#What’s the matter with Idealism?

[shesnake]

we as a society genuinely need movie rental stores back so much

[ratqu33n]

betrayal has to happen before redemption

[seaglassdinosaur]

What’s so interesting to me about Odysseus’s transition in Monster is that he hasn’t changed all that much. He was always capable of violence and we know that because of everything he’s done in the war and in his journey. The only change that occurs is he’s chosen to no longer feel guilty, and to stop hesitating when it comes to violence.

[sleepgarden]

Unfortunately I don’t have much of my egl wardrobe with me here, and what I do have doesn’t coordinate well at all, so I’ve settled on this normie dress for photos ^^; but I wanted to share the headdress in motion to showcase how the pink “blushes” in the light!

Some photos first, great posing (I didn’t feel like putting makeup on):

And a small video:

It still doesn’t fully come through, but it gives some general idea. In some light the lettering is almost invisible ^^ This is my first completed personal piece of the year I think, so I’ve been excited about it.

[oceanwithouthermoon]

ive never liked powerless saiki aus because the entire conclusion of the series is him accepting his powers as being a part of him that he cant change so like.. in aus where the power remover works, half of his development is erased..

if he had been "powerless" for longer, we wouldve gotten to see him realize this himself and im genuinely sad that we didnt.. we got to see him realize that being powerless wasnt the change he wished it would be and that its something he cant change, but its literally over a two day long period and we miss out on sooo much potential development..

and then in aus where hes born powerless, people think he would have the exact personality and development that he THOUGHT he would if he got rid of/didnt have his powers, like NO ? "without powers he would be another satou-" NO he would be a shy, borderline flamboyant, weird, awkward, genius LOSER.

he would have a more normal relationship with his brother (still probably competitive but in a way more average sibling way and kusuke wouldnt have had the motivation to become so murderous) and he would probably be even more friendless but with less trauma.. he may or may not have ever befriended akechi at all, and the classroom incident wouldnt have happened.. even some of his current friends might not be around if not for coincidences due to his powers or direct involvement from his powers.. (nendo and kaido would for sure still be there though, but this only ensures the idea that he would be the biggest fcking loser ever)

he would still be saiki, but. his powers are a key part of him. he would be totally different without them, but NOT in the way he thinks he would..

[transmascutena]

thinking about how akio sees his younger self in utena and wondering if there's any fondness there. doesn't change the horror of what he does to her obviously but i do wonder

[kaladinkholins]

mizutaigen is literally like. the first "toxic" m/f ship i've ever cared for. cuz like usually my taste in m/f ships is basically "unhinged baddie" x "badass wifeguy" *

* (see:yen/geralt. trevor/sypha. adolin/shallan. kataang but katara is sane and they're literally so wholesome like theyre traumatised kids in love who are each other's emblem of hope in a war-torn world! so basically they don't count. anyway. i'm rambling.)

and to that end my friend called mizutaigen yaoi-adjacent and im like. yeah you're right actually cuz like hell yeah non-binary mizu and bisexual taigen rights and all the gender fuckery in the show in general

but also like.

theres just SOMETHING else about mizutaigen that just GETS me. like there's a special secret sauce like the pheromones in that one sephora lotion attracting spiders and i am the silly spider!!! there's just something about it!!! it's not even the enemies to lovers trope cuz i personally am not even usually into that (obv it's fine if you are. but yk.)

so as i keep rotating these thoughts around i thiiink it's the fact that, yknow, theyre so similar. like i honestly truly think they could be besties in another universe: a kinder universe where taigen was not taught to hate. a universe where mizu was not born a girl in a deeply misogynistic society or half-white in a xenophobic homogeneous society.

yeah now that i think about it that really just might be THE secret sauce!!! like the fact that they COULD be perfect and happy together, if only things were different, if only they werent themselves.

smth v bittersweet about that's just driving me insane and makes me want to root for them to overcome all those obstacles, to say "fuck all that" (re:the world and all its fucked up shit) and find each other in the end. to eventually become each other's fav person and confidant. who obv still bicker and tease and insult each other all the time but they dont really mean any of it and over time it just becomes a running gag between them and no one else has to get it because it's just between the two of them.

[princehoneytea]

sorry no art in a hot second... ive been really burnt out for a long time now and its been miserable, ive been looking for a normie job for ages so that i can make art something i do for myself again and i havent had much luck but.

i have good news now.

