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momentomori24 · 1 year ago

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Long-ass fandom rant because I need to scream into the void to find a reason to live let's gooooo

[For context I wrote most of this last friday which I thought was good to mention so the timeline makes a bit more sense. I really held off on this one XD Welp, let's start this trainwreck.]

Ok, I know I have other long posts I should be paying attention to (*cough* Keiji's shady shenanigans rant *cough*) among other probably more important things, but quickly wanna get this off my chest because it's kinda started to bug me and add even more concerns about the yttd fandom than I already have. This is specifically going to be about soushin-- yeah, yeah, I know-- but also bleed into something more... broad. Or broader. Idk, I'm a Tumblr user not a grammar teacher.

While browsing through Twitter I've been noticing a little spike in popularity for yttd with more fans and soushin shippers emerging as well. Which is cool, the game deserves all the praise and popularity it can get. And as someone whose been here for years, I'm glad that the fandom is slowly and steadily grown more accepting of soushin compared to the attitude around it way back when. There's been some genuinely really cool stuff that really does the ship justice from a lot of talented artist and writers that I absolutely love (will link some later), but something I've also been seeing a lot of from fans is what I can only describe as a "sanitisation resurgence" (but not really. kinda). A week or two ago on Twitter I stumbled across some soushin discourse where some people were sharing the sentiment that "if soushin end up being related and/or have a big age gap the ship is ruined". That they can only be two years apart max or else Nankidai has "fumbled them".

And the only response to that I had is "what". Like, how is that a deal breaker to you lot? How did you even get into the ship without accepting that those things could very likely end up being canon? How are you here and not ready to ship them no matter what's revealed about them after everything we've learned about them? Midori and Shin possibly being related was always on the table, and Midori potentially having already been an adult when Shin was in high school was always a very real possibility ever since we learned that he was never actually a student at his school. This is literally what soushin shippers got harassed by antis for years ago. Soushin is "problematic", and that's why people who shipped them where treated so badly in the fandom or just excluded all together. I can't count how many timed I've come across a "soushin shippers dni" or "soushiners are freaks and I hope you all have a bad day" or soushin fanfics/art with "I DON'T ACTUALLY SHIP IT BTW" and "not a ship" and "actual soushin shippers dni" attached to it. I can't recall how many times I had to explain myself with the "I ship but I don't condone it irl" or explain why I shipped them to not be labelled as a freak as if you need an excuse to ship anything fictional to begin with. I still remember soushin artist @uououoon and how they ended up deleting their Twitter account years ago because of the harassment and slanderous comments they were receiving for ships the fandom deemed problematic. When a person was saying their goodbyes to them on reddit and made some goodbye art (which is now deleted), some assholes in the comments were calling them weirdos and pedophiles for how they explored fiction and "glorified abuse" (which are the usual comments to uououoon's art posted on reddit unfortunately). I only caught wind of this one because back when they were still active in the fandom they were my favourite soushin artist and I went through their stuff almost every day and was tipped off when I randomly couldn't find their account anymore. They were such a nice and incredibly talented person too so the fact they essentially got bullied by a flock of stupid western fans seriously irritates me thinking about it again. This is why we cannot have nice things.

Soushin is "problematic". It's toxic and subtly abusive and important to the characters in question, but that didn't stop people from going after people who wanted to explore a dark, canon relationship (romantic, platonic or otherwise). How the actual hell did we go from "soushin has very toxic and problematic elements and you shouldn't be shipping it, you fucking freaks" to "you can ship it but don't make it actually problematic, you fucking freaks" like what is happening right now???? The worst part is that this is coming from other soushin shippers. The fact that there's actually soushiners with "proshippers dni" or "soushin is not for proship" genuinely makes me want to bite someone. Like, you horrible summer child-- not only are you demonstrating that you don't even know what "proship" actually means, but you're also spitting in the face of the people in our community that have CARRIED this ship for us for years. Why throw them under the bus to be one of the “good ones” in the eyes of antis when they hate us all anyway?

This brings us back to the sanitisation point: I feel like soushin is slowly being "sanitised" to fit the sensitive palette of antis by trying to make them as "morally acceptable" as possible. It's a worry I’ve had for a long time that once the fandom grows more accepting of the ship we'll be seeing more people basically scrubbing soushin of everything that made, well, soushin, to justify enjoying it. I've seen a bit of it already with a few people trying to say it's "not abusive" or just erase Shin's very obvious trauma by Midori all together for quite some time. Guess it's starting to happen on a bigger scale sooner rather than later. Maybe. Personally I don't think soushin having a big age gap or being related would ruin the ship. It just adds another layer of fucked up to their already fucked up relationship (I already hc Midori to be significantly older anyway so maybe I'm just biased). It doesn't really matter. I came here for toxic yaoi. I want nuclear waste level toxicity, not nuclear waste level toxicity presented in the most conventional and moral way possible. What would the point even be? It’s like packaging poison in a grape juice box. Like, it might be harmless to look at and more justifiable to think of as delicious, but it’s still poison. You making it look all cute and innocent isn’t going to change that. It's kinda funny and by that I mean not really that people will talk about wanting more "toxic yaoi" but when the yaoi is actually toxic and messy and horrific they will cry about it being "bad" or "ruined". You don't actually want dark dynamics, you want dark dynamics stripped of everything that makes them uncomfortable and dark so it's digestible to your tastes that don't even align with said dynamics in the first place. The worst part of this whole "soushin isn't proship so it's fine" bullshit is that it relies on trying to make the ship more "morally acceptable" or "legal" than other ships. Dawg, we are talking about abuse. You shouldn't be minimising that to say "well it's not [insert other terrible thing] so it's fine!!" That's not the "gotcha" you think it is. It’s one of the reasons why antis being into soushin made me feel weird cuz like you can’t ship it and then turn around to insult someone else, man (I’ve seen so many soushin defenders bash other “proships” to justify theirs like what are you doing--).

Realistically, the simplest and smartest thing to do when I see someone mischaracterise or butcher my faves is to either block or ignore and pretend to not care so I don't act on my sixth sense telling me to off them and myself. Realistically, this shouldn't be a big deal or anything that important, but this attitude is usually weaponized to harm and harass people who don't conform to their purity crisis over fiction. I'm in the unfortunate position of being not only a Your Turn to Die fandom dweller, but a Hazbin Hotel and The Coffin of Andy and Leyley one too. I'm used to being labelled a rapist and incest apologist irl who's delusional and deserves to be harassed and insulted by virtue of the media or ships I like (probably not a good thing). But people who are more active in these fandoms than me have it much worse as they get this shit directly waaaay more often while I mostly get called these things indirectly, which is what motivated me more to make this post.

So a couple days ago someone made some art of Monika from ddlc, Nikole (don't know the game sorry) and Ashley from Tcoaal. A lot of people on Twitter, unsurprisingly, bashed it for including Ashley to the point where some felt the need to clarify that they like her as a character but her actions (for some reason I do not understand like Monika has also done some seriously evil shit why are you not applying that logic to her too?). What struck me the most is that a yttd fan-- a self proclaimed "Midori enthusiast"-- ALSO quoted it to bash having Ashley in it. A freaking Midori fan. I told them to mind their business and start separating fiction and reality and to stop being a hypocrite, and thus ensued the most hilarious and stupidest convo I've had in a while:

You can literally count the seconds it takes for these guys to start throwing predator accusations and slurs at people. So "not exploring fiction correctly" makes me weird, but harming or putting real people on blast for nothing is free game, apparently. They're not the worst, both in this instance and in general, but it just stuck with me. Which is impressive, cuz I normally don't have much emotions to spare aside from general mild irritation for things like this. Maybe it's the Sonic feet.

But it ties into my issue. Midori's an absolute piece of garbage, yet some people will convince themselves that his actions are in some way justifiable to justify their hatred of something else (that is a lot less severe in this case) rather than love and let love. Tcoaal is not an "incest game" and if you describe it like that unironically you are not ready to be on the internet. No, it doesn't condone or glorify incest-- it literally does the opposite. If you need the characters to look into the camera and say "what we're doing is wrong and immoral" before doing something bad, I think you're the problem at that point. For the same reason you liking Midori (probably) doesn't mean you support human experimentation and torture, someone liking Tcoaal doesn't mean they support incest and someone shipping soushin doesn't mean they support abuse. These things are dark and shouldn't be condoned irl, but this is fiction. We can do whatever the hell we want. Being into darker themes and media doesn't have to reflect your real world views, but the inability to grasp that sentiment leads people to make their interests as moral and sanitised as possible and, feeling morally superior, will go after people who don't do that. This person deadass said that "incest is not morally grey and absolutely unjustifiable" (didn't even say that it wasn't btw) as if their blorbo hasn't committed so many atrocities for kicks that I personally find more unjustifiable. That line implies that they think that everything else Ashley has done and everything Midori has done can be justified because it wasn't incest specifically, which I find is a WILD thing to insinuate XD But it really does encapsulate the hoops antis will jump through to defend their likes while attacking yours despite the fact that it's literally the exact same as theirs. Rule of thumb: if someone accuses you of condoning something immoral because you like it in fiction, apply that logic to them, look at what they like and if their wet little meow meow is the Joker, Eren, Killua, Makima, Midori or whatever other morally bankrupt character you can come up with, take that as a confession and run. Cuz half the time these guys are actually nuts. While quote tweeting someone to shit on their art isn't the worst thing, considering how twitter has treated tcoaal artists the fact that they'd potentially open them up to harassment pissed me off, which is probably evident from my tone.

[Hi hi, this is me from the present right now cuz a more recent development came up so I’m using it as an example here too.]

While most of the things listed here have all been happening online, this attitude can come up in the real world as well.

