#- should never exist or that their existence is inherently harmful.

[cicadangel]

idk. i feel like since there's 0 easily accessible, free, genuine help for people with severe self-harming tendencies it makes sense that people turn to online self-harming communities? honestly most of the self-harm prevention stuff i see on here or on tiktok or in health class or whatever doesn't actually apply to people who severely injure themselves (yeah yeah all self harm is severe i mean to the degree which people are physically hurting themselves)/are addicted/have been doing it for years... so i think immediately discrediting these communities as being "pro" self harm is a) just incorrect and b) ignores the fact that these spaces are some of the only places severe self harmers can find community/support and advice on wound care.

[themthistles]

rain scene in ep two really is the perfect representation of who dongsik is as a person and nam sangbae's words about dongsik helping others to make himself happy. he's holding an umbrella over that boy's head, looking at him jumping up and down and his smile is so bright and warm like he doesn't even notice that he's got no shoes on and that he's cold and wet. because the boy is safe and content and if he can keep him that way, if he can keep everyone that way, protect them from pain, sorrow and fear then maybe he can keep a tiny part of himself safe too. gain some peace and sanity in a world that is anything but that for him. for a little while he can leave his own head, see the world through their eyes, forget the horrors, escape his grief. he can't go back in time and save his past self so he saves those he can now.

his only way of interacting with the world is 'how can i help? what can i do?' but he really doesn't like when other people try to help him in return. especially when he thinks they have to sacrifice something to do it. he's annoyed with jeongje when he lies to give him an alibi. he's frustrated with jaeyi when she wants to involve herself in catching the killer. angry with juwon for trying to take the blame for him.

dongsik's attitude undergoes a huge shift first after jaeyi tells him 'i SHOULD get hurt. i want to get hurt if that's what it takes. why are you the only one making sacrifices?' and then after juwon tells him 'this is not on you. this is not your responsibility. i'll deal with it myself and i'll suffer the consequences however terrible they may be.' jaeyi tells him you're not crazy, just sad and lonely. juwon tells him you've had enough of that lonely sadness in your life. they tell him let us help so he does. gets whole team together to catch nam sanbae's killer. agrees to work together with juwon to take down han gihwan. tells jihwa about it. yeah juwon learns how to take the hand he's offered but so does dongsik. they learn that lesson together.

[fabulouslygaybean]

maybe it's just cus i grew up with close family that were significantly older than me (older siblings who are 14+ years older than me, cousins triple my age, etc), but y'all really need to step back and realize that viewing any/all casual or friendly interactions between teens and adults as unsafe or predatory doesn't help anyone. it's one thing to have a preference for who you personally interact with (especially if you're 18+ and have an explicit blog/account/whatever), but acting like nobody should interact with anyone outside their age group both in person and offline is incredibly stupid.

[buddhistmusings]

Every time I post something referencing the very real humanitarian crisis in Palestine, my "for you" page changes and becomes filled with recommended posts that contain the most vile antisemitic shit.

It makes me so sad, because it reminds me of what an awful job that a movement that was supposed to be about advocating for Palestinian lives has done with boundary maintenance. It is so compromised that social media algorithms don't appear able to differentiate between advocacy on behalf of Palestinians and antisemitic content. The crossover between the two has become enough that a user who engages with content of one kind is recommended content of another. People who are not educated on antisemitism and the covert symbolism it uses might not recognize it right away, so we are seeing an entire group of people, convinced that they are participating in a civil rights advocacy movement also being indoctrinated into a separate hate movement, under the impression that these two movements are the same.

With such poor boundaries being maintained between these two ideally separate movements, and such overlap growing, how long can I honestly maintain that these are two separate movements?

Meanwhile, innocent Palestinians are being bombed, children are starving, far-right governments on both sides of the conflict are gloating in the support they get from American conservatives and leftists respectively, and functionally, I hear nobody advocating for peace anymore, only the destruction of their enemies. Palestinians are being so incredibly demeaned, by both the people who want to destroy them and their sovereignty, and the people who claim to be supportive of them.

Sane, rational people who are advocating for peaceful solutions are disregarded and voices on the fringe are centered. People are witnessing what they interpret as a genocide unfolding and in response are advocating for a counter-genocide. Can they not see how this actively impedes the peace process? They give legitimacy to (false) far-right Israeli nationalist claims of Palestinian statehood as an inherent danger to the safety of the Jewish people, and demean the Palestinian people by suggesting that what they want is revenge and not to live their lives in peace. They've made questions about the legitimacy of Hamas, an evil terrorist organization, central to the movement, instead of what should be the priority, that innocent people are suffering and that this is unacceptable. They have redefined and reappropriated Jewish words to use as antisemitic slurs and convinced their audience that using these slurs is not antisemitism.

Meanwhile, capitalizing on the above mentioned antisemitism, those who want to harm the Palestinian people, deny them statehood, are using the words and actions of these activists as ideological ammunition to fire up their anti-Palestinian base. Donald Trump literally called Joe Biden a Palestinian at the presidential debate as a slur. Republicans are using the word "Palestinian" as a slur. Netanyahu (possibly one of the worst people involved in this entire situation), in his speech to congress, was able to point to the very real antisemitic actions of activists to further cement support for him personally. By the way, saying how antisemitic activists harm Palestinians shouldn't have to be the rhetorical point we resort to. The fact that antisemitism hurts Jewish people is enough to make it a bad thing and is enough to make us avoid doing it, right?

