#and a judgment of that behavior as bad and harmful to be made. You can hold space for understanding without excusing. That's what I do here

[dxxtruction]

So this feels sort of obvious to me but Armand doesn’t wish to use or want any power he wants control. Specifically he wants to be in control of his sense of security, safety, stability, and attachments, his survival and identity. He controls what others are doing really only insofar as they threaten the control of any of that, cause he doesn’t really want power over them. (Except maybe Claudia, but I’d argue that is still a control thing). He will willingly forgo using or being in power for control. He manipulates and lies not for power but control. He makes grand displays of his vampire powers or strength not on the central intent of having power over people but for control. He doesn’t back down from Madeleine’s turning to have power over Louis he does it to remain in control over himself. He submits to giving up power for Louis’ power because it feels like it’s all in his control, and disobeys Louis when it’s not. He doesn’t take back power over the coven because he has more control if he does not fight it. His choice is a matter of weighing up how much control he has between the two. If the reasoned way to have control is to use power he will use it. If he doesn’t have to use power to have control, or there’s simply more control in not, he is not going to use it. Of course you will note he is simply very powerful, he has the position and means for it, and his ability to have and get so much control is a power in itself, that power is baked into having control. But he is not like Santiago, who is power hungry and wants and uses any power he can get his hands on. Or Marius who is full of himself on his power and has a sense of entitlement about it. Or even Louis who seeks and uses dominance and capital as power for a means of getting and having control. Armand is going primarily always for control as a means in itself for control, and the demand of it is a very high bar which tends to look like he wants or relishes in using power. But from all I can tell he quite hates it really, submission to power is a place of control for him, but he will use and get power if it’s the most in control means to control he has.

(This is at least as insofar as we’ve seen of him in the show. You could say Armand will have a sort of love with power but then some kind of disillusionment with it in s3, going off what I recall of tvl, that puts him back into this state of needing control being above power which would’ve also been his way of operating with Santino and Marius.)

(Added note: I should say I do believe Armand is almost always aware of his position to his power at all times, it’s not lost on him he is very powerful and can use said power if he so wanted, but it’s a question of his control if he does. He understands power and how to use it or he wouldn’t have such great ability to have and manipulate all this control. Of course he’s not perfect in this either, and I do think a strong sense of powerlessness, and total loss of control can override all his sensibility about power. Anyhow, Armand understands power extremely intimately, from all sides of it, and yet places attention not there but in having control, for the things I described above. Survival for him ranking above concerns like that.)

[kiame-sama]

Dragon headvanon guy here again because a few more dropped into my head (also sorry for the typos, I'm not used to my phones big keyboard yet xD also 100% relate to you on the plushies, I have a big collection on my.own and love them with all my heart)

1. Most if not all Creatures love to be pet, it's common to see children & sometimes young teens being pet by their parents, older siblings or close friends. The older they fet the less likely they get petted tho, older Fae's and long lived Creatures tho remember that Humans would pet anyone who allowed it with great joy.

2. We know that Humans are seen as Peackeepers (or Beast Tamers) but I like to headcanon that they are also a symbol of Loyalty in many Kingdoms. Some older Creatures, like Lilia even remember Humans going through great dangers or sacrificing themself for their Pack.

An old Rumor has it that one of the Great Seven was actually once pack bounded with a human who sacrificed themself for them. (It would be an intresting idea if it was Scar and after he died many mistook the Human Sacrificing themself for him as him killing them & eating them. But you guys can go wild with this one)

3. Angry humans were a raresight to see and most only learned how dangerous humans could be once a Creature attacked a child and had to be send to a hospital after the Parent of said child got their revenge. It's also at that point that many learned how dangerous a human bite can be thanks to the bacteria in their mouth (that information sadly got lost to time though)

4. This is the last one for now, promise xD A lot of Kingdoms who were safe for humans, would have human daycares where they would watch over the Creatures kids. It was something unheard of since a lot of Creatures dont trust their young and rather weak children around others they dont know (and sometimes even close friends & family couldn't get close to the child without nearly being mauled.)

But it was a bit sucess and since it was free, low income familys would adly send their kids there to get food and have a chance at making friends. Some daycares even allowed sleepovers for Creatures who worked during the night, kids who were night active or those who weren't picked up because their parents worked late.

Sadly after humans went extinct these establishments were shutdown.

Ok one last one, this one is for the Fleur City; It's belived that humans created the Bell as a gift to the Rightous Judge who them upon getting this gift enchanted the Bell to ring in a specific tune when a human entred Fleur City.

Legends say that once the last human in Fleur City died and they went extinct as last that the Bell rung in such a sorrowfull way with the Rightous Judges cries that the spirit of the last Human in Fleur Ciry granted him a last gift. The Firelotus, so that any Magical Creature who dares to harm an Innocent Creature will be punished by humanitys judgment.

(No worries about the typos, I'm pretty bad about it too)

I'm down for all of these actually. Absolutely love how some canon things can so easily fall into place with just a little adjustment and work so wonderfully in an AU all its own.

I can see almost all of them wanting to be pet and of course hoping the soft human will pet them. Rook's already been pet by those little Human hands and he is already hooked. I could absolutely see Jack and Ruggie going nuts for petting. Lilia's already made it clear that group grooming is common so petting would likely be too. Maybe that's the Human's way of returning the grooming behavior to make Lilia sleep? Lilia has already petted Grim.

The last Human Lilia met was the surrogate mother of a young fox fae child and he will be forever haunted by how injured she was and still standing, unsure how long she must have fought to keep her young safe. Lilia had arrived near the end of the poor Human's desperate battle, stepping in himself but it was quite too late for the Human mother. He took in the child and raised them himself in Briar Valley, Silver is not the only child the old fae has taken under his wing. Lilia knows the sheer drive humans have to protect those they truly love because he saw it firsthand and he knows better than to mess with little Grim regardless of how much fun it would be. No need to upset the Human.

Humans were quite good at taking care of others young and many had a natural proclivity to protect infants regardless of what species it was. Humans aren't really all too threatening, so many mothers of the more protective species didn't feel that threat to themselves or their young like they did with other species or even their own family. Many are quite manageable as children and almost harmless, meaning the soft Humans could take care of them with no problem.

To make a world of magical creatures tremble in fear is a mighty feat and one only the fire lotus could achieve. After all, so many looked down on humans for their lack of magic, why not suffer the same fate for those who brought Humanity to heel?

[gatheringbones]

[“HOW TRAUMA PLAYS OUT IN GROUPS

Horizontal Violence

When we can’t strike back at those who are truly harming us, we often lash out at those we can reach. We yell at our lover because we can’t yell at the boss. In groups, we may fight even the most minor conflict to the death. We attack our fellow group members with all the unexpressed rage that really belongs to the perpetrators of violence. In our minds, we are always fighting for our lives. Just as enraged dogs will attack one another with no regard for their relative size, we lose sight of real power differentials and may demolish a group member with a blast of anger without realizing that we have shifted from victim of abuse to abuser.

Horizontal Violence Strategies

Friends don’t let friends abuse one another. A group that sets healthy boundaries and standards for behavior needs to hold one another accountable for keeping them.

Offer constructive critique and honest feedback.

Collective intervention: Others in the group can support one another to tell the raging group member that their behavior is not acceptable. Couple this with:

Good cop/bad cop: While one or more group members set and hold clear boundaries, another might offer help and support to find counseling, coaching or mediation.

Mentoring: Assigning the offending person a mentor can provide long-term encouragement to both change behavior and look at deeper patterns.

The Perpetual Victim

Some people cling to the role of victim, claiming center stage. Whatever issue or drama erups somehow always ends up being about them. Their patterns may originate from deep hurt and trauma and we can feel sympathy, but colluding with them is not helpful either to the person or the group. Fruitless efforts to appease them can drain the group’s energy and undermine its effectiveness.

When we are caught up in the role of victim, our speech and actions reflect our sense of powerlessness. To regain our sense of empowerment, we might begin by challenging the inherent assumptions in our words and practicing alternative framings and affirmations.

Blaming

Statement: “You made me feel …”

Assumptions: I am at the mercy of other people’s speech and actions. I am helpless to do anything but respond to how others treat me.

Alternate suggestion: I choose how to respond to other people’s statements and assessments. I can choose what to take in and what to discard. My feelings are real and valid, but I can move through them quickly and separate them from my own assumptions and other people’s judgments.

Blurting

Statement: “I have to speak my truth.” Translation: I’m about to blurt out something hurtful in the most blunt way possible. Assumptions: Truth is uncomfortable, painful and festering. My feelings and perceptions are The Truth, and I must get it out just as I might vomit up a bad meal, regardless of consequences.

Alternate suggestion: I choose to speak my truth, using all my sensitivity, wisdom and skill so that I can be clearly heard and effective.

Bleating

Statement: “I’m being silenced.”

Assumption: If people actually heard me, they would agree with me. So if they don’t agree with me, they are shutting me down.

Alternate suggestion: I can advocate for my own perspective — whether or not others agree — and respect their right to differ. I do not need anyone’s permission to advocate for myself.

Strategies for Transforming the Role of Victim

Clear, fair and transparent ways that people can earn power in the group will provide constructive alternatives to victimization.

Structures and practice of constructive critique can provide positive channels for complaints.