As OP states, a bunch of hellaverse cosplayers were targetted at a french convention by haters of the show trying to ruin their cosplay. This is already completely unacceptable but the thing I can’t for the life of me get over is torching their costume while they’re still wearing it. Literally attempting to set someone on fire. All over a fucking show. It’s baffling how people can justify actions like this because they think your taste in fiction is so disgusting it’s Ok for them to hurt you. Not just online, but outside as well. It’s not the first time a hellaverse cosplayer has been harassed (last time it was a Valentino cosplayer but then again Val fans get shit from all sides all the time), and while I’m pretty sure these will remain as isolated cases it’s still scary to think about. What’s even more scary to think about how people think that their opinion on hazbin hotel has any relevance to the situation. So many of the comments in that post are just “I hate Hazbin Hotel, but—” or “I hate the fandom, but--” or “I hate Vivzie, but—” and I’m literally here ready to start pouncing like SHUT UP. No buts. That is not in any way important here. You not liking the show or the creator should not be important to the situation of cosplayers being actively harmed. You don’t have to signal your allegiances before showing basic human empathy, goddamnit. And what’s even worse is that some people have just turned this into a “b-but the hazbin fandom!!” issue, which is insulting. For example:

The “Hazbin fans do blackface and disrespect black people daily” is a reference to ONE Alastor cosplayer that nobody had defended. Not even fans. At least no one I can find. Yet they are using this one bad apple to generalise the whole fandom as "bad" and down play the amount of bullshit the hatedom does to fans on a regular. It kinda makes me feel sick that someone would look at a situation like this and spin this into a “fandom thing” rather than focusing on the victims. That they don’t deserve to be taken as seriously just because of the fandom their in. Some lunatic in the comments was literally completely minimising this whole thing saying “some red paint (fake blood capsules) isn’t nearly as bad as lynching and what black people have gone through in America” before calling anyone who called out that that’s completely irrelevant racist for liking Hazbin Hotel like are you kidding me. My homies in Christ, someone almost got lit on fire can everyone please stay on the goddamn topic. This is one of the rare moments where I was kinda proud of twitter as the majority of the comments and quotes where calling out their bullshit, but the amount of likes and some of the comments are still disappointing.

So what points am I trying to make here? This was very spontaneous and rushed so apologies if it feels messy cuz it very much is messy. But my main points boil down to this: Purification, sanitation and the “fiction equals reality” and "your fictional tastes reflect on you morality irl" arguments need to die. They just have to. While petting Shin on a daily basis gives me enough serotonin to find the will to live, the only true solace I will find is when people start being normal. People shouldn’t be getting harassed or labelled as freaks for fiction you don’t like both online and real life. People are not less worthy of basic human decency and empathy solely based on their fictional interests. People should be able to explore fiction however the hell they want without worrying about there being made a call out post on them somewhere. I search Tcoaal on twitter and there’ll always be a bunch of posts with over 10k likes calling all fans annoying weirdos or say it’s an “incest game” even tho it literally isn’t. I will try looking for some Valangel art on tumblr and see some loser use the tag to basically shit on everyone who ships it and lying about the treatment these shippers get while defending Charlastor or just shit on the ship in general. I just exist on the twitter side of the HH fandom chilling with other Val fans and literally every single one of them has either received death/rape threats or told to kill themselves, got ratio’d by a bunch of haters, had a call out post saying not to follow dedicated to them, had their art reposted and Val scribbled out, repeatedly accused of ““romantising a rapist””, or all of the fucking above. Valentino’s VA gets asked if he’s actually like the character he plays in real life or a fan being “relieved that he didn’t abuse them like Valentino” when they met (kudos to Joel for being chill about it btw I would be fuming this fandom does not deserve this man). I type in a certain controversial yttd ship to search and most of the latest posts are just people being rude, saying that if Nankidai makes them canon they’ll drop the game, calling the man himself a freak, calling other shippers freaks, shitting on soushin as well and then having soushiners defend their ship while also shitting on said controversial ship. It genuinely feels like fanbases are circuses and we are the clowns 💀

I could list other examples people being weirdos but I can't do that without breaking the momentum of this post even more than I already have. I guess what I wanted to vent about is how these attitudes regarding fiction and the way people police how others engage with it and how people think of you based on what you like can go from just annoying to downright dangerous more often than you’d think. That belief that you are morally superior to someone else based on the fact that you ship or like things the “legal” and “pure” and “healthy” way (which is never actually the case btw) can lead to you being really disrespectful or a complete asshole and not feeling bad about it at all, which does more harm than good. Which is why I thought it was important to bring up more extreme cases to empathise how this obsessive gatekeeping of fiction can and does hurt real people, who should be more important to you than fictional characters.

All of this is very likely going to sound very aggressive in tone and I want to quickly clarify that this is not meant to be an attack towards anyone in particular. I'm just tired and recalling all this stuff is making my mood sink like a stone lmao. Who knows, maybe I'm just overexaggerating and things won't get worse when the game gets more popular. This is just what I've been witnessing both in and out of my side of the moon. The amount of yttd fans I've seen act like this are a lot tho. No fandom is perfect obviously, and this one is the farthest from it, but with new people coming in and this weird attitude and need to sanitise not only towards soushin, but other "problematic" ships and media as well growing more prominent (mostly on Twitter and Tiktok) my biggest worry is that the hostility in this fandom will just... increase? Roulettefeel made pretty good posts about it-- my favourites being this one, also this one and this one's pretty short and sweet, summarising most of my soushin points a lot better and shorter than my trainwreck of a post so I recommend checking them out. If you like soushin, go check them out. If you don't like soushin, go check them out anyway. They make stuff outside of soushin too. They're pretty cool.

[I also want to add that the whole sanitisation thing in the yttd fandom is nothing new. It’s been a thing for longer than I have been here. I’ve just been seeing it again with soushin, which is was what made me want to do this in the first place. There’s another dynamic the fandom obviously does this for, but uttering it would not only get me flamed but straight up burned at the stake of bad takes so I’m saving that for a rainy day.]

Aaaaannd, I'm done, I think. I didn't have a good conclusion for this in mind. Idk, just be nice? You don't have to like "proships" (or what the fandom has defined as proship cuz that's not the actual definition), but that's what the block buttons for. Don't like, don't read, I say. Fandoms are for everyone and as long as what the person is doing is harmless, let them feel safe being themselves without having to worry about someone coming after them. Real life cops already suck. Let's not bring them into our collective escapism. And something you personally don't like ending up canon doesn't mean the game or ship is "ruined". That doesn't just go for soushin. That goes for other things too. To tie up loose ends, soushin having an age gap or being related has always been on the table and fits with other themes in the narrative. That does not count as "bad" if it makes sense. Soushin is not "Ok to ship" because it's "not an illegal ship" (whatever tf that means) and it's not "bad to ship" because it's "romanticising abuse". It's fine to ship because it's fictional. You don't need a moral justification to ship anything. That goes for all ships. That's why NOTPs exist. And "proship" doesn't and has never meant "shipping problematic pairings". It's a stance on shipping. It means being pro people being allowed to ship whatever they want. That includes being cool with problematic pairings, but is not limited to those. It means not being a fandom cop. Please stop saying otherwise, I cannot keep living this way--

Soooouuu, to end off on a more positive note and finally put this whole thing to bed I'll link some of my fav newer soushin accounts for anyone who's interested:

Hyo (orewagahai on ao3 check that out too): They are an amazing, amazing writer. If you're into dark, abusive co-dependent, complicated soushin with beautiful characterisation I would highly recommend. They just posted another soushin drabble on twitter and it's great.

jinn: They've been putting out banger after banger ever since getting into the game. Their art is absolutely stunning and they upload frequently, so go check 'em out if you can! It's actual medicine for the soul, I promise. They also draw for dead plate, so if you're into that go ahead too.

angel: Also cool. They're soushin art is hilarious and cute. As much of a sucker as I am for toxic, abusive sludge, they give thses two idiots a silliness that I enjoy. Also if you like trans!Shin content they're pretty good.

欣武 (my dumbass forgot to add them the first time sorry): They are INCREDIBLE. Extremely incredible artist. Their art is so, so freaking good. Not checking them out is absolutely your loss, ngl.

Be nice to them. If I catch anyone attempting to annoy them I'm coming after you and your entire family. Let's be better and not chase new comers off this time :3 Thanks for listening to my incoherent venting. This is mostly for me to feel a bit better, but anyone is free to read. If anyone's got an opinion or observation, feel free to offer it. I need coffee. Coffee sounds good.

#yttd #your turn to die #hazbin hotel #the coffin of andy and leyley #soushin #fandom discussion #fandom discourse #proship discourse #should go without saying but don't harass anyone mentioned here thank you. you won't see the light of heaven if you do #take a shot every time i say “soushin” cuz you'd be on the floor afterwards probably #i feel like i repeat a lot of words here in general. jesus.#anywho i just needed to let all that out. the last few weeks have been weird #sorry if this is unreadable and roundabout i didn't know how to get my thoughts straight #this is how i sound when i'm off coffee for a whole month #i've just been seeing a spike in people acting unhinged over fiction and not in the good way and it kinda gets to me #i just hate seeing people i like having to deal with bs cuz the fandom thinks they're exploring fiction “the wrong way”#and just pointing out and exploring certain things gets deemed “too problematic” and gets attacked despite being important to the plot--#and i just want to enjoy fiction or not mind problematic themes without getting qt and called the n-word repeatedly for responding #people can like whatever they want just don't slap others who like other things over the head and label them bad people #idk maybe that's too much to ask. maybe people'll always be like this but i have my blogs so if want something done right do it yourself ig #sorry for any typos this is mostly just uncut pure madness XD #momento rambles

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dullorangepulp · 1 year ago

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persona 5 fans can't keep it in their pants.

an explanation (of my boundaries) under the cut:

this is the haru fanart i posted to reddit that started this whole mess. this completely non-sexual, completely safe-for-work art prompted this guy & his friend to begin leaving sexually-charged comments under my fanart. After I asked him politely to not say that & to delete his comment, he mocked my discomfort & his friend joined in to downplay his actions.

I think I'll have to clarify this so that no one thinks i'm some kinda anti-horny, anti-free speech prude: there is nothing wrong with finding a fictional character attractive. there is nothing wrong with expressing your attraction to a fictional character on a public forum. there is nothing wrong with saying that you find a fictional character hot. I find plenty of fictional characters hot, & if I were confident enough, I'd totally belt out my love for a fictional character from the rooftops.

that's not the problem. the problem is that there was no prompting for this comment whatsoever. the fanart i posted didn't have haru in any kind of skimpy fanservice-y outfit, she wasn't doing anything sexual, she's literally just standing in a white void wearing futaba's normal clothes, so there was no reason for this guy to start salivating at the mouth at my drawing of her.