I'm tired of turning in one direction and saying "You should NEVER say something like that about Palestinians" and then turning in the other and saying "You should NEVER say something like that about Jews". It should not have to be said that condemning the very existence of one of two ethnic groups in their shared homeland is unacceptable, and yes, it is their shared homeland, because they both live there and are both from there. It should not have to be said that you should understand what a word means before using it to insult people. Here I am in fact talking about the word Zionist, because that is a family of various movements, some of which are worthy of condemnation, but frankly, the basic premise of Zionism does not demean or degrade Palestinians at all, because it simply is the belief that Jewish people have the right to return to and form communities in their homeland.

I'm kind of opening myself up to get a lot of criticism here, but I wanted to get these thoughts out, because I have been finding them enormously frustrating. My heart breaks for all the innocent Palestinians who are suffering and have a lackluster movement advocating on their behalf, and my heart breaks for all the Jewish people who have lost friends to antisemitic conspiracy. My heart breaks for the victims of 10/7 and their families, as well as the Jewish community who was interrupted in the mourning of their losses. My heart breaks for all of the Palestinians who have lost friends and family in the subsequent destruction in Gaza and the immense violence and famine we are seeing.

Please root your activism in peace and compassion, not hatred and destruction. Please think before you speak about entire groups of people. Learn about what words mean before you use them to condemn others. Learn about Jewish people, Palestinian people, their lives, their cultures, and why they both feel such a strong connection to the land. Make this about healing, love, and reconciliation, and not about being right.

[diazisms]

hi so I just looked up what proship means. and I just wanted to ask if you like/support incest or pedophilia ships?

i support uncensored media. does that mean i like all of it? no. do i believe it’s important it exists and continues to exist? yes.

you don't have to like/support "problematic" content to believe it shouldn't be censored. censorship affects all of us, but especially lgbt and poc creatives. it starts with the things that everyone agrees is bad — no one, not even the people who read underage, thinks harming kids is okay in any capacity.

but it never stops there. it doesn't stop at underage or incest or rape. once a corporation realizes it has your stamp of approval to censor shit, they'll keep going until it's a white cishet conservative's dream. nothing queer, nothing where poc struggles are a focal point and it's talking negatively about white people and white supremacy. no sex. no sex no matter how vanilla. that's a problem. everyone, especially people who fall into marginalized identities, should be really, really against that.

this purity culture that's started to run rampant in fandom, this need to sanitize everything, to make sure everything exists very neatly within the box of Morally Right is harmful. fiction is not inherently good or bad because it's not real.

reading about siblings having sex doesn't actually hurt anyone, neither does writing it.

this shame surrounding taboo sexual topics, though?

that hurts people. that hurts kids. purity culture is spreading in fandom but it didn't start here. people are so worried about being "morally good" about media that has no moral responsibility in the first place that they completely ignore the real life repercussions of telling children that talking about sex is wrong, that if you've ever had thoughts that don't align with the purity mindset that you're gross, that if something ever happens to you you shouldn't talk about it, that if something happens to you and, in your trauma, it becomes something you're into in a consensual, pro-kink context that you're dirty.

the vast majority of people i know and have seen both online and in person with rape or ageplay kinks are victims of sexual abuse.

fiction is a comfort and it's allowed to be no matter how weird someone else thinks it is.

no one's telling you you need to go on ao3 dot com right now and filter everything with "underage". no one's telling you to make nsfw fanart of siblings if you don't want to. the point of being pro-ship is that you're in favor of people doing what they want with fiction. i know it's got "pro" in the name, but the point of being pro-ship is to be anti censorship.

(and, yeah, i ship the brothers from supernatural.)

[1moreff-creator]

DRDT Rulebreakers!

It has come to my attention that MonoTV seems to be lacking in its responsibilities as a killing game host, in particular regarding the punishment of vile, despicable rulebreakers. Apparently, it’s willing to let breaches of rules go if they’re, quote, “funny.” This is unacceptable.

So, since I was rewatching DRDT for other purposes anyways, I decided to make a list of every participant who’s broken a rule so far. You’d be surprised at how many there are, given there are only three rules they can break. “No violence against MonoTV”, “no sleeping outside the dorms during nighttime,” and “no significant property damage outside of murder.” And yet, all of them have been broken at least once. Here are all the instances of this happening.

Rule Number 5: “Nighttime” is from 10 pm to 8 am. During nighttime, sleeping outside of the dorms is prohibited.

Rulebreaker: Rose

To the surprise of no one, I imagine. If I’d given you three guesses as to who broke this one, your guesses should have been “Rose, Rose and Rose a third time.” Indeed, Ms Lacroix takes the dubious honor of being the first person to break a rule after the students were given their monopads. As in, she literally breaks the rule in the scene the rules are handed out, in CH1 EP2. Right after the nighttime announcement, she falls asleep while standing. For shame.

Thin Ice: Ace

(Ignore the numbers)

I mean. Top right does say nighttime, and he is in fact sleeping. I feel like we could forgive him for this one given the situation, but I suppose it’s up to the jury.

Rule Number 6: Violence towards MonoTV is prohibited.

Rulebreakers: Levi, Arei

Levi is the only person who actually got punished for breaking a rule, and that’s especially funny considering he is the only one who did it before the rules were actually presented to the students lol.