[reachexceedinggrasp]

I've mentioned before I have zero chill about Heaven Sent and do not want to hear anyone's objectively wrong negative opinions about it, but I honestly have to stay in the Whouffaldi bubble even as far as analysis and praise. At least people have to be accepting of the idea or possibility of the ship, not dismissive of it. Not because I need everyone to ship it, but because not realising the love story exists inevitably creates terrible takes on S9 and those people usually shit on Hell Bent and say it ruins the three parter.

The ship is canon and it's woven extremely deeply into the fabric of the story, so much so that if you're oblivious to the romance you will erroneously conclude that the story wasn't coherent. I constantly see people say Hell Bent undoes everything from Face the Raven and Heaven Sent or renders them pointless. And that's because they don't understand what was actually happening. There's still a disturbingly large number of people who say we never found out what the Hybrid was.

It's the single most consistent thing about people being unfair to Hell Bent, even more so than the ones who are just angry it isn't a story about Gallifrey. They're mad because they thought Heaven Sent was about getting over Clara's death and moving on, therefore Hell Bent was a big narrative backtrack. A lot of people say this, totally unwilling to consider that maybe it's not that this one episode radically departs from the thematic impetus of the entire series and is randomly exempt from the heavy, heavy foreshadowing in every other episode, maybe- actually- they missed something.

[greenerteacups]

What do you think as Hermione's career would be post battle of Hogwarts? To me her being minister for magic really doesn't make sense. She does not have patience or tact to wade through murky waters of politics 😭😭

So hard to say! The Trio are so, so young when we leave them, I find it almost impossible to project their futures farther than a few years out. The job that suited me at 17 would be radically unsuited to me now. That's why of all the Trio, Ron's ending strikes me as the most realistic — he jumps straight into the save-the-world business again, burns out, realizes he's actually Done The Fuck Enough, Thanks, and pivots into a low-stress career where he gets to see his family a lot. Feels accurate! The others are weirder to me because they do seem to just... pick a lane and stay there.

With Hermione, you could spin her a couple ways. You could say that she leans into her bookish side and does research or teaching, which is not my preference for a couple reasons (namely, I don't think Hermione would like academia as a profession; she finds her classwork interesting and enjoys intellectual validation, but she'd be stifled and wasted in a DPhil program, and she'd be infuriated by the administrative politicking of your average higher-ed faculty). You could say that she gets disaffected with politics and ends up as a barrister or a lobbyist of some kind, but if anything that requires more political finesse, because you don't actually have institutional power, you're just handling the people who make decisions and trying to persuade them of your goals. This is not Hermione's preferred method of influence. She's not even particularly good at persuasion, she just happens to be smart enough (and right often enough) that people take her ideas seriously.

Or you could say her brashness fades with the years into a softened flavor of tell-you-like-it-is honesty, which some politicians actually do successfully trade on; as we see in British politics today, you don't have to be all that charming or clever to get ahead, you just need to be really driven and well-connected (which Hermione completely is; she fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the first postwar Minister and her bestie, the Literal Messiah, runs the Auror Office.) But I don't know if Hermione especially wants to be Minister, after the war. She's just watched years of horrendous bureaucratic incompetence plunge the country into a violent civil conflict. She's had not one, but two Ministers of Magic try to bully or shame her friends into complicity with fascism. Her view of government is... likely extremely dark.

But Hermione also isn't the kind of person who sees her life as a quest for happiness. Babygirl has a savior complex that makes Harry look selfish. (She basically kills her parents — yeah, obliviating is a form of murder, #changemymind — "for their own good," and justifies every batshit, vindictive, mean-spirited move she ever pulls on the grounds that it "helps" one of her friends.) She is a mean, lean, dragon-slaying machine, and she needs a dragon. After Voldemort, the Ministry is the no. 1 threat to muggle-borns and non-wizarding Beings. As a war heroine with basically infinite political capital, I'd be surprised if she didn't try to do something there. That said, Hermione is so vivacious and dynamic that she could potentially grow in a hundred different directions; it's possible that all of this, while true of her at 18, becomes completely inaccurate by 22. That's why I'm not too fussed about any particular fanon interpretation.

[peninkwrites]

(putting my very long, very personal ramble under a readmore so folks can avoid it) (this won't include any of my plans for going forward or for my writing but I'm not going anywhere so don't worry about that. love to you all.)

A little disclaimer: If you have zero context for what I'm talking about, apologies for not explaining in depth, but this post won't be relevant to you otherwise. All you really need to know is that it seems that Wilbur Soot is an abuser, and Shubble came forward and talked about it recently. He was not named, but from what she shared, I believe that was who she was talking about. I don't say this to speculate, and if you disagree, I'm not here to argue over it, but it's enough for me personally to not to want to support him indefinitely, save for Shubble explicitly saying she wasn't talking about him.

