#THIS IS LITERALLY WHAT WE IDENTIFY AS AS A WHOLE

[unsolicited-opinions]

how long do you give it for the Free Palestine movement, as it stands right now, to self-implode?

I'm not going to make predictions about the Western "Free Palestine" movement, but I'll try to put it in some context.

How Long Until the Western "Free Palestine" Movement Implodes?

Pattern Recognition: Comrades Eat Comrades

Western leftist movements are uniquely good at destroying themselves from within. I don't mean in a vague "movements always change" kind of way. I mean they start off energized, decentralized, idealistic…and then flame out in spectacular fashion after turning on their own organizers for being insufficiently pure.

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) collapsed in the 1970s when it split into warring factions…some of whom literally became terrorists.

Occupy Wall Street No hierarchy, no demands, no outcomes. Just a long, slow descent into incoherence as activists argued over process, language, identity, and whose trauma deserved the most microphone time.

The problem wasn't the cause.

It was the belief that moral clarity must always mean moral absolutism. Absolutism inevitably leads to internal purges. The only real suspense is how fast it happens. Ideological rigidity eventually leads to doom.

Say what you want about the political far right (and I do because they suck), but they do understand how to rally behind a single message and follow a demagogue without asking whether he centers each of their specific sub-groups and sub-interests.

We saw in the 2024 election how many leftist purists were willing to help sabotage an imperfect candidate generally aligned with their values...and help elect Trump.

Why? Because the candidate who agreed with 65%-70% of their positions was more offensive to them than someone who has openly expressed admiration for Hitler. (How's that been working out for you, leftist purists?) These parts of the far left have their heads firmly up their own pure asses. They can’t/won't see the forest for the trees.

They subvert the goals they claim to care about because they're too busy performing their purity and moral absolutism for each other and clout instead of trying to effect changes to policy.

An Aesthetic of Resistance

The Western "Free Palestine" movement, especially since October 7th, has exploded in scale and visibility.

While some people are genuinely driven by concern for Palestinian civilians, a whole lot of others are clearly in it for the aesthetic, the vibes, the social belonging, or the drama.

It's a chance to cosplay 1968 without reading anything published before 2010.

What the Western "Free Palestine" movement offers isn't a roadmap to peace, justice, or statehood. It offers an identity. It's a moral fashion statement. You wear the scarf, you learn the slogans, you change your bio, and…congratulations! You're part of something Righteous and you didn't have to sacrifice or even learn anything!

An aesthetic of resistance, however, is not a strategy. It doesn't change policy. It doesn't build power. It doesn't endure.

Worse, it doesn't tolerate any nuance. In a coalition built on branding, anyone who doesn't fit the brand becomes a threat.

It can't permit any introspection or growth, so while might grow in size, extremism, or tactics, it's intellectually sterile, and that can make it ineffective and/or brittle.

Pattern Recognition: Factions and Purges

Leftist movements which base their legitimacy on moral purity almost always eventually turn inward.

First they identify the oppressor, then then identify the collaborators, then they start purging anyone insufficiently zealous. Eventually, everyone's a collaborator.

That’s already happening.

Mainstream ceasefire activists have been smeared as traitors by more radical circles for not calling explicitly for the abolition of Israel. Members of groups like JVP or IfNotNow (who for years were considered the "edgy" left flank) are now sometimes labeled as gatekeepers, liberals, or even crypto-Zionists for refusing to call October 7 a legitimate form of resistance…and JVP and INN keep shifting with the overton window of their movement to greater degrees of extremism.

Arab and Palestinian organizers who speak about nonviolence, coexistence, or long-term political strategy are being pushed out of leadership roles and branded as traitors...by white cultural Christians who know far less about the matter than they do. If they suggest anything other than total victory for Hamas and the destruction of Israel "by any means necessary," they're branded a sellout or a Westernized Zionist. The movement increasingly rewards people who sound revolutionary...not people who organize effectively.

Jewish allies to their movement, even the extremely anti-Zionist ones, are walking on eggshells. Support is conditional. They're expected to show up, shut up, and definitely not talk about antisemitism unless they want to be accused of derailing and supporting genocide. The number of Jews who've been publicly smeared or privately frozen out by movements they supported is growing fast, and most of them aren't saying anything. They just walk away. I don't know what their numbers are, but I've spoken with a handful like this. In each case, it was the privately unrestrained antisemitism which broke the spell and helped them realize what was happening.

Internal discourse policing is relentless. Want to talk about the complexity of Hamas's role in Palestinian suffering? You're platforming Zionist narratives. Want to discuss how sexual violence on October 7 has been minimized? That's "white feminism." Want to clarify that Jewish self-determination doesn’t inherently mean colonialism? You've committed the cardinal sin of nuance and must be purged.

None of this is new. It’s the same bullshit which took down SDS, tore apart the anti-Iraq war movement, and gutted Occupy from the inside. When your movement decides internal deviation is a bigger threat than external opposition, it stops building anything and just chases ideological purity.

Social Media May Accelerate the Cannibalism

In the past, movements have sometimes eaten themselves slowly. SDS took years. The anti-globalization movement unraveled over the better part of a decade. 

That was all before social media. Now what used to take five years can happen in five weeks.

Every far left movement now has an online wing and an IRL wing. The online wing is where purity spirals metastasize because virality rewards outrage, not organization.

Calling someone a colonial apologist gets more engagement than helping to register voters.

But Engagement ≠ Change.

So what does that mean for the Free Palestine movement? It might just undergo a slow, chaotic unraveling. Callouts, splintering, people walking away in frustration or disgust because they're too tired of it to say much about it as they just…stop showing up.