Arei, meanwhile, has no excuse. While strangling a robot that doesn’t require air to breathe is a generally unadvisable as a genuine method of inflicting harm, it’s still very much violence against MonoTV. I actually can see no reason why she wouldn’t be punished for this. I guess she must be the mastermind! /j

Thin Ice: Nico, Charles, J

Nico holding MonoTV by the tail wasn’t an inherently violent act, but it still could cause harm.

Charles, in a twist of fate, got jumped by MonoTV, which isn’t a violation in itself. However, if he fought back at all… it’s curtains. Unconfirmed, but possible violation, hence he’s on thin ice.

Finally, J didn’t actually attack MonoTV in a way that matters, but she basically attempted to murder it with her remote. Watch it, young lady.

Rule Number 7: Significant property damage is prohibited. This rule may be waived in the case of committing a murder.

Rulebreakers: Teruko, Xander, Whit

Teruko: Could anyone use this to commit a murder? The materials these things are made out of are really cheap. This hammer is plastic. Oops. I already broke it...

Whit: Jeez, you trip and faceplant into the wall once and [Charles] will never let you forget it.

Whit is the latest student to be confirmed a vile rulebreaker, and as you might expect, the reason this post exists. He admitted to face-planting on the computer lab wall, and MonoTV admitted it only let it slide because it was funny. This implies the rule was broken, meaning even small things like that count as “significant” property damage.

And with that, we can confirm Xander as a rulebreaker too. No surprise, he’s the Ultimate Rebel for a reason. He actually has multiple counts of breaking this rule, with the elevator doors, but the most straightforward case is the table he broke while arm-wrestling Ace.

Finally, we have Teruko, who has broken this rule in more situations than just one. I chose her breaking the plastic hammer provided to everyone (CH1 EP1) because it’s the most straightforward, but there’s also the icing gun which breaks in her hands when baking cake in CH1, possibly a plate later in the same scene, and probably more. See, this is why Xander was in the righ-

Thin Ice: Ace's Attacker/Nico

(Aka whoever actually broke the fan)

(I could get images without numbers. I'm not going to)

This one's an interesting grey area. The property damage rule can be waived "in the case of committing a murder," but what about attempted murder? Since the murder wasn't successful, should the person who broke the fan be punished for it? Up to interpretation.

———

And that’s as far as it goes (unless I missed something which I most likely did). So, while Ace, J, Charles, Nico, and maybe the Ace attacker (if they’re not just Nico) are all on thin ice, Rose, Levi, Arei, Teruko, Xander, and Whit, are all rulebreakers! And are hereby BANNED from the DAYCA-

Wrong fandom sorry.

These six are all rulebreakers, and are thus liable for execution and/or mastermind allegations. Do with this information what you will.

[apas-95]

i largely agree with your politics but tbqh the way you present your ideas is not really radical, frankly it's worryingly eschatological/messianic. which sucks cuz otherwise you seen like a pretty rational individual

I don't think 'making claims about the future' is inherently messianic or eschatological, though I understand this is often a sticking point regarding Marxism - if we understand dialectical and historical materialism to be genuine scientific knowledge on human society, which we should, then the ability to predict future events with confidence is simply part and parcel of its existence as scientific knowledge.

The claim 'the tendency of the rate of profit to fall drives capital inevitably, through various ways, into cyclical crises of various scales, with the largest-scale examples consisting of global economic crises and world wars, the approach to which can be recognised and quantified prior' should be seen as no more messianic than 'the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere causes runaway heating which, while increasing the general planetary average temperature, alao leads to localised extreme weather events and rising sea levels, which can be recognised and quantified prior'.

Fundamentally, while a lot of people are willing to accept Marxism as providing *empirical* understanding of human society; that is, as a means to understand and decompose present and historical social issues; it is a lot harder for people to accept Marxism as providing genuinely scientific understanding of human society capable of predictive power. The reasons behind this are, generally, due to the nature of enlightenment philosophy and the bourgeois conception of science, wherein bourgeois social 'sciences' are incomplete, piecemeal, and reflexive (since, as Marxism demonstrates, a geneuine scientific analysis of human society, beginning from the political-economic basis of society, is harmful to bourgeois society).

When I say 'revolution in the imperial core is not going to occur today, but is an essential inevitability in the near future' I am saying, essentially, nothing more than the well-proven principle that 'revolution will occur where the chain of imperialism is weakest'. The condition for revolution in the imperial core is widespread revolution in the periphery states, the condition for widespread revolution in the periphery states is worldwide economic crisis and war, and the condition for worldwide economic crisis and war is the decline of imperial profits and the collapse of imperialist alliances. There is a fairly clear chain of events here, each of which has not only turned out in the past (the first world war being predictable before it ever occured) but is currently turning out in the present (look back even on my own blog towards discussions of inter-imperialist war and note that Marxists had predicted a ground war in Europe by 2025 well prior to the actual commencement of the Russia-NATO proxy war in Ukraine, as well as the inevitability of an economic crash circa 2020).

As proletarians, there is, also, largely nothing that can be done to influence these events without the existence of large proletarian political organs capable of leading the proletariat in conscious political action - the existence of which is contingent on historical circumstances. The imperial core does not have serious proletarian organs with a mass basis, and will not have those organs until conditions exist to facilitate them - said conditions being the collapse of imperialist profits and the worsening of domestic repression in core states. This does not mean that the eventual emergence and victory of those organs will not require constant, arduous work from communists to build up and maintain, to whatevee degree is possible, a communist movement until fhat time arrives - but it means that, for instance: Marx in the 1800s was never going to lead a socialist state, leaving that work to a future Lenin.