Additionally, these thoughts are some incredibly personal and self-centered rambling. It does not reflect where my priorities lie, with supporting Shelby for coming forward above all else, but other people have said that much better than I have, and this post is really just a place for me to vent some of my feelings.

I prided myself on not falling prey to “parasocial relationships.” I didn’t get invested in the personal lives of content creators, only in their creative works. I thought this protected me somehow. I knew next to nothing about Wilbur Soot’s personal life, but I admired him deeply as a writer and empathized with him as an artist. I projected so heavily onto his character and did so for over three years. When I waited for his final dsmp stream, I felt panicked. Like my survival hinged on how he ended this story, and then he ended it in a way I could live with, and I thought I could go on loving this story and these characters for what they had been, no matter how messy the rest of the endings to follow were. His character was mine in so many ways. He had some of my problems and I gave him some of my own. I used him to process quite a bit. And now that part of myself is irrevocably tainted.

When the stuff came out about Dream, I was upset, but not betrayed. I never followed the creator and he existed only as a character to me. All I grieved then was the community his actions destroyed and most importantly the people he hurt. I planned to continue writing for the DSMP, even as I refused to follow any content involving him. It felt like a pause, not a full stop, while I ensured what I was doing did not show him any support. I also gave that character no pity and therefore the man behind him no pity, I had no personal investment in his character.

Now my response is visceral and bitter and I don’t know how to go on writing, because this character meant the world to me. I don’t know how to write about a character I truly love and see myself in, knowing the person who also loved and saw himself in that character, who created that character, has done horrible things. I don’t know how to write any of these other characters I have loved and cared for for over 3 years because he has poisoned them. All of it turns my stomach now and I feel so betrayed. The thought of his character is tainted because it’s connected to his voice and his face. I cannot separate the art from the artist both because it was the inclusion of the authorship within the story which affected me so strongly, and because there are things within the text that I look back on now and can only see that this person was always this way. I couldn’t sleep last night. I kept thinking of c!Wilbur’s line when he found out about exile, “he didn’t actually hit you though“ and his horror when c!Tommy responded that he had, that for some reason that was the turning point. The implication that it was only crossing that line, that particular type of violence, which made something wrong. Fucking disgusting.

I’ve tried to find another story before now. For the last few years, honestly, I’ve looked for something to latch onto the way I have with this one, but nothing feels the way this did. I know I’ve been clinging to something gone or at least mostly gone, both the community and the story, but I haven’t known how to let go when nothing makes me feel the same way, even when the feeling has faded and changed so much with time. This was never supposed to go on this long. Honestly, the reason I started posting mcyt stuff to my sideblog instead of my main was because I assumed I would get over it in a few weeks, delete the posts, and move on. Three years. 40 works. Over a million words. Just. Fuck.

I loved these characters so much and I’ve wrapped up my writing in them for so long it’s hard to separate the two. At this point, it feels like these characters are what allow me to write, separate from the main story, but a place where I could work things out for myself as a person and try new things as a writer. And I’ve tried so hard to feel the same way about the QSMP, but maybe it’s because we’re out of lockdown so I don't have time to watch much, or I’ve just changed more than I’ve thought, but I haven't gotten attached the way I did even when I look at the stories being built there and can see the heart in them, the storytelling, the care, just as much as the DSMP if not more. There’s no good reason for it, it just hasn’t locked into place the way this story had, having been the perfect storm of circumstances. The DSMP came to me during one of the worst years of my life, and I have loved it so much I miss that time even with all the bad it carried too.

And now this thing I have been holding onto can only make me angry, hit me with grief and disgust. Fuck, the only plan I’ve had for an original novel in years is a loose adaptation of TDDD. My senior thesis was largely a novella about two siblings with a complicated relationship, the older fatalistic, the younger brave to the point of ignorance. So even that original project has poison in it now. All of it, all of my fucking work, all of my growth as a writer, all of my writing for over three fucking years has poison in it.

I’ve felt lost as a writer for a long time and the only thing keeping me anchored was these characters. And I don’t know how to cut them away from myself and I don’t know how to cut him away from what’s left when his writing, his character, undeniably gave me so much of a spark. When I’m happy, I write. When I’m sad, I write. There's so much bad in the world right now, but I could always fall back on writing. And now my main means of escape is the grief. Far more than ever before. I know this too shall pass and all that, and this hasn’t actually stolen my ability to write, but right now it all feels so ruined. I don’t know how long it will take for me to be able to look back on what I’ve made and not feel like this. I'd maybe moved on in some ways, but not all. There was so much left I wanted to do.