"Free Palestine" means..?

One of the biggest warning signs here is that no one consistently agrees on what the endgame is. We know that to Hamas it means the end of Israel, but it's much more vague for many "Free Palestine" activists. It can mean:

End the occupation of the West Bank!

Ceasefire!

One-state solution!

Two-state solution!

Third intifada, globalized!

Dismantle the state of Israel!

Ask 10 of them, get 12 answers. In normal movements, that's no big deal, because people are allowed to disagree. In this movement, though, disagreement is treated like betrayal.

If you say you support a two-state solution, you're a filthy Zionist.

If you mention Hamas's role in civilian suffering, you're a genocide denier.

If you're Jewish and support Palestinian rights (that describes most Jews), you'd better not talk about antisemitism lest you be accused of centering yourself, weaponizing antisemitism/trauma, and supporting genocide.

And if you try to discuss actual policy? That's imperialist behavior!

This isn't just ideological incoherence, it's a refusal to tolerate difference...which can make organizing unsustainable.

So will it implode soon?

I very much doubt it.

Will it unravel soon? 

Almost certainly not. The slogans, at the very least, will stick around and the hashtags aren't going anywhere because they've become identity signifiers.

A lot of the disinformation fed to Gen Z has been sticky and I'm concerned what the US will be like when they reach the peak of their political power.

There will always be a core of people pushing for Palestinian liberation (whatever that means to them), and some of them will have good intentions and/or good strategy. Some of today's antizionist zealots will eventually come around and start hearing Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib.

The count of antizionist social media accounts and posts will continue to be high - much higher than the number of actual belly buttons in the movement IRL, due to bots and agents controlled by those seeking to destabilize the West. Those probably won't go away any time soon and are likely to get much more sophisticated, effective, and difficult to screen out...because AI.

But as a mass movement? As a unifying force with real impact on politics? Something which puts people on streets in huge numbers? I'm less sure about that. From here, it looks like it's already fraying around the edges. The internal fights, the factionalism, the paranoia about bad-faith actors, the purity tests, the bizarre rituals of performance...that looks to me like the start of a collapse by attrition.

What if it just hangs out in the ideological natural reservoir of academia?

It's already been absorbed into academic discourse and nonprofit branding, right? It may just live there in a natural reservoir while continuing to do nothing material to improve Palestinian lives.

I'm not sure if/how it can be dislodged from academia. I can't support Trump's methods, but the absence of ideological diversity is both alarming and predictable.

From graduate admissions to peer-reviewed publishing, career advancement in the humanities often depends not on the originality or rigor of an argument, but on how well it aligns with prevailing orthodoxies. Scholars are trained to cite the right theorists, frame questions within accepted ideological paradigms, and signal moral allegiance to dominant narratives, particularly around identity, power, and oppression.

You pass your dissertation defense if your committee LIKES YOUR VIEWS. If your dissertation shows excellent scholarship which disputes their preferred narrative, you've wasted years and tens of thousands of dollars...and there are already more degreed scholars than faculty positions in these disciplines. So they're highly motivated to conform.

So dissent is pathologized instead of being debated. The result isn’t a community seeking truth, but a faculty enforcing consensus. Challenging the orthodoxy ends friendships and careers.

That's how you end up with an entire Middle Eastern Studies department which only knows and only teaches one narrative. It's not just a political problem, it's an intellectual ans social problem.

(On a personal level, this makes me very sad. When I was an undergrad in the 90s, I learned so much from the disagreements between professors I respected. I also admired the civility and intellectual honesty they offered each other.)

So...it seems like academia is going to be an ideological natural reservoir for the movement until that's addressed somehow without resorting to fascist tactics.

Maybe it'll splinter out into competing groups with varying flavors and intensities of dogmatism.

There are groups and individuals within the movement who think Amnesty International is a Zionist PSYOP.

There are self-styled anarchists and communists who want violence. They want chaos. When these people chant "by any means necessary," I have no problem believing they're willing to resort to domestic political violence to globalize the intifada.

Maybe some violent factions will splinter off like the Weather Underground splintered from SDS.

The revolutionary left has been recycling these dynamics for over a century.

The rhetoric tends to be more lasting than the movements which use it, because movements built on purity or aesthetics rarely build lasting institutions or effect meaningful positive change.

The Party Dynamics

Forget "Free Palestine" for a moment and look at the bigger picture.

It may be hard to believe right now because the Free Palestine people are so loud, but most Congressional Democrats continue to support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Party leadership has repeatedly affirmed this position, and recent bipartisan resolutions backing Israel's legitimacy passed overwhelmingly, with only a small group of "progressive" dissenters. While a vocal minority on the far left calls for conditions on aid and proposes condemnations of Israel, they don't represent today's Democratic party. Voting records, public statements, and primary outcomes all show that the Democratic caucus remains broadly pro-Israel, even as internal debates have grown louder.

But:

Since Clinton, Democrats have largely hugged the center, while polarization on the Right exploded...culminating in the MAGA takeover of the GOP.

Now the Left has its own hardliners, people whose politics are less democratic and more dogmatic. That's the very vocal minority. That's AOC/Tlaib/Omar.

...and they're driving moderates away from their party.

Trump didn’t surge in 2024 because Americans suddenly loved him. A lot of voters were running from a Democratic Party they see as increasingly dysfunctional and in which the loudest voices are often the most extreme.

The Democratic party's base keeps pulling left, but the candidates the "progressive" wing would nominate for a general election wouldn't do well.

AOC polls better than you might expect and may be beloved in Brooklyn or Berkeley, but she's still deep underwater nationally. If Kamala Harris was successfully cast as "too far left," AOC would be radioactive anywhere but the coasts. AOC may well take Schumer's senate seat in New York, but in a national election she'd likely crash and burn.