Almost assuredly, no existing party in the USA will carry out revolution - but the leaders of the revolutionary movement that will emerge under the pressures of war against Russia, China, the EU imperialist bloc; and of climate crisis and economic collapse; will likely be the ones gaining experience in political work at this time. Marxism speaks of classes, not individuals - it is not, really, messianic to say 'the bourgeoisie will go to war when faced with economic crisis, and the proletariat will resist when faced with war', nor is it, I reason, very eschatological to say 'the world is going to get much, much worse in the near future, however, there is a possible way to escape the horrors of war that does not end in nuclear annihilation'.

However, if it's what you'd prefer, I could call myself God-queen of violent benevolence, and emanate a vision of revolutionary salvation - whichever works.

[ihaveanaversiontodecisions]

okay I am not involved in the current call out drama personally but it's made its way to my Twitter feed and im so genuinely confused because have none of you interacted with fandom before?

yes, the jrwi boys explicitly stated that there is a hard boundary against rpf about them and that they do not want to be shown nsfw art/ fics of their characters. these are reasonable boundaries to have, and they should 1000% be respected.

HOWEVER: they also explicitly said that they could not stop people and they're RIGHT. fandom is, at its core, weird. people write weird, gross, and even immoral shit all of the time. thats what tagging systems, scrolling, or blocking fan creators is for. for example: i really hate arthur being shipped with either of the twins or the twins being shipped together. i think its gross. so i exclude tags, and i scroll. its that easy! weird stuff will always exist on the internet, and nsfw works in the jrwi tag have some of the highest hits. many people read and write these things casually, and that isn't inherently wrong.

it's completely understandable that the jrwi guys dont want to see the characters that they put pieces of themselves into in nsfw situations. SO don't show them!!! as a general rule, you should not be showing, @ing, or sending creators of any media your fanwork, especially if it's suggestive or gorey. THAT is what a boundary looks like. fandom is not for creators anyways, and involving them in it tends to break many creators boundaries, even in more innocent situations (as a general pattern I've observed)

the person who made the call out post is a minor. they are likely steeped deeply in purity culture and have not interacted with fandom much. HOWEVER, calling specific people out by name is not a cool move. these are not bad people. they aren't being bigoted or doing harmful things irl or in the community, and their fan content is relatively harmless as well. they are simply creating things that people feel uncomfortable with on a personal level, and instead of blocking or scrolling, people have decided that they are morally bad people. and that's just... wrong?

sorry about this rant but writing "weird" or "gross" things is not a cancelable offense; it's a part of being in fandom. I am begging anyone who is genuinely upset by this to click on a supernatural or mha tag on ao3 and scroll for 3 seconds. I promise people writing correctly tagged gore or porn that will never be seen by people who don't want to see it is not the end of the world.

love you to the people who got called out and have been getting hate anons if you see this. yall are cool as hell

[leviathan-supersystem]

i know this is quite an open-ended question, so apologies in advance, but as a marxist-leninist what are your main issues with post-modernism/post-structuralism as a school of thought? from libs to anarchists, lots of (so-called) progressives/leftists seem to really enjoy it, but its reception is a far less positive among communists/marxists from what i gather. what are your thoughts on it, and on the work of people like foucault, deleuze, guattari, or even more recent ones like judith butler etc? once again sorry if this is too open-ended, but i really value your insight on politics and philosophy etc etc.

well, to be clear i do think there are some good critiques which have come out of the post-modernist camps, and consequently i would consider myself more of a neo-modernist than a classical modernist, as i do think mdernism as a concept needs to be updated in response to post-modernist critiques.

at it's best, post-modernism offers genuinely useful critiques of the limits of our ability to know things, genuine good points about the inherently fuzzy and indefinable boundaries of any system of categories that human beings could ever create.

at it's worst, post-modernism rejects the very notion that there's a material world that we can understand, and rejects the very notion of categories as a whole. once it crosses the boundary into this sort of solipsism is utterly useless to me.

ultimately once post-modernism crosses the boundary into this sort of solipsism- which it often does- it becomes completely incompatible with marxism, which is fundamentally based on the notion that there is a material world and we can learn things about it. no, we can never know things with 100% certainty, but we can know with better than 0% certainty

i really love deleuze and guattari's Capitalism and Schizophrenia, but ultimately i think it's more of a piece of poetry than a piece of real scientific theory. and i do believe, fundamentally, that the approach to analyzing capitalism must be a scientific one.

i'm not very fond of foucault at all, because frankly i'm a bit of a panopticon apologist. these sorts of "panopticons" are just part of living in a group with other people, and while i certainly think there are points to be made about how these sort of systems of sousveilance need to be regulated in order for them to not be excessive and harmful, but ultimately these sorts of regulations on those systems are themselves enforced by social systems of sousveilance. so for example, the idea of taking pictures of people in public and posting them online, i agree that there should be social conventions discouraging that behavior- but inevitably these social conventions are enforced through similar "panopticon" style social systems- that when someone sees someone posting a creepshot online, the observers collectively disincentivize that behavior, tell them "dude don't take pictures of random people in public and post them online to talk shit about them you dick" etc. anyways, that's why i don't think the foucaultian persective on "panopticons" is particularly useful though i agree that obviously those social systems exist.

[babacontainsmultitudes]

🤔 Admittedly I was a little disappointed by the reveal (but certainly not surprised the foreshadowing was heavy in this episode lol), but not actually against how Beth (and Will) seem to be playing with it thus far- which is to say that I do think it has a lot of potential, and I suspect there's more to what we're seeing).