I'll use some fanart I did of a character in a skimpy fanservice-y outfit as an example of when I'm okay with someone commenting how hot she is:

If someone commented "why is Aigis so hot", I wouldn't be creeped out at all. In fact, I'd probably either express gratitude at them engaging with my post, or I'd just ignore it & not reply. This is because everyone knows playboy bunny costumes are skimpy, fanservice-y outfits worn in adult entertainment spaces. So, it makes perfect sense for someone to comment that they found my art of Aigis in a bunny suit hot, because I drew & then posted this with the awareness/expectation that I'd get that kind of comment. If I didn't want to see people comment that they found my art of "Aigis in a bunny suit" hot, then I would've just never drawn or posted it in the first place. If someone commented that they found Aigis in a bunny suit hot, & I got mad at them over it, then yeah, I'd be overreacting because it wasn't that serious. I'd 100% be the asshole in that scenario, & i'd deserve to get called out for it.

The problem with this guy's comment is just how unnecessary it was. This guy could've just said "why is haru so pretty" or "why is haru so cute" & that wouldn't have made me uncomfortable at all! This is because "pretty" & "cute" are normal, non-sexually-charged compliments that you can just give to strangers & no one would bat an eye. Plus, it'd make me happy to hear that someone found my drawing of Haru pretty/cute, because it'd mean I was able to accurately draw her (since Haru is already very pretty, it's just that me being able to draw her pretty means I've gotten good at drawing characters to look like their canon pretty selves.) I myself have commented on many people's posts & said that I found a fictional character pretty/cute, & it'd be wildly hypocritical of me to say that others can't do the same.

This is especially egregious when you consider that r/churchofharu, the subreddit i posted this fanart on, already ALLOWS NSFW posts! So, this guy could've just made his "why is haru so hot" comment on any of those! But noooo, he had to comment on one of the only few SFW fanarts, & he had to comment "why is haru so hot" instead of "why is haru so pretty" or something else along those lines. You guys just don't understand! He had to tell me "lol just cope" when I expressed my discomfort at him announcing his sexual fantasies to a random stranger, who he doesn't know the boundaries of, whose AGE he doesn't know, & who he doesn't know if I'm fine w/ horny comments in general (which I am, btw, just not on my SFW art.)

That's honestly what upsets me the most; how people online don't take the time to consider how the fanartist themselves feels having to read their degenerate comments. People on the internet in general don't see other internet users as people. & in the internet's post-tiktok era, people don't really see fanartists as people, but as content-creators. This guy & his friend are hardly the first people to not listen to others boundaries, or to overstep them then go "lol just cope" when the person gets upset at them. That's what ragebait is, after all. & everyone knows to just ignore that.

The problem is that this guy isn't trolling or ragebaiting. He's 100% serious, & he actually thinks his actions are perfectly fine. Those are the most dangerous kinds of people; the ones who don't realize the things they say are wrong, who never self-reflect, & who actually treat others like they're not human, because they don't see them as human.

If you got to the end of this & you still somehow think I'm some kind of soyboy, weak willed, anti-sex prude that needs to grow thicker skin, then like, yeah sure, I probably should grow thicker skin (no to all the other stuff tho, did you even read the post? nothing I said was anti-sex or implied that I'm a prude. everything i said contradicts that, in fact). But that doesn't mean that that guy's comment was okay. On any other site, If I don't like a comment on my post, I can just block the person & it'll delete their comment, or I can just delete the comment manually. On reddit though, that person's comment is gonna stay there forever unless a mod deleted it, or they deleted it themself (which I POLITELY asked them to do! you can see how well that turned out -_-)

As a general rule of thumb, don't say things online that you wouldn't say to someone in person. If you wanna say horny things, go to a r34 website or 18+ discord server. If you wanna comment on someone's SFW fanart of a character you find attractive, just say "this character is pretty/cute/whatever". If you think that you can't keep it in your pants & the urge to comment something horny on SFW fanart is too strong, then just scroll past! no one is forcing you to comment on every post you see! & especially no one is forcing you to comment your sexual desires about a character on someone's completely SFW post when the fanartist never asked you to, nor consented to read, nor is old enough to know that you shouldnt normalize leaving sexually-charged comments on people's fanart when you DON'T KNOW THE FANARTIST'S AGE.

#dop rants

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fictionkinfessions · 5 months ago

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ah jeez canon tv, huh

well our actual physical tv was garbage. i have no idea why we lived like college students in a run-down apartment, cause isn’t nightmare supposed to have a goddamn castle or something??? anyway yeah our tv sucked, so we didn’t use it often

besides, catching signal was tricky as hell. nothing ran in our area. makes me wonder why we had a tv at all, sometimes. usually we just got static when we turned the thing on

i think killer and horror tried “static gazing” (like cloud gazing) or something at some point. i can’t imagine that was much fun. but sometimes we did get a signal from another world, and we could steal a peek at that

interdimensional tv is a fucking nightmare btw. in case you were wondering. still, wasn’t all bad. we’d get bizarre shit that none of us could understand, yeah, but also weird little gems. i swear there was a cooking show we really liked. think we caught a rom-com a few times.

or maybe our standards were just ridiculously low by the time we actually caught anything onscreen. who’s to say?

beyond that, error apparently got cable in the anti-void. no idea how he managed that one.

-dust #waning🌘

✉

#fictionkinfessions #fictionkin #waning🌘#dustsanskin #utmvkin #gamrep #canon tv #schools cw #mod party cat

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powder-blu-hue · 2 years ago

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Thoughts on relationships in PP

Baby's first post on tumblr. But also there's no one here so I can safely yell in the the void. Basically my 'do I ship it or not' list because I'm just a filthy shipper. Anyway.

(btw when I say 'relationship' I mean it in a general sense)

Kougami Gino Yeah this one is popular in jp, they are like 80% of all the doujins I've seen T_T but I get it. Childhood friends to colleagues to 'enemies' (with the lovely angsty flavour of 'his descent into latent criminalhood was a betrayal to me') to 'he's dead to me (but I still care)' to 'we know each other so well we just call each other out on bullshit freely now (but also are back working as colleagues who respect each other for the most part)' (damn now I see why it's shipped) but for me…..I prefer them without the shipping lens Verdict: friends/gen

Gino Mika Ah yes my 50/50. Do I love their little interactions? Plenty. In fact they give us so much little little Gino Mika scenes it's hard to not want to see more of them. Gino is the guy who deals with Mika like it's a given. Mika seems to prefer getting in on what SAD is up to via Gino (probably coz she knows him best, as they worked together) - given she can't stand Frede lmao and seems to not want to touch Kougami with a 10 foot pole. Also between Gino and Sugo Gino is the obvious choice. But I also like them as a big bro/senpai looking out for lil sis/kouhai sort of thing. So. Bothbothisgood.jpg Verdict: 50/50 ship and gen/platonic. Will take either way

Kougami Shion It's very very hc territory but I would be very very interested in FWBs KouShion, just sayin Verdict: fwb only (but I will eat that shit up)

Kougami Sasayama This is only here because I saw some doujin of them lmao But Sasayama had to have some serious impact on Kou's life to make him this mad about him being killed my Makishima. I like to think the suave punk Sasayama took baby Inspector Kougami under his wing and they bonded over manly things like booze and criminal catching. But yeah don't really see it as a romantic thing. Verdict: gen

Kougami Makishima Dgmw after that slightly homoerotic fight in S1 and the fact the series opens with them facing off each other in a way I know will have my fujo homies sitting up, despite that I still just see them as a good (anti-)hero vs villian with nothing deeper to it.

Verdict: don't ship

Kougami Frederica Honeslty I like to think they're colleagues who respect each other and in a way mirror each other (Gino even says she's a female kougami) but part of me won't mind if they hooked up in SS3, coz she's a hot woman in his house and he's just a man with needs

Verdict: don't ship ship but if it's on the table in a very specific flavour I will partake

Gino Akane What can I say, I'm a Gino fan especially with how much he's developed over the seasons, and those scenes of him staunchly showing his loyalty to Akane (esp the end scene in ppm and that Mika conversation scene in S3 that I've rewatched 10 million times) have me by the balls, but at the end of the day subordinate loyalty is a trope that gets me like no other (especially given they were equals to start and now she's his superior, you can't write this any better) but also one I enjoy in gen sometimes and this is one of those times.

Verdict: platonic loyalty only

Kei/arata (+ Maiko) Okay. These guys are like, 100% shippable, right? I mean the whole 'don't go where I can't hold your rope' thing, the fact that Arata 'holds' Kei's 'social' rope in the same way Kei hold's Arata's 'mental' rope, the way they go all the way back as childhood friends, bonding over shared trauma of loss of loved ones. S3/FI did a great job at creating tension within their relationship with their falling out over Maiko's involvement with Heaven's Leap and Kei hiding his Bifrost Inspector shenanigans from Arata and Maiko. Which brings me to Maiko. She is as much a part of the trio as they are a duo at work. Maiko's friendship with Arata just feels pure, and Arata doesn't feel like a third wheel hanging out with them. We know from that real badass scene in Heaven's Leap she isn't a damsel in distress. So while Kei and Arata are just asking to be shipped, because Maiko is lovely and also a badass, I adore the trio as a unit, she's a part of them, rather than a competitor. It's a really well-written relationship triangulation and I adore it.

Verdict: love them as friends, the brot3 trio.

Irie Mao Ngl their whole thing in FI was kind of cute. I just want them to go on a nice Enforcer-friendly date or something. (God the more I delve into parallel media the more I love Irie, to think I thought he was just some thug at the start)(anyway random Irie love over)

Irie Oishi The manga/novels really highlighted this relationship in a way that wasn't showcased in the anime. Irie was like a charismatic gang leader in the slums and Oishi looked up to him and felt betrayed when he left. Angsty shit, love it. But on the whole I see it as more of a brotherhood thing. Verdict: gen

Hinakawa Akane Little bro smitten with big sis, loyal to a fault. Again, the loyalty thing grabs me and refuses to let go. (Then I read the interview that said Sho was a bit of a siscon lmao)(still love him though, my lil druggie) But also I love the way Hinakawa strikes me as the kind of guy who likes to stay out of trouble (for the most part) but for Akane he will bend the rules (speaking to her through an illegal channel in S3 to give her updates).

Verdict: lil bro/big sis with or without the 'complex'

Gino Sugo Dont really ship it. But it's okay.