The far left isn't going to win the White House or a congressional majority any time soon because it alienates allies and energizes opponents...but a takeover of the Democratic party seems possible. Maybe not likely, but possible.

If you think that's silly, please note that nobody thought Trump would hijack the GOP and remake it in his image so quickly...until he did.

If you oppose the rising political power of the antizionist movement, get involved in Democratic party politics and help move them in more practical, policy-focused directions.

Final answer?

I'm less concerned about how/when the Free Palestine movement will end than I am about how many good people will be hurt by it before it does.

[liquidstar]

i missed this shot of the extended crew in the other post

background lesbians spotted! thank you again vivinos

[carlyraejepsans]

for real WHERE does the idea that [utdr humans] are nongendered so that "you can project on them" come from. their literal character arcs are about NOT being a blank slate to be filled in by the audience

i think i understand the assumption on some level for undertale, because there is a very intentional effort to make you identify with the "player character" in order to make your choices feel like your own (the beating heart of undertale's metanarrative lies in giving you an alternative path to violence against its enemies after all, and whether you're still willing to persue it for your own selfish reasons. YOUR agency is crucial).

of course, the cardinal plot twist of the main ending sweeps the rug from under your feet on that in every way, and frisk's individuality becomes, in turn, a tool to further UT's OTHER main theme: completionism as a form of diegetic violence within the story. replaying the game would steal frisk's life and happy ending from them for our own perverse sentimentality, emotionally forcing our hand away from the reset button.

i think their neutrality absolutely aids in that immersion. but also, there's this weird attitude by (mostly) cis fans where it being functional within the story makes it... somehow "editable" and "up to the player" as well? which is gross and shows their ass on how they approach gender neutrality in general lol.

but also like. there's plenty of neutral, non PCharacters in undertale and deltarune. even when undertale was just an earthbound fangame and the player immersion metanarrative was completely absent, toby still described frisk as a "young, androgynous person". sometimes characters are just neutral by design. it's not that hard to understand lol.

anyone who makes this argument for kris deltarune is braindead. nothing else to say about it.

[voidimp]

i hate insurance companie

[lususnatura]

🎤 🎤 🎤

a song that i associate with my muse meme!

AHH, hey, ramone!! thank you for sending in this prompt :D since you sent in three of the mic's, i shall now be treating you to three songs that make me think of blamore when i hear them / that i associate with it. an explanation of why i chose them will be in the tags <3

hozier - who we are.

icehouse - crazy.

depeche mode - personal jesus.

[nicki0kaye]

fuckit, just gonna reblog it with this run down;

for EITHER route (aware under the programming or wiped and forced to rebuild) Lobot!Kallus is what happens if he doesn't get away during Zero Hour, courtesy of Pryce being petty af and Thrawn rightly identifying Kallus as the best living database of Spectre/Lothal info in the galaxy. During his 'repurposing', it's realized mf knows how to code and needs to be HEAVILY restricted in order to avoid a jailbreak.

'Unit 4522' has ALL the prisoner subroutines cranked to 11. It cannot perceive objects clearly and is forced to stare forward. It can only hear spoken word which of course is a privilege that can be revoked at any time. No speaking unless addressed. No variation in tone of voice. No involuntary reactions like expressions. Can only refer to itself as 'this unit' or by serial.

Of course the barricade keeps the Spectres off Lothal until the end of season 4, so they don't see L!Kallus much. He gets carried bodily onto the Ghost before the Imperial HQ is launched into orbit and asplodes.

From here, I've RP'd two different routes with @sidhebeingbrand;

1.) Kallus is and has been fully aware but is presumed gone by the Spectres bc literally no one is around who can sense through the force he's conscious and the only Medtech on base who knew and worked with Teezo is uh usually fucking busy, so the jailbreak doesn't happen until months later when Kallus finally guides Zeb into giving him permissions to start gutting the restrictions. This is ill-advised and results in throwing his whole body into crisis bc he ISN'T A MEDTECH, which scares Zeb half to death, but hey, at least now Kallus can talk through 'User memos', giving him an avenue to tease Zeb through, still entirely in monotone

2.) Kallus has been stripped of identity so severely, they're essentially a fresh droid who actualizes while in the care of the Rebellion, resulting in someone with all of Kallus' neuroses and intellect but is, you know, surrounded by ppl that love them and want them to be true to themselves. Later, after much personality has been fought for, encouraged and has begun to take an identifiable shape, they're forced into a dangerous situation and a 'defense' sub-routine activates which is, in actuality, a fraction of Kallus preserved unknowingly by the Imperial programmers. Because of the restrictions placed on expression and awareness, the programmers didn't realize the fighting prowess they were trying to isolate for the sub-routine was really a fixed point in Kallus' memories. Aka; the sub-routine is a teenaged Kallus with no context for what he's being put through. This is worrying bc now there's two distinct ppl in there and, worse for Zeb, implies that there is hope that a Kallus who remembers Bahryn, remembers being Fulcrum, and might even return Zeb's affections is in there somewhere. But what the FUck do they do with the other two?

there's a lot of fun things that happen in both routes, tho we ended up playing out the second scenerio wayyyy further bc its, y'know, my favorite trope; amnesia that leads a character to question why their previous self did ANY of the stupid shit they did, leading to LOTS of arguments with any other Self they run into

have I posted Lobot!Kallus? I keep meaning to I genuinely can't remember

vacant, only speaks when spoken to, has to be guided by hand bc his spacial awareness has been intentionally fucked with, is either In There behind all the programming, unable to jailbreak himself without permission which no one has thought to give him OR has been fractured so severely, his identity may as well be gone or only exists as a subroutine that only triggers under certain circumstances and is so buried by restrictions it's unrecognizable.

just things I do to my favorite characters uwu

[sammygender]

the thing thats always missing in conversations about gender in general is the fact that 'cis', as an identity, is not a innate Thing Some People Are, but rather a state of acceptance society grooms us into from birth

[mangled-by-disuse]

Tried to put this in the replies, but it got long and is relevant to the OP, so:

Less so than the average British/South African white guy of his time, which is to say: yes, but not notably so.