;) Big ol' ramble below

Mostly the theory has turned me off until now (at least insofar as I've witnessed it transpire in the fandom at large) because it struck me as so painfully ironic to see Trudy, a 1950s housewife, struggle to exist under the system that she's in, fail to fit the mold assigned to her, and be denied her personhood very literally for it (this being ironic insofar as how it mimics how she would have been treated back then). This and because frankly I just think she's a lot less interesting if she's fully a robot LOL, but I'll hopefully get to that in a bit.

Not that the hints at her mechanical nature and the relevance of Tucker's background were lost on me; I can appreciate why those would contribute to a plausible, fun and I think still mostly harmless theory (now fact). However, minus one or two specific posts I've seen on the matter (namely a recent one suggesting that if Trudy is a robot Beth is probably taking inspiration from The Stepford Wives, :( sorry person who made that post I couldn't find it I wanted to credit yoouuu), I've seen the theory just about exclusively presented in a manner that, rather than explore the metaphorical and political significance of Trudy being partially or fully mechanical, at best disregards the parts of her narrative that are at their core about sexism (among other related things), and at worst negates them entirely (i.e. Trudy only thinking and acting how she does because she's a robot malfunctioning and not because the world itself is causing harm and she rightfully wants something more than the role she was forced into, Trudy not even having any real thoughts and feelings of her own, etc.). I just think it kind of sucks to shove all those important things about her aside and say "actually, there's no person suffering here, she's just a robot" and perhaps worse yet to imply that she does have thoughts and feelings but because they result in Weird™ behavior it must be a problem with her code and not at all relate to what women were subjugated to during this point in American history.

CONVERSELY I don't think Trudy being a robot (or at least partially one) at least from what Beth and Will have presented us thus far, inherently suffers from any of these issues? First and foremost because Trudy definitely appears to possess sentience, thoughts, and emotions of her own, matters which immediately complicate her degree of personhood and don't inherently box her behavior in as a bug in her programming rather than an issue with the world she's been put in, quite the opposite in fact! I think they have a very solid groundwork laid out here to make a strong statement with Trudy's narrative (and perhaps ask the question of what is really malfunctioning here), all the more so since [I pull out a Rebecca Swallows-style conspiracy board] I don't think she's entirely robotic in nature? Actually you should just read Mack's tags in this post cause he has great thoughts on the matter (of which those are just some of them), but if I can direct your attention to one thing in particular, it would be Beth's fact (I *believe* from episode 2) about Trudy never graduating high school because of her essay where she suggested that "perhaps women could one day domesticate themselves", a statement that could of course be interpreted a number of ways but ultimately threatened the patriarchal status quo enough (in suggesting women's independence) to cost Trudy her diploma. Taken on its own this fact appears to contradict the theory that Trudy has always been robotic in nature, because it doesn't really make sense that Trudy would have been set up to go through high school (or school at all really) when Tucker's intention was/is for her to be the perfect housewife. You may then suggest that Trudy's memories of this are fabricated and not actually her lived experiences, in which case firstly perhaps you should reread my earlier point on the robot theory being used to actively negate and otherwise disregard the portions of Trudy's narrative that pertain to sexism and feminism, and secondly it really doesn't make any sense to me that Tucker would implant those kind of memories into Trudy's brain? To be completely honest if she's been a robot from the very beginning (rather than someone who became a cyborg, which is what I'm trying to suggest here), then I don't see why Tucker would program her with actual sentience in the first place (suspending my disbelief here with regards to the possibility of programming sentience to begin with). It seems much more likely to me then that Trudy was not always a robot, and instead altered by Tucker to force her into a role of subordination and remedy her """imperfections""". This option is significantly more interesting to me one, because it implies that Trudy has actually lived a life up until the present, full of its own complexities and strife (and dreams, and real actual memories worth exploring, etc.), and hence is not by any means "just a robot", and second because it amplifies the hypothetical statement being made on the lives of the real living women of the era and how they were treated and seen as being "in need of fixing" for not conforming to gender roles or otherwise acting "out of line" with what was expected of them.

OKAY THIS GOT OUT OF HAND SO I'M CUTTING MYSELF OFF HERE but I wanted to my share my current thoughts what with this ending and where I'm at so hopefully that was at least interesting to whoever has chosen to read through this one okay thank you byyyyyyyyye~

[doberbutts]

It's astonishing to see people say "All fear of men is reasonable and okay, but you shouldn't be afraid of black people obviously" and you having to reply, "Hey, question? Aren't black men people?" Everyone clinging to their fear of men while never examining their actions which could harm men of color, in this case, black men who have historically been killed and lynched in great numbers by white women weaponizing this fear to end their lives. Read the Will to Change! bell hooks talks about this! She talks about how white people, especially white men, have distracted from their own patriarchal masculinity by portraying violent women-haters as aberrant and abnormal (So, clearly Black men are more likely to be dangerous because they're already aberrant and abnormal in our white supremacist society). PLEASE understand your fear isn't fucking value-neutral and can be inherently be trusted!!!