Encourage responsibility with questions like: What would you suggest to make the situation different? What structures would you like to see in place that would help us address your needs and concerns?”]

starhawk, from the empowerment manual: a guide for collaborative groups, 2011

[1yyyyyy1]

I found this article and I couldn’t help but relate this to what you talk about. Everything you said is so right. The paper says that women who see wife beating as positive are more likely to experience IPV. And women who view wife beating as negative are less likely to experience it in their relationships. That is so full circle! I also noticed the high illiteracy rate but aside from that the paper tried to explain it as cultural norms. Nope those women have wicked intentions for other women and as a result experience their karma in the form of their male partner. Wishing harm on others apparently comes back to you. This might be why some many occult practices speak against cursing people etc. Another thing I noticed is how small the percentage of sexual violence is. I know it’s inaccurate because domestic violence is almost always followed by sexual violence. The only thing that can help women is if women help themselves. Anyways what are some of your daily practices that help keep you in alignment with your higher purpose? How do you hide your disgust towards others actions? These days I find myself displeased with most women. I have a hard time faking empathy for their self inflicted sob stories. Still I don’t want to be a social pariah so I need to figure out how to be cordial with them. Maybe pretty privilege isn’t so bad if I remain surface level then I can coast by. It’s a hard act to maintain though and I hate dumbing myself down which is why I’m not that social. It’s hard to talk when we live completely different lifestyles. I also just hate not being myself. I just want to find a middle ground but it’s hard to stomach the things going on in this world. Coming across as self righteous and judgmental makes you a target. I want to avoid that. I guess my question is how do I blend in and look normal when I’m not normal? I’m not there yet financially to where I have F you money. I have to interact with the world.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11002416/#:~:text=Worldwide%2C%20nearly%2030%25%20of%20women,lifetime%20by%20their%20intimate%20partners.&text=A%20study%20conducted%20in%20Afghanistan,negative%20health%20outcomes%20in%20women.

Thank you for the message :) The concept of karma might seem too harsh to some people, especially considering the severity of what women go through with men, but there are objective reasons to women experiencing hardship in relationships if the woman is mean-spirited and is up to no good in how she treats other people. I find that, by and large, women who are psychologically dysfunctional enough to see harming other women as a means to an end tend to be drawn to troubled men and enjoy dysfunctional relationships themselves; the most blatant example being misogynists whom women pursue out of the misguided idea that being an exception to such a man would prove how exceptional she is to herself. Women's pursuit of superiority and dominion is what puts them in these compromising positions, or, prompts them to get involved with men they are likely to get victimized by in return, e.g. a racist man might also believe in a social hierarchy within his own family and view his racist wife as inferior. Evil people are adept at making poor decisions that have the potential to ruin their own life and the universe simply does not prevent said decisions and their consequences from happening.

I cannot give you a straightforward answer on how to blend in in terms of behavior because it comes naturally to me, although not wanting to end up getting financially ostracized is a decent reason to keep a low profile in public and something I was primarily motivated by while learning to keep my mental composure around women. Looking back, my frustration with women had to do with how helpless their actions and refusal to work towards female safety made me feel, as well as the responsibility I felt I was obligated to carry for their conditions and circumstances despite women routinely proving that they cared about neither or being outright malicious to myself. Back then I believed that there was always something I could do to help women or make them want to improve the state of the world, like framing them as the victim to understand where they were coming from, which made interactions with women difficult as I was, essentially, forcing myself to be understanding of people I deep down perceived to be abusive. Over time, my frustration continued to fester until I discovered the concept of karma and the fact that everyone both bears responsibility for their living conditions and will be presented with the right tools to improve them should they choose to do it. Truthfully, the knowledge that everyone will be getting exactly what they deserve no matter what lies they tell themselves and the world has been the most relieving of them all, and nowadays I find myself handling social interactions with women with ease even if I dislike said women, as I no longer believe that their behavior has much bearing on my life at all or feel responsible for the consequences of their actions.

The thing that keeps me in alignment with my purpose is reminding myself that there is nothing abnormal about my antagonistic attitude towards people and their behavior; I cut off anyone and anything that somehow disturbs my peace as well, which I have learned to do after years of making unpleasant exceptions for things and people. Other than that, I engage in my hobbies, which I have plenty of, and balance the need to be cordial with women I would otherwise not choose to engage with by talking with like-minded female friends — I find that people are way easier to tolerate when you have had a friendly chat with somebody who understands you prior.

[wtfuglydemon]

pro-recovery this anti-recovery that

have you ever thought that people cant recover unless theyre willing to? unless they feel comfortable to? unless they feel like they are ready to?

not only that, ever thought that some things just arent able to be "cured" or recovered from? that our entire psyche system cant handle anything more complicated than a simple anxiety/depression? that if you have complicated disorders they will either shame you, make you feel like a monster and never help you directly but ask you to internalize your symptoms to not be a nuisance to others for the detriment of yourself? that, if they dont straight up drug you numb they will hospitalize you for something you have no fault on? Sometimes seeking for recovery can hurt you more than you already were and its why you can't unless youre willing and prepared to.

Being better with yourself isn't simple, sometimes recovery is having accomodations made to your problems that society simply does not give to others, it's different to all of us, mental health is not easy and straightforward and many make it up to be, this is extremely damaging and can make people hurt themselves, mentally and physically.

I've been abandoned, judged and seen as problematic for not seeking a doctor for myself and also being very open about my distaste for therapy, because i study it, i know how the system is flawed and systematically judgmental, classist, racist and misogynistic and the people in the field can be even worse, i warn people so they know if they are ready for a lot of trial and error, not to discourage them but to know that this is also a challenge you need to be mentally prepared for because otherwise it will leave you more hurt.

every journey to better your mental health is different, complicated, ugly and sometimes filled with hardships, boiling it down to "pro recovery and anti recovery" is to forget others who can't exactly recover, people's who recovery need systematic societal change, people like me with psychopathy who are seem as nothing but monsters who need to be purged from society, regardless if we have our own struggles and difficulties to deal with, its forgetting people in countries who don't have good mental health awareness, it is forgetting people who don't have financial conditions to afford help. No one is against others seeking help for your struggles but sometimes issues are not as simple as you deem them to be and the need to antagonize and "reclaim" their spaces is to negate hurting people of a space where they can be themselves and proud of who they are.

in the end what made me write this is how i am myself even with all my bad, self destructive and harmful behaviors and people like me exist and need a space safe for them to be themselves, it is why i found myself so drawn to the Jirai community, people "reclaiming" and trying to separate it from its roots is just bringing harm to a group of people who simply want to not feel alone with their struggles and be proud of who they are. You are not better than anyone from depriving those of a space for them, all you're doing is showing ignorance and disrespect for an entire group of suffering people.

[kaiaden]

Kai’s Temper

Summary: Kai accidentally harms Lloyd with his fire by accident. Wu taught Kai many things after this. Ep. 17 “The Administration”.

Fic:

“Why isn’t Heatwave healing faster?! Are you sure the crystal goo is still working Kai?” Wyldfyre asked, concerned and worried. Wyldfyre turned to Heatwave and Kai turned to her.

 “Things like this take time.” Kai said, but then Wyldfyre turned back to him. 

“No they don’t!” Wyldfyre yelled out. “Heatwave has to get better! And we have to get that Dragon Core back to the other Ninja! And this is taking forever!” Wyldfyre grunted in anger. 

“Impatience makes everything worse, Wyldfyre.” Kai told the angry teen, trying to calm her down. “It clouds your judgment and you make bad decisions. Trust me. I know from experience.” Kai grimaced, thinking about all the horrible decisions he’s made, as well as his deepest regrets. 

“But we can’t just do nothing!” Wyldfyre cried out, trying to make a point. She whipped tears off of her face. “You wanted to learn some of Master Wu’s techniques? Try this. Moving through forms. It’ll help you focus, to be in the moment.” Kai said, and started to perform some of the forms his master had taught him. 

“Standing in one place, moving super slow? I told you, I can’t do nothing!” The teen huffed out, before turning to Heatwave, who had whined out in pain. 

“This isn’t nothing, you’ll see.” Wyldfyre sighed out, before getting into the same position and copied him. But she kept getting distracted by Heatwave. She suddenly lost her cool. “I can’t do this! I can’t stop worrying about Heatwave!” Wyldfyre said, and turned to Heatwave, Kai following suit. “He’s never been hurt like this before.” 

“When you’re worried is exactly when this is most helpful. You are not your emotions. Focus on your form, let the emotions pass through you.” Kai began to re-perform the form.

 “You pass through you!” Wyldfyre yelled out in anger and frustration. Effectively breaking Kai out of his focus. “You’re patient, I'm not, remember?” Wyldfyre pointed out, before Kai burst out into fits of laughter.

 “Okay, no one has ever called me ‘patient’. I’m the hothead, in more ways than one. Master Wu had me practice my forms. I was never as good as the others, but Ninja never quit. So I kept going until it worked enough to calm me down. And if it can work for me, it can work for anyone. Even you, because you kind of remind me of someone.” Kai said, staring at Wyldfyre, who looked unimpressed. 

“Who? Master Wu?”

 “No! Me! You remind me of me! So, if you're ready, let’s try again.” Wyldfyre sighed out, before again, copying Kai’s movements. 

—

Once Wyldfyre calmed down, They both sat down around the fire. “How did you know that these…forms…and the crystal goo, would work?” The teen asked. Kai looked down at the floor. 

“Master Wu taught me that, but the context of the situation was the problem.” Kai told the teen, his gaze darkening.

“What is this…con-tex-t?” Wyldfyre asked, genuinely confused. 

“Let me tell you a story. It isn’t an exhilarating one, but maybe it can teach you a thing or two.” Kai said, turning his head to Wyldfyre. 

Wyldfyre nodded excitedly. “Yes! A story!” Kai chuckled at this, she reminded him of himself, but also Lloyd’s childlike behavior. 

“One time, a few years ago, I ended up failing a mission. I was so angry, because it was a simple mistake that caused me to fail it.” Kai spoke, and began recalling the memory. 

—

“UGHH!!” Kai groaned in anger. He kept on punching the dummy. “It’s all my fault!” Kai yelled out. Lloyd was outside the door with a worried look on his face. He could hear Kai screaming from outside the monastery. They had just beaten Morro, and Kai was already frustrated from that. Kai kept hitting the dummy. But he was so angry that he didn’t notice that he had started to use his fire. 

After listening to Kai beat up the dummies, Lloyd decided he would check up on Kai. Lloyd walked in. “Hey Kai-“ Lloyd was cut off by a searing pain in his torso. He screamed out in agony. 