He did also speak very bluntly in his response to the Nazi requests to translate his work, claiming he would have been proud to be a genuine Aryan [that is, from the Indian subcontinent] but unfortunately he's just German and English. Some of that is "Oxford fellow thinks he's being very smart" rhetorical devices, but he also does seem to have been pretty vocally of the belief that different cultures and ethnicities held value, and while he left South Africa very young and considered himself English, he did also remark on the brutality and inhumanity of the apartheid regime there. He also criticised C.S. Lewis' assertion (in The Last Battle) that some people couldn't get into heaven on the basis of race and culture, but "have a theological argument with C.S. Lewis" does seem to have been one of his primary hobbies at the time so idk if that was purely anti-racist.

At the same time: this was at a time when the N-word was in common parlance (including in children's nursery rhymes and even in leftist discourse), when Britain had an empire and Tolkien had been raised in one of its colonies, and when the school system emphasised "the white man's burden" and the savagery and primitivism of "lesser" cultures. And Tolkien was not a radical, and not sufficiently concerned with race as a topic to break fully from that social conditioning. So it's not like he wasn't a racist, but he wasn't a racist by the standards of his time, background, and immediate environment. (Bearing in mind that his immediate environment was the same one that saw the rise of Oswald Mosley and Winston Churchill.)

What Tolkien WAS was a genuine, old-school British conservative, which I think is what right-wingers pick up on in his work. He had an engrained belief in hierarchy and traditionalism, and his arguments against capitalism come from Catholic semi-feudalism, not socialism. "The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate/God made them high and lowly and each to his estate" is very much an underpinning of a lot of Tolkien's work, which emphasises the importance of working to, and being satisfied with, your status in life - Sam's strength is his humility and desire to be a simple gardener, but, while humility remains valuable throughout, Aragorn's strength is that he knows that he is born to be King. Ruling is all he can ever ethically do (noticeably, whether or not his people consent to be ruled - note that the first Man of Gondor he comes into contact with is Boromir, whose response of "ok mate where the fuck have you been when we were fighting and dying for the past forty years?", and that is cast as a mistake on Boromir's part, and he is told to sit down and respect the rightful king by Literal Voice Of The Gods Gandalf), and it would be wrong and evil for him to try to do anything else, just as it would be a moral wrong for Sam to try to be a king.

Lord of the Rings in particular is very concerned with noblesse oblige and the burdens of power - while, yes, the core story is "minor gentry [Sam is the only actual working-class character] rises above his presumed station and, through being literally and metaphorically one of the little people of the world, slips under the radar and completes a heroic quest", almost all the surrounding stories are about the difficult duty of managing power. And, unfortunately, this lends itself very readily to a "white man's burden" kind of reading - these people, you see, are simply of superior race (literally, in the case of the Elves, and in the case of Aragorn, Boromir, and the ruling class of Gondor being measured by their proximity to Númenorean bloodlines), and so it is their unfortunate duty to command and to cleanse the lesser (Orcish, and by extension Easterling and Haradrim) races from their nice, functional societies.

To be clear: I do not think this is how Tolkien intended it. I think, in his own traditionalist, cloistered-academic, Catholic way, he was pretty egalitarian. He doesn't treat the ruling class as actually better than the working class - Sam is no less a hero than Frodo, Merry, and Pippin, all of whom are gentry or nobility, and none of them are lesser as people than Aragorn or Elrond or even Gandalf or Galadriel - even if he does view class distinctions as fundamental and immutable differences. He values friendship, peace, and the laying down of grudges (against all the problems caused by revenge, note that Éomer's first and most noble act of kingship is "accepting the Dunlendings' surrender, treating them kindly, and making peace with them", and they are so impressed by this that they too put aside a centuries-long war and help rebuild the country they helped to destroy). While he often forgets that women exist (I will die on the hill that "three out of 22 rulers of Númenor were women, despite equal inheritance being explicit" is evidence that Tolkien just did not think of women as being half the population), he is quick to defend their value in both masculine and feminine pursuits, and to express them as people outside of marriage and childbearing - and his own life, in which he married a much older divorcée from a different religious background against all voices from their families, reflects that same sense of valuing women on human terms. He is a humanist, not in the religious sense but in the sense that he values humanity above all things in his writing; he writes consistently against power for its own sake, against war as glory, and against bigotry and condemnation.

BUT

he was also a traditional, dyed-in-the-wool Tory, Catholic-restorationist, pro-feudal Oxford don who was raised in a much more conservative time, place, and social class than most of us, and he brings that to his writing too. From a conservative perspective, reading with an eye for right-wing ideas:

Éowyn ultimately turns from the aberration of being a warrior and becomes a wife and mother, embracing "feminine" traits of healing and caring as part of her own healing.

Class is reified through Sam's heroism being that of a servant, and Aragorn's that of a king, and the return of the king is the source of great rejoicing.

Some races, and some classes, are simply better at things. Dwarves are better craftsmen. Men are better warriors. Elves are better at everything because they're special. they are also tall and fair and European

The idyllic Shire is a cottagecore dream of traditional British rural life, in which people know their place, women are real women, and everyone has good manners.