Also, on the topic of patriarchal masculinity, I think that term really encompasses what we're talking about when we say male privilege is highly conditional. It's also what makes this uncritical man-hating so devious. Like, bell hooks says, contemporary feminism has provided a place for some women to construct a sense of self outside of sexist expectations, but the same can't be said about men. So by distrusting trans men, telling them they should accept feeling unwelcome in queer spaces because "your identity as a man means you have to earn other's trust (even if you haven't done anything other than exist), you're conflating transmasculinity with patriarchal masculinity. Which is so fucking damaging? Not to mention how people love to destroy and hurt transmasc's emotional selves, the same rituals that bell hooks talks about which so severely damage cis men (who were the book's main topic), and we're doing this to a marginalized, queer group who face immense systemic oppression.

Just--I hate how we mutilate trans men's emotional selves, demonize them because we assume all men possess patriarchal masculinity. I hate how we can't talk about marginalized men because apparently, that means we believe in misandry, when in reality, we're trying to talk about how men of color are portrayed as the worst of masculinity to deflect from white men's violence.

Disclaimer: Sorry for this big ass ask. Just seeing you have to respond to people with a basic lack of understanding of intersectionality and who weren't subtle about their racism--gosh.

And the biggest issue is that I understand why the kneejerk reflex happens- there's a lot of men who have engaged in the most bad faith of bad faith discussions about men's issues and somehow have turned it all onto "so it's WOMEN'S fault things are like this" rather than "so how do we work together with everyone in society to break free", and so a lot of people have their guard up from the start and don't care to listen to the last bit because they think it's more of the same.

Unfortunately, all this will do is continue to make us spin our wheels. We are always stronger together.

[hutiapendra]

Denizens of The Sunken: Type Wheel, KEMC Diamond, and Habitats

Some researchers have asked what all the graphic icons in our encyclopedia entries mean. The following document should explain them all.

PART 1: THE TYPE WHEEL

The creatures populating the Sunken Island can be classified under ten (eleven) different Types, and five (six) different Cores. This diagram illustrates the relationships between Types and Cores.

The inner wheel contains Cores, the intrinsic origins of a creature. The outer wheel contains Types, the modes of a creature’s existence. Cores have certain Types associated with them, though a creature may deviate from these common links entirely.

Cores:

MUTANT: Life as we know it, twisting and accelerating beyond explanation.

UNDEAD: That which is no longer alive, echoes clinging to this world.

EGREGORE: Collective concepts brought to life, human ideas.

CRAFTED: That which was deliberately built, taking on life of its own.

HAZARD: Life inimical to other life, parasites, forces of nature.

Types:

VERMIN: Beasts. That which scurries, scratches, consumes. The rage of a thousand cornered rats.

WEED: That for which growth and movement are one and the same. Plants. Fungi. Sessile animals.

SHELL: Corporeal undead. Cadavers. Dust. Fossils. Rot. Food.

SOUL: Incorporeal undead. Ghosts, grudges, hauntings. Aftershocks of history.

RUMOR: Beings born from whispers. Legends. Cryptids. Bogeymen. Fear. Uncertainty given flesh.

DOGMA: Beings born from rules. Philosophy. Religion. Information. Code. Conviction given flesh.

MECH: Automata. Mechanical monsters free to self-replicate, free from their origins in human factories.

CHEM: Homunculi. Chemical processes running rampant. Water, salts, fuel, coarse stone, refined crystals.

PHYSIC: Forces of nature. Extreme heat and cold. Storms. Blunt impact. Distant stars. Disasters passively harmful to life.

PLAGUE: Invaders. Parasites. Infections. Consumers from within. Pestilence actively harmful to life.

Blank:

A Type and a Core at the same time, Blank is defined by absence. Some would call this a 'normal' or 'neutral' attribute, but there is nothing normal about a creature devoid of an identity. What little unites these Denizens involves empty vacuums, blistering cold, and unfilled vessels. Blank creatures are rare, and they tend to behave oddly when exposed to other life forms.

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PART 2: THE KEMC DIAMOND

Damage varieties:

All Denizens have the ability to inflict harm on others. That includes you, reader. Please familiarize yourself with the risks inherent to field research before going outside to catalogue the wildlife.

KINETIC: Harm inflicted with physical means, such as claws, fists, fangs, or infection. By far the simplest form of danger to understand, but no less deadly.

ENERGY: Harm inflicted by emitting high levels of energy through comparatively small amounts of mass. This may take the form of fire, electricity, radiation, among others.

COGNITIVE: Harm inflicted by assaulting the mind and senses. Creating illusions, manipulating emotions, and altering memories all fall under this category.

METAPHYSICAL: Harm inflicted by locally rewriting the rules of reality. What was fiction a moment ago is now a fact of life, and yesterday's laws of physics are today's fairy tales.

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PART 3: HABITATS

The icons above represent the various environments a Denizen may call home. The Sunken Island is very humid and situated well within the tropics, so many habitats such as deserts and glaciers have never been present here. Other icons may be added to the Denizen Encyclopedia if those presented are insufficient.

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That should cover everything, for now. If you have any other questions, please direct them my way!

-Dr. Calypso Ceiba, Postdoctoral ecologist for the Denizen Project

[lanniisters]

On Friends-To-Lovers:

I get so annoyed when people throw around the “healthy platonic relationships are so important” thing because YES THEY ARE but you don’t actually think that.

What you think is that, in this particular case, I want these two characters to stay platonic so that I can ship my ship and, simultaneously, feel morally superior. The reality is that there are multiple non-canon ships for whom this applies… but one of them happens to be queer.

Woah hold those trigger fingers!!

While this train of logic does apply to people calling queer coded relationships “besties” or, heaven forbid, “brothers”, it also applies to straight (or straight-presenting) relationships.