SAD 3+1 Most fav dynamic ever, love them to bits. 1000% need a spin off (the little omakes in the S3 manga gave me so much life istg) Verdict: LOVE (but also gen)

Division 1 found family-ness The best thing about pp

Frede Mika Fremenies with begrudging respect for one another. Kind of love it. Can't wait to see Mika's face when Frede 'poaches' Akane for the SAD Verdict: gen

Kunikara My og pp ship, way before I fell for ka I think they should get married and buy a cosy little apartment together and have a cavoodle doggo named Finn Verdict: SHIP 100000%

Shizuka Akane

A wildcard if I ever saw one. Firstly, they just look good together. Like Sybil would've matched them or something. But also Shizuka is just an enigma, I can't quite put a finger on him yet (the only thing I know about him is he lives to win, and has an interest in Akane's wellbeing for unspecified reasons.) I hope they reveal more about him in later seasons - he's a bit of a blank slate at the moment, a pluripotent little stem cell with a million ways of potential. He doesn't quite have the history that Akane shares with Kougami or even Gino, but there's enough in the crumbs we got from s3/FI to keep me hopeful.

Verdict: kind of ship but also an 'on probation' ship

Kougami Akane Ah, saving the best for last. Where do I even begin? At the start, when I was a wee 10yearsago-me watching PP1 for the first time, I was sucked into their dynamic. Something stirred, but it wasn't entirely a 'I want them to be together romantically'. It was a second, difficult to define, thing, borne of seeing the amount of trust and respect they had in each other. But also, somehow, somehow, I cannot imagine them sailing off into the sunset together. Like there is just no way. But also I desperately want to see it happen. I call this my Schrodinger's ship because I ship them and can't ship them at the same time. They have a lot of history and that in itself is enough to give me feelings, but I am left feeling conflicted about it. Like I know the creators are not going to remotely hint at any sort of romance with them and that's fine, that's not what PP is all about anyway. But still. They are just. So frustrating in they way they make me feel about them. ~~it's like emotional edging, help me~~ But also I will devour any fic, art, fanwork of them being romantically together or being that elusive third thing - not quite lovers but more than friends - in fact if anything, maybe the third thing is what I really wanted them to be all along.

Verdict: it's complicated (but also yes)

Wow looking at this list it looks like I'm more of a gen relationships person after all lol. Anyway it's all good fun. Sometimes gen is nice too. I will still be here for kouaka or whatever they want to be to each other. It's a private matter between adults after all

#psychopass #shipping #just some ramblings that no one will read

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fallhound · 8 months ago

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I'm so happy with this btw, the design process easily took 100+ hours of work & helped me so much with figuring and representing myself ;- ;;;;

Pretentious ass identity/sona/therian writing:

I could find rigid labels for myself, I could rationalise and write things out in a cold and detached manner that, borderline clinically, rigidly describes the general gist of what is in my head.

BUT! What feels truer to myself is expression through metaphor, something expressive, something that shows the... Vibe? the feeling, the essence of what I'm experiencing.

It's, in a way, less precise, but existence is not static. It's not universal, objective. Metaphors and their interpretations are all dependant on our selves, on our perception, experiences. My expression of self is true to ME, explains ME, but the 2nd party maybe has a different take. WHICH IS FINE. The point even! People "take" others in different ways, noone is the same in alien eyes.

It all started with me figuring out the whole it/its therian thing & experiencing more intimacy (platonic & sexual) & finally working on the new fursona, where I tried to finally figure out the ME.

I've been having so many separate, unconnected thoughts that were just floating around, until a close friend of mine hit me with an idea that just. glued everything together?

Hellhounds throughout mythology are servants, guardians. They are meant to be intimidating, ward off dangers, keep others safe, yet their sole purpose is to be of use, to be in servitude, to be owned through being a part of something larger. Hellhounds also are not a... canid genome, they are concept of defending & serving others with teeth & claw.

I've always liked wolves. Not in the Lone Wolf or Alpha way, but in the sense of being fiercely protective of your family, your life, your community, while being entirely different with them; safe, soft, protective, caring.

I've always liked sheep, in the sense of softness, calm, warmness, going with the flow, calm, working with direction, being a part of something larger, constant jumpy anxiety.

I've always liked hellhounds, in the sense of rebellion, blasphemy, heresy, anti-establishmentarianism, punk-ness, goth-ness, otherness.

Separately they dont. reflect me well?

but if you take the metaphor of a wolf in sheeps clothing, or a sheep in wolves clothing, the picture starts coming together, the idea of being scary outwardly / soft inwardly, the idea of coming into your own skin and finding your bite, your teeth, your sense of self, going against the grain, becoming what you want vs what others expect. The idea of being perceived as a lie, a hidden threat.

Delicious representation of societal views of lesbianism, of transgenderism, transmisogyny, and like. yeah

A hellhound can be anything. the process of creation of it can be anything, as long as its poignant to their mythology.

What if in a moment of fear, of confrontation, of raw expression a sheep and a wolf were to find that they are opposites yet one and the same? What if at their lowest they find commonalities between the two seperate ends of the spectrum theyve perceived their whole life. What if the things they did not think possible WERE possible, things that seemed unattainable were in sight? What if in the moment of a borderline ying-yang connection, with some help of hellfire, of seperation from the norm, from voiding of the warranty, from the stepping over something you can never go back on they became one. What if you dreamed of other and saw the other dream of you.

A wolf and a sheep, both feel parts of their nature, of their old wounds, of their upbringing, yet with the support of the other find completeness, a use for something that was previously unwanted. Through understanding, purpose, or subversion. A sheep that is free, a wolf that is domesticated, both made for a purpose, for use, for servitude, yet given freedom, because the goal is not the societal shackle, but rather simply what they want, the handing of the proverbial leash to people it can trust, love, and want, while receiving the same back. Yeah.

Time for ANOTHER major fursona redesign, aka; what if I took a metaphor and ran with it :) (Transcript in ALT if you hate my handwriting)

#fallism

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galaxysharks · 3 years ago

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You ever have shower-thoughts at 2am for a fandom you havent touched in like 5 years? In fairness, Teen Titans was my shit for like 13~ years, y'all i literally ran out of fanfic to read, it was bad.

Regardless, i was snooping on the tags for Raven again and found this mini-lecture on the semantics of Hell!Demon vs DimensionalRift!Demon in dc, and the author mentioned how much more powerful Raven's story is if she is considered to be this inherently evil creature that chooses good despite her instincts that literally radiate #badvibes off of her.

And i began to hear the rattling of genius within my mostly deserted skull. So now Everyone must bear witness to my unraveling.

K so Trigon is pretty much established to be less Demon and more so Demon God, right? And has thusly fecked his way through the dimensional void, spawning his little half-demon babies, yeah?

Our boy's got 7 children, each forming the living embodiment of humanities worst traits. (As explained via convenient Western Religious analogies).

1. Pride

2. Sloth

3. Wrath

4. Lust

5. Greed

6. Gluttony

7. Envy ( full disclosure, took me 15 min to remember this one, which is sad and funny all on its own. Sorry not sorry dude )

Now, daddy-dearest wanna rule the universe, but needs a ride to do it, so he picks one of his kids, and boom, sudden Anti-christ, fair enough, demon-gotta-demon. So Trigon looks at his selection and chooses his only daughter, that'd be our girl Raven.

This is where i propose, Trigon Fucked Up, and inadvertently provided Raven with the only circumstances that would allow her to defy him.

With his other children, he clearly has total control of them, and to be fair Rae does have several altering factor that could contribute to her breaking free, Azarath and Azar's teachings included. But i dont think she needed them, i think she would have gone against him anyway.

Raven is mentioned to be his most powerful offspring, go off girl, but more importantly, those Sins up there, Our girl is Pride. Trigon chose Pride to be his portal.

( Which btw is the most typically pseudo-fatherly patriarchal bullshit and i am kind of here for it. :D )

Anyway, it is important that the sins are not just strong characteristics within these guys, the are the living fundamental expressions of these concepts. Nothing will ever alter who they are or how they are at their core.

Pride is the only sin that could have failed the portal.

Wrath, Lust, and Greed can be warped into believing it served their own goals

Sloth cant be bothered to fight it

Gluttony sees it as an expansion to their need to consume everything

Envy would do it just to prevent the others from getting there first

But Pride fundamentally cannot allow itself to submit to another. It has to come out on top, second best or equal share isnt good enough.

Raven has to fight him, because to do anything else is to war with her very nature, which is impossible. She can do good because the Sins are simply flaws, not in of themselves damning.

Admittedly i misspoke earlier, Dc Demons are not inherently Evil, they are inherently Malicious, ( which if youve spent any amount of time with preteens you know are not actually the same. )

Raven directs her darker natured instincts at bad guys and her father, still maintaining her nature as Pride, after all she is the most powerful Titan, raw power wise, and she knows it. Pride is content without constantly having to prove herself becuse she lacks the Envy amd Greed that usually come with excessive pride flaws.

Whats funny is that Trigons plan could have worked, if he simply wanted her to take over in his stead, rather than do it himself. But he was never going to do that because he is also Pride, and all the others too, and to do so is against his very nature.

#DC Raven Headcanon #dc comics #Raven #rachel roth #teen titans #Dc Demons #Dc Trigon #trigon the terrible #shower thoughts #but like 2am in bed thoughts #dc Analysis

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peasthedumb · 3 years ago

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MY BABY BOY ITS GLITCHED NIGHTMARE I DONT CARE THIS IDEA IS PROBABLY DONE LIKE A MILLION TIMES ,THIS FELLA IS MINE.

Yeah I already did one post about him (the rushed doodle a lil bit back) but I’ve actually made his design this time.

Btw, he LOVES compliments. He thinks he’s absolutely astounding and that his presence is a gift in itself.

Idk wether to actually give him a story or make him just exist for the sake of it.

Well- I have an idea for what his story would be (which roughly translates to: I’m making this up as I type and I’m not gonna look back over it to fix it)

Maybe, there’s still the tree and the twins, but for some reason it’s in the middle of the anti void. Dream and Noot both obviously know the dangers of being alone in the void for extended periods of time (aka glitching), so they’re both very careful to stick with each other and keep each other sane. Time passes, but idk how long cause time is meaningless in the void. Could’ve been minutes or lifetimes, but to them it felt a little like a few years.

One ‘day’ though, despite their best efforts, Nightmare became an error. He was very confused cause he and his brother had been so careful about trying to make sure the void didn’t get to them. But then Nightmare realises, Dream isn’t here? Wait a minute, he was never real. It was a hallucination, probably caused by the effects of the void. The tree also had no golden apples on it, only black apples. In a bit of a “oh shit my life’s a lie” moment, he decides to go eat those black apples cause to him, they’re probably not real either.