Most of the "good" societies are coded with European or Classical trappings (the exception is actually Gondor, which is pretty easily read as Byzantine), and opposed against a literal rampaging horde from the East. Some of the horde from the East are literally inhuman, while others are elephant-riding brutes who hold oblique historical grudges and strange religious customs. Compassion against these foreign invaders is looked upon favourably by the narrative, but only after you've killed them.

With the previous point, and the films, in mind, it is easy to conclude that regardless of species diversity, the Fellowship is a cadre of brave white men fighting to protect their society from a monstrous foreign threat - one in which a cunning trickster from within the main setting has puppeted the less evolved races into destroying Western civilisation.

While the story is anti-war, it is anti-war in a way that allows for cool battle scenes and noble deaths, and there are several points at which Dying For A Cause is lionised and seen as redemptive in a way that slots nicely into a lot of more militaristic ideologies (including fascism).

again, I cannot underline enough, I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS IS A FAIR READING OF THE NARRATIVE. I think it's an ideologically-motivated reading that ignores both Tolkien's personal views and large chunks of the text. But the thing is: the people who read it in the way I've described would probably say the same thing of your description.

The thing about Tolkien's much-discussed distaste for intentional allegory is: Lord of the Rings is not 1984. It is not an explicit political polemic. It is one man unpacking his Great War trauma and political anxieties, his expertise in Anglo-Saxon literature, his special interests in folklore and etymology, his love of the English countryside and his dislike of modernity, his Catholicism and his conservatism and his egalitarianism and his loneliness and his loves. It is not absolute in its politics, because it isn't trying to give you a political solution: it's trying to give you morals, yes, but they're as much personal ones as societal ones.

It is not a shock that right-wingers latch onto Tolkien's work, or see parts of their beliefs reflected there. It's still a fucking insult to the work, but it's not a shock.

Seeing conservatives and bigots being fans of Tolkien works is a special type of jumpscare bcs what are you doing here man? In the franchise about folks from different backgrounds and races come together in brotherhood to vanquish the villain? Where kindness and compassion and sinple happiness were seen as the best ways to keep evil at bay? Where war is not glorified and seen as a grim necessity to the point where the son of the author gor criticised the movies for glorifying the war too much? Where men openly engaged in feminine activities and were open about emotions other than anger? Where multiple characters gender presentation varied from those we normally associate with their gender? Where women were empowered in multiple different ways? Where greed was presented as turning one into a literal monster?Where the villains are all thinly veiled depictions of capitalism? Where care for the enviornment is seen as a given?

[sweet-as-kiwis]

Never before have I turned in negative peer reviews. The time has finally come.

[comas-are-for-sleeping]

so hard to feel hopeful when ur government is willing to spend billions of dollars on a genocidal government but say their hands are tied for literally every single issue going on in right here

[drchucktingle]

What do you think of people who are therian, otherkin, and alterhuman? Or, perhaps, the ideas of alterhumanity as a whole?

this is a good question had to look up what some of these things were, so bear in mind my understanding is limited and fresh, HOWEVER this one seems pretty easy for me to speak on philosophically because it falls under a BASE philosophy that i have always had

as far as identity and body, my trot is that everyone has the right to do whatever they want with their body, which includes of course things like gender affirming ways (or even humanity affirming or unaffirming aways). that also includes ways in which you identify yourself.

some otherwise well meaning buckaroos get wrapped up in things like 'well i am okay with the standard pronouns but what about neo pronouns of buds who say they identify as non human or a dang tree.' i mean WE ALL KNOW there is the old scoundrel joke about attack helicopters and the thing is this: i genuinely, sincerely, without any reservations believe you can legitimately identify as a helicopter.

who am i to say you are not one? how do we even define what a HUMAN or UNHUMAN is in this swirling mix of matter and energy? is there even really a point where i end and you begin? there are OF COURSE standard answers to this that help us get through the day in a material way, but i feel like once you start talking PHILOSOPHY AND EXISTENCE and really ZOOM OUT then you are opening things up to a grander perception of this timeline, where things like 'what even IS my body?' become very abstract

in a world where all i REALLY know is that 'i think therefore i am' i am not really ready to start imposing strict definitions of these things on other people

what i personally care about is RESPECTING others and showing them kindness. so if someone is identifying in a way that is unusual (not in the sense of bad but in the sense of literally not usual) i will always just say 'okay that is very cool and exciting thank you for telling me'. i mean HECK, as a non dysphoric trans person i identify in a technically unusual way.

it is SO EASY to just 'yes and' other buckaroos expression of themselves. it is SO EASY to just 'yes and' love and exploration. so i fully support and am excited about and whole heartedly believe in any way that buds see themselves fitting into this timeline

[piniatafullofblood]

sometimes I feel like some queer people just reinvented more binary norms to ascribe to. yk? like. I see conversations fairly often where someone’s like “I feel this way and I say I’m (x) gender” and then there’s a whole comment section about “that experience you described isn’t (x) gender, it’s (y) gender by definition” and like. I feel like we lost the plot

the point of creating new labels isn’t actually creating new boxes to fit people in, the *point* is to make someone more comfortable. If someone’s feels like they have multiple genders at once, but they want to call themselves nonbinary instead of bigender because that's what makes them happiest, that’s the whole point of creating new labels in the first place. At its core, the queer movement is supposed to encompass do what makes you feel good. So, do what makes you feel good.