You do not need to write two characters as romantic interests (or *groan* enemies) for the story to be romantic. It is OKAY for those characters to form a deep, romantic and emotional bond after years of building trust and loyalty.

As a person who identifies as demisexual, I find the erasure of friends-to-lovers extremely harmful and inherently invalidating. Especially now that we are seeing screenwriters and authors being critical of the trope.

Please, sit me down and explain to me in excruciating details why these two characters - who have seen each other through their darkest periods, who have been each other’s personal cheerleaders, who have loved each other unconditionally - are not good as lovers?

“But can’t two characters just be friends anymore?!”

They certainly can and good for you for believing that characters should show genuine love for one another without having any romantic feelings. But that doesn’t mean the latter can’t exist.

Listen, I never go in expecting my ship to happen and I never expect everyone to agree with it but it drives me up the wall to be invalidated purely because friendship and romantic love can’t coexist in your world. If you want to believe that platonic soulmates should be a thing (AND THEY SHOULD), you also need to understand that you cannot use that term to invalidate another’s ship when the foundations of your own (usually rival) ship are the exact same as mine.

[xclowniex]

from a realistic point of view, i dont see how zionism doesnt lead to non-jewish palestinian death or at least repression. if you have a state which has it enshrined in its founding documentation that it is For "Jewish People" (israel has been carefree about fucking over people they dont consider to be Jewish in the right way). two state solution doesnt even solve it since the assumption is just to have another israel and shove all the people they dont think count as jews over to palestinian state and pretend like they didnt just make an ethnostate

The reason you do not see how it doesn't lead to palestinian death is because on a fundamental level, you do not understand zionism from a jewish perspective.

Jews can and have, taken DNA tests and proved that we are descdant from cannanites who lived in Southern Levant. There is history too proving our orign from the region. A lot of jews were forced out due to various empires wanting to kill us, however some jews remained in the region.

Zionism is simply about self determination for jews as one of the indigenous peoples to the region. It does not inherently imply that palestinians are not indigenous as you can very much have two indigenous groups in a region, eg Moriori and Maori for example, both are indigenous to land which is part of New Zealand, but are two different groups.

I'm not going to say that no zionist ever wants harm to palestinians as there are, however the majority of zionists want a two state solution or a land for all solution (which is different to a one state solution of israel or palestine).

Indigenous groups do deserve self determination. This applies to all indigenous groups world wide. One indigenous group gaining self determination does not inherently harm another group of people, indigenous or not.

Ideologies can be implemented badly and not mean that the inherent concept is bad. For example, communism. No country has ever sucessfully implemented communism as they never leave the transition phase without something going wrong. Saying that zionism always hurts palestinians is like saying that communism is inherently genocidal because of China and Russia.

There are plenty of zionist solutions which does not harm palestinians which are deemed as ideal solutions by zionists, such as versions of a two state solution and land for all solutions.

Israel is also not an ethnostate. The percentage of israeli jews is almost equal to those who are New Zealand European in NZ, yet no one calls NZ an ethnostate. There are plenty of other countries whose majority population is around a similar percentage of 70% - 75% of a country and that country does not get called an ethnostate. Either, all countries with the majority ethnicity percentage above are ethnostates, or the threshold percentage needs to be higher for a country to be an ethno state, or if its only Israel who is an ethnostate and other countries with similar percentage are not, then you hold an antisemitic belief as the only jewish state should not be an exception for purely being a jewish state.

I would also like to touch on yoru usage of "non-jewish palestinian".

Whilst palestinian jews do exist (and I do know one personally), they are a very small minority of palestinians. It is illegal to be jewish in Gaza and the West Bank, so there are no rabbi's there for palestinians to convert. So I am very confused as to what you mean as there are no palestinian jews in palestine, and those that exist in the diaspora are a minority in both aspects, so whilst they deserve recognising and care, your wording is very strange and dogwhistle like. The reason I say dog whistle like, is because it is a common dog whistle for people to say that palestinians are the real jews and who we refer to as jews today are fake jews, which is obviously antisemitic.

[drbased]

It's interesting to me how patriarchial ideology generates all these specific paranoias

dominance is about proving who is best -> men dominate women -> women are fundamentally masochistic -> women seek out the most dominant male -> but what if that dominant male isn't me?

I was listening to a thing about satanism just now and it was mentioned that one of the beliefs about witches is that they lust after demons, and my immediate thought was how men are so desperate to entirely fabricate a view of female sexuality for their own ends and then get terrified of the natural conclusion of that. Because if women are fundamentally masochistic, and demons exist, then of course women are going to want to submit to them, right?

It's built into the psychology of racism as well - black men are more bestial and violent, but also violence is a way of gaining dominance, and regardless women are bestial and masochistic, so then a paranoia is formed where white women secretly desire to submit to black men - to debase themselves in the most obvious way, the veneer of the purity of whiteness stripped back to reveal the inherent whore nature of the female underneath. and of course there's overlap with the fundamentals of incel ideology - these men are obsessed with women's degeneracy and masochism causing them to submit to the 'wrong' men causing some spiritual downfall of society. and the three examples all blur and mix together, associating blackness with bestiality, satanism/occult practices with bestiality, and said bestiality with moral degeneracy and disruption of some natural healthy order where the men who do dominance 'properly' should be on top.