Well uh- they were real so now he’s a glitchy goopy tentacle monster.

He’s not sure wether dream was ever real at some point, and it did eventually click how weird it is that there’s just- a tree in the anti void. He made a theory that maybe something happened in whatever AU he came from that sent him here, but the glitching probably erased his memories and made him think this was just how life was.

(What actually happened was actually pretty much normal dreamtale storyline up until just after Nightmare accidentally corrupted the apples on the tree, then- idk something happened that caused him an the tree to get glitched into the anti-void. Dream n the rest of Dreamtale was left behind very confused. Dream has been trying to find his bro since but last time he saw him he was passive and un-glitched so he wouldn’t recognise him)

(If this post makes no sense, it’s cause I can’t be bothered to re-read it 50 times like I normally do)

#nightmare sans #I dunno #I make things up as I go along and hope it works

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thedreadvampy · 3 years ago

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Re last post to expand on that tag tangent a bit like

I am really very definitely connected to my Quakerism. and before I considered myself a Christian (which only really happened like 5 or 6 years ago) I understood myself as culturally Quaker, the same way many of my atheist friends are culturally Catholic, bc Quakerism for all its vagarities is a very. specific cultural space imo.

like there are extremely specific ways Quakers tend to approach social and philosophical issues. there are specific framings of ideas. although there aren't Holy Artefacts there are important items we might use as signifiers of Quaker identity - the little red book (Advices and Queries), the big red book (Quaker Faith and Practice), the Quaker Tapestry (which is a big Victorian project of embroidered scenes and homilies from Quaker history and thought, the most commonly seen of which is this little sequence of two donkeys pulling against each other and then walking off in the same direction, and which is often reproduced in homes and meeting houses), candles, white poppies, etc.

there's turns of phrase we throw out often that feel extremely clear in the community and don't necessarily connect with people who haven't heard them - "let your ayes be ayes and your nays be nays," "be still and silent in thy own mind," "moved by the spirit of the meeting," "hold someone in the Light," "discerning the right path" - and I do think those speak to a very specific way of approaching certain ideas. but there's also a lot of stuff that's like. so micro I can't necessarily identify it but like, modes of speech or behaviour that immediately ping someone as Quaker for me, even in different cultural contexts (like in Germany or in Japan).

(not all stuff that's explicitly in line with Quaker beliefs either btw. there's a lot of very specific tactics of conflict avoidance I notice idiosyncratic to Quaker communities which I have deep beef with bc I think conflict avoidance runs counter to a lot of the stuff that matters to me about Quaker thought which is like. peace is not the same as avoiding conflict. peace is not appeasement. peace requires honest communication in pursuit of justice.)

but yeah idk it's complicated bc obviously I'm speaking from within Quakerism and I don't have a lot of distance on this. but I think while I agreed with almost everything that post has to say about the American Evangelical void and its roots in opposition to ritualistic religions. idk I am also from a religion with deep roots in 17th century lay Protestantism. like our whole deal is being anti-dogmatic and rejecting a hierarchy of earthly things - we don't have holy items or holy days, even.

but I feel some kind of way about the conflation of 'not having concrete religious rituals and artefacts' with 'holding nothing sacred or important or 'not having your own identity'.

partially because like. the rejection of sacred artefact and ritual in Quakerism isn't meant to be about making something like the Bible or Easter Sunday less sacred as much as it's about elevating the sanctity of everything. like the same is true socially. when Quakers used to thee and thou kings and princes as if they were social equals, that isn't saying that those people aren't important - it's saying that I, a random person on the street calling the king 'thou', am just as important as him and should address him as an equal.

but also like. idk I'm overreacting to a point I'm not even sure was being made in the first place, but I am deeply intimately connected to my faith and its culture because to me I'm more authentically respecting and connecting with the beliefs without the veil of Formal Ritual. but I do recognise that there not being a Formal Ritual doesn't mean there's no ritual. we might not take communion but the service is incomplete without tea afterwards. we might not chant prayers but part of being a Quaker is joining in silence to pray independently. Our books, whether the Bible or the red books (which are iterative collections of notes, letters and advice from the national community from the last 400 years) aren't sacred objects but the contents have huge importance and, as ideas, are to be handled respectfully.

idk what I'm getting at I'm just wandering around this idea. and the thing is (and why I made my own post) is like I very much don't disagree with the actual post. any of it really. I just think it's complicated bc I think there's more ritual and culture to pin a religion on than only rituals and cultural elements that are explicitly sacred.

(and I think it's hard to balance analysing how The Christian Community acts against how individuals relate to their religion. like ultimately what matters on an individual level is whether you feel a strong and specific connection to your religion to the degree that you don't need to go looking for bits to add on our justify it. and that can happen in any faith with any amount of formal or informal structure and culture. but on a wider scale yeah there really is a void there)

(that's actually something that draws me to (my style of) Quakerism btw. it's maybe uhhhh a disorganised religion? like it's a religious community but bc it's intentionally focused on an individualised relationship to faith within a community it creates a lot of space for people to define their relationship to it on their own terms. which can be a welcoming place for people who are alienated from more formalist religious spaces. I think although it can be quite muddy there are 5 very clear and explicit core precepts and not a lot of hard rules beyond that.)

#red said #idk i have a lot of thoughts about my relationship to faith but none of them are very coherent

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lgbtqiacab · 4 years ago

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Thoughts of an angry feminist lesbian — Pride & Prejudice edition

Disclaimers: I know it's not all that pertinent to judge a 208 year old book with today's values but I never come to tumblr.com in order to be a productive member of society. I just like to rant in the void, like everyone else. I'm a simple woman, after all. Also I'm reading the gay version (Gay Pride and Prejudice by Kate Christie because I have no time for the straights anymore). Will update in time.

- Elizabeth Bennet is such an NLOG it hurts my soul. She is annoying as hell. She reeks of internalised misogyny. I'm very ambivalent with her character. I ship her really hard with Caroline Bingley though. Enemies to lovers is the way.

- Lydia should have been the heroine. Get it, girl. Premarital sex is the best sex, so I'm told. She absolutely does not deserve to be cut off from her family. Blame George Wickham. It's literally in his name that he's the culprit. No victim/slut shaming in this house. Ew.

- Kitty/Catherine "becoming good again and marrying some rando after not being around Lydia's bad influence" is slander. Stop.

- Mary does not deserve to be trashed on the tl 24/7. She also should have been the heroine. A woman with ambition? Who wants knowledge? That's my shit. Yeah she's struggling but who isn't??? She trying her best and (hopefully) enjoying herself and that's the most important thing. Also the real treasure was the friends we made along the way.

- About Mary again, she is always portrayed by perfectly conventionally attractive women in the latest adaptations and it makes my blood BOIL.

- Fitzwilliam Darcy, Caroline Bingley and Charles Bingley are all raging homosexuals.

- Darcy and Bingley are hiding a passionate relationship. They are so in love wow. You know I'm right.

- Darcy is that depressed homo™️ (the emo bf) and Bingley is the ray of sunshine who gets him out of his shell. I have so many headcanons about them. OTP. *cheff kiss*

- Give Mrs. Bennet a rest, she's the only one trying to help her daughters having a future. She is not "hysterical" or a comic relief to despise. She is making sure she and her children have a roof over their head after Mr. Bennet dies. That's called parenting. It is expected from a parent. Get ✨ it ✨ together ✨ y'all.

- Mr. Bennet is a horrendous father. I want to slap him. That mf does nothing else but despise the wide majority of his own children and makes fun at their expense. He's like respecting women (my own children too) who do not meet my conversational standards? Heck no. He doesn't give a flying fuck about what happens to his family after he dies. Sure man, read your books and be pedantic/detached from these "crazy women" all you want, so edgy of you. Also cutting his own daughter off?? What's up??? He'd probably be posting "I hate my wife jokes" and "edgy" sexist/transphobic/homophobic/anti-masks memes on facebook nowadays. He would say stuff like "wake up sheeple." Ew again.

- The Bennet family is sO dysfunctional jESUS-

- Catherine de Bourgh is a domineering woman (why is that a such bad thing, Austen???? I think it's very hot of her) and is basically a boomer BUT- in her defence, she is merely wishing for her daughter to be safe. Just like Mrs. Bennet. The times were harsh on unmarried women.

- William Collins is so bland, we get it, Austen. Don't get me wrong, he's a dumbass for sure but we get it, Austen.

- Btw my favourite thing about Austen is that she gives her name (Jane) to all the best/morally-upstanding/prettiest/most candid/kindest/angel-like characters and honestly whaT A MOVE. Our girl be manifesting before it was cool.

- "You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you" is such a powerful phrasing. What an drama queen, love it. Ily < ymamttyhaiaaly

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nothingunrealistic · 4 years ago

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review roundup: billions 5x12 “no direction home”

it’s the end of the season and the end of an era! the axe era! what do the critics think of that!

New York Times: ‘Billions’ Recap, Season 5 Finale: The Axe Falls

“So this is what it is to lose,” says Bobby Axelrod. “OK.”

He’s talking to Mike Prince, the man who helped engineer his downfall — a decisive one this time. How do we know it’s decisive? Because, I think, of that concluding “OK.” (Also, Damian Lewis, who plays Axe, just made public he is leaving the show.)

(yeah, that would do it.)

Chuck and his allies, meanwhile, are left fuming — but they’re not the only ones. When Prince rolls into the Axe offices to take control, two of Bobby’s underlings, Dollar Bill and Mafee, walk right out. These two former rivals, who once staged a charity boxing match to give their enmity an outlet, agree to an alliance while they’re still in the elevator.

Other ex-Axe employees find themselves in a shaky position even when they stay behind. Prince says he needs Wendy and Taylor in order to effectively run the firm, but it’s impossible to imagine the two of them getting along anymore — not when Taylor, a crucial player in the conspiracy to take Axe down, figures out almost immediately that Wendy knew Bobby was planning to flee.

Then there’s Rian, the trader Taylor used to help move the anti-Axe plot along. Moved by something like pity for the young woman, Taylor warns her that what’s left of her ethics will be whittled away if she continues to work in the field, going so far as to encourage her to quit. But there’s Rian in the office when the conquering Prince appears; she’ll be a valuable asset to both Prince and Taylor, no doubt, but she is also shaping up to be one of Taylor’s biggest regrets.

