in his right mind when he'd killed.

A lot of people get so hung up on the premise of a "villain protagonist" that they completely disregard the unreliable narration. 2ha did not fail at telling the story it wanted, it's just that it was not telling the story that people thought it was. Mo Ran was never the villain, he was Shi Mei's first and biggest victim. This story is not about Mo Ran redeeming himself but about regaining himself. It is about being mentally ill because you had your mind deliberately broken by people who were supposed to care for you as a child and putting in the work to overcome it and be your best self as an adult, even though the mental illness never goes away. This book has always been about love, selflessness and healing, not some obnoxious bad boy getting a happy ending just because he is hot and has a giant dick.

In fact, if we are going to speak on this topic, I might suggest that saying that a man who'd had all that done to him was somehow not supposed to snap is the definition of victim blaming, not him getting a happy ending in which he gets to heal himself and live out his best life.

[dash-n-step]

You can tell twitter is having the same dumb conversation because I'll retweet months old "discourse"

anyway ultimately frieren is "fine", it writes its emotional beats well, the characters are all fun, but the way it insists on bringing up demons bored me out of it

the problem is it insists on trying to bait people with ''oh but maybe there's more to the demons" even though you already know "oh well there's not really anything to the demons, the writing and twists have already hammered that in" and every time it's like "haha, are you surprised? we actually had nothing to say about the demons"

Like yeah, human mimics are cool, on its base a monster that pretends to be a child to kill even more people is terrifying, but after a while it's like "so what else".

It's like, when people say "hey, why does this feel kind of facsist", it's not like AoT or Hetalia where there's overt tones of idealogy or playing down ideas, I genuinely just think the author didn't think anything beyond "wow, wouldn't it be cool to have monsters that pretended to be humans" and then forgot that the rest of the book hinged on emotional literacy and not who can shoot the bigger beam at each other, so now people expect something meaningful instead of just another excuse for a battle.

I suppose it's just to support Frieren's unwavering worldview about demons and why she fights as hard as she does, but, I'm sorry, that does in fact come with unfortunate implications, implications that certain kinds of people love latching on to.

[yourtoobright]

honestly i've been watching the stream for the entire 3 hours and it's soooo sad it's very mid 2 me...maybe its cause i know nothing about breaking bad JKHVSDJKSDGCVFKSJDFBVJSDG but the bait and switch was so lame because THEY ALREADY DID IT BEFOREEEE. genuinely i wouldve tuned into this stream if they were like 'funny breaking bad rp'. im curious abt how its gonna end tho so im gonna keep watching no hate to rtvs but the only weird part is they Restocked their hlvrai merch??? in the height of the hype?? very strange decision but w/e

yea im ngl some decisions in this process did weird me out a lil. if we're lucky theyre just messing with us and they actually do have something else planned for a little later but i absolutely wouldn't bet on that. honestly if it was branded as a merch restock announcement plus Something Else instead of 12-16-23 TUBE IN #HLVRAI the reactions from the community would have been better

At The Same Time. the community absolutely jumped the gun on assuming this would be hl2vrai. no hate to anyone who did, it was Definitely presented in a way where people would assume that and NGL yeah it does feel a bit mean. but the reaction was IMMEDIATE and i think everyone involved could have benefitted from slowing down a little. yknow?

ultimately it's a little bit of a clusterfuck and i am Not looking forward to the inevitable discourse crawling onto my dash in the next few days. mistakes were made on all sides i think. but honestly? been a bit since we had hlvrai discourse on the dash. nostalgic.... (JOKE)

[lifeneedsrot]

⚓️listen up buccaneers! This ship has been real mismanaged lately, but I run a tight ship here. Our main account is starshipsys, and this is our VENT and NSFW account. Expect lots of barely censored triggering topics on this account. I’m talking NSFW as in gore, not porn, but there will be horny textposts. That’s not what this account used to be, but it’s what it is now!

Our system used to be split in half, with one half on the other account, and the other half on this account. That’s not how it’s gonna work anymore. We’re ONE crew, and we won’t be having any mutinies here. I will listen to all crewmates but ultimately I’M the guy in charge, got it? This account is for ANYONE in the system to use. It’s where we put the gross stuff that we don’t want to share on our main. If we’re following you, either you post stuff we want to see, or you’re a friend we trust.

We are proship and proendo. I don’t give a shit what you believe in or how your system formed. I don’t give a shit what you’re into because we’re into weird shit as a coping mechanism, and we’re not about that gatekeeping lifestyle. We are willing to befriend ANYONE as long as they’re respectful and don’t cause us harm. I don’t care what you’ve done or believed. I only care who you are now and how you treat me, my system, the people close to me, and the people close to you. Close meaning both in proximity and in intimacy. We don’t bother engaging with obvious bait and arguments that would get nowhere, so don’t bring discourse here.

