#<- discourse i guess

[webanglikethat]

"rigging" this, "rigging" that........OKAY someone’s rigging a poll for a fictional character ... okayyyyyy, lame, but why are we out here writing an investigative exposé like it’s some international exclusive scoop? it’s truly not that deep.

from what I understood, apparently, some group of people decided they couldn’t handle their fave losing, so they rigged a Reddit poll using 7-10 accounts each. they dragged their coworkers, parents, grandparents, and probably their neighbor’s cat into this by using their phones or something like that. because clearly, Grandma Doris voting for a brooding sexy vampire on Reddit was the missing piece to world peace.

like I seriously don’t get it. you’re out here with a literal PowerPoint presentation of screenshots and receipts like you're about to present this case to the Supreme Court. for what? to prove someone cheated at pretending their vampire boyfriend is more popular than an angel boyfriend?

I mean, seriously please 😭 let’s all be for real for ONE second. imagine sitting at home, seeing someone cheat in an online poll, and instead of laughing at the sheer desperation and ridiculousness of it all, you decide, “No, I must expose this injustice to the world!”

just . let them cheat, let the mods deal with it. do you want them to be persecuted? what’s the endgame goal? “Malbonte Fans Caught Rigging Polls — The Public is in Shock” articles? Malbonte, Cain, Livius, or whoever isn’t solving world hunger or stopping wars.

The LI isn’t real, the poll isn’t life-changing, and no one is getting a trophy.

drama can be fun. it’s entertaining to spill the tea and etc. but at some point, you’ve got to ask yourself: is this worth my time? is this the legacy I want to leave behind? they’re rigging polls like their lives depend on it, and you’re fighting back like you’re leading the Avengers into battle. are you really going to look back in five years and think, “Wow, I’m so proud of how I spent my time defending X and Y's honor on Reddit”?

this whole thing has turned into a spiral of pettiness, and honestly, it’s kind of hilarious but also kind of sad. so yeah, drama is fun, but maybe save your energy for something that actually matters? because if this is the hill anyone’s choosing to die on, I’ve got some questions about life choices.

if they need to cheat to feel good about their fave, that’s their own embarrassing problem. let’s not make it yours too. this is my only advice.

while you're here, use your fingers for this instead:

[a-method-in-it]

You know that Chris Fleming line that goes "Call yourself a community organizer even though you're not on speaking terms with your roommates"?

I honestly think every leftist who talks about the "revolution" like Christians talk about the rapture needs to spend a year trying to organize their workplace. Anyone who sincerely talks about building a movement so vast and all-encompassing that it overwhelms all existing power structures needs the dose of humility that comes with realizing they can't even build a movement to get people paid better at a badly run AMC Theaters where everyone already hates the manager.

[jaguarys]

I find it fascinating (derogatory) how the general fandom conversation has shifted from "this woman is getting in the way of our gay ship and she's USELESS and ANNOYING and WE DON'T LIKE HER!" to this weird "no actually she's just not involved in her own relationships because she's too cool and special and awesome and a girlboss". But the problem is that there's not actually a veritable difference there. People still aren't engaging with her as a fully-fledged character. Like sure man calling her a girlboss is fine it's whatever but let that lead somewhere else. Engage with her. Can you actually name any of her character traits or are you just blindly praising her so that you can focus on shipping the guys in the background without feeling bad about it

[askivv]

okay, but like, who the fuck keeps telling dream he was the reason dsmp was popular ? mfer, ur villain character was outdone by fucking Jschlatt . who didnt even want to be there . You were on the same server as Technoblade . sit the hell down .

[wikiangela]

athena bringing Bobby home to his children, when he always wanted to see them again and be with them again, was such a beautiful act of love and sacrifice. she can't even visit his grave and be close to him without flying to Minnesota, she loved him so much and she knew what he would want. it's such a devastating and heartbreaking choice and an act of love and im forever gonna cry about it.

bathena truly are (were 😭) the best couple ever, nothing will ever compare to their love 😭

[rookflower]

whichever one of us is a person first

[thats-the-biz-babe]

isn't it funny how eddie getting right up in buck's face and shouting at him for no reason, and guilt tripping and shaming him for having feelings = peak romance

but tommy calling buck by his name, looking after him and giving him an ice pack and painkillers when he's injured, noticing when he's not okay and checking in on how he's feeling, even dressing up in a suit and driving with him to a cemetery so he can make a speech to a dead cowboy in order to break a curse he doesn't believe in = abusive behaviour

[valtsv]

You allow yourself a moment to indulge in the fantasy of yourself as their chosen companion—their trusted right hand when their own fails them—before the sheer laughable impossibility of anyone finding comfort in such reliance on you clamours and shoves its way to the forefront of reasons why that can never be. You understand this. You truly do. It’s only that—

sketched some scenes from my fic

+ better quality under the cut:

[a-mel0n]

everytime someone who doesnt watch 911 makes a post abt it being like supernatural an angel loses its wings

no the show isnt queerbaiting you. 2/7 of the mains are queer. one of them has been married to her wife since season 1. they have two kids. the other hooked up with his gay will-they-wont-they situationship in his house this season. they were slamming each other into the walls and panting like dogs.