If you’ve somehow read this far, know that I love this community with my whole heart. I never quite made friends with any of you, even as I wanted to, and it's felt too late for a long time now. My beloved mutuals (and followers that are mutuals in all but name) I have found so much joy with you, in what all of you have created. I wish I could hold onto that above all else, even if I’m not quite sure how. I’m not going anywhere, to be clear. I won’t delete my blog and fall off the face of the earth or anything. I still love what all of you create and care about, even if things have changed and our interests don’t always align anymore. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to detach this story from the creator, to love any of it the way I did or even love what I myself created again. I don’t really know why I’m writing this or if I’ll even post it except for the fact that you all are the only people who could understand.

Again, this was a deeply personal rant, not a statement about the situation as a whole, nor do I think this situation's impact on me takes an ounce of precedent over the person actually involved. The most important takeaway from this is what Shelby has shared, the importance of believing victims, to do what we can to protect ourselves from abuse that doesn’t seem obvious, and to look out for each other. Take care of yourselves, everyone.

[tothepointofinsanity]

what are your thoughts on Madoka and Sayaka's relationship? I always thought it was underrated for how complex and tragic it is.

Madoka and Sayaka's relationship function similarly to that of a knight and a princess, so both their friendship or couple pairing are interesting to me. It seems to be intentional that Sayaka was crafted with a knight motif in mind to click with Madoka's vulnerability. The tragedy is that Sayaka was way too young and inexperienced to be shouldering such expectations in a friendship. Taking up the role of a protector at every turn because she wanted to protect everyone has always been a contributing factor to how fast Sayaka burned out.

Contrarily, Madoka's struggle with her own helplessness throughout the show was also part of the reason why Sayaka said a lot of terrible thing to her, but deeply regretted her actions to the point where she succumbed to Witching out away from Madoka. Madoka, at least in this "final" timeline, was not there to see her own childhood best friend change into something else. To, in a way, "die", and be reborn as the same monster that all magical girls were hunting after in a frenzy. Homura was right that Sayaka brings Madoka grief — it seems that in almost timeline, since Sayaka becomes a Witch as long as she becomes a magical girl unlike Mami or Kyoko, Sayaka is a consistent source of Madoka's grief. Whenever Madoka becomes a magical girl, then, her aspirations are based on Sayaka's sacrifice and ideals, except Madoka actually has the power to "save everyone". I believe Madoka loved Sayaka as Sayaka may not have been an "effective" magical girl, but she was the one who was willing to sacrifice her soul for her ideals, regardless of how naïve they were. To Madoka, who was so ensnared by her sense of uselessness, Sayaka was the closest thing to an idol or a star for the courage required to be a magical girl. Sayaka's desire to make the world a safer and justified place for people was so inspiring to Madoka that even when Madoka becomes Kriemhild Gretchen, the Witch's whole gimmick is "creating heaven on earth, a Witch content only if there is no more grief in existence". A prospect deeply held onto by Madoka that even Gretchen embodies it.

It's probably why Madoka's wish to save all magical girls would definitely sound equally impossible to he audience and the incubators, but Madoka herself says, "If someone says it's wrong to hope, I will tell them that they're wrong every time." Sayaka was often called foolish for her ideals and hopes, and Madoka was the only other person aside from Kyoko who understands Sayaka's struggles so much that she outright tells people that Sayaka was never wrong — this is how Madoka protects Sayaka. Madoka would never want anyone to say any of the magical girls' wishes were wrong or foolish. It was how Sayaka also found her peace at the end of the show: to be understood and not viewed as an object that would eventually be replaced in the cycle of magical girls and Witches.

Madoka and Sayaka eventually learned how to protect each other. Sayaka doesn't need to suffer from her own overbearing expectations anymore, and Madoka can finally be something even more to protect her angel: A God.

[mintacle]

So, you've seen the words "anti" and "proshipper" thrown around in people's bios and "batc*st dni" on people's posts. Maybe you want to know what all the fuss is about, maybe you have a particular opinion about all this fuss. In any case, this informative post is for you.

Using Samantha Aburime's paper "the cult structure of the american anti", I'm going to explain the issue.

First of all what is an anti even? It's a term people use to self-identify within fandoms. As the name anti implies, they mainly identify with being against things.

Which leads us to our problem of the anti mentality.