(i mean, if dollar bill and mafee can become friends again, maybe wendy and taylor can reconcile, especially now that axe is out of the picture… right? maybe not. and i don’t think it’s pity for rian that moves taylor to tell her to quit so much as their own regret and guilt. also, rian’s a quantitative analyst, not a trader.)

Corey Stoll’s comparatively laid-back Mike Prince will be a major departure as Chuck’s next antagonist; it’s impossible to imagine Axe standing still for three minutes while Chuck cooks him an omelet. That’s a testament to Lewis’s work. The real cliffhanger for Season 6 is simply how “Billions” will fill its Axe-shaped void.

(well, that’s just because axe and chuck never — [i am dragged away by a squad of SHOWTIME® security guards])

I don’t know about you, but when those workers chiseled the words “Axe Cap” from the office walls — a change not even the firm’s switch-over into Axe Bank occasioned — it really did feel like the changing of the guard.

(i agree. also, i’m begging someone to please compare this to the scene in 1x02 when someone else’s name gets chiseled off a building that axe has just bought and renamed for himself.)

One unexpected note of grace from Bobby’s departing deal with Prince: Axe pushed, albeit unsuccessfully, for Taylor Mason Carbon to be set free. Clearly he still has some respect for the protégé who almost eclipsed him.

(😭.)

Vulture: Billions Recap Season-Finale: How Does It Feel?

(HOW DOES IT FEEL??? HOW DOES IT FEEL??? TO BE ON YOUR OWN??? WITH NO DIRECTION HOME??? LIKE A ROLLING STONE??????)

We can’t talk about rage-driven fuel without addressing both the saddest outcome and one of the glimmers of hope in “No Direction Home”: Taylor Mason’s snuffed-out soul. This is something Taylor has been grappling with since their arrival in season two and a topic heavily documented in my recaps. Their slow evolution into a heartless, Axe-like monster has been a long time coming, though it was still upsetting to hear them advise Rian to use their hatred to succeed. The question is, will that slight flicker of humanity that remains — the one that subsequently warned Rian to make like Tom Cruise in Minority Report and run (she didn’t, btw, much to Taylor’s visible disappointment) — be what helps or hinders them in their battle against the merciless Mike Prince, now the owner of Taylor Mason Carbon?

(i never like the discussion of taylor’s eroding ethical center being framed in terms of Taylor’s Soul, for obvious reasons. that said: 😭😭😭.)

Who knows? Now that Axe’s name is literally being chiseled off the walls, it’s possible that everybody, including the newly returned Bonnie and the Vocab Twins Ben Kim and Tuk Lal, will join Dollar Bill and Mafee’s planned venture. (We knew Bill was serious about leaving the second he Removed. His. Dollar. Bill. From. His. Monitor.) Everybody that is, except Wendy and Taylor, who are technically allowed to bail, albeit legally prohibited from taking Mase Carb with them. Could Prince’s reign be what definitively allows Wendy and Taylor to let bygones be bygones and form an alliance stronger than ever before? And will Chuck get in on that alliance?

I’m cautiously optimistic. Yes, Mike Prince has become the King, sitting in Bobby Axelrod’s old chair and smugly validating that he, not Chuck, made that happen. But the truth, especially on Billions, often lies in its music cues. The reprise of “Like a Rolling Stone” is a glaring reminder that Prince is just as alone as Axe, and, I’d argue, in a far more precarious situation: He’s estranged from his own daughters, he’s Chuck’s latest target, and, with the exception of Scooter, everyone surrounding him at this moment — Wendy, Wags, and Taylor — is plotting his downfall.

(yes! if anything allows wendy and taylor to forge a true alliance — and for chuck to be on their side — this is it! we don’t technically Know that anyone working under prince is plotting his downfall but it seems likely!)

I liked the fake-out that bookended the episode (you think Chuck is looking for Axe at the Axe Cap offices when it turns out he’s searching for Prince), but the constant time-jumps gave me some serious American Crime Story: Impeachment vibes.

(you compare the time-jumping to some other show rather than any of the many billions episodes with convoluted chronology? not even golden frog time, the nigh-universally-acknowledged Best Episode to which this episode has been endlessly compared? shameful.)

Entertainment Weekly: Billions finale recap: As Chuck closes in on arresting Axe, not everything is as it seems

Everything is arranged for Axe to surrender himself to Chuck. Everyone meaningful is present, from Chuck and Kate to Wags, Wendy, Orrin, and Taylor. Axe's helicopter lands, but no one comes out. Chuck orders the cops to drag Axe out kicking and screaming, but there's no one there.

(if you guessed that this is the only time this recap mentions taylor… you’re right! get it together, entertainment weekly!)

Fan Fun with Damian Lewis: Billions on Showtime, Season 5 Episode 12: No Direction Home (Season Finale)

(so… is Fan Fun with Damian Lewis still going to post billions recaps in the absence of damian lewis? wouldn’t blame them for deciding not to.)

This insane episode, full of outwitting, outsmarting and outlasting, also drops clever, if subtle, clues along the way about what is coming as well as offers moments from Billions memory lane that I adore! We all know that Billions creators love references and they use Billions references, too, in this episode – as a tribute to Axe and Chuck, Damian Lewis and Paul Giamatti, who storm every scene they are in together. No Direction Home is absolutely one of those episodes you should really see at least twice to collect all the clues as well as all the blast from the past!

(is this code for “there are a dozen instance of characters quoting things they said to each other in seasons past, about half of which are prefaced with ‘you once said…’ so you know it’s a callback? because if so, i agree.)

It falls on the head of HR at Axe Holding Company to calm the employees down. They need to stay calm and united. Yes there will be negative press in the near future, but they will ultimately win as they always have. I wonder if Wendy believes these words she says to them…

…but I know she believes the words she says to Taylor and Rian. Because the advice Taylor now gives Rian about turning hate into fuel is exactly what Axe told them in Season 2 Episode 3 Optimal Play to motivate them in their poker game against Krakow.

“Hate is nature’s most perfect energy source. It’s endlessly renewable.”

Whoa. The circle of life. Taylor has now become Bobby Axelrod. And even Axe is ready to admit that – Taylor’s Boyd move in particular proves they have learnt enough from their mentor whom they have just killed.

Axe is probably taking pleasure in telling Taylor what is in store for them. They will feel less and less sad about people they crash over time. But in case they do not, they are welcome to bring cookies to Wallkill Correctional for Axe. But he does not think it is going to go that way and that Taylor knows it – which makes Taylor go and tell Rian what Agatha the Precog told Anderton in Minority Report: “Run.” And I really think, deep down, Axe is proud of Taylor.

(😭😭😭😭😭. but also, axe knows he isn’t going to jail at this point, so his line about bringing cookies to wallkill doesn’t mean as much as taylor might think.)

As Team Axe (Wags, Wendy, Bach, Taylor – why is Taylor there?) and Team Chuck (Chuck, DA Gramm, Kate, Karl) arrive at the heliport for the precious delivery. I believe that the anticipation of having Axe cuffed in front of Wendy is the ultimate wet dream for Chuck!

(why shouldn’t taylor be there? makes perfect sense that axe wants them to see that he’s outsmarted them — and everyone else — one last time.)

Chuck cannot wait for another second to get nasty with Wendy about Axe leaving her behind. I do not know how many times I called him a little, insecure man in this post, but he really is. But Taylor does not miss what Chuck misses. While she pretends to be shocked at the heliport, Wendy knew that Axe was going away.

(i counted. the author called chuck a little, insecure man five times, included the example quoted here.)

As the new boss arrives and welcomes everyone back to the workplace, it seems everybody is staying except for Dollar Bill and Mafee who are planning to partner up. We may see them as a rival company in the next season and, who knows, may be taking instructions from Axe. Remember that Axe told Dollar Bill in their last meeting that he will always be a good operator in the money business and his place is Axe Capital.

(intriguing possibility. would axe even want to give them direction? isn’t he tired of the game by now?)

Taylor, when they met with Axe in his country house, tells him that his problem is that he sees Taylor’s work, company and them as his. And now that Axe sold Prince the shares he bought from Wendy, Taylor has a new boss who loves to say “it’s all mine” 🙂 Hey Taylor, how is it going for you?

(i think i can answer for taylor on this one. BAD. IT’S GOING BAD.)

AV Club: Chuck and Axe are both outplayed in the Billions season finale

Axe gathers his brain trust to game plan a worst case scenario. According to Warren, that would mean lengthy jail sentence for both Axe and Wags (as the bank’s CEO).

(warren? you mean… ORRIN? axe’s lawyer who’s been around since the pilot and whose name is easily googleable? does no one proofread these?)

The Axelrod loyalists are convinced their roadrunner-in-chief will once again lead coyote Chuck Rhoades over a cliff, but while Axe still has plenty of bluster, he doesn’t have much of a plan.

(won’t lie, i enjoy this mental image, and the phrase “roadrunner-in-chief.”)

Axe’s faceoff with Taylor is less satisfying, mostly because their relationship hasn’t made sense in a while and Taylor was only a bit player in Chuck’s plot with Prince. Taylor has their own one-on-one with Rian, a character the writers never quite got their arms around this season, with predictably ambiguous results.

(speak for yourself!! on all points!!)

Thrillist: The 'Billions' Season 5 Finale Totally Transforms the Show's Central Rivalry

In a characteristically busy hour of maneuvering, Axe attempted to free himself from a complicated financial trap involving a marijuana start-up and a private bank charter laid by long-time rival Chuck, Corey Stoll's do-gooder billionaire Mike Prince, and Asia Kate Dillon's mentee-turned-enemy Taylor Mason. Freed from quarantine, Axe sprung into action and Lewis got the chance to do what he does best in the role: Walk into rooms with a charming arrogance, verbally dismantle his opponents, and fire off pop-culture references like an assassin spraying bullets. He went down swinging.

(what this reminded me of: in axe and taylor’s conversation, not a single cultural or historical reference is uttered. the closest we get is axe pounding his chest, which i’m sure must be a reference to something, though i have no idea what. also, i refuse to agree that he Dismantled taylor in that conversation, if that’s being implied.)