and it's all entirely made up. the fact that there is no true definition of 'healthy dominance' is entirely what fuels this paranoia. in reality, dominance is just harm and abuse, but men have to try to find a way to invent some righteous and healthy form of said harm and abuse - it has to be codified and controlled. that way there are always scapegoats: the men who do masculinity 'wrong' onto which women's fears can be directed, so that men as a class never get to be held accountable. men will hold onto these paranoias so they never have to engage with the underlying ideology. the benefits of dominance are too potent. this is the classic 'patriarchy hurts men too' - the ideology of patriarchy is exactly the same as that of self-harm; the harm becomes a closed feedback loop, a sunk-cost fallacy whereby the self's personhood becomes reliant on a destructive lie. men will literally kill themselves because they lose their ability to recognise the value of human life, instead seeing their identity as part of a collective narrative, and so murder-suicide becomes a form of martyring to send a message to other men and women that men will dominate at all costs, and that said domination is righteous is a pseudo-spiritual sense.

so much of our societal energy has been wasted on this. and now as we're on the cusp of recognising that dominance isn't righteous, we turn our attentions to how bad it is for men that they're hurt by the psychological impact of this ideology. in doing so our attentions are redirected, away from the benefits of why this ideology exists in the first place, and therefore accidentally reinforcing it. the psychology of the abuser is always that his narrative is of greater importance than anyone else, and the moment attention is taken away from those he hurts is the moment we capitulate to his ever-consuming demands. we give him an inch, he will take a mile. because for all the focus on getting men to be softer, more open etc. without also holding them accountable, we're simply adding to their narrative through giving them a superficial redemption arc. said softened male will still implicitly believe in his dominance over women even whilst he explicitly claims to be against dominance as a concept. that's how we end up with pro-porn and pro-bdsm 'leftists' - those who seek to reject the pseudo-spiritual righteousness of dominance but loop right back around into believing it can be codified and controlled, whilst utilising that to scapegoat the right-wing, who in turn scapegoat the leftwing as their dominance is codified and controlled in the form of traditional gender roles. the patriarchal system then resumes as usual, a bit shaken in confidence perhaps, generating much more powerful paranoias (e.g. incels) that then also get folded back into the fix in the form of further scapegoats, rinse and repeat.

[stackslip]

the thing that kills me most about the recent chapters is how in the end, violence had always been there, lurking under the surface. denji's attempt to mimic a normal capitalist existence always felt empty because in the end said existence was in itself built on violence that was simply hidden from the world. denji's own upbringing and exploitation and starvation as a child, his debt bondage and the violence he lived through were completely normal. the yakuza are and always have been inextricably linked to the japanese government and they say so themselves to makima in part 1--even irl (check out especially the role the yakuza played during the japanese occupation of manchuria, under the leadership of shinzo abe's own grandfather)! and then the violence and exploitation he went through as makima's dog. so really, that normal everyday he reached for--no wonder it felt so empty. it's always been a lie! the violence has always been there, boiling under the surface. in his life, in asa's life, in everyone's lives. violence by humans, violence by devils, violence through capitalism.

and who knows that kind of violence better than denji. any attempt at building even a semblance of kindness and love and stability ends up being swept away, and it's never even about him--it's always about another goal. he's an obstacle in the way, he's a tool to be used, he's an easy sacrifice. i think in the end the relief isn't just in the end of the ennui and pretending, it's also in the fact that denji's known violence and pain his entire life. it's familiar! it makes sense! what did gillian flynn say again? a child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort. denji again and again has been reduced to his most basic bodily functions--hunger and pain are familiar things to him. they're old companions, they're the sole truth in this world, they're what makes sense to him both as a human and as a devil. tearing yourself and others apart--it's the only thing he's ever been able to have control over without someone tearing it out from under him. it's the one thing that gives him agency! it's the one thing that can't be taken away from him! it's what makes denji denji! if violence is your baseline then it's a relief to return to what you know once everything you tried to build has been taken away. becuse really, you always knew it couldn't stay. it was always going to exist.

and i think what kills me most in this is his reaction to nayuta. nayuta, who chapters ago tried to tell him that violence is normal and in both their natures. but when nayuta sees denji both suffering and inflicting that violence--she flinches, because in the end nayuta is a child! and because no matter what she says, denji has tried to raise her in the absence of violence! so when he says "you should stay away from me" he isn't punishing her. he's saying that he's doomed. he tried with her because he wanted to break the cycle of abuse and for the child born of his and makima's mutual understanding of pain to not have to know this suffering. it's what pochita wanted to! he did his best. he succeeded, in many ways. for all nayuta's lack of empathy and talk of inherent devil instincts, she is, in the end, a child. and that's why denji wants her to leave and stay away from him. he can't be that for her anymore, he can no longer pretend, and he still wants the best for her. denji believes he is nothing but a vessel to receive and inflict suffering anymore, and so nayuta must stay away from him lest she be caught up in the fire.

i don't think fujimoto is saying that all victims are inherently evil and going to revert to this kind of state! it's more complicated than that. i think he is trying to explore the nuances there--how difficult is it for a victim of abuse to escape when the violence they've been through is normalized, and even considered a necessary part of how society functions? how does it "get better" when every time you try to build something, it gets torn down gleefully again and again? how do you rebuild yourself when you have been systematically shaped and remolded to receive and inflict pain, and any attempt at leaving that role sees you punished? is it not better then, to just embrace that role? to let yourself slip back in that mold? at least it's what you know. at least the lie is over, and everyone is forced to reckon with what they have created in you. at least the violence is uncovered and laid bare for the world to witness and receive themselves!