“LLOYD!” Kai screamed out. Lloyd had fallen, but Kai caught him before he hit his head on the ground. Kai was panicking. Everyone was gone, they were either on a mission or out doing something. Kai was forced to sit out on missions for a couple of days, and Lloyd was on recovery time. 

Kai carried Lloyd to their medical room and laid him down in one of the beds. Lloyd was groaning and crying. Kai grabbed the front of Lloyd’s gi and carefully pulled it open. He cringed when he saw some of it stick to Lloyd’s injury. When he got a full view of the wound, Kai wanted to throw up. The burn was pretty bad. Kai suspected that it would be a second or even worse, a third degree burn. He tried to remember what Zane had taught him about how to treat severe burns.

That’s when he heard the doors to the monastery open and Kai ran out of the medical room to see who it was. Hopefully it was Zane. When Kai ran out, he spotted Wu and ran to him. “Kai? What is wrong?” 

“Lloyd! Fire! Accident! I’m so sorry!” Kai managed to yell out in a panic, he was having a hard time breathing.

“Kai, show me where Lloyd is.” Wu said, trying to distract the panicked ninja. 

Kai led Wu to the medical room. When they walked in, Wu walked over and examined Lloyd. “Follow me Kai. We don’t have long. Lloyd can’t go untreated.” Wu said, and gently grabbed Kai’s wrist and led him to the monastery’s entrance. 

When Kai was in the forest, he began to ask questions about what they were doing, more like what Wu was doing. “Why are you smashing rocks! We can’t just do nothing! Lloyd is not getting any better from us smashing things on the ground!” Kai said he was getting more and more impatient.

“Impatience makes everything worse Kai.” Wu told the angry and frustrated teen. “It clouds your judgment and you make bad decisions.” Wu finally broke open a rock. He showed it to Kai. 

“This is what we’re looking for. Find more like this.” Wu instructed his student. Kai began smashing and then finding more blue crystals. 

When Wu was leading him back to the monastery, Kai and Wu found a total of 6 crystals. Kai was still frustrated and confused, but he had learned not to question his master so easily. 

Wy led Kai back to the medical room and placed the crystals down. “What are we supposed to do with these?” Kai asked, turning his gaze to his little brother, whom he had hurt.

“Melt these with your fire.” Wu said, ignoring the teen's question. Kai did as he was told and melted the crystal into a gooey like substance. “Now put it on Lloyd’s burn and spread it around.” Kai again, did as he was told and placed the goo on Lloyd. 

“What is this supposed to even do-“ Kai cut himself off as he had noticed Lloyd's burn was a lot less red, and the skin wasn’t as irritated. Kai repeated the same process until Lloyd’s burn was fully covered. “How did you know that this would help?” Kai asked, not letting his gaze leave his brother, who had finally calmed down and seemed to be in less pain. Wu turned to his student. 

“This crystal can be found anywhere in the 16 realms and has a very great burn-healing agent. You just need to calm down and see things from a different perspective. “You are not your emotions Kai.” Wu told Kai, who had turned to his master. 

—

“So that’s how you knew about that crystal goo.” Wyldfyre said, she surprisingly was silent throughout the whole story. 

“Yup! Like my master had told me, not all lessons are about fighting. A ninja is more than their fighting skills. It’s not about the size of the ninja in a fight, it’s about the size of the fight in the ninja.” Kai said, and Wyldfyre turned to Heatwave. Kai looked at the teen and saw so much potential. But he also saw himself. Maybe she’ll come around to the idea of being a ninja and on a team. Maybe one day.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A business model for bankrupting the oil companies

Today (June 6), I’m on a Rightscon panel about interoperability.

Tomorrow (June 7), I’m keynoting the Re:publica conference in Berlin.

Thursday (June 8) at 8PM, I’m at Otherland Books in Berlin with my novel Red Team Blues.

When a giant company wrecks your life, what are you gonna do? They can afford more and better lawyers than you can, and they have people whose full time job is fighting off lawsuits — are you really gonna beat those people by pursuing your grievance as a side-hustle? Do you really wanna be a full-time, professional litigant?

For some people, the answer is yes: some people are angry enough, or sufficiently morally offended, to make suing a giant company their life’s mission. Sometimes, they succeed, and force companies to cough up gigantic sums of money. Obviously, this makes the plaintiff better off, but it can also make things better for the rest of us. Money talks and bullshit walks, and once it becomes clear that 300% of the profits from harming people will be sucked out of the company by a lawsuit, shareholders will revolt and force the company to clean up its act.

Shareholders don’t invest in companies that ruin our lives because they are committed to an ideology of cruelty. Ideology only gets you so far: the pursuit of profit incentivizes far worse conduct than mere sadism ever can:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farbenizers

Incentives matter. Companies above a certain size become too big to fail and too big to jail. They capture their regulators and ensure that any damages the government extracts are less than their profits — a fine is a price.

Juries, on the other hand, can and do really whack a company for its bad conduct. They understand that incentives matter. They understand that a company that saves $1,000,001 by cutting back on workplace safety can’t be driven to improve its behavior by a fine of $1,000,000 after it kills a bunch of workers. If profit outstrips penalties, penalties aren’t effective.

A dirty $1m profit needs to be met with a $100m judgment. As the Untouchables MBA teaches us, this is just sound business: “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPZ6eaL3S2E

But suing these giant companies is hard. They can tie you up in court for years — decades, even. They can outspend and outwait you. The more profits a company has racked up through its evil deeds, the more claims it can fend off. Incentives matter, so if you’re gonna commit corporate murder, you’d better do a lot of it to build up the cash needed to scare off your victims and their survivors.

However: the bigger a company is, the more cash it has, the more money there is to extract from it if you can prevail in court. If the company has genuinely injured you, and if you can mobilize the capital and resources to pursue it to final judgment, there’s a huge payoff at the end of the process — and a lesson for all the other companies contemplating their own course of action.

That’s the Voltaire MBA: “you have to execute an admiral from time to time, in order to encourage the others.”

For hundreds of years, rich, powerful people have observed their colleagues’ abuses and thought, “They only pull that shit on peasants — but if they did it to me, I could sue them for everything!”

This led to an obvious course of action: strike a bargain with the mutilated, ruined peasants to finance their suit against the toff that so abused them, in exchange for a (large) share of the proceeds. Medieval courts called this champerty; today, we call it litigation finance: investing in other peoples’ grievances against deep-pocketed monsters, in the expectation of reaping huge cash payouts.

On paper, litigation finance seems like a neat solution to a messy problem. The bigger a company is, the worse the abuses it commits — and the more it can be made to pay for its sins. The normal economics of litigation are turned upside-down: rather than avoiding the largest companies, you pursue them. This is the Willie Sutton MBA: “That’s where the money is.”

Litigation finance is a large and growing chunk of the finance sector. For about a decade, hedge funds and private equity have been bankrolling law-firms that represent people who’ve been mangled by corporations, keeping the money flowing through whatever delays and entanglements the target throws up:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/magazine/should-you-be-allowed-to-invest-in-a-lawsuit.html?smid=tw-share

Litigation finance can be thought of as the no-win/no-fee “ambulance chaser” business on steroids. While a local lawyer can make a tidy living going after slip-and-falls and fender-benders, splitting the proceeds with their clients, a firm backed by a huge investment fund can do the same to companies with billions in the bank and hundreds of millions on the line.

Litigation finance is also closely related to impact litigation, which is when a nonprofit uses charitably raised funds to chase corporations and governments through the courts to establish precedents that overturn bad laws or pave the way for future judgments. Impact litigation can be thought of as the trailblazer for litigation finance: for-profit lawsuits are risk averse and stick to pursuing cases that have a high likelihood of eventually succeeding, while impact litigators are a kind of legal entrepreneur, advancing new, uncertain legal theories in the hopes of making new law. Once that law is created, litigation finance can drum up thousands of similarly situated plaintiffs and sue tons of companies on the same theory, citing the new precedent.

Litigation finance’s first big scores was going after med-tech and pharma companies. A lax regulatory environment allowed medical companies to market deadly products that maimed or killed people wholesale — think Vioxx, vaginal meshes or metal-on-metal hip replacements (a doc about this, The Bleeding Edge, will give you persistent nightmares):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bleeding_Edge

Suing the companies that killed your family or permanently disabled you is a slow and ugly process, but it’s a lot more certain than asking Congress to patch the loopholes the company that hurt you exploited, or hoping that a future President will appoint an agency head who gives a shit, and that the Senate will confirm them. And since money talks and bullshit walks, corporations that can’t pay dividends or do stock buybacks because they owe all their cash to their victims will suffer in the stock market, and their rivals will clean house and tread carefully.

Which brings me to the latest turn in litigation finance: climate litigation. As more and more money has sloshed into ESG funds that are supposed to make money by investing in ethical, climate-friendly businesses, the idea of suing giant oil companies and other wreckers has grown more attractive. 18 months ago, Businessweek covered the nascent-but-growing phenomenon:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/09/grievance-factory/#champerty

That growth has only continued. With more and larger ESG funds chasing returns, there’s a lot more money available to represent, say, poisoned indigenous people in the global south whose ancestral lands have been rendered an uninhabitable hellscape by a mining or petrochemical company. The returns from these cases aren’t correlated with wider economic trends: whether the market is up down, it makes no difference to the size of the judgment or settlement that is extracted in the end.

A new piece in the Financial Times by Camilla Hodgson does an excellent job rounding up the state of play in litigation finance, starting with the oil giant PTTEP paying $102m to 15,000 Indonesian farmers to settle claims stemming from a massive, ocean-killing oil spill in 2019:

https://www.ft.com/content/055ef9f4-5fb7-4746-bebd-7bfa00b20c82

The firm that financed the suit is Harbour Litigation Funding, and they paid for a lot of shoe-leather lawyering, sending reps on off-road motorbikes to each of the farmers’ plots to sign them up. The case cost more than $21m, and Harbour creamed $53.5m off the top of the settlement from PTTEP — about 40% of the total.

Those numbers are pretty compelling investment story: there aren’t a lot of opportunities to make a >100% return on a $21m investment in 15 years — let alone investments that let you claim to be bringing justice to poor farmers who’ve been abused by rapacious corporate murderers.