Fan Fun with Damian Lewis: The Unbeatable, Unstoppable, Unparalleled MVPs from Billions Season 5 Episode 12 No Direction Home

Best Damn Easter Egg Billions Has Ever Given Us – Bobby Axelrod’s date of birth is the same as Damian Lewis, as shown on Axe’s new Switzerland passport! DOB was listed as 11.02.1971 (the International format of DD/MM/YYYY) and Damian was born February 11, 1971. I have to believe this could have been Damian’s and/or the Writer’s Room way of gifting us a true piece of him, a small good-bye gesture ‘Farewell, thanks for watching me these last 5 years.’ It was a delightful offering to us…the TRUE-BLUE DIEHARD Damian fans. I’m quite verklempt about how the season ended even though I was prepared for this outcome (we’ve known of Damian’s departure from the show for almost two years), but at the same time cherish this tiny parting gift.

(i mean, it sure is An Easter Egg, but i don’t think “character has same birthday as the actor playing them, because we had to put A Birthday on said character’s passport” is that brilliant, especially when it conflicts with what the show has already established about said character’s birthday. also, did you say you’ve known for almost two years?? what?? i can understand your fellow ffwdl-er who published a book about the show knowing in advance but what???)

Best Possible Fall – Bobby Axelrod

Social media is full of posts and tweets about Bobby Axelrod having lost. Are you fuckin’ kidding me? Under the circumstances – Bobby is a winner! Yes he may have lost 75% of his total assets but he has got $2B in his pocket and instant Swiss citizenship! Besides – he has the kind of freedom he may never have in America. The alternative? A pretty long jail sentence with all his assets frozen. No wonder Axe has a big smile on his face as soon as he crosses the Swiss border!

(AGREED. this season was about axe realizing the money game was making him miserable, and now he’s out of the game *and* out of the reach of the law. that’s a win for axe, even if it costs him his relationships.)

The “Worst Dad” Award – It’s not like this show is graced with great father figures – I mean, Chuck is as bad as his dad who is awful. Dollar Bill has two families. Wags has what, three? And Prince sold out his kids to get at his rival, but none of them compare to Bobby who abandons his two boys to go on the lam. I feel for ya Bobby, but speaking as a dad, that was totally uncool.

(won’t disagree about any of these men being bad dads, but axe isn’t exactly “abandoning” his sons now when they’ve lived across the country from him since the middle of season 4.)

“Who’s left?” – So next year we have no Bobby, and Dollar Bill and Mafee have left the building. And I imagine we’ve seen the last of Spyros too. Shows have to evolve and so characters need to come and go – M*A*S*H and Cheers are both examples of great shows that endured the loses of classic characters and their replacements became just as memorable. But this stings. And while I like Ben Kim and Tuk, it’s just not the same. (Bobby’s hugs to them both were two of the most uncomfortable and unconvincing hugs I’ve ever seen). The only one I really believed was Dollar Bill. In some ways Dollar Bill was just as emblamatic of Team Axe as Bobby himself. His loss as a regular will sting.

(WATCH THE SEASON SIX TRAILERRRRRR DOLLAR BILL AND MAFEE ARE IN THE TRAILERRRRR AND KELLY AUCOIN HAS SAID HE’S FILMING SEASON SIX A MILLION TIMES ON TWITTER OH MY GODDDDDDD)

My Hope For Next Year Award – Please writers, stop with the overabundance of references, whether pop culture, literature or sports – no one, and I mean no one, uses as many cultural analogies as these people do. And it comes across more as the writers showing how many they can jam into an episode rather than being actually useful. It didn’t start out that way – they were used in moderation for the first couple seasons. But then I think the writers enjoyed them and the reactions to them so much they decided to throw them in whenever they could, and now it’s overkill.

(i’m sure they’ll do that right after axe comes back to star in the billions-succession crossover episode. 🙄.)

#billions #review roundup #bobby axelrod #wendy rhoades #taylor mason #mike prince #rian billions #chuck rhoades #dollar bill stearn #dudley mafee #5x12

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jyndor2 · 5 years ago

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so I was talking to my friend @timelordthirteen about some shit and I decided to just share with you all about the importance of actually explaining shit instead of just saying it. the Left, I am looking at you bitch (ily bitch but)

lol would put a read more but tumblr's being a petty little bitch today ❤

shitposting is fun. dunking on asshat right wingers is fun. you know what is not fun? seeing people not understand the basic terminology that we use in the ~discourse*

but. if we are going to use terminology, if we are going to inject regular old laypeople conversations with (imo) unneccessary amounts of academic terms, then we should try to use them correctly** because in many cases misusing them means we as leftists do not have a full understanding of what the fuck we're on about. this dilutes both the meanings of these terms and their purposes. I know I am wordy as fuck and can be hard to understand sometimes (thanks adhd) so what I am about to say is a little ironic, but clarity is fucking important when it comes to strategy and organizing.

so I am going to examine some commonly misused concepts and terms today. yay.

1. THEORY, PRAXIS AND FRAMEWORKS FOR ANALYSIS weeee yes I am fun at parties tyvm

what is a framework? a structure, in this case, for analyzing some bullshit we deal with irl. that's it lol but I use it a lot so I figured I'd define it here. examples of frameworks are: intersectionality, marxism, queer theory. seriously, if you can think it, it has already been analyzed through the queer lens.

what is theory? ideas, knowledge in the abstract based on looking at shit happen and analyzing that shit. it is useful because it can help us articulate what we are going through in our shitty lives. this is why I often recommend people learn about chomsky's manufacturing consent (theory of why we get the info we get from the media tl;dr), not because I think chomsky is the ultimate leftist grandpa but because this site needs some media literacy lmao. and btw, this clip narrated by amy goodman is a great, trippy little 4:30 min long video that explains the basics of manufacturing consent so you don't have to open a book or use drugs!

theory can help serve as a framework to understand what the fuck is happening to us irl, but imo is kind of an incomplete understanding of shit without lived experience (aka - theory v praxis). this is one reason why we should listen to marginalized groups on their own shit and not talk over them - because all of the research and theory in the world does not make me a Black woman living in Flint (aka - ground up organizing v technocracy). it is not about being nice, or politically correct, although we should be nice and we should care about people just because they're people. if you understand the why of listening to marginalized groups, you understand that it is mainly about communities knowing their own problems best and therefore having the best solutions for those problems.

2. MARXISM, CAPITALISM AND OTHER BUZZWORDS (and leftists need hobbies)

so marxism is a framework for socioeconomic analysis observed by mr kpop himself, karl marx (and his sugar daddy friedrich engels). because leftists love to argue, there are so many kinds of marxism, and if you ever feel like you are shouting into the void too much, just look up some arguments between stalinists and trotskyists. it's just... magical. no, I am not defining tankie here.

as many people smarter than I am have said (read: kwame ture seriously watch this video it's iconic), karl marx did not discover socialism or invent it or whatever, he observed capitalism and saw how shitty it is, like any other sane person would do. the point of marxism is not karl marx (which he would say) or tankies or fuckin guillotines***

things that marxism is:

- an analytical tool for looking at the world

- a theory which was used to develop the basis of different kinds of post-capitalist economic systems like communism and socialism

things that marxism is not:

- a system of economics or government lmao marx did not govern dick

- scary

marx looked at capitalism and said "this is definitely gonna fail someday because it's clearly unsustainable, I mean the proletariat is bigger than the bourgeoisie who owns everything uh yeah so I can do basic fucking math. if I have one capitalist and fifteen hundred workers, eventually that capitalist is gonna lose his damn head because he is gonna hoard all that wealth and his workers are gonna get pissed that they don't have their basic fucking needs met. lmao now put on some kpop, freddy" or something. idk that might not be a direct quote.

what is capitalism? (besides horseshit) a system of economics where industry is privately owned. and yes, this includes publically traded corporations because they are still owned by individuals (shareholders) even if they aren't privately owned by one person or a group of partners. truly a nightmare to live in, and we hate to see it.

what is the proletariat? well, the working class. and the bourgeoisie is the owner class, the capitalist class. the rich.

and this is something else that we need to discuss, tumblr. if you are going to say "eat the rich" please understand who you are talking about. we're not talking about random actors or musicians, or doctors or lawyers, even if they make better than a liveable wage. even if they often have zero class consciousness, meaning they don't ~see class, like colorblind racism for classism.

anyone who has to sell their labor for wages and is not part of the owner class is working class. this includes people who cannot work for any multitude of reasons (disability, can't find work, caretaker, etc) and also white collar workers who might be well off in relatively high paying jobs because they don't own the means of production, or capital that is used to produce shit. so yes, that rich actor who is a part of a union is actually part of the working class in marxist theory. when we say eat the rich, we mean jeff bezos, not john boyega. jeff bezos owns the means of production. john boyega is a working actor who is in a union.

this is important not because we shouldn't get pissed off when actors and celebrities do tone deaf shit like singing about imagining no possessions in their mansions while people starve during a pandemic. they need to put their money to good use, have some class consciousness, instead of asking fans to donate to causes that they could fund. but they are not the bourgeoisie until they start owning the means of production. and there is no doubt that many of them do, which is why we might eat gwyneth paltrow but we won't eat john boyega.

and by the way, eating the rich is metaphorical, a reference to french revolution-era philosopher jean-jacques rousseau's quote: "when the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich." obviously I don't even need to explain it but I will anyway. basically, the people will forcibly redistribute the wealth of the rich if they have nothing else. this is why there are some very smart capitalists who are in favor of reforms and raising taxes, because they recognize the danger to their necks in not providing for basic needs of the working class. no, "eat the rich" does not mean be pro-cannibalism. but there are many capitalists who would prefer to die than lose their hoard so

oh, and one last thing. "no ethical consumption in capitalism" is tossed around a lot and it's a million percent true, but I need all of us to understand that it is not an excuse to support harmful practices but it is also not meant to shame consumers. it is rather an understanding that we as consumers are not responsible for the monstrous impact of capitalism. we live in it, we have no choice but to consume, and sometimes (most of the time) that means we have to buy shit that was produced in unethical ways. unfortunately supply chains being what they are, all consumption causes harm in some way.

it is a reminder that individual actions are not going to have the impact of collection actions. this is why plastic bag bans, though well-meaning, are not going to have the same impact on climate catastrophe as, say, banning fossil fuels would.

I am a vegetarian and I can recognize that I am doing a whole lot of nothing by not supporting factory farms, and when I was a vegan I wasn't doing much either. boycotts without mass support don't have much evidence of working. this is why bds exists - boycott divestment and sanctions. boycott, meaning don't support goods from various conpanies connected to something, divestment, meaning get companies/countries/institutions to remove their money from something, and sanctions, meaning getting countries to penalize a country for their bad behavior until they comply.

this is what the anti-apartheid south africa movement did and what palestinian rights organizers support for israeli apartheid.

do not allow legislators to put the burden of fixing the ills of society that capitalism created on consumers' shoulders.