With all that being said, here’s a list of alters and what to expect, as well as the ideal way of interacting with them. We are not used to the tumblr tagging system, but I’m gonna try and get us to start tagging things as “[insert alter name] starshipsys” to make it possible to filter certain alters out or search for certain alters in particular. Unless otherwise specified, all alters enjoy being talked to about whatever they’re saying.

🧤Agate, they/them. 8. Childhood trauma venting, general fears and anxiety, sadposting. Please talk to them, avoid sexual subjects and violent subjects.

🪩Boppie, they/them. 21. Wanting to do drugs, wanting to go to parties, generally very bad life advice and unhealthy coping mechanisms. They won’t be able to have a very deep conversation with you, but love talking to people.

♠️Cole, he/it. 21. Venting about lost relationships within the system, references to self harm or alters attempting to self harm, weird sexual stuff about being turned on by sharp objects piercing soft flesh. He holds a lot of autistic symptoms, and doesn’t talk much.

🐰Daisy, she/her. 7. Hypersexual syskid, yes they are real, but we’re not comfortable sharing anything she wants to say anyway. You can only talk to her if she talks to you first, and you cannot engage in any of her sexual nature unless you have our simplyplural and a safe alter is fronting alongside her. Trying to sexualize her without explicit permission from a safe alter and HER will result in us never talking to you ever again.

🔭Estella, she/they. 21. Mostly just frustration with classes. Feel free to talk to her.

🐁Fobi, it/she. Nonhuman adolescent. Panic attacks, triggering situations we experience in real life, irrational behavior in an attempt to prevent abuse from happening again (IE disfiguring yourself out of fear that being attractive will result in sexual assault). Please try to talk to it and calm it down, if Fobi is fronting we are probably in an immediate danger.

🦇Grim, it/any. Nonhuman adolescent. Romanticization of abusive behaviors, fawning stress response. It wants to be abused in every way. Try to reassure it that it can be loved without being abused.

🌺Haven, she/he. 21. Mostly just rambles about the people we love, affection towards friends, maybe even soft hornyposting. She likes talking to people, especially if you’re our friend. He might even make a post about you if you talk to him.

✏️Indigo, they/them. 12. Probably vents about not being able to achieve our dreams and life goals we had when younger. Get them talking about a special interest and they’ll adore you. Sex repulsed, don’t bring that up.

🎊Jynx, she/any. Ageless entity. God complex posting, torture threats, and domination fantasies (sexual and nonsexual). She is actually friendly, despite how mean she presents herself as, and desperate for the approval of others.

🍠Kakxyl, he/any. Ageless entity. He is the alter that changes the roles of other alters, and will talk about everything all of the other alters talk about, but from an outside perspective. He won’t engage in conversation if he’s busy.

🫐Lynx, he/any. Ageless entity. Not much, really. Probably won’t post at all. He can barely communicate, and generally him fronting means we’re experiencing a wide variety of emotions, specifically from an emotional attack on either the inside or outside.

⚓️Maverick, they/he. 21. Goals for the future and plans, as well as general venting about daily frustrations. Assume they’re talking to another alter unless they’re talking directly to you.

🍥Nyan, he/she. 6-8. Whatever kids complain about when they don’t have trauma, idk. Please talk to them and try to cheer them up. If you bring up anything traumatic, though, we will be very upset with you. He probably won’t even be allowed on this account anyway.

🚀Oscar, he/him. Nonhuman adult. Vents about how awful all of our relationships and the people we love are. He specifically holds the splitting towards hate symptoms of BPD whereas Haven and Grim hold splitting towards love. Don’t take what he says too seriously, he is intentionally trying to push you away because he is afraid you’ll abuse us. Don’t talk to him unless you’re in a sane enough mental state to deal with him.

🩵Present, she/it. Nonhuman adult. Sad posts about our relationship with an ex, and attempts to comfort other alters. She likes when people talk to her, but can be a bit of a downer.

🥀Quasiren, they/them. 17-19. Venting about relationships in an attempt to build a codependent relationship with someone. They love when people talk to them.

🥩Raptorse, it/its. Nonhuman adult. Vorny (vore+horny) posting, hunger. Doesn’t hold conversations very well unless they involve food.

🎆Starbound, she/any. Ageless entity. Rage posting, threats to hurt herself or others, general aggression. If you weren’t the reason she fronted, feel free to talk to her. If you are the reason she fronted, you should probably wait about thirty minutes to an hour after she starts fronting. You can ask her if you made her front.

