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You can either take it easy, take it personal, or the secret third thing: Both. That's where you assume that whatever someone said, they meant it as an insult, but you don't respect them enough to care about their opinion of you.

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Seriously, the most useless people in every leftist activist group are the ones who refuse to see progress as, well, progress, and instead are obsessed with the idea of fomenting Revolution on a truly massive scale, because “that’s the only way things will ever truly change.” Not that they’re actually going out and trying to START that revolution ever, mind you. They’ll just keep telling you that that’s the only real solution, and until that happens, until they can get their absolutely perfect outcome, they’ll just sit on their asses and tell the rest of us that what we’re doing is useless. Which is bullshit, of course.

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I just came up with a really inconvenient, possibly unplayable four-player game: The Evil Advisor

All you need is a completely normal chess board and a deck of cards that you can somehow divide into an even amount of cards that mean "yes" or "no". Out of the four players, only two need to know how to play chess - those play the role of advisor. The other two play as rulers. At the start of the game, both advisors pull a random card from the deck, which dictates whether their goal is to win the game, or lose it. They keep their respective card, showing it to nobody else.

The rulers, who ultimately choose where to move the pieces, always aim to win the chess game, and also know that the advisor may or may not be on their side, and don't know whether to trust the advisor or not.

If the ruler wins the chess game, they win the whole game. An advisor only wins if they reach their own goal - if an advisor's goal was to lose, but the ruler wins, the advisor loses, and vice versa.

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ok im going to #seriouspost for a second here. I don't think Harry Potter is a manifesto. I think it was a flawed passion project that millennials latched onto because of the fantasy of sticking it to their mean teachers and arbitrarily categorizing themselves (hogwarts houses; it's the thinking millennial's astrology). I think the fact that the series got popular when and how it did was very much a product of its time.

I don't think Harry Potter is the biggest symbol of JKR's bigotry. I think the most flagrant sign of that was how she responded to critics. I watched her become radicalized in real time. I watched how she doubled down on her racism when she was called out for the ways she promoted her tragically mid fantastic beasts movies. I watched her chase marginalized teenagers with a double digit follower count off of twitter for daring to criticize her thought process, and no one with any kind of power standing against her because she was the one who was paying them. This isn't to say Harry Potter is without flaws. This is to say she really didn't give a shit about that. Getting rich and powerful is a hell of a drug, and she had enough sycophants that she had no reason to care about what her critics were saying.

She was convinced that she was a martyr; a voice for the unheard; a leader for the ages, so of course her detractors were the bad guys. And I think we should take this to heart. We should see this as an example of how easy it is to get radicalized; if you think of yourself as a paragon of virtue, you are going to think that whatever you see as good and right is an objective fact. Most people don't know this, but the majority of terfs start out as trans allies. You are not immune to propaganda! You are not immune to falling into dangerous ideologies!!!

This is why the most important thing you can do as an activist is to listen. Do NOT think you're above being wrong; do NOT develop a god complex; do NOT form an identity out of being right all the time. Involve yourselves in the groups you claim to speak for. Listen to trans women; share resources that help trans women; familiarize yourself with the diversity of experiences that trans people have and the struggles they face.

No, none of you are as bad as JKR because you don't have her money or her power. You will likely never have the capacity for harm she does. But check yourselves. Do not affirm yourselves into thinking you always have the moral high ground. Watch yourselves; humble yourselves; check yourselves for signs of cult behavior and internalized prejudice. You are always learning. You will always be learning. Do not allow yourselves to get a power trip from brushing off marginalized voices.

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They should invent a method of asking for reassurance that nobody secretly hates you that doesn't make people secretly hate you.

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What's cool about Gideon I think is that she's actually, in-universe non-conforming, rather than just being "butch" or "masc" to our sensibilities but relatively passé within the universe. We read Gideon as masculine, yes, but it's not like Gideon acts like Ortus, or Mortus, or Crux. Nor does she act like Aiglamene, for that matter. The Ninth to me presents a kind of monastic androgyny - everyone shaves their head, everyone wears baggy black robes, everyone paints their face. Gideon, with her "ridiculous" hair and aversion to skull paint, is therefore non-conforming to the gender of Ninth. She's also non-conforming to the gender of cavalier, it's not something she was raised in, it's something she struggles to "pass" as. Gideon is basically transcavalier. And I think that's cool! I've seen a lot of people posit basically "what would it even mean to be 'butch' in a post-gender society" and I think Gideon solves that equation nicely by being "butch" to us in the real world and being decidedly nonstandard for both Ninth cavalier and a cavalier in general within the text. You need to look beyond what we consider arbitrarily "masculine" and "feminine" in order to effectively analyze gender in tlt, and I for one think that's very interesting

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every time i see those posts like ‘what food from a show did YOU always wanna try’ i go lol none? but i just remembered im a liar

i always wanted the fucking soup brock made in the pokemon anime

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playing undertale at last after somehow unintentionally avoiding all major spoilers for my entire online life (UT came out two years before I first used social media) and oh my god. this game is crazycool. lifechanging. I kind of want that gay robot

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Round 1 is a go!

In case you do not know/forgot what the songs sound like, the songs are under the poll! (they are youtube links, oops)

The top four options will move on.

I hope you guys like youtube videos because tumblr doesn't want me uploading audio

Ochette, the Hunter

Castti, the Apothecary

Throné, the Thief

Osvald, the Scholar

Partitio, the Merchant

Agnea, the Dancer

Temenos, the Cleric

Hikari, the Warrior

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Round 1 is a go!

In case you do not know/forgot what the songs sound like, the songs are under the poll! (they are youtube links, oops)

The top four options will move on.

Toto'haha

The Harborlands

The Brightlands

The Winterlands

The Wildlands

The Leaflands

The Crestlands

Hinoeuma

The Sundering Sea

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Castti Octopath :D

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(x)

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I hate when a tiny stupid thing pushes you over the edge and makes you freak the fuck out because it makes you look like a completely irrational tar pit of a human being. Like no I promise this is warranted just maybe not about that specifically I swear I'm well adjusted. Come closer stick your fingers in my cage

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SHOOTING CIVILLIANS POINT BLANK. SHE WAS TRYING TO GET HOME AND THEY SHOT HER FOR NO REASON. GET THIS FOOTAGE OUT!