Other cases are still ongoing: mining giant BHP is facing a £36b class action case over the 2015 collapse of Brazil’s Fundão dam, which released poisoned mine-tailings into waterways serving millions of people. 700,000 plaintiffs are in the class, and the investors, Prisma Capital (Brazil) and North Wall Capital (UK) have already fronted £70m pursuing the case.

There is a vast inventory of cases like these, just lying around, waiting for someone to stake a claim. One barrier is that most of the world’s large law firms are conflicted out of pursuing these cases — they represent these same companies in other actions. But a new sector of specialized, un-conflicted firms is growing up, and tackling more and more of these cases.

These firms are chasing relatively easy claims, but there’s an even bigger fish out there, waiting to be caught: class actions against carbon-intensive companies, especially coal and oil companies, for their knowing contributions to the global climate emergency. These corporations are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars, and they have inflicted trillions in harms. There’s gold in them thar wildfires.

The FT cites experts who predict a massive wave of litigation finance climate suits in the next 2–3 years, and notes an increasing tempo of shareholder motions demanding that big oil and mining companies disclose their litigation risks in their investor reports. This is a very compelling idea, a kaiju boss-fight in which we recruit monsters to fight other monsters. It’s such a fun idea that I actually wrote a novel about it, 2009’s Makers, in which corporate misconduct that has not yet reached the statute of limitations becomes the new oil, prompting a huge investment bubble:

https://craphound.com/category/makers/

But is the answer to a bad guy with a law firm a good guy with a law firm? There are certainly some ways this can go very wrong (many of which end up in Makers). Back in 2015, Cathy O’Neil published an excellent critique of litigation finance in the context of vaginal mesh cases:

https://mathbabe.org/2015/09/01/litigation-finance-a-terrible-idea/

O’Neill’s point is that incentives matter. The incentive for a litigation finance fund is to extract settlements, not win justice. Time and again, we’ve seen how a financial tactic can be severed from a societal strategy — like how GDP can be goosed to spectacular heights without improving national prosperity.

There’s even a name for this phenomenon: Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” The finance sector is spookily good at decoupling positive societal outcomes from positive investor outcomes. The real answer to medical companies that mutilate women with vaginal meshes, or destroy the planet with CO2, is criminal sanctions and regulation, not private lawsuits.

That said, I think there’s a case for the one leading to the other. Right now, climate wreckers devote very large sums to preventing effective action on climate. Suborning regulators and politicians all over the world isn’t cheap. If we take away the money they’ve saved up for this project through stonking, eye-watering judgments, and if we convince the capital markets not to give them any more money lest it be immediately extracted to pay for more redress of a litany of grievances, then perhaps we can deprive them of the capacity of corrupt our political process.

One way to understand whether something is a genuine threat to a company’s power is to look at how viciously the company attacks it. If you doubt that unions could do good for workers, just take a peep at the all-out violent blitzes that Amazon and Starbucks mount in the face of union drives. I mean, imagine if the Democratic Party took unions half as seriously as the GOP!

The corporate lobby exhibits the same terror over plaintiff-side lawsuits as it does over unions. A massive, decades-long campaign to villify plaintiff-side lawyers has convinced many of us that corporations are the victims of the legal system, rather than its masters. The PR campaign is surprisingly effective, despite its reliance on lies about the “McDonald’s hot coffee lawsuit” and other urban legends:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/hot-coffee/#mcgeico

Corporate plunderers are terrified of being dragged into court by their victims, and devote titanic amounts of blood and treasure into making it harder and harder to do so. On the “the more scared the are, the better” metric, litigation finance is a slam dunk.

But winning a case isn’t the same as getting a judgment or disciplining a firm. When Steven Donziger won a landmark judgment against Chevron on behalf of indigenous people whose lands and bodies had been permanently poisoned, the company struck back:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/02/free-steven-donziger/#free-donziger

Chevron bribed a judge in Ecuador to claim that Donziger had rigged the case, then brought a case in the US against Donziger for racketeering, judge-shopping to get judge Lewis A Kaplan on their case. Kaplan is a former tobacco industry lawyer who never met a corporate criminal he didn’t love, and when the SDNY prosecutor declined to press charges against Donziger because the case was absurd, Kaplan appointed a private lawyer — whose firm also acted for Chevron! — to act as prosecutor. The case against Donziger was obviously trumped up — the Ecuadoran judge who accused him of corruption later recanted and multiple countries’ Supreme Courts upheld the judgment Donziger won against Chevron. Nevertheless, Kaplan got Donziger locked up under house arrest for years, and even got him banged up in Riker’s for a time. Donziger’s lost his law license and his clients are still awaiting judgment.

This is the best law that money can buy, and Chevron has a lot of money. The massive expenditures needed to railroad Donizer were a pittance compared to the $9.5b judgment Chevron owed its victims in Ecuador.

The lesson of Donziger is that these companies won’t go genrly to their graves. They are enormously, unimaginably wealthy and act with the ruthlessness born of greed, which makes mere sadism pale by comparison. Litigation finance is exciting and promising, but it’s only a tactic — and it’s a tactic that’s always in danger of being turned against the goal it nominally serves. The people funding litigation finance don’t want to save the world — they just want to get rich. They can and will change sides if someone can make the business case for doing so.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/06/thats-where-the-money-is/#champerty

[Image ID: A mirrored office tower bearing the Exxon logo. One face of the office tower is a graffiti-covered ATM. Before the tower is a giant pile of bricks of oversized US $100 bills in paper wrappers. The ATM screen depicts a smouldering Deep Water Horizon oil platform.]

Image:

Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 — 

Joe Shlabotnik (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/joeshlabotnik/2299501806/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[marvelslut16]

Acquaint Yourself With The Avengers

Prompt number: 29 "That's all? Easy."

Fandom: Marvel

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Avenger!reader

Rating: E(veryone)

Word count: 4.2k+

Warnings: Maybe some swearing. Slow Burn? Reality TV show hate. Bucky (and readers') self hatred. Talk of death.

A/N: Hey guys! I feel like I've been gone forever- work is killing me! But I'm back for Fictober and I'm really hoping I'll finally do the whole month. This is part 1 of 2 I think- but I'm open to writing more in this universe. Part two will be up in a few days if not tomorrow. I have never watched a reality TV show, so please bare with me for the mistakes I no doubt made.

“This has to be a joke,” you deadpan, throwing the joke of a contract onto the table in front of you. Steve murmurs in agreement on your left, and an increasingly uncomfortable Bucky shifts in his seat to Steve’s left. “Tony, reality shows are crap. What were you thinking?”

“This is coming from higher up than me,” he rubs his temples, giving away his exasperation. Over the years Tony started to slowly step out of the spotlight, no longer seeking out media coverage. “It’s directly from Fury, and the few Congress members that are still on our side. Since the Accord drama our ratings have been dipping, we need them to see that underneath it all we’re just human.”

“And if I don’t agree to it?” your voice hardens as you have a staring contest with the billionaire. 

“Then you’re out.”

“So you’re telling me if I don’t exploit my life, if we all don’t exploit our lives- we’re kicked to the curb. Just like that? Years of work and helping people just flushed down the toilet?” you’re on the verge of angry tears.

Your mother had drilled into your brain since you were a young impressionable child, that reality shows were trash, that they did more harm than good. The worse things people did on these shows the more famous they got, it teaches young children that they’ll get rewarded for their bad behavior. You wonder what she would think of you now, about to agree to become that trash just so you can continue to help the people that are bound to talk shit about each and every one of your friends online. 

“I agree with (Y/N/N),” Steve finally speaks up, quickly glancing at Bucky’s clenched fists. “Bucky shouldn’t be subjected to having twenty cameras shoved in his face, not so soon after rejoining society.”

It’s been a month since Bucky came to live with everyone at the newly built compound, he had spent the previous three months after the Accords in Wakanda receiving the best help Shuri could provide. You wouldn’t say that you and Bucky are friends, but you two are definitely friendlier than he is with most of the team. You’ve never pushed him to talk, you two can sit in peaceful silence, something Sam does regularly because of his experience with PTSD and the benefits of talking about it. 

“You’re just worried that more people are going to start speculating that you're dating him,” Sam joins the conversation, referencing the newest gossip article published today. Some ‘news’ site wrote a fifteen paragraph article speculating on a non-existent romance between the super soldiers, stemming from one single photo of Steve standing half in front of Bucky and pushing a camera out of his face on the way into a restaurant- for a team dinner. 

“On the topic of relationships, I don’t really want a bunch of cameras in mine and Clint’s,” Natasha speaks up from the other side of the table, Clint nods along.

“The last thing people need is hours of footage of Vis and me to analyze and bully us about, I already get enough judgment and hate,” Wanda adds, crossing her arms over her chest. Vis rests a comforting hand on her soldier, he’s learned enough about human emotions- especially Wanda’s- to know not to add anything. 

“You guys are overreacting,” Sam rolls his eyes. “Plus this could be a good time to promote things we’re passionate about, like group therapy for Veterans.” 

“It sounds fun,” Thor booms, you roll your eyes. No one will say anything about him, he’s conventionally attractive, has a sexy accent, and he’s a literal God. He has nothing but adoring fans. 

“All publicity is good publicity,” Tony grimaces. “We can’t go any lower, we’re already at the bottom of the barrel.”

“Peter’s lucky he’s a minor and anonymous,” you pout, out of the corner of your eye you can see Bucky crack a small smile. With that one final comment you're signing the contract, because at the end of the day you’ll do whatever it takes to be able to help those in need. Everyone has a similar vein of thought, all signing their own contracts. 

Later that night you're sitting in the living room with Bucky, the News is playing in the background, but neither of you had been paying it any mind. You’re too focused on coming up with worst case scenarios about the impending reality show. Bucky can practically hear the gears whirring in your head, he keeps glancing over at you to make sure you're okay. Not that you notice because you're too wrapped up in your own little world. 