🪱Tazelein, he/any. Ageless entity. Torture posting, threats to torture, horny posting, romanticization of literally every bad thing ever. Yes, every bad thing ever. Yes, even that. He doesn’t represent our “true feelings” about anything, he mostly just provides a source to point to for our intrusive thoughts. He will say some fucked up shit to you, but he loves people very much, and hates death.

🕊️Utopia, they/them. Ageless entity. Weird philosophical or religious nonsense. Will probably try to convert you to whatever religion they’re making up right now.

🦠Vitriol, it/its. Nonhuman adult. Hatred for the system, disgust for all alters, will talk about everything we’ve ever done wrong. Wants to push people away to protect them from us. Won’t want to talk to you, most likely, unless you directly triggered its fronting.

🕸️Webber, they/any. Ageless entity. Abandonment issues, trust issues, soft bondage, probably some hornyposting. Will love talking to you, but tends to ramble and send very long messages.

🔥Xray, he/him or xe/xim/xis. Primordial god. Generic and vague complaints about our daily life. Likes to cut to the chase in conversations and be very direct.

🌲Yarrow, they/it or yey/yem/yeir. Primordial god. Long rambles about various alter’s mental states, similar to what Kakxyl may post, but with the purpose of informing outsiders rather than changing the perspectives of alters. Yey want someone to listen to and talk with, but might stop replying spontaneously if yey get particularly invested in documenting something.

🌊Zenith, ze/zer/zers. Primordial god. Positive things, sexual things, and general bragging about our life and our successes. Ze loves people and would love to talk.

As a general rule, only talk to alters that you’re comfortable talking to. No, this is not roleplay. We have disabling DiD, and yes it is diagnosed. If you do something to upset us, we will tell you directly before we publicly vent about it.

[trickstarbrave]

i have a lot of thoughts about "problematic" media and the dumb fucking "pro-ship vs antis" discourse that are probably disjointed bc i am half awake

for one i wanna preface this with: i think it is good actually to critique problematic elements in any media. movies, games, comics, tv shows, even fanfiction. if you think me saying something is "problematic" means i think it should be outlawed and banned and i personally want you, a fan of that thing, to die and i support suicide baiting you, you are just as braindead as the people you claim to hate. you are annoying. this post is not for you and is in fact also about you. you are a tar pit.

there is a vocal minority of people who do in fact see any depiction of something bad and think it has to be condoning it. they are genuinely few and far between, but they are VERY vocal, and typically very young. but i think after looking at how these people thing and present arguments, i really understand why they think this

depiction, if you are something with any critical thinking skills, does not inherently condone or condemn its subject matter. it can condone it, yes, but it can also condemn it. typically a story is mature enough to depict certain things, it is doing so for a reason and has a lot of nuance and shows if it condemns or condones it in indirect ways. for example in a very clear cut way: slasher films show a killer murdering people. they are screaming and dont want to be killed and try to stop him or run away. it is supposed to make you, the audience, feel bad and go 'well i wouldnt wanna get killed'. but at no point does someone look at the camera and go "killing people is wrong and should not be condoned. people dont like being killed".

this gets a bit more messy in other topics that are commonly normalized or go under the radar like racism and abuse. ultimately i think many stories that are "problematic" arent really done that way on purpose, hence why i dont believe in attacking the people who made that story for these things. a lot of times these things sneak their way in subconsciously or by pure carelessness. example: i do not think all of the designers for skyrim are racist white supremacists who intentionally made this story to be a perfect recruiting and radicalization tool for white supremacists. skyrim is a story about fantasy pop culture vikings in fantasy pop-culture viking land where you kill dragons. however there are also elves, which oppose the fantasy pop culture vikings and the vikings hate, and a civil war where many of the fantasy vikings want to purge and non-pop culture fantasy viking out of magical fantasy viking land. that shit is like catnip to white surpremacists. they love that shit. ultimately skyrim is just written badly. at no point was that the INTENTION behind the game, but it has been used to radicalize a lot of white guys and also is still beloved by white supremacists for these reasons.

ultimately that example is one most people im talking about wouldnt even get though, because it requires a lot of thought, understanding of how white supremacy operates, how we even got the concept of "vikings" in our larger pop culture (it was nazis, lol) and that those concepts are wildly inaccurate, etc. instead these kinds of critiques go after very overt depictions of subject matter or literally children's media.

and i think there is a very real reason why they do this i have come to realize: not only do they not know how to critically think, actually trying to think critically even in the slightest is mentally exhausting to them. by this i don't mean "ha ha they are stupid and lazy" i mean they genuinely dont understand critical thinking. at all. like they lack media literacy entirely. ive heard dumb takes from these people like "symbolism is trying to hide/bury the themes of a story" or "because the abuse in this story is metaphorical it doesn't count". they dont understand the parts of a story and why they are utilized as literary devices and actively resent having to think about the things presented to them.

