homopsychology

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can you imagine being toriel and you're going to live forever and outlive all of your new friends and the only other immortal person is your ex husband

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trans mascs racking their brain to come up with non sex related reasons as to why they’re treated like shit and dominated by trans women in trans spaces makes me feel insane.

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THE CHOIR SINGING GOES HARD NGL HOLY SHIT

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amateurish first effort

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my umamusume OC who is an improv freak who can never refuse to escalate a bit so ok i am putting her in a room with super creek for no specific reason and i do not know what the word vicarious means

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One thing I love about the first episode of Madoka Magica is how its core themes are introduced in the very first scene. Madoka watches Homura fight Walpurgisnacht--which, unbeknownst to the audience and most of the characters has played out countless times before--and has the following exchange with Kyubey (from the official English dub):

KYUBEY: If she [Homura] gives up, it's over. But you have the power to change this destiny…. All this tragedy, all this destruction, you can change it, if you want. The power to do so lies within you. MADOKA: I can change it? Even someone like me can do something to help? Can I really change how this ends? KYUBEY: Of course you can. Just make a contract and become a magical girl.

The first and most obvious theme is Kyubey's final line, which is echoed at the very end of the episode: "Make a contract with me and become a magical girl!" The story of Madoka Magica is Madoka's journey to do so--but not before she and the audience learn all the history that has led up to this point. Only when she is fully aware of the conditions and the consequences does Madoka fulfill her narrative destiny. And when she does, she indeed changes this scene by erasing Walpurgisnacht once and for all, Homura will no longer have to engage in this particular battle.

But can you really change fate? This is the question that, like Homura, I keep coming back to again and again, and the answer is more ambiguous.

It's true that Madoka saved Homura from being stuck in her loops and fighting an unwinnable fight for eternity, but the series concludes with Homura continuing to do battle against the wraiths with no end in sight. At the same time, Homura has been trying to save Madoka from HER fate (becoming a magical girl and then witching out or dying) and she succeeds, only to lose Madoka anyway when Madoka makes one final wish and becomes a concept. Did they save each other? Yes--and their struggles and sacrifices and genuine love for each other made all the difference. Was it ENOUGH? Ultimately, did they truly change fate or simply swap it out for a variation on the same theme? Well, that depends on your perspective. It seems like some things can be changed, but only up to a point.

Another key word in this passage is "tragedy" because tragedies are also very much concerned with this same question of "Can you change fate?" and the answer there is always "no". While the ending of Madoka Magica is not tragic in the sense of "a bad ending for everyone", it is nonetheless tragic in the more classical sense of inevitability - there is no way to arrive at a different outcome as long as the fundamental nature of the characters remains unchanged. As long as Madoka is compassionate and Homura determined to go it alone, etc, etc, it's difficult to imagine how it could have played out any differently-- or, rather, you can, but it involves the characters making different choices which they could not have done without changing who they are and/or the circumstances outside of their control that led to this point.

This is challenging for a lot of people to accept, including myself; when a professor told me, "You can't fix tragedies" during a discussion of Antigone, my reaction (paraphrased) was "Skill issue!" But the older I get, and the more I work with stories, the more I understand what he meant by this. I still write fix-it fics, but I also have more acceptance of why things turned out the way they did in the original--that sometimes, the tragedy is the feature, not a bug.

I think it's also important to point out that characters in Urobuchi's writing tend to represent specific philosophical point of views, and thus are inherently static and inflexible in certain attitudes and behaviors compared to real people, and that for him, this is also a feature and not a bug. Homura and Madoka aren't merely themselves, they are also two fundamental attitudes about the world in conflict, and part of the reason that neither one can get an upper hand and permanently "win" is that both have valid points. This is also why I think the inevitable end of the series is the two of them coming together as equals; until they do, the cycle will inevitably continue because neither perspective they represent is inherently superior to the other.

Which brings us back to another theme introduced in this first scene: "If she [Homura] gives up, it's over." It's true both in-universe and out; only when Homura gives up her fight to save Madoka can the series end for good. And the only way to do that is a solution that satisfies both of them and allows them to stay together, be it as magical girls, witches or a secret third thing.

"Is it possible to change fate?" is a recurring theme in Urobuchi's works, and in Kamen Rider Gaim, the answer is very much a Madoka-like ambiguity--the details change, but the fundamental framework of destiny remains the same, and the main character must sacrifice his humanity to save humanity. The primary difference is that he does not have to be completely isolated like Madoka.

Thunderbolt Fantasy is more explicit: changing fate via time travel is bad, actually, and it will fuck you and the rest of the world up if you meddle with it, because bad things have to happen sometimes in order for there to be good things. Characters can make choices for the future, but must accept the past as inherently fixed.