3. INTERSECTIONALITY (because it deserves its own section)

I don't have as much to say on this as I did the last bit because holy shit capitalism, man.

intersectionality, a term that was coined by law professor kimberlé crenshaw in the late 80s to serve as a framework for people to critically assess how legal structures impact Black women differently due to class, race and gender. it is not incompatible with marxism (in fact marxism has been argued to be a form of intersectionality).

intersectionality can and should be used to examine why the Black queer experience is unique, for example. I also want to acknowledge that professor crenshaw isn't the only person to come up with intersectionality; sojourner truth spoke about it even if she didn't coin the term, for example. patricia hill collins, another influential af Black feminist academic****, created frameworks for viewing intersectionality. also you can read her book black feminist thought here for free.

intersectionality has been used - improperly - by liberal feminists***** to excuse bad behavior from leaders who pretend to care about women while creating and enforcing legislation that harms women. anyone who stans politicians at all needs help. it has also been misrepresented as essentialism, which it is also not (essentialism is the idea that everything has some assets that are necessary to its identity) because intersectionality isn't saying that every Black queer woman has the same experience, just that Black queer women might experience similar issues because of a system that negatively views them as Black and queer and women.

intersectionality does not excuse kamala harris for prosecuting poor moms of truant kids.

okay if you guys have things to add please do because I want us to educate each other instead of always talking shit. both is good.

* I am not calling out people for not being academic enough or not speaking english or not reading enough theory because LOL I am a 2x neurodivergent college dropout who radicalized by working retail and not by hearing karl marx talk dirty to me. also, not everyone speaks english like, I am truly not shitting on people.

** I recognize that language is fluid and ever changing, and that is a good thing. But diluting terms that serve specific purposes is not ever going to be good.

*** and I don't want to dismiss intra-leftist theory discourse (🤢) because I know how annoying it is to hear bernie sanders lumped in with liz warren, or bernie sanders lumping himself in with post-capitalists lmao of course I get it. but twitter discourse is not dismantling capitalism so ANYWAY

**** actually crenshaw built on collins' work (black feminist thought) and the collins built on crenshaw' work we love to see it.

***** I should go ahead and define liberal feminism as well as rad fem and terf and shit because people use them all very very loosely, especially terf (not every transphobe is a terf but every terf is a transphobe, it's like the rectangle/square thing). but I am exhausted with this so next time.

#marxism #word vom #intersectionality #kpop idol karl #truly apologize for my mess

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a-v-j · 6 years ago

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Me and my brain has thought of Extinction's origin story This follows the CQ-generated Error origin, k? Error's the mom, right? That's 'cause he's indeed the one that been carrying Extinction's SOUL and had already been ever since he was still Geno. He and Death were a thing & hit it off since he was still in the save screen so yeah. No, not sex, but SOUL mating or bonding In this story, Geno didnt messed with his DETERTMINATION powers but instead used it to go the Death's deathvoid(Death hasnt been showing up for some reason). If he can travel to impossible places like the Savescreen using his DETERMINATION surely he can manage to go to Death's place, right? Buuut, that landed him in the Anti-void, yada yada yada he hated everything and junk, he glitched out into Error. Extinction came out as a child and not as an infant 'cause due to Geno's turn-to-glitch process and that infant bodies are fragile and cant possibly handle the glitchiness so his SOUL stayed inside Error(Error didnt know junk) till its old enough to handle a glitchy body. Then one day, Error felt not so good, so he just slept it off and woke up with a creepy kid staring at him at his feet. Hence he dub Ex as "The creepy kid that showed up one day".

Undertale (c) TobyFox Geno!Sans & Error!Sans (c) TheCrayonQueen Reaper!Sans (c) Renrink Extinction (c) Me Next

This is Extinction BTW

#undertale comic #error x death child #well more like a post-geno error x death #was-geno x death child #sanscest child #error x death #geno x death #destructivedeath extinction #destructivedeath #tl dr #ughh..#i love making stories tho #hope you like listening to them

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buzzdixonwriter · 4 years ago

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Inefficient As Hell

It only took 49 years, but I finally saw Haunts Of The Very Rich, a 1972 ABC-TV MoW (movie of the week).

For those unfamiliar with the term, a MoW was a 75 minute made for TV movie in a 90 minute time slot. ABC made more than 250 of these over a 6 year period, modern day versions of the programmers and B-movies of the 1930s and 40s.

Many MoWs served as pilots for later series (The Six Million Dollar Man, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, etc.), a few were attempts at serious drama (Brian’s Song, That Certain Summer, etc.), a couple were surprisingly good (Duel, Trilogy Of Terror, etc.)…

…and most were like Haunts Of The Very Rich.

It’s pretty much a quintessential example, showing all the strengths and weaknesses of the form: Sensationalistic story, stellar (at least by TV standards) cast, plus enough time and budget to be more technically proficient and aesthetically pleasing than a typical TV episode are the plus side of the equation; cliché’, hackneyed, predictable, turgid, and astonishingly offensive for racial sensitivities of the era.

If the title didn’t tip you already, the first two minutes hammer the point home: They’re DEAD!!! And they’re going to HELL!!!

Okay, dynamite TV cast for the era: Lloyd Bridges, Cloris Leachman, Edward Asner, Anne Francis, Robert Reed, Donna Mills, Tony Bill, and Moses Gunn all turn in performances ranging from good to very good indeed.

Paul Wendkos director, a respected journeyman director who never made it to the A-list but worked consistently in film and TV across a wide range of genres. He demonstrated an unsuspected flair for the supernatural in his best known theatrical film, The Mephisto Waltz, and manages to bring that same sensibility to Haunts…

Script? Eh, don’t ask… William Wood’s teleplay (story by T.K. Brown III, which I suspect is a pseudonym) is a ripoff of the 1923 play Outward Bound already filmed twice as Outward Bound and Between Two Worlds, but to modern audiences it looks like a Twilight Zone mash-up of Gilligan’s / Fantasy Island.

Seven very rich people (upper middle class bourgeoise, if you ask me) find themselves on a mysterious jetliner taking them to Seacrist, a tropical vacation destination, run by Mr. Seacrist (Gunn) in an all-white outfit than anticipates Mr. Roarke’s wardrobe by a good five years.

I strongly suspect all the wealthy characters initially represented the seven deadly sins (pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth) but by the time ABC got through mucking with it those distinctions were lost.

Not that it matters. The seven stooges arrive and run through their various melodramas. Seacrist resort is cut off from the outside world by a hurricane. The native help abandons the resort, Mr. Seacrist goes off to find help, the rest of the cast mopes around as resources and tempers grown thin, and it finally dawns on them that they’re DEAD!!! And they’re in HELL!!!

Folks, ///National Lampoon/// did that as a one panel cartoon called “Presbyterian Hell.” EC’s Tales From The Crypt would have batted this one out in 6 pages. As a half hour Twilight Zone it would feel padded (it might have worked as a short segment on Night Gallery).

Despite Wendkos and the cast doing their (dare I say it? I dare…) damnedest to make the material work, but that script is a killer and not in the good sense.

Case in point #1: Mr. Seacrist is of African descent (Gunn provides him with an erudite, quasi-British colonial accent suggesting a Caribbean background), the staff -- “They understand English but I’ve instructed them not to speak it” (yeah, so the producers don’t have to pay for speaking parts) -- are either Native Americans or of African descent.

The stooges actually comment how surprised they are that Mr. Seacrist is running the show because native staff is one thing, but isn’t there usually a white guy in charge of everything?

Say wha -- ?!?!? This was 1972, people might still be thinking that b.s. but only Archie Bunker would be saying it out loud.

Case in point #2: Timothy Leary, Bishop Pike, and Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan were pretty well known to the American public in 1972, and so Robert Reed’s reverend was given a big anti-drug scene. I suspect the heavy handed anti-drug message was added not only to blunt (no pun intended) his character’s earlier mention of peyote but also to undercut the pretty chilling “there is no afterlife” context of the original scene. (Despite this, it’s still the most best thing in Haunts… and Reed shows some fine acting chops here).

Case in point #3: Lloyd Bridges is a married serial adulterer with a clinging wife he can’t stand who briefly enjoys a romantic fling with the equally married Cloris Leachmen (though if they’re dead, their wedding vows are now null and void). Bridges’ wife can’t live without him and kills herself, showing up at the end to make his hell complete.

It’s hilarious when it happens to Harcourt Fenton Mudd in Star Trek, it’s horrific for all the wrong reasons here.

Why should she be eternally punished for his being an asshole?

Which leads us to the observation poised in the title of this post: If this be hell, it’s a damned inefficient one.

Seacrist the vacation / damnation destination is actually the Villa Vizcaya in Florida and I must admit it’s a great location, a huge sprawling estate that gives off the same familiar-yet-somewhat-odd vibe as Portmeirion, Wales did for The Prisoner.

But in the context of the story, why go to all that effort to torment just seven people?

Ever see Johnny Got His Gun? The wounded WWI vet in that is blind / deaf / mute / limbless / unable to eat or taste anything (his genitals are still attached and functioning; rendering him the polar opposite of Jake Barnes in Ernest Hemingway’s ///The Sun Also Rises///) is trapped forever in an eternal sensationless hell. Why go to the trouble of this elaborate stage show that lasts less than a week when these poor bastards are going to be stuck there for hundreds of thousands of millions of billions of trillions of years? Just shove ‘em in airtight boxes and stack ‘em away in a hot room.

The only thing that would make sense about Seacrist would be if it’s not Hell but Purgatory, and the stooges’ suffering will eventually guide them through to eternal bliss.

I suspect that’s what Mr. Seacrist started as; an allusion to “see Christ” but the network suits apparently freaked out over that and made him just a run of the mill sinister host.

. . .

BTW, I caught Haunts… on the Creature Features channel on YouTube. Vincent, Tangella and Mr. Livingston picked up the torch (or should I say cigar?) from the late John Stanley and are churning out episode after entertaining episode. I find they strike the right balance of humor and informative interviews and the show is delightful. Check ‘em out.

#review #Creature Features #Haunts Of The Very Rich #religion #writing #television #made for TV movie #movie of the week

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