this is a larger cultural issue. i see it beyond just self aggrandizing, black and white morality faux activists. you can see it in spaces of pretty much any political view or in any community: a lack of understanding of how to break down information and stories to evaluate it. we all have a tendency towards bias and they familiar and things that make us comfortable, but these people are on a whole other level. thinks like metaphor are seen as nothing more than lies and detraction used to obscure information rather than help build information up. understanding nuance, personal flaws, deeper intentions, and how you actually convey complex information is completely beyond them.

they live, ultimately, to just drink up content and media while having to think as little as humanely possible. they crave exciting stories but with extremely simplistic meanings and those stories just don't exist. because confronting these topics means rethinking their entire world view, be they extremely insular "leftists" or right leaning morons. it means admitting maybe they are not always right and perfect in more complex ways than simple mistakes a 4 year old would make. even when people like to bitch and moan that "depicting something doesn't mean you inherently condone it" they don't give examples on how you can tell. they don't talk about how personal biases can contribute to a story condoning it when the author does not consciously believe it. unconscious biases aren't even necessarily harmful, but going unchecked they can evolve to full on bigotry, born out of a refusal to admit you can be wrong about things and things are allowed to make you uncomfortable without being a personal attack on you.

because again, this thought pattern exists to preserve the ego and to think as little as possible. admitting things have nuance means admitting EVERYTHING can have nuance. that maybe the people who hurt you are not all irredeemable monsters or that you were the villain in someone else's life. that people you love to attack for moral superiority are complex individuals with their own lives and experiences.

this thought process is ultimately AGAINST accountability too. things are bad because they are bad. there are no pieces that give it nuance, the existence of them is either morally good or morally bad. which means if you think of yourself as morally good, as we all like to, that means you can never, EVER admit to doing something "morally bad", intentionally or not. i saw it recently with mods for a community refusing to admit they did something racist (attacking a black woman and making her life miserable) and would instead rather burn the community down with them while whining about they feel "unsafe" because people said that behavior was unacceptable, wanted them to apologize to the person harmed, and put steps in place to keep it from happening again. which is basic accountability. but that requires thinking about your actions, why they happened, that it doesn't make you an irredeemable monster who can never be better ever, and accept responsibility for what you did.

it is protection of biases and your own beliefs rather than challenging them. to think critically we need to know how to break these things down, evaluate them individually, how they work in a larger whole, and why these things are being told to us. maybe people refuse because they are comfortable in their biases. maybe people are comfortable in their biases and dont like acknowledging them because they dont understand critical thinking and media analysis. maybe its both. i dont really know.

all i know is it is annoying and maybe we really need to by and large teach people literary analysis and critical thinking skills from the ground up. because i cannot keep looking at the same brain dead takes in every community about how symbolism exists to obscure and metaphors are actually lies because "why not just be literal" and watch people make the dumbest moral arguments on both sides of any debate

[ladymorghul]

Hi! I saw a tweet you made and had some thoughts (or an X or whatever it is now called lmao!) but if you’re not interested don’t feel pressured to respond or anything. Related to people thinking TGC will leave the show if Aegon does terrible things- I’m confused about what people think he as an actor signed on for. From his first episode Aegon is a child rapist. That’s in the script, he would have been very aware. This isn’t a bait and switch where they cast him as one thing then suddenly changed it. He knows what he’s playing and he does a very good job, because we still empathize with aspects of Aegon and understand him. This is good! There’s also HBO contracts and a slew of other things, there’s no reason for him to leave a job he’ll have for 4-6 more years, etc. but I’m just very confused why people think he would be more upset about the writing in s2 than what he’s already been given?

yeah, i agree, he knows the script, but to my knowledge, the gist of the discourse of tgc leaving before s3 comes from the idea of him probably expecting aegon's story to be more complex in s2 than it was in s1 and offer him more character depth and the things that the writers described him to be that didn't translate to the screen in s1.

personally, i do think deep down tgc probably wanted / wants a more complex story than he was given considering his initial fears, but i don't think that he could or would leave hotd. leaving projects like this isn't just hard in itself, but it's a no no for actors and usually reflects badly on them. tgc is still working on his career so i think that regardless of his personal opinions, he will focus on acting as it is ultimately a job.

as a sidenote and a personal opinion: i do feel like he probably regrets the a tiny bit that he got this r*pist story because he has especially underline the way as an actor you want the fans on your side and to establish that connection with them. intstead tgc doesn't really get to enjoy that and has shut down most of his media presence beause he is facing a rabid, shitty attitude online.

that being said, i do think he has his own opinions on the story, but i don't think he would ever leave hotd based on his opinions on the plot itself.

but.... he is a r*pist not a child r*pist. i don't think he's a p***.