“What if they edit it to make one of us the villain?” you ask out of nowhere, this is the first time you’ve broken the peaceful silence in the months you’ve been sitting with him. “Sorry, forget I said anything, I’m gonna head to bed.”

“It’ll be me,” Bucky whispers when you stand up from the couch. “They’ll take this opportunity to show everyone what a monster I am.”

“You aren’t a monster Bucky,” you squat down in front of him when you see that he’s staring at his lap. “You can’t be blamed for what Hydra made you do. And anyway, they usually pick an unsuspecting person on one of these shows and edit it so their words and actions are all twisted. They ruin people’s characters, not make hard hitting political statements.”

“You think they’ll target you?” he asks it like it’s a question, but it’s more of a statement. 

“Yeah I do,” you sigh, standing up and plopping on the couch beside Bucky for the first time. “I’m mysterious, or at least that’s what Tony and Peter keep telling me. I don’t have a big social media presence, I do my best to avoid the paparazzi when I go out, and I very rarely speak at press conferences. If they don’t make me the villain, I’m worried they’ll hyperfocus on me until I slip up and become one.”

“I think it’ll be Vision, since he’s a robot,” Bucky adds after a minute of silence, and you can’t help but smile at him.”

Before you know it, Wednesday rolls around, and the fifteen person crew shows up to invade your lives. You start to get overwhelmed by the ten cameras they are setting up, two in a confessional area, and the other three in the living room where you are all supposed to do your opening scripted talk- where Tony will explain why you guys are doing the reality show Acquaint Yourself With The Avengers. On top of those cameras, the crew are setting up hidden and security cameras to catch the action when they aren’t there filming on the main ones. Once you're all seated on the couches- your stuffed between Bucky and Sam- the PA, Alice, comes over to talk to you all.

“So filming will happen Thursday through Tuesday most weeks, unless a big event falls on an off day, crew leaves by ten PM at the latest, and the hidden cameras will go dormant after midnight. No children will be in the final product- as requested by Scott, we can evaluate on a case by case basis if any of the rest of you choose to have children down the line and want to show them. Are there any questions?” she asks, but gives a look that screams not to ask any. “Well if there aren’t any, we should get to shooting, we’re already twenty minutes behind.”

You say your two scripted lines in the beginning scene and then zone out through the rest, you’re a little worried your face will give your lack of enthusiasm away, but none of the crew says anything so you assume you're fine. Soon enough, you're dismissed, but not allowed to go far because the first interviews for all of you are about to take place in the dining room. You and Bucky both stay firmly planted on the couch while most of the others go to the kitchen to get something to drink, or lurk in the dining room to watch said interviews- Steve being the first to be interviewed. 

“Just act like the camera’s aren't there,” you say unhelpfully when you notice his gaze shifting uneasily from one camera to the next. In reality you too are struggling with them watching you from every possible angle. 

“That’s all? Easy,” Bucky deadpans, a laugh bursts out of your mouth and his eyes twinkle.

“Did you just make a joke,” you laugh again, this time far quieter. For the first time since the camera crew arrived you forget they’re there, too lost in this one real moment with Bucky, too lost in his gorgeous crystal blue eyes. It’s the first time you’ve ever seen him let his guard down with anyone other than Steve. 

“And if I did?” he asks playfully, leaning in closer to you, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. 

“Then I’d say do it more often, it’s a good look on you,” you grin back at him, and you're only broken out of your trance when Alice calls for Tony. 

She calls you after Tony, hair and makeup come rushing over to give tiny last minute adjustments to your appearance after you're seated in front of a ring light. You start to fidget with the hem of your shirt as the PA flips through her paper to get to her list of questions about you, the suspense just making your anxiety skyrocket.

“To start off we’re just going to ask some easy and basic questions to get you warmed up. So (Y/N), you’ve been with the Avengers since it was first formed, tell us what that’s been like, and make sure you put the question in your answer.”

“I’ve been with the Avengers since 2011, I was the second one Director Fury recruited, right after Tony. I’ve loved all of the good deeds we have been able to do for people all over the world, and I’ve made some lifelong friendships too. It’s amazing being able to do something you love with the people you love.” 

“Good good,” Alice nods, looking down at her questions. “Now tell us how you feel about all of the new auditions to the team since then, and don’t hold back.”

“We’ve had some pretty great people join since the seven of us were originally put together, not only are they good, friendly people, but they are also all very skilled at what they do. I love watching the team grow, it just means that we have more skills and manpower to be able to help even more people,” Alice rolls her eyes at your response.

“For this next part we’re going to put up article headlines talking about how you’re the most private Avenger, even more so than Natasha. So just tell us why you’re so private.”

“There isn’t all that much to say, I’m just a private person,” Alice makes a keep going gesture from behind the camera. “I’ve always been pretty private and I was only thrust into the limelight when I joined the Avengers Initiative. I do my job to help people not to get recognition, that’s what my career has always been about. I never felt the need to post a lot of selfies online or make a tweet about the workout I just did. People are allowed to do those things, and there’s nothing wrong with that, I’ve just never understood why people would care what I’m doing in my day to day life.”

“Do you feel safe in the compound?” the question comes out of left field and you aren’t sure why it’s being brought up.

“Of course I feel safe! I’m in a highly secured compound with my fellow Avengers, there’s nothing safer.”

“One last question, everyone is dying to know, what’s your relationship status?” Alice even seems like she’s interested in the answer.

“Like I said before, I am a very private person, but I suppose I could answer this. For the whole two people wondering about my relationship status, I am single at the moment. I’ve just been really focusing on my job, and I’ve learned that people don’t necessarily like coming second to my job and my friends.”

“Thank you,” Alice smiles. “Can you send Bucky over next?”

You do as you’re told, search out Bucky and send him on his way to the dining room. Instead of heading to sweet freedom, your room, you loiter and watch Bucky’s intro interview. “Sergeant Barnes, what has it been like joining the Avengers and how has everyone treated you?”

“It’s been okay and mostly everyone-” Bucky gets cut off by Alice.

“Make sure you put the question in your answer.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bucky is clearly starting to get agitated with all of the focus and cameras on him.

“Say something like joining the Avengers has been really good, it’s helping me get better with teamwork again blah blah blah. The team has welcomed me in and it’s reminiscent of my time in the Army, something like that,” Bucky gives one nod, turning back to the camera in front of him. 

“Joining the Avengers has been really good, it’s helping me get better with teamwork again,” you bring your hands to your mouth to stifle your laugh at Bucky repeating you word for word. “The team has welcomed me in and it’s reminiscent of my time in the Army.”

“Okay,” Alice draws the word out at Bucky’s lack of originality. “Who would you say your best friends on the team are?”

“Steve,” Bucky responds without thinking, and Alice tells him to mention at least one other person. “Other than Steve, probably (Y/N).” 

You're shocked, but flattered, by his response. Sure, he may have just said that because you were right there and staring at him, but maybe he meant it. Maybe all of those nights on the couch with him meant something to him.

“Oh really?” asks, clearly liking whatever spin she’ll eventually put on this conversation in editing. 

“Yeah, she um, she was the first one to really welcome me and spend time with me,” he rubs his neck nervously. 

“Just like (Y/N), you’re really private too,” you take a step forward seeing that the questioning is starting to put Bucky on edge. 

“Cause it’s no one's business,” Alice, thankfully, doesn’t push. 

“Are you ever worried you may do something to put your team members in danger?”

That’s enough!” your voice comes out firmer and louder than you imagined it would, drawing the attention of the rest of the Avengers. “Bucky isn’t going to sith there and take your abuse, his interview is done.”

You hold your hand out to him, and he jumps to grasp it, gripping it like it’s his lifeline. You’ve never touched Bucky before, and you keep your brain from running at how warm and nice his right hand feels in your own. You lead him out of the room, away from the prying eyes, and the now constant camera presence. You pull Bucky to your favorite room in the compound, the library. You deposit him on the comfy chaise lounge in the middle of the room while you go grab two books. You come back with Harry Potter for you, and The Hobbit for him, you had heard him talking to Steve about the movies once and learned he read it back in the day. 

Little do you know, the littlest action of knowing Bucky’s favorite book on top of the way you stood up for him out there means more to Bucky than he’ll ever know how to express. It thaws his frozen heart just a little.

[woefully-undercaffeinated]

What to do when something illegal happens at work

When your boss does something illegal at work, it's common to freeze up because you're not sure what to do. Here are a few tips for how to handle those situations during and after:

While it is happening:

Keep yourself safe. In the moment, your first priority is always to keep yourself and others from physical harm and out of danger as much as possible. If any other advice I give you conflicts with that, your safety takes priority.

Make sure you know where you are. If you think your safety might be at risk, getting your bearings can be critically important. Take note of potential exit routes, hazards, the flow of traffic (both vehicle and foot traffic), cameras, and any safe areas you know of. Later, knowledge of your exact location may be very important in reconstructing events.

Check the time. Knowing exactly when something happened, and how long it took, will be extremely valuable.

Look around for witnesses, and try to bring some over if possible. Witnesses will both reduce the likelihood of more outrageous behavior and help you to take action afterwards. Do your best to remember who was there.

Say "please let me finish" every time you're interrupted, and count the number of times it happened. Bullies love to interrupt people at the first sign of disagreement, and then later they'll claim that nobody disagreed with them when instead nobody could get in a word edgewise. Saying "please let me finish" calls out the fact that they were interrupting, and a count of the times you were interrupted will help you protect yourself from being misinterpreted later.

Avoid agreeing to anything or signing anything if possible. You have the right to review any document that you're asked to sign, which usually includes taking the document and having it examined by an attorney. If you're being threatened with serious consequences if you don't sign immediately, write "signed under duress". If they're asking for a verbal agreement, try to get them to accept a "let me think about it/check my to-do list/etc" rather than a hard "yes". Even if the thing you'd be agreeing to is something you're okay with, it's still important not to agree to things when you don't feel like you're allowed to say "no"; in stressful situations, our judgment can be seriously compromised, and allowing yourself to be bullied into saying "yes" will set a bad precedent for further interactions.