I feel like a lot of people are acting on the ideology of queerness without actually realizing the idea in your brain that being queer is about finding self expression that fulfills you. When you don’t, it comes out hollow, and it affects your activism. Queer labels aren’t rigid barriers, and you don’t have a right to say anyone else can or cannot identify with literally anything they want. The whole point is that, to exist as a human is nonlinear and nebulous, and queerness as an ideology is based around allowing for expression of a diverse, nuanced experience.

[pissvortex]

In this video detailing his day one plans for education reform after disbanding the Department of Education, he explicitly states that he is going to enforce a “standard” where universities are required to “defend tradition and western civilization,” and will confiscate their entire endowment fund if they don’t meet this standard. He details that this will be done by dismantling all college accreditation institutions and replacing them with party loyal Republicans who will ensure universities are granting “fast-tracked” degrees to get people into the workplace.

This is, beyond an obviously fascist move to crack down on dissent and totally destroy the concept of academic freedom, in his own words, “crushing his enemies.” The left in this country retreated into academia for job security, but the humanities as we know them will be gone completely soon. This is not an overreaction, it is literally already happening. Most of my colleagues are already looking for new jobs. For what it’s worth, republicans are very good at identifying and crushing their enemies - the left as a whole has no choice but to exit the academies and enter the workforce. It’s on us to make him regret heightening this particular contradiction.

[outislovesgoobers]

PLEASEEEEEEEE MAKE THAT POST ABOUT GUSHING/TALKING ABOUT HECTOR I NEED IT REAL BAD. I HAVENT PLAYED THE DEMO YET WHAT DO YOU MEAN YB THE POSITION OF THE VENTS. OTIS. YOU CANT SAY THAT THEN NTO ELABORATE /lh

OH THANK GOD SOMEBODY'S FINALLY GIVEN ME AN EXCUSE OKAY-

AHEM you get another thesis. Smiles evilly. Spoilers ahead for the demo, obviously <3 ALSO NSFW, because... well it's kinda unavoidable w/ Hector, he's a bit of a freak KSJADKJ

EHEHEHEEEE OKAY I'M GONNA START W/ THE VENTS FIRST BC I FEEL LIKE THATS REALLY FUN, AND THEN SOME EXTRA RAMBLES AT THE END.

*pulls out a comedically long ruler* I have so far identified seven vents in the entire house, not limited to :

Across from your desk, where he can blink sweetly at you while you work,

Dining room - surprisingly none in the kitchen! Perhaps one of the few Big Rooms (tm) where there is not a vent,

Living room, where he cannot watch TV bc of the angle, but he CAN watch YOU watch TV AKSDFJAKSF,

Downstairs bathroom,

UPSTAIRS bathroom,

Home gym, placed sort-of-opposite the treadmill,

And of course, the bedroom, in a simply precarious position KJASDKASJDA

I will let you digest and process this as you will 🫡 godspeed soldier(s), this absolutely fucked me up when I first realized it. This little freak is almost inescapable, except for the kitchen and smaller rooms (closets, laundry room).

OKIE NOW I GET TO YELL SOME MORE ABOUT SOME OTHER STUFFS >:) EHEHE.

oughhhwobuoubuogurgurb <- dying. he feels so bad about accidentally making you feel bad w/ his weirdo reaction

This moment is just so sweet to me. He keeps going after, too, talking about how he will "Make up for that, (...) I will do so much for you, as I always have" EEEEEE <3333 he's a freak but he's a SWEET freak and that's my favourite flavour of freak

ALSO! Note his vent's temperature changing depending on his mood! Ice-y for angry or upset, and steam (the love hearts!!) for when he's happy/in-love! AAAAAA!!!

I need to hit him with a car. What do you mean when you say those words you say. He truly goes on like this for a Hot Minute, about how he wants you to control him AND wants you to understand how much that means to him. Wh.

It's just really fun bc I feel like usually this Genre (tm) of character is more dom-leaning, it's so cute + funny to have one who's a massive sub!

It's also crazy that this conversation happens on the SECOND DAY!!!!! HE'S GOING WHOLE-HOG 2 DAYS IN!!!!

So funny to think about him during the evening of day one, pacing (crawling???) through the vents, being like 'okay. okay. alright. Hector, you're gonna be So Normal with them tomorrow' only to pull out THIS!!!! AAASKDJFSKAFJDKSJFSD

this isn't directly about Hector, HOWEVER I also love Fantina and this line has be going crazy.

what did she say

what did she mean

What did she huh when she wuh

Fan club... FAN club... do we think Fantina and Hector just hang out and talk about you??? 😭😭😭 is it just the two of them, or are there more??? I love these two sm. Squeezing them so tight.

I also love the pun! Like if we think about it, an HVAC is just a bigger fan!

I am not immune to silly jokes. Thank u to the devs, this cracks me up.

anyways he it LITERALLY baby and I cannot wait to meet him properly in a few weeks. Getting up on a step-stool to bite his hands.

[heartyluv]

Plz give the girls a full fwb!caleb fic ur little ficlet was so good like it had my cootamunk QUIVERING ‼️

Note: I just want you to know that cootamunk has had me in tears since yesterday. Literally couldn’t stop laughing and now I can’t stop saying it. You’re a hilarious genius and I luv you. This is for you, babe. Enjoy!

Creds to @/anitalenia and @/strangergraphics for the dividers!

Rating: Explicit - !!Minors DO NOT Interact!!

Warning: Smut, Caleb is a little controlling and rough.

Word Count: 2,251

Summary: Caleb finds out that you’re trying to go on a date and shuts that shit down.

Jealous&FriendsWithBenefits!Caleb/Reader

Hey. You up?