The script for Walpurgis no Kaiten was written after Gaim but before TBF, so who knows where it exactly falls on this spectrum, but I'd be surprised if Urobuchi dramatically changed his mind on this point. I think it will eventually be revealed that all of the characters' efforts to change fate are what caused that fate to happen (as typical for tragedies), but as with the original Madoka anime, I don't think it will mean a bad ending, or that everything was pointless. Rather, I think it will be like the lines in "Simple Gifts":

"And turning and turning will be our delight 'Til by turning, turning, we come round right."

In other words: it was all fate the whole time, but it'll be okay, because it was the only way for things to turn out "right" in the end. Everything will be the same and yet different, and those difference matter, even if Madoka, Homura, and the audience are the only ones who know the full story.

When Walpurgis no Kaiten was first announced, I found the decision to bring back Walpurgisnacht initially perplexing, but the more I think about it, the more appropriate I find it. The original anime's opening scene encapsulates the series' primary conflict, so it makes sense to be returning to that, especially if this is in fact the story's conclusion. In a series dominated by the circle, both visually and structurally, it was inevitable we'd come back to the starting point eventually; we could hardly do anything else.

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I'm at the doctor's office and a teenager who's like 7 fuckin feet tall just walked in and told the receptionist their name is Sequoia lmao. like is that a chosen name or did your parents somehow know you were gonna be the size of a redwood tree

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the comment sections of facebook links to science articles are my favourite thing in the world

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Pay attention to the particulars of Mastercard's responses, because this a textbook example of how to create plausible deniability.

"Mastercard has not barred any legal transaction" is, technically, a true statement – because Mastercard is not the one processing the transactions in the first place. Mastercard does not deal directly with any merchant, and in fact typically refuses to communicate with merchants at all; there's always a payment processing service sitting in between Mastercard and the merchant, whether that's Stripe or Paypal or any of dozens of other service providers.

Consequently, there are two layers of service agreements in place: the agreement between Mastercard and the payment processing service, and the agreement between the payment processing service and the merchant. That second layer of service agreements, between the payment processing service and the merchant, is where all of these content restrictions are being imposed. Mastercard can thus truthfully claim that they aren't barring legal transactions.

Now, if you've been paying attention, you've probably already spotted the issue: if the content restrictions are being imposed upon the merchants by individual payment processing services and not by Mastercard, why do all of those payment processing services seem to have exactly the same content restrictions?

That's where the critical sleight of hand comes in: while Mastercard's own terms of service do not require payment processing services to bar transactions of particular types, their ToS does require payment processors to bar transactions which could be damaging to the Mastercard brand. What constitutes damage to the Mastercard brand is not defined; it means whatever Mastercard wants it to mean. The payment processing services are thus in a position where they can be held in breach of Mastercard's terms of service for basically any reason, which gives them a strong incentive not to test any boundaries.

And that's why Mastercard can truthfully say they have never barred any legal transaction: they're never the ones doing the blocking. The layer of payment processing services that sits between Mastercard and the merchants are enforcing those content restrictions, based on a series of unwritten handshake agreements between the payment processors and Mastercard regarding what does and does not constitute acceptable content – and because the particulars of those handshake agreements aren't in writing, Mastercard can assert that their terms of service do not compel payment processing services to bar any legal transaction and technically be telling the truth.

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the only thing that can fix me is something violent and sickly obsessive

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Do you guys think If i hit an arbitrary goal i will finally unlock unlimited happiness?

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I’m paying to force seven thousand strangers to see a photo of my late husband having fun with his dog. Tumblr Blaze is totally worth it. XD

[homopsychology]

I'm usually annoyed when folks try to subvert something that was itself a subversion and end up just taking it full circle while being smug about it, but I make a specific exception for OCs based on sexified versions of mundane professions because it's almost always hilarious. "They're a sexy clown who's bad at being sexy" so, like, a regular clown?

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Its frustrating when non-horror people come into horror spaces and ask why we like violence and watching people suffer and sexism and all other manner of moral hand-wringing, but i also find it frustrating when horror fans (myself included) attempt to sincerely engage with these questions. Like 9 times out of 10 the question is either being asked in bad faith, or the asker is genuinely confused, and neither of those types of people are prepared for a proper answer about how horror reflects the cultural landscape or the complex relationships between the genre and gender and race etc and they definitely aren't ready to hear about the real facet of sexuality and eroticism in basically all horror media

horror is an easy target for pearl clutching but you can subject pretty much any genre to the same criticism if you frame it poorly enough. Oh you like romance movies? So you enjoy watching men stalk women and violate their boundaries? You think cheating is okay? You think its cool when women give up their careers to get married? I dont like or watch romance movies but based off my limited understanding thats what they're all like, etc

i think we need to just start responding to bad faith questions about horror with "yeah i thought it was awesome when The Killer fed all those teenagers into a wood chipper"

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creating a book series called "big fear shakespeare" where i expect you to know every reference and definition and instead there are comments in the margins saying things like "what kind of idiot wouldn't know this?"