After it's over, as soon as you're in a safe place:

Complete the WTWFU checklist

Send a follow-up email summarizing your understanding of what was communicated. It can be as simple as "just to ensure we understood each other, what I got was that you were telling me/us that [we'll be disciplined if we discuss our wages/contacting a union is a fireable offense/our pay will be docked if anyone submits a complaint to OSHA/etc], is that correct?". If there is information that protects you, such as a health condition or pregnancy you need accommodation for or a prior agreement that is being violated, include it in your email even if the company already knows. CC HR and any coworkers who were present and BCC your personal email*. Forward any responses to your personal email as well*.

Rescind any agreements you made. Either in the same email as step #2 or in a separate email, depending on what you think is appropriate, say "I didn't feel like I could safely say 'no' in that situation, so I'd like to rescind my earlier agreement until I've had some time to reconsider." If it's something you think you'd have otherwise agreed to, try to offer a time frame for an actual decision. CC HR and BCC your personal email*.

Collect any evidence you can, and make note of any evidence that exists but isn't accessible to you. This includes emails about the issue, any photos that were already taken or that you can safely and legally take,

If something illegal was done or hinted at, contact the applicable regulatory agency as soon as possible with all of the information above.

Consider arranging a consult with an employment law attorney -- consults aren't the same as retainers, they're considerably cheaper (or sometimes free, depending on your income and the possibility of a lawsuit) and can either turn into ongoing representation or just be a one-time service.

* Don't include information that you have a legitimate duty to safeguard, such as customer data, protected health information, or non-public market-affecting information. This does not include any information pertaining to working conditions, your compensation, regulatory compliance, or workplace safety -- the company isn't allowed to demand that you keep those a secret. Either try to get the point across without including the specific information that's being safeguarded, or censor it by replacing it with two underscores per replacement with generic descreptors as necessary (i.e. 'I have safety concerns about the release of our secret robotics project on January 10' becomes 'I have safety concerns about the release of our __[project]__ on __[date]__').

[yutaholic]

Thank you for even making that post because I honestly feel like I’m going to explode!! Championing every issue is EXHAUSTING. I have such empathy fatigue. Bombardment of “rules”, behavioral guidelines, services, companies, networks + food brands & PEOPLE to boycott ALL THE TIME. Fandom is space many of us come to unplug from reality…it’s certainly my hyperfixation & ppl be like “well then get another one because you shouldn’t support–” IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT. Fuck. I can’t take it anymore. Calls to action being in EVERY single place have weakened my mental state even more than it was before which was already on “pending disability” level of severe & now I’m just. burned t-absolute-f out….at everything!! I can literally FEEL myself unraveling. Kpop stans & their toxic activism can go to hell. They’re so worried about making sure to condemn others for “not doing enough” or being bad people, that they don’t even realize their actions are making them into bad people. This shit takes a toll on mental health, there is science behind this, it is real and what happens to human beings when inundated with constant terrible news, and it’s not just being ~too privileged to care~ but these performative mfs have no concept of blacklisting anymore and just want to assume the absolute worst about someone, call them names & wish harm on folks who are at the end of their ropes! It’s maddening! So even if compassion fatigue isn’t why you didn’t go out of your way to Denounce and Drag™️ him (bc you totally have the right to simply not want to do that on a fanfic blog!) I’m just glad someone else stated that this is supposed to be an ESCAPE. fuck.

Baby, burnout will fuck you up. Don't do that to yourself. Take the time you need and recoup. Life is a constant war and you can afford to lose a battle here and there to focus on your own health and well-being. Getting yourself back into a good place mentally will be a huge win. We both know the ppl obsessed with performative activism aren't doing anything from a place of compassion. The real ones are out there making change, not sending people death threats online from the comfort and safety of their mommy's basement.

When I posted the pic of NCT Dream and Big Time Rush, I wrote in the tags how BTR was something my sister and I loved and bonded over. We watched the show even though it was obviously a kids show and we were both adults. It was just something that gave us joy. My sister passed away years ago and anything BTR-related will make me teary because I think about how much we laughed together over it.

So the first thing I get are messages over how problematic BTR is, that I should delete the post or I'm pro-genocide if I don't dislike them. Ngl that made me so upset because I got a bunch of faceless people trying to taint some precious memories of me and my sister. If they came at me trying to educate me on things I didn't know that would be different, but it's straight to judgment and hatred toward me over something I posted that was totally innocent.

Meanwhile I get criticized for posting about a kpop group instead of reblogging every call to action post. I donate my money to these causes, but I don't post about it because I don't need my ass kissed for doing what I know to be right. I am 1000% sure the anons in my inbox that try to police me have never given a dime to anything, but are policing people's blogs for not reblogging posts or talking about it more.

I feel bad that I haven't been very active on here this year so I try to come on when I have some free time to interact with you guys. I make a silly post about Doyoung and get anons tearing into me for it like I'm his social media manager. Okay so because the world is going to shit we aren't allowed to enjoy anything?? Can't make jokes about anything. Can't show support for anything. Just wrong on every fucking count.

Believe me I am so goddamn aware of how lucky I am that I can sit here and say I'm very privileged that I live comfortably in the life I have. I know what's going on in the world and I do my part to help where I can, but I also have to keep functioning. I don't want every minute of my life to be seeped in anger, I did that for a long time and it not only eats away at you, it makes you ineffective in actually changing the things making you angry in the first place.

This was just supposed to be a blog where I posted my stories. One of the few places I could go and not constantly be reminded of how fucked up the world is. I've always said that people who told me reading a fic of mine made their day a little better or helped them escape for a bit were always my favorite. That was what I came here for and I loved being able to share the tiniest moments of peace and quiet with others through stories with guaranteed happy endings.

I'm frustrated because I have 4 drafts ready to go next year. I got the story posts done and made all the headers. But I don't want to post them. I have no problem admitting I'm selfish and spiteful. Even though I can turn off anon, I can't block these miserable people and I don't want them reading my stuff. They don't get to consume my content and then tell me to off myself right after.

A massive fuck you to those of you that ruined this blog for me.

[archivalofsins]

Hey now that some folks are out of bounds- "LET'S PARTY"!

Gunsli what do you mean? Remember when I said I haven't talked about what verdict I've personally wanted for Kotoko. That's because I couldn't care less, I like both options when it comes to the narrative of Milgram.

I am in no way condoning Kotoko's behavior I'm solely saying this from a narrative perspective.

Let me explain through exploring how I view the options~

So why would some want Kotoko Guilty?

Well the reason for that is simple she jumped some people's favorites and could do it again if voted Innocent.

Haruka and Mu are still sitting at Guilty. Their fans have a vested interest in not indulging Kotoko's mindset further. Secondarily she threatened to kill Mikoto. Thirdly she's shown through her second voice drama and song that she no longer believes in Es' judgment and is vying for the role of guard herself. Anyone who recognizes any of these things and are opposed to them happening will vote her guilty.

Meaning fans of Haruka, Mu, and Es all have a reason to be wary of Kotoko getting a second Innocent verdict.

Though in the words of Utena,

"But was that really such a good idea?"

Kotoko's trials are questioning the degree of separation necessary needed to excessively punish another. Because no one knew her victims when this started it was easier to forgive her behavior. I mean we only have one side of the story and she's so passionate against evil doers. Why would anyone not take her at face value.

So, what will be gained from saying I'm okay with you jumping strangers who I viewed as in the wrong without knowing a thing about them based solely on your word. Yet, I know the people here I know them well and I think some of them are nice. These people didn't deserve the way you treated them.

Though what makes the prisoners better than any of Kotoko's victims? Is it such a good idea to present that people only matter dependent on how well we know them? Is that any different from for example Shidou's mindset.

"Someone’s value cannot be the same as another."/"Should choose between superiority or inferiority."

Is there a sense of equality if one were to instead just,

"Hate evil as the evil that it is."

Or are both ways of thinking to binary and rigid to fully be acceptable. Are the audience hypocrites in finding Kotoko Innocent for killing killers we don't know and then finding her guilty for simply harming some killers that some of us feel like we know.

That's the question of her trials. Do people hate the sin or just the sinner? That's the question of Milgram overall. How much can another person judge someone. Over what ammount of time will one become more lenient or forgiving on someone.

And should one even be more lenient on another person just because of how long they've known them or how well their beliefs allign with their own?

In the same vein people would want Kotoko innocent for the same reasons she stated she dislikes. Not because they believed what she's doing is right or acceptable but just because they like her. She would be innocent for no reason other than being a killer we've gotten to know. Enforcing once again that she is no different from anyone else here. A thing that she has been shown to be upset about and afraid of through her second mv.

She'd just be innocnet because the majority would think they know her well enough. That's she's good deep down, she just made a mistake, was a little too extreme. Even though her actions were bad it doesn't mean she is. To be forgiven under those circumstances. Oh, she'd really hate that I'd imagine.

Simply because she wants to find others that understand her mindset and behavior people that view these things in the same and truly believe she's right. Finding her Innocent while still stating her actions were wrong in this case finding what she did forgivable wouldn't be enough. Now she could assume that everyone found her innocnet because they agreed with her so hard.

However she was innocent by a pretty large percent last time and her mv still shows her anxieties around her own innocence... So, I personally doubt that'd be the case.

So I feel like being innocent again would just strengthen her feelings of being treated like the rest. Especially considering even more people are innocent including Mikoto. It just doesn't seem like it would give her the feeling of drowing in the knowledge that she's right that she's stated to want from the jump.

So, I think in response she'd do exactly what she's doing now and what was implied she'd do from her first cover Anti Beat. Lash out in order to hide her own insecurity and take some control over the situation. The best way for her to do that is to put herself in Es' position to prove how above the others she really is.

Which that outcome would be pretty cool too actually.I would like to see how they'd follow through on the foreshadowing in Yonah if she were Innocent. Even if I do have a good idea on how they would.