The notification that appears at the top of your phone screen stops your doom scrolling. You smile just a little to see that familiar message with the name accompanying it. You look at the time, not surprised that it’s almost two in the morning. You never go to bed at the time you intend to, unintentionally looking and reading through a whole bunch of things from your roulette of consistently used apps.

You open your messages, twiddling your thumbs before you get ready to answer. Tonight could go one of two ways: You’re either about to be put to bed with sex or you’re about be up for another hour or two watching something you’ve already seen before until you and Caleb pass out on the couch.

When Caleb proposed being your first after you shared your fears of giving yourself to someone who didn’t deserve it, you thought he was joking. But when he looked at you with those serious eyes you’ve grown to be able to identify so well, you knew that you were about to tread into some dangerous territory. But you let it happen, and you were convinced that if you ever had sex again, it wouldn’t be what Caleb showed you, what he did to you.

You’ll never forget his gentleness, his praise and respect. The way he put you and your needs above his own. Your thighs always press together just thinking about how you watched him slide on a condom and look into your eyes before he began to slip inside. You worried about pain, but Caleb had prepared you so well, gotten you so wet, that it was nothing but blissful pleasure.

“You’re doing so good for me. I got you, pretty.”

“It’s okay, hold onto me. I’ll make sure it feels good.”

“If you need me to stop, don’t hesitate to tell me. This is about you.”

You were addicted. And you were scared that your newfound desire for consistent sex was because it was Caleb who made you feel so good. You tried convincing yourself that you just wanted to feel that full and taken care of again, but you knew better.

No other man would do what he did—would feel like he did. So when you vented to Caleb about how much you enjoyed yourself, you played it off and said that it was going to be scary showing yourself like this again to a stranger. But, then he said what you would’ve never had the guts to.

“We can still have sex if you want. I mean, neither of us are dating or anything. Friends with benefits, you know? It doesn’t hurt to just feel good and we trust each other enough.”

You didn’t hesitate to accept and it’s been history ever since. He comes over all the time and you still operate like friends, but when he’s hard and you’re wet, you two fuck like a couple madly in love.

He always comes over at some point when he has a break or you go to his place. If he’s up for it—he always is—he’ll make the drive to your apartment when it’s past midnight because he tends to get off work late. Tonight is no different. Finally, you start to write your reply.

Hey. Yeah, everything okay?

Yeah. I’m outside. Open up?

Your eyebrows raise in shock. He’s outside already? That’s a first.

Your oversized shirts falls mid thigh when you stand and you walk to your front door, not needing any light to see since the moon is so bright that it casts a gentle light into your open floored space. When you open the door, Caleb looks at you with a tight smile.

“You sure you’re okay? You texted me like you weren’t here, yet you were standing outside this whole time,” you chuckle. But Caleb doesn’t laugh, he just holds that expression that you can’t read.

He steps inside when you move over and you shut the door behind him, locking it while looking at him take off his sweater.

“Caleb—” you start, but he’s cupping the side of your face and kissing you with so much intensity. You accept it, melting into his hold as your hands snake into his hair, pressing your body close to his as your tongue licks at his mouth.

It must be one of those nights where we talk after, you think. He’s done this before and so have you, where you’re so overwhelmed with something that you need to release physically before you can do it verbally.

He’s eager in his urge to pull your clothes off, tickling your skin with his fingertips as he grabs the hem of your shirt to lift it over your head. You’re just as grabby, pulling his shirt off and tugging at his pants to get them down. You kiss your way to the couch and he falls backwards when you gently push him.

You can see him, but just barely. You don’t feel like cutting a light on, so the moon illuminating through your windows will have to do. You slide your panties off and your pussy squeezes around nothing when you hear how ragged his breathing is and the wet noises that you know is him stroking his cock.

You crawl onto his lap, bracing your knees on both sides of him as you raise your hips. You put one hand on his shoulder and use the other to grip his length to put him where you both need.

“Caleb…Oh my god…” you whine as your body takes him inside, making you two become one.

You feel him twitch inside your walls as you start to move just a little bit, rubbing your breast against your palm as you hold onto him.

“I’m in love with you,” he finally speaks for the first time since his arrival and you nearly freeze, but he doesn’t let you. He keeps your hips moving, keeps thrusting into you from beneath as you choke on your breath from his words and actions.

“The thought of you letting anyone but me get the privilege to see you like this makes me fucking nauseous.” He kisses your shoulder as he moves snugly within your warm cunt, and all you can do is listen to him because he’s not giving you a second to speak.

“Could you deal with me killing a man for you? Because if you ever let him experience this, I wouldn’t hesitate. Tell me what you need from me and I’ll become that and more to fulfill your every desire.”

You whimper as he grabs your ass tightly, keeping you moving so that you take him ass deep as you can.

“Caleb, what are you—What happened?” you say breathlessly, confused and thrown off by his confession. Every time you try to stop moving, he won’t allow it.

Caleb doesn’t want you to stop because if you stop feeling how good he makes you feel, you’ll try and find a way to bullshit him.

“You think I’m going to let you leave me?” he groans when you squeeze him. “I know about your little date. Remember what you told me when we started this?”

You never told him anything, but you’re not surprised that he was able to find this out. Caleb always finds his ways and you’ve never understood how. The date was harmless, setup by a coworker of yours after she told you the guy liked you and he didn’t seem bad, so you figured—why not? Well now, you know you made a terrible mistake.

You do remember what you said, and it replays in your mind like a voice recording.

“If either of us start dating or anything, we have to cut this off. There won’t be anymore sex, but we could still be friends. But if someone can’t deal with that, it’s healthy for us to just cut ties entirely.”