911 is not a good show. if it brings up an idea that idea will get resolved in that 45 minute episode. one of the characters said “[doubt] is like a virus” and then they cut to the beginning of The Deadly Virus emergency. buck got asked “are you in love with eddie” and stared directly at the camera when he said “no he’s straight and my best friend and it isn’t like that no matter how many people want it to be.”

[sherlocking-out-loud]

and this whole fight was foreshadowed in that bar scene with Buck and Ravi!! Buck was all "Eddie can do no wrong ever!" (because he's a war hero and a great dad, yadda yadda), showing how he idolizes the guy, and Ravi was like "Dude, he almost killed a stranger in an illegal fighting ring, what are you even talking about??"

like, Ravi sees Eddie for who he is, but Buck sees him as this perfect guy on a pedestal, and if the perfect guy tells him he's wrong then that must be the truth, so Buck folds and accepts every single hurtful thing thrown at him and he even apologizes for it!!!

I HATE IT HERE!!!

[idiotsonlyevent]

it is completely understandable to be uncomfortable with the sexual assault in dandadan. it's important to discuss how it's framed, whether it's handled poorly, or if it could be been portrayed better. but the number of people - even fans - stating that it is only fanservice, irrelevant, or could be removed is frankly bizarre to for SO many reasons, starting with the fact that this parallel exists.

the anime made it even more obvious by interpolating cuts from the first scene into the second one.

i thought this scene showed that momo gaining her powers by believing in her relationship with her grandmother gives her the strength to fight back against what is basically a horrific, much more aggressive and abstract (maybe even absurd?) representation of her shitty gross ex - who was demanding she 'put out' and pay for the love hotel in very first scene.

while the escalation from one scene to the next is surprising, it's not something that comes out of nowhere. this first scene is meant to be a set-up to what will happen later. it sets the tone, though significantly more lighthearted at this point. it tells you that sex, sexuality, etc. is something dandadan will touch on - though you don't know what the scope and depth will be until later in the chapter.

i cannot recommend this video enough, as it discusses some interesting interpretations of what the serpoians and turbo granny represent in their respective assault scenes, as well as how right now the treatment of both scenes is unfortunately uneven.

more notes about plot and thematic relevance below the cut. spoilers for anime-onlies (up to chapter 8, will probably be covered in episodes 4/5).

momo was assaulted, and almost cut up by the serpoians, much like the other victims turbo granny appeared around. this is an intentional parallel. turbo granny goes to momo because that is what she does. again, SUPER unclear how that factors into turbo granny's assault of ken, but if we keep the video's interpretation of cynicism in mind, it could be related to that; maybe turbo granny has a cynicism toward men - similar to momo in chapter/episode 1 - and this is why she chose to attack ken. unfortunately, it's still too early to really understand and explain a lot of her motivations.

again, completely understandable to not like how the sexual assault was handled or portrayed, and it's important to keep discussing it. but this is what dandadan does for many different types of trauma and difficult life experiences. this is a huge part of dandadan's identity. if you don't like it, that is fine, but calling the sexual assault 'just fan service' is blatantly untrue.

[bixels]

For a moment I forgot Tumblr’s still radfem headquarters.

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

There's an old probably apocryphal tale about Lyndon Johnson that was popularized by Hunter S. Thompson which goes like this:

This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics.  Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas.  The race was close and Johnson was getting worried.  Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows. “Christ, we can’t get a way with calling him a pig-fucker,” the campaign manager protested.  “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.” “I know,” Johnson replied.  “But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”

Tumblr keeps making me think of this anecdote. There's a group of users on here who constantly demand if anyone mentions BDSM positively or even neutrally they caveat it by saying they aren't talking about abuse or if a man likes to call his boyfriend daddy they demand he disclaim that he doesn't support incest or if a trans girl likes to wear cat ears she needs to deny that she isn't into bestiality.

The point of this isn't that they actually believe it themselves or even a lot of the time it isn't about convincing other people that it's true but just to tar people by creating the association between two unrelated things by demanding that people constantly deny it.

[mxtheyes]

you guys all know that like. his take on this is a very generic liberal take, right. and it doesn't mean he's secretly super transphobic, right. you guys know that most bigotry is very mundane and subtle, and not secretly a sign someone's a nazi, right. right guys? right?

like there's things to criticize yes but i guarantee you if you talk to like. a random person at Walmart about this they'd probably have the same take. and i think having a huge uproar & insisting that it's immoral to watch his content now is like. more likely to make him dig his heels in than anything else.

idk. this is my last post on this fr. but like. i think... maybe..... don't let [insert streamer] be your only safe space, and don't put people on pedestals because they will fail to live up to your standards.

edit because this apparently wasn't clear: that doesn't mean don't talk about it or don't care about the normalization of bigotry. what this means is that making the situation something it's not (ie that skizz is actively and purposefully transphobic) masks the way that bigotry like this is mundane and often unintentional, and stops us from being able to talk about it in that way. i care a lot that's why I've posted like 1000 words about it atp. lol

[nyancrimew]

you're a pathetic criminal who should be arrested, charged, and executed for your hacking crimes.

ok, let me guess, you're a US liberal? how's that been working for you? have you tried growing a spine yet?