Personally I just think she'd lash out even more just to prove to herself that she's better. Because she simply always feels inferior on some level. Like it's not difficult to tell that she doubts her own feelings and philosophy. Especially since she seems to need to be told she's right because she already feels she's wrong but she hates being told she's right. because she knows better than anyone how wrong she is.

So, she'd just keep stepping over the boundaries of others and put them in a position beneath her. The same thing we see her try to do with Es over the course of her second trial just to assert that she's doing what must be done. She's doing what others are too weak to do themselves all to stregthen her own feelings of vindication.

It's a lose/lose situation no matter how I look at it. That's what makes it so lovely. When nothing can be right that in turn means nothing can be wrong. These are just events that are happening att that point. The label of good and bad is completely up to the observer.

That's the best part of Milgram. It goes exactly where the audience is willing to take it.

Oh but Gunsli you wouldn't want Kotoko to run the prison and Es to just defer to her would you? That could be bad. You wouldn't want Mikoto to possibly die? You wouldn't want anything bad to happen to Haruka and Mu the only two guilty? It's not about what the fuck I or anyone else wants.

It's about the characters wills after the last bell tolls everything that happens next is up to the sort of people they naturally are.

Isn't that exhilirating. Isn't the most equisite kindness a story and author can give. The opportunity for the reader to enact their own will on the media and the media enact its will on the audience in kind?Isn't there something so miraculous about that. It's a thing of immeasurable beauty a once and life time experience. At the same time isn't it also the most disgutsting thing one could ever do to others and themselves.

Doesn't everyone want to see it- What lies at the end of Milgram? The culmination of all these choices all these clashing wills. Kotoko's trial is so engaging to me because it sets the stage for trial three perfectly. It's interesting because Innocent or Guilty the cog will still turn.

The worst part is the question what is judgment? What good does it do? What would Innocent serve? To be told you're right or acceptable just because someone assumes they know you and sees the good in you. That they know what you'd do and who you are deep down. It's soul crushing isn't it? It can be painful can't it? Even heartbreaking.

The hero some see are they real was the victim? If a person doesn't push what can they learn? What will one do when the things they don't yet know become things they can't unknow? Will they lash out in anger saying this wasn't what I thought it would be? Will they dig themselves in even deeper? Try to force that thing into being the shape they wanted it to be?

To me the fact is with this case Innocent and Guilry are quite frankly the same thing. If she's guilty she's no better than the others she judged and if she's innocent with the rest of them that still means she's no better than they are. She'll never be drowning in that feeling of being right unless everyone is guilty except her.

I find that mindset of Kotoko's that insecurity which ultimately stops her from accepting any kindness. So, very touching and human. Though it's ultimately going to fuck us all over no matter the outcome. It's tragic she was last in line. So tragic that she was put there-

Jackalope must be laughing about that placement choice just a bit. The same with Muu who wanted everyone innocent. Maybe if they just showed up a bit earlier the things they desired would have been possible.

Too bad, so tragic... I wonder just who put them there again.

Regardless of if one knows the outcome. Despite what one speculates. I wonder... Should ones morals change based on that sort of thing. Personally I think a person should do what they'd regret least. That's usually how I do things.

This isn't a post I spent days on or anything just some thoughts on the verdict outcomes for Kotoko specifically. Plus what I think the logic around it is. I personally think both choices lead to bad things for each prisoner not just Kotoko. So, this isn't the only trial like this but it was funny for it to be the one where this is most apparent to me.

I'm really interested in both options because I'm the sort that would like to have both if possible. It's so incredibly unfair that there's no way to see it all here.

[hualianff]

Fisherman HX

Fisherman HX who finds an injured creature tangled up in an abandoned net. Not only does HX recognize this creature as a merman, but also as the infamous sinker of numerous shady ships.

He decides to help this merman anyway, their wounds look quite severe.

HX: “how bad can he be-?”

HC: [weakly hisses and tries ripping HX’s hands off]

HX: “GAH”

Nevertheless, HC’s wounds are too many and too deep. And he can only defend himself so much while trapped in the net. Eventually, he lets HX pull him up into the boat. 

HX can’t believe he’s actually following through with this idiotic plan. He slowly unsheathes his trusty dagger, making sure the merman can see he means no bodily harm, just needs to begin cutting up the net. 

This merman can’t seem to understand HX’s words but still gives him the most judgmental looks. Especially when they’re back in HX’s cottage, the human attempting to apply ointment to the bleeding scratches on his back, and some gashes on his tail. 

However, the merman’s mobility seems to worsen over the next few hours. HX curses. There must have been poison involved. It would take him a couple days to properly identify it and concoct the appropriate cure. Because of the merman’s mild paralysis, HX literally has to tend to the merman’s whims. 

A week goes by. The two have established a somewhat friendly relationship. And as it turns out, HC can understand human tongue

HC: “you fuckin’ loser”

HX, getting whiplash: “exCUSE ME!?”

HX decides to bring HC on his next fishing trip. The merman’s condition has improved enough. Plus, if HC can communicate with him, he should be able to offer advice on how to catch more fish to sell in the next market. 

So here HX is, patiently waiting for the telling wiggling of his small nets below. HC is splayed out on the other end of the boat, chilling and ultimately making HX’s life harder.

It doesn’t get more exciting than this-

SPLASH!

A body shoots out of the water and yoinks HX overboard. The creature drags HX beneath the surface, constricting his limbs and going for his neck. 

A series of aggressive clicks echoes underwater. 

HX: [so this is how i die?]

One second, HX is being drowned by what is clearly another merman, the next moment he’s somehow back above the surface and gasping for air.

HC now insistently clicks at the other merman, who squawks then hisses as he brandishes HX’s limp body like a ragdoll. 

HX: “Whasss goin’ on?”

HC: “Shut up, don’t say anything.”

He chirps one last time to the other merman. 

***

HC beckons his mate closer, speaking in merman tongue. 

“Love, let the human go. He saved me.”

Floating next to the boat, XL bares his teeth, his expression one of disbelief. 

“Are you sure? I can still drown him if you want. He’s just a human,”  XL says, still half-strangling HX. 

Centuries ago, XL’s pod was brutally attacked by pirates. As an adventurous, young merman, XL had swam too close to the surface, consequently leading the pirates to his podmates. A few survived, but XL never forgets.

He will never let his vendetta against humans go.

Funny how things work out. 

While XL was born a merman, HC was turned by XL when they mated. This explains why HC knows human tongue and has a better understanding of human behavior. It also helps him sink even the most advanced ships.

XL and HC started off extremely hostile, HC a merchant who sailed the waters XL resided in. HC even has a scar from their first meeting, which he jokes that it’s a love bite or something. HC always wore tough clothing so XL’s jaws couldn’t pierce through. 

Feisty XL hadn’t hesitated to chomp HC multiple times.

Alas, the fates had plans for them. Over the course of five years, the merman and human fell deeply in love. HC had then offered his life for XL’s to have, and the decision to mate was made. 

The transformation process is a difficult one, and has a very low chance of survival. It involves dark ancient magic; a ritual consisting of feeding from human flesh for one week straight; then drowning until near death before being saved with a kiss from a merman.

When HC’s two legs took the form of a beautiful, massive, crimson and black tail, the pair had lovingly intertwined tails while wrapping their arms around each other. 

Many, many eras have come and went. XL taught HC the merman ways from how to swim at incredible speeds to how to avoid humans and the violence they bring. 

The mated pair have been together since, swimming beneath the ocean’s surface, inseparable. 

Now, XL has successfully stalked the human that took his mate. He doesn’t understand human tongue, and is prepared to slaughter this human and offer the flesh for HC to devour to recover. 

Fortunately, HC explains the situation, and HX’s life is spared. 

HC: “He’s honestly not that bad.”

XL: “...did you misbehave while you were with him?”

HC: “Not a single eating utensil left, water everywhere on his floors, and I managed to break his… he said teevee?”

XL, purring: “That’s my boy. ”

HX is still held in the feisty merman’s clutches. After a snickering string of clicks from the new merman, HX questions: “What is he saying?”

“Oh, he says thank you for helping me,” HC answers.

What XL actually said: “Why is his haircut so ugly?”

Soon enough, XL hoists himself up into HX’s boat. He deposits HX on the floor, then wiggles over to HC. 

“Missed you,” XL says, petting his mate’s hair. HC responds by nuzzling his forehead against XL’s. 

HX lays on his back, staring up at the sky. He now has two merman cuddling in his boat, and exactly zero fish have been caught.

“Why am I here?”

A few days later, XL approaches HX’s boat again and actually does offer human flesh for HC. HX gags and looks away as HC happily tears into the gory flesh.

***

w/ @no-one-says-hi

[donnerpartyofone]

I keep thinking about this experience I had where it was apparent that somebody was attracted to me, and after I learned a little more about him I realized that he was chiefly attracted to a quality I find pretty repulsive and that was definitely not something I deliberately cultivated, that was in fact something I struggle to suppress. And even though I had no interest in that person I had all sorts of strange feelings about this experience: On the one hand I really resented that someone would like me for a reason I found pretty gross, and this made me feel fetishized or something in a way that was very uncool in my view. Then on the other hand I wondered if I was just being a snob and I should realize that everything about oneself can be lovable...and inevitably I'd just swing back to finding the whole thing kind of insulting. It's like being told, I don't know, "I love how dirty you are and how bad you stink," the fact that the speaker means it as a high compliment doesn't mean you have to appreciate it, just as you're under no obligation to be grateful for attention in general. Plus I don't think I can do the whole unconditional love of the entire self thing, I think self-criticism is what actually drives me to improve and become more aware and responsible. And then there's matters of taste, he has a right to his preferences and so do I even if mine seem more judgmental or "negative" or something.