“Yeah, you remember,” he licks your neck. “I never agreed, I just let you try and ignore your feelings because you said you weren’t ready for a relationship. But now?” he abruptly stands with him seated inside of you to the brim.

“It looks like I have to make the right decision for both of us.”

He walks through your dark apartment into your room with your small lamp on. You turned it on before you got up to answer the door and you’re glad you did, because you can see him so clearly now. And he looks hurt—hurt and angry.

“Caleb I didn’t mean—”

He roughly throws you down into the bed, still pulsing inside. You don’t even understand how he’s this fucking strong, but it’s turning you on so much that you know his cock is soaked with your slick.

“What?” he growls, cutting you off, grabbing your hands and placing them above your head as he starts to pound into you so hard that you can’t breathe. Your bed physically moves, you hear the frame grate against the floor.

“To hurt me, huh? To make me have to think that you were going to choose someone else over me? Over us?” He spreads your legs, spearing into you over and over while your breasts bounce in his face. He roughly takes your nipple into his mouth, sucking and licking the peaked nub. He starts to suck on your breasts, leaving red marks that he intends to keep on you so you’ll always look in the mirror and know who owns you.

He angles himself, sitting on his knees and you don’t know how he’s able to make you so flexible right now, but you’ve never been so spread in your life. His hand comes to your throat, not putting pressure but it’s telling you what you two are without it needing to be said.

“Caleb…” you hiccup. “I can’t..I’m gonna—”

You’re going dizzy at how hard he’s fucking you, how he’s punishing your cervix with each brutally delicious thrust. His head falls to your neck while he keeps your throat in his palm, and when you hear him sniffle, you damn near cry yourself. You move your hands from above your head where he put them, tugging on his hair and tracing his back while his hips never lose their momentum.

“I’ll make you see. I’ll make you realize how much I belong to you. I want to live in your body, I want to stay a part of you forever. I’ll do everything in my power, baby. Please take me, please, please don’t make me have to know what it’s like without you.”

“I’ll never do that you,” you whine as he circles his hips to make you feel every thick inch. “I’m sorry…I’m here..”

“Show me how sorry,” you feel wetness of what you believe is a tear drop on your neck as he continues to hide his face in it. “I’m not pulling out. Let me put my cum inside you. I want you to feel it. You’ll let me, won’t you? Please tell me yes, baby… I’m so fucking close..”

“Yes,” you affirm, your own orgasm impending. “Give it to me, Caleb…”

And when he whimpers as he slams into you just a few more times, his heavy load floods your fertile pussy as his cock fucks it into you deep. Even when you cry out from how hard you finished, he’s still slowly rocking his hips, making you and him both feel that mix of pleasure and pain from overstimulation.

You feel the cum start to spill out, falling down and pooling beneath your ass. It sticks to your skin and stains your sheets but you don’t care. If you could stay like this forever, you would.

He finally pulls back to look at you and even if his eyes aren’t red, his face is flushed and you can see the wetness on his long eyelashes. Gently, you take your thumbs to his eyes to wipe his tears. You pull him down, kissing him so sloppily that you don’t care how messy it is. He follows your lead without hesitation, sticking his tongue down your throat and making you both pour the rest of yourselves into one another.

He bucks his hips, his cock slightly moving inside of you as a reminder that he’s still there—that he’ll always be. He’s not giving you a choice but to let him. And you can’t stop clenching, you can’t stop your hole from wanting to bring him deeper, to keep him there.

“Caleb,” you say softly when you two are forced to pull away to catch your breath.

He just stares down at you, his eyes dancing across your face as his breath becomes steady.

“I’m in love with you too.”

He smiles hard, holding you tight as you wrap your arms around him. He’s more than happy that the feeling was mutual, that you want him just as much. Because he wasn’t exaggerating about killing a man for even daring to think that he could have you. He wasn’t playing when he said that you’d never leave him.

But hopefully, you’ll never have to find out how far he’ll go. A man like Caleb in love is a man who has no shame or fear, other than losing you. And he’ll go great lengths to prove that.

“Forever,” he mumbles. “You’re never leaving me.”

“Never,” you kiss his neck. “I promise.”

And he intends to make sure you keep it.

[nymphaura777]

How to enter void by loa???

Okay, so can we talk about how Voidblr and Loablr are literally saying the same thing but acting like they’re two different concepts? Like, be so fr, the void isn’t some magical realm you have to "get to," and loa isn’t some complicated technique you have to master. Both are just about assuming something is real and letting it be. That’s it.

Think about it. The void is just deep self awareness, the second you stop identifying with your thoughts and just exist, you’re there. And what’s loa? Being in the state of the wish fulfilled. If you assume something is already true, your reality bends to match it. So if you assume you wake up in the void every night, guess what? You will.

Using loa to Enter the Void (aka Stop Trying So Hard):

The reason people struggle with the void is that they keep putting it on a pedestal. Y’all act like you have to solve a damn Rubik’s cube to get there when really, it’s the easiest thing ever if you just assume it is.

Here’s what you have to do:

1. Assume it’s easy.

No more "omg why can’t I enter the void?" because you’re literally affirming that you can’t. Instead, try "I always wake up in the void." That’s it. That’s the change you need.

2. Stop acting like you have to do the absolute most.

You don’t need to meditate for 5 hours or lay in a starfish pose waiting for symptoms. Just decide it’s effortless and let it happen.

3. Accept that you’re already there.

If the void is just you being aware of being aware, then congrats, you’ve been in the void this whole time and many times in ur life....nothing left to chase.

Literally just assume you’re gonna enter and let it be that simple. If loa can manifest money, love, and entire realities, why wouldn’t it get you into the void? EXACTLY...