Most antis are minors or under 24. People who left the anti community have explained their experiences in the following manners:

Maybe you have felt the pressure to join in anti behavior as well. If any of the following feelings are familiar to you, then you are experiencing anti indoctrination:

If the shame and guilt instilled in anti members isn't bad enough, there are more consequences for the targets of the antis. In the batman fandom these are blogs that may or may not describe themselves as proship, meaning they ship characters that are (adoptive) members of the wayne family (Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne) with one another.

Essentially: this is how anti action works:

Examples of dehumanization and harrasement which are very commonly practised among antis:

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And threats of violence:

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Beyond the aggresive nature of the anti mentality, the problem is that the people it targets are overwhelmingly vulnerable minorities.

And I have often seen antis justifying their harrasement by explaining that they are themselves queer or non-caucasian, which is an example of moral licencing and does not actually excuse targetting other minorities or people of the same minority as you.

So what do antis specifically do? The anti community of the batman fandom will often throw around accusations of incest ("batc*st") and pedophilia.

Let us examine those three concepts, disinformation, virtue signaling and legitimate abuse.

We can find disinformation in the prectise of denying reasonable arguments for tolerance of proshipping. An anti will not engage in any attempt to understand why people ship something they find morally apprehensible. They will label proshippers as degenarates, thereby misrepresenting who it is they are targeting. Furthermore they will misrespresent the amount of influence that proshippers yave on influencing people.

Virtue signaling describes the practise of labelling things as problematic without delivering reasonable arguments for doing so and instead using strong emotional language to explain their judgement:

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Virtue signaling also represents the practise of self-describing the anti as morally pure and the "enemy", the proshipper as morally degenerate.

Both disinformation and virtue signaling allow for legitimate abuse. Depersonifying and villifying the opponent gives the anti a feeling of being legitimized in their abuse.

For followers of my blog, I would like to raise awareness of this side of anti culture. Emotional and shame-inducing language can easily sway us. I plead my case for reasonable and distanced evaluation of what you see online. Condemning pedophilia and incest will seem perfectly natural on face value, which is why it is so hare to understand that often time what is labbelled as such is misrepresented, and really all the time the anti myth will equate preference of fiction to beliefs of real life morality (see first image)

To finish my informational post, I leave you with one last essential quote from Samantha Aburime's paper:

"The anti movement perpetuates archaic systems of judgement based on personal disgust and region-specific morality, punishing powerless people for their fannish interests and tainting their online communities. Their work does nothing to dismantle harmful systematic institutions; rather, it embraces them, even going so far as to actively harm and destroy members of their own community."

Read the full paper here. It's very interesting and a not too long read.

https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/2147/2829

[phereinnike]

D&d vampiric lore and Astarion.

I see a lot of people commenting on Astarion's good & bad ending (this is your chance to run from a spoiler) and if they're truly in-character or canon or make narrative sense.

And while there is a lot to say about his personal narrative and the motif of the cycle of abuse, the influence those around us have on us, not being able to see kindness as an option if it's never been shown to you, etc... One of the things I've seen very few people mention is that because of the setting, he really never stood a chance.

Vampires in dungeons and dragons aren't like those in other media. They're not twillight vampires or even anne rice vampires. It is well established in the lore and it has been for years, that true vampires in d&d aren't fully autonomous people with their own nuanced moral codes. Vampires in d&d are completely obsessed with power, paranoid and greedy, to the point that it erases who they were in their mortal life. They are fully evil and fully corrupt. No matter what they were like in life. You could be the goodest aligned person on Faerun, a true hero and defender of the powerless. And if you got turned into a true vampire, that goodness would still completely cease to exist.

That is not to say that vampires don't have personalities. Obviously they are all unique and have their own tastes, personalities and agendas. They retain knowledge and attachment to what was important to them in life (be it people, goals, places, etc.) but those bonds are as corrupt as they are. They don't get to keep the same feelings and ideas they had in life.

We can't argue about what makes narrative sense for a character without taking into account the setting he exists in. And because of the very setting we play in, there was never any possibility of Astarion becoming a true vampire (ascendant through the ritual or a regular one), turning the player into a true vampire as well and living happily ever after, be it in a good campaign or in an evil one. The setting just doesn't allow for it, because the moment he becomes a true vampire, the Astarion we know is truly dead and gone.

[sweet-potato-42]

imma just say bless the tubbathon I think i would be in much more distress over the qsmp situation if it wasnt for this

[rapidhighway]

hey i might be controversial but im not really feeling the 12th doctor so far