My last shrink, who was so incompetent that she triggered a rolling psych episode that got kind of scary, would do this abject positivity thing to me that literally made me crazy. I'd be trying to untangle some difficult experience and she'd just bombard me with all this stuff about what a good person I am or "what if it's not YOU that's wrong, what if THE WORLD is wrong!", and I'd think...OK fine but that's beside the point? I just wanted to talk through this thing that fucked me up but never mind, you're right, I'm OK You're OK and as long as we agree on that then nothing is worth discussing. And then I was trying to talk to her about how I used to have this major dysfunctional behavior that was derailing my life and I recognized this and got control of it and I'm really proud of myself for that, and my shrink just kept going "But why are you saying behavior X was BAD? Why does it have to be WRONG?" like she was really sad and disappointed that I was criticizing myself and I just wanted to scream in her face It's bad BECAUSE I SAY SO! I'm the one who was harmed by it WHICH I JUST TOLD YOU ALL ABOUT and that's a perfectly good reason for me to say it was WRONG!

TL;DR:

1. Sometimes things about yourself are crummy and it is totally rational and even a form of self-care (🤢) to judge these things and want to change them.

2. Don't involve people in your fetishes if they aren't expressly interested; this includes just making it kind of obvious that you like a casual, platonic acquaintance for an unpopular sexual reason. It may not make them feel as complimented as you personally think it should.

[theinfernalsanctuary]

Greetings all,

On a lighter note from my last post, I'd like to share with you all the three infernal sins from the Infernal Gospel. These are the three things we can do as theistic Satanists that blatantly go against our doctrine and poison our practice from the inside. They are referred to as sins, but don't worry, Lord Satan understands your humanity and that we sometimes make mistakes. Unless you continually and knowingly make these mistakes and refuse to fix them, you have nothing to worry about. Nevertheless, it is important for all those who wish to inherit the kingdom of Hell to be made aware of these transgressions so we can work on removing them from our everyday life.

The first infernal sin is False Judgment. A judgment is false when it is formed without data, experience, or unbiasedness. It is an opinion that exists based on nothing but emotional disturbance. These judgments are common in society and result in some of the cruelest injustices that could ever harm another person. We are called to assess all judgments we make towards other people and determine whether or not our judgment should be deemed false. For example just because somebody was rude to you once does not make them a bad person to deem them a bad person would be to make a false judgment and could therefore have negativeconsequencesfor that person. Though on the contrary if you see somebody repeatedly using racial slurs, being anti-Semitic, being homophobic, or transphobic it is perfectly fair to make the judgment that they are not a safe or good person to be around. Use your common sense in all things.

The second of the infernal sins is Arrogance, while an exaggerated ego is not uncommon nor inherently negative. It inhibits ones sound judgment. If the ego is nurtured without caution, it will grow into self aggrandizement, and in this arrogance becomes ignorance. We are called to humble ourselves. We are never done learning, and therefore, we should never act as though we are better than those who may have just begun their research. Look to teach and uplift those who may have just begun their learning. We are all Lord Satan's children, and he would only want us to treat each other as such.

The third and final infernal sin is Malice. The left-hand path does not promote violence nor malicious behavior, nor does it support those that bastardize its craft for hateful and ignorant agendas. We are called to always conduct ourselves in a respectful and dignified manner, and this, of course, includes in the way that we address Lord Satan, each other, and the denizens of Hell. It is up to us to seek out those amongst us who shame Lord Satan's name for the sake of bigotry or just to be edgy and contrarian and remove them from our spaces. Theistic Satanism is an actual religion, with actual followers and beliefs that guide us. There is no room for hate for hates sake here, nor is there room for blatant disrespectful actions or verbiage in reference to Lord Satan, the denizens of Hell, or each other.

May Lord Satan's light guide you even in the darkest places.

Ave Satanas!

[readingsby-valentina]

Thank you for writing in and bringing this up! //

Thank you for being receptive! I think it’s great to be positive and romanticize life, which I’m definitely guilty of doing. But I also think balance is essential especially when talking about someone (I’m assuming) no one here knows personally, otherwise it almost feels like a certain idea and image of Harry is being pushed with an agenda and to the detriment of keeping honesty, even if that’s not the intention.

Just for example, if someone wanted to raise the idea that Harry seems to surround himself with suspect people or he has publicly made questionable statements and this might speak to an element of his own character, the tone of the commentary here suggests that there would be enthusiastic pushback against that idea because it means “Harry = bad”, rather than an openness to exploring it with curiosity. It just feels stifling.

What you’re saying isn’t mumbo jumbo and I do understand your point about how focusing on the negative expands it, but the negative also provides opportunity, lessons and guidance. It’s a grounding point. The negative doesn’t exist just to make you feel like shit lol. If I have an argument with someone and they say things that cause negative feelings in me and I just ignore it and focus on things that make me feel better before processing the bad feelings, I miss out on the benefit of reflecting on why what they said caused that reaction in me. I miss the opportunity to get the gift out of the situation. If I avoid confronting the negative, I risk encountering the same negative pattern over again instead of transforming it into a positive. In terms of celebrities, this applies in how as a society we can tend to overlook elements or hints of their more unsavory behaviors and how this can create a particular standard for what is acceptable. What’s going on with Lizzo is a good and timely example of this (I’m not saying Harry is guilty of doing anything this extreme, just providing context).

I also feel like you have quite a number of Harry fans who read your blog because they are projecting and deep down they are hoping they’re his SM. I feel like this projecting and secret pining over Harry would be reduced, if he was presented in a more human way. It is very easy to romanticize Harry because at this material level he is a stranger to most people and there seems to be a concerted effort whether by himself and/or his team to make him this figure that can be everything to everyone, but that romanticizing can become a slippery slope to maladaptive fantasies, especially for fans wanting to be his destined one true love.

He is a lot of positive things but he is also a lot of negative things. He messes up. He makes mistakes. He’s opportunistic, maybe even greedy at times. He engages in behaviors that are harmful on a societal level. By his own admission, he is jealous and he has treated people in his life poorly. He can be irresponsible with his platform. He has unattractive traits. I don’t list these things to say he’s evil and deserves never ending hate and judgment, but when this part of him is overlooked the image of him is incomplete and biased. When he’s made out to be this beacon of perfection, who wouldn’t want to be the lucky one who gets to be with him? I’m not saying you should go the other way and judge him in the harshest possible light, give him zero grace and start a hate crusade against him, but a dose of realism would be healthy and compassionate to all in the bigger scheme. I’m projecting here for sure but it’s almost like every other relationship is secondary in the face of Harry and his mythical SM. Of course people are going to be jealous, that’s a normal human emotion and we’re still wired with the survival of the fittest mentality.

Harry isn’t special because he’s the chosen one by some highly ordained power; he’s “special” because he has all of our eyes on him. We make him special. He’s no more special than any other human the universe has created, and the universe that created him is the same universe that created all of us. He shouldn’t be placed above anyone. He should be humanized, not deified.

People who are being rude and insulting literally for the sake of it don’t need airtime, but I do think when people are genuinely sharing a view that goes against the grain it’s worth looking at. I think it would create a healthier environment especially if the goal is creating a positive reception to the relationship in question.

I’m really sorry for the thesis but thank you for being open to an exchange of ideas.

Thesis welcome any time!

[septembersghost]

I'm feeling embarrassed that I show so much love for Taylor and like all my friends know and I've gotten a lot of them into her too because now idk what to say to them about this situation and it feels. bad. do you feel like you should stop posting or anything?

well, i am not here to invalidate your emotions, sometimes we just feel how we feel and that's okay. people are different, people are flawed, people make choices (people are people and sometimes we change our minds...). and we don't have to like or agree with all of those choices or behavior, or even understand them (or have to like them if we do understand them!). i also feel like some are forgetting that liberal dirtbags unfortunately persist - someone can be quite progressive in their ideals and yet still say/do harmful things because of lack of empathy or foresight or tact or intersectionality, etc, which is i think an issue here regarding mh. though it doesn't in any way excuse it. that said, while you have every right to be upset about association, how much that affects your engagement is entirely up to you. i feel it's important to remember this doesn't change things we know to be true, and on a wider/more fundamental level it doesn't change the artistry or the music. if that's important to you or something you've loved and found comfort in, i don't believe you should give that up or even allow that to be tainted (easier said than done at times, i understand).

so here's a bit of a tangent - obviously i love classic hollywood and old music. the studio system was corrupt and abusive (towards women and poc especially), the music industry is often terrible, and i recognize that, but it doesn't cause me to dismiss the art that was made in those films or the joy the music brings me. there were perhaps decisions and behaviors i don't agree with even from artists i love dearly, and i can parse that some of that is because it was a very different time, some was down to individual circumstances and traumas and experiences, some was just people being imperfect humans. we decide what we can keep and what we can't. (like i won't watch w**dy all*n films, but i enjoy a bunch of hitchcock. granted, he is no longer profiting off of that work, but it's ultimately not about him for me, it's the actors' performances, the stories, the design, the costuming, and so on. i saw a post the other day joking about how nobody today would survive fleetwood mac and i laughed). if i judged the performers i enjoy for every misstep, i wouldn't be able to be a fan of anyone's. i know a lot of actors (gn) and musicians i love simply weren't perfect, so i ask, did they try to do better? did they work to grow, did they ultimately share more kindness and good? humans are fallible, but also beautiful. love and compassion and art live on. separation of art and artist is a necessity at times, but i really like the approach, where possible, of lending understanding to the artist through their art too.

i don't think moral arbitration and judgment based on art an individual enjoys does much for real social change and justice, because where does it end? there are things we should have no tolerance for, and yet even on those topics not everyone agrees where the line is? then you have to ask, is someone intentionally hurting others, actively harming marginalized communities, spreading prejudiced ideology with no compunction, profiting off of that harm or exploitation, and doing more damage? or did they mess up personally because they're human, but still do more net good?

she's not suddenly revealed something monstrous about herself, though it’s disappointing that she’s willing to overlook things he’s done. tbh it seems like she's…going through it or whatever and maybe not thinking too clearly. human. we can dislike a choice without discarding every other true and meaningful thing. you shouldn't be embarrassed by something you love that makes you happy. you should never be embarrassed about sharing that love with others, that's really special and helps it grow. the music is what it always was. the meaning to you is paramount. even if you need to take a bit of space, i would encourage you to not let anything steal your love or your joy.