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You want us all to base our lives on a book • That you have only read bits & pieces of • That has translation errors • That contradicts itself & known truths • That contains narratives which appear to be taken from previous cultures I'm not sure you've really thought this through.
Every time a believer defends their holy book, they make it less convincing. The upshot of any defence appears to be that it's up to humans to interpret it and decide what it means, but that we should blindly trust that they are the ones, throughout all history, who have finally figured it out.
#holy book#holy text#bible#quran#torah#religion#interpretation#book of human claims#religion is a mental illness
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obsessed with the half a centimeter wide emotional space of I Look in People’s Windows.
#she can be so big and demanding and intense and then so restrained#it’s such a small emotion in a way. it’s making no claim it’s just pondering the smallest of possible human interactions#her endless range I will weep#also the Victorian Dickens little match girl Christmas picture book energy#GETS me
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Their virgin "wahh I should block every person the Cool Kids claimed a looser and align with my audience's demands to not lose my platform as a creator :'((((" vs my chad "I will deliberately say or reblog something controvercial once in a while as a preventive measure to ward off the people that only like me when I am pure"
#personal#too many people are scared to be claimed 'bad' these days#seriously guys just embrace being bad as a natural human experience like I did#if everyone is bad then no one is bad this philosophy shit is easy#I am just sooooo mad at conformist people that really are okay with audience that keeps them restricted#like guys. guys guys guys. you will be happier with like 5 genuine fans that accept you for who you are#than with 5000 'fans' that will burn the witch as soon as you fail their expectations#so many people are scared of being CLAIMED bad that they forget to fear BEING bad#ohhhh damn that's deep I should write a book
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obsessed with their different reactions to being called starcrossed lovers
#im gonna pretend mattie didnt die and visits them sometimes back in toronto#it's such a cute dynamic they have#the two evil (affectionate) sisters who just loving teasing laura#also one of my favourite things abt this show is the choreographing they do for the static camera#i bet it's so annoying to have to think about but i love watching them all move so coordinatedly through the frame#somehow still making it look natural#also i know laura is the storyteller one and i dont really know enough abt romanticism to make any definitive claims abt carmilla#but having scrolled her blog a bit to figure out her tastes in music and art#i wonder if theres a part of carmilla that kind of enjoys being starcrossed. or doomed in a sense#or maybe she that she wouldnt have CHOSEN this story necessarily but that she has resigned herself to it#on account of her vampire nature#and sees a certain beauty in it#that all her romances are doomed#idk. im still figuring her out#also im reinterpreting that exchange mattie and carmilla have in this scene#carmilla calls mattie a utilitarian which is probably right#mattie then callls her a nihilist and carmilla corrects that to existentialist#and mattie says absurdist at best#but those arent designations like back and forth as i had read it before#it's just carmillas philosophy theyre arguing about. i THINK. or maybe it's both of them#putting a pin in that until ive read more books#also kind of obsessed with how laura and danny and maybe the other humans are so quick to ascribe a morality to the vampires#based just on the 'shes a vampire!!' while obviously by necessity the vampires have spent wayyyyyyyyyy more time thinking abt their ethics#or maybe not by necessity for all of them but to mattie and carmilla it definitely seems like a necessity. or inevitability#they mustve spent countless hours over the centuries talking abt this if they can joke abt it in this way now#and in different states too like i can imagine distraught Im A Monster type conversations but also just sort of academic debates and also#carmilla reading some new book that has come out and mattie being like what newfangled thing are you into now#i guess utilitarianism was also newfangled at some point. theyre both older. but you know#carmilla is a poet. dont know if she writes poetry but she looks at things in a poet's way i think#also dont think shes entirely a romantic but i do think some of her tastes lean more toward the romantic
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Sometimes... people who write books... are wrong
#or at the very least their perspective should be considered their own#and not universally true for every human alive#like its one thing to cite a specific source that contains specific material evidence for a specific claim#but to say well your lived experience is contradicted by the claims of this one book i read#is uh#well#it sure doesnt support your claims of being intellectual!#a book is not inherently more correct or intellectual or well researched than anything else#you think someone would really do that? lie in a published book??#yes#yes they would
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just thinking about how 3 of tdkr's four major antagonists are people who swore to change their ways and show the public a new face before reverting to old habits
#cipher's squawks#harvey dent + joker both claimed to have been reformed before immediately going back to their old tricks#superman's a bit of an edge case but we count him. he signed a deal w the govt to work for them; but he still stops the bombs from killing-#-anyone. even batman himself#he spent 10 years swearing that he'd never don the cowl again but inevitably gives in.#“i see a reflection; harvey. a reflection.”#it was foreshadowing for the entire book. tdkr is about thrashing against the barred cage that is humanity.#no matter how hard you try you cant outrun the past. but you can try your damnedest to get better#for batman; retirement wasnt the answer to dealing w jasons death.#“he was a good soldier. he /honored/ me”#anyways uhhhh idk if any of this made sense. just thoughts that consume me during every waking moment
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Sometimes, a reading will take me 3 hours when it's only about 15 pages, and it's never really because it's hard, but because I take psychic damage with every other line.
#fuck jared diamond so much#jesus christ#the vague thesis of his book had always seemed pretty fine to me#even if i disagreed with his overall biological determinism#but rwading the actual text....GOD HE'S SO STUPJD#HE DOESN'T KNOW ANYTHING#HOW DID WE LET THIS MAN COMMIT HIS IDEOLOGICAL CRIMES#HE ATTEMPTS TO NOT BE RACIST BY BEING AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT FLAVOUR OF RACIST#jesus#his entire agricultural theory about how nutrient-poor the americas are#comes from him COMPLETELY disregarding potatoes and beans#just....such an idiot#god#his geographical thesis about how europe is so much technologically competitive than china#comes from his belief that china is flatter than europe#HAS HE FUCKING SEEN CHINA???? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS MAN???#It's.....staggeringly incompetent#his disdain for human agency in every aspect of life is just palpable#he goes out of his way to claim that no human EVER purposely tried to domesticate plants#and like sir....how the fuck do you know that??? none of them left writing#sure a lot of it was probably entirely coincidental#but humans are smart and notice patterns#i bet a few of them did know and do ot intentionally#but he believes in the dominance and supremacy of biology and environment to a farcical degree
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In defense of the original, while I do agree the episodic vibes were a bit much at times, and it was something I kinda had to work my way through slowly rather than binging all in one...
I do kinda prefer the more gradual approach to laying out the information; getting to know both the setting and who Vash is as a person and the different facets of both, before getting the context that lets it all click into place. Plus the main quartet having ample time to grow together so that later developments have stronger emotional weight.
I will agree that Knives definitely suffered in focus, and I am interested in how Stampede handles him, but admittedly he wasn't really what I watched Trigun for in the first place. ^^;
yeah my gripe is less with the way the setting and characters were handled and more with the way the. actual plot was handled. it honest to god felt to me like they realized about halfway through their run that they didnt have enough episodes left to get the backstory in in a cohesive way so they just shoved it all into one episode and pretended that that explanation didn't create more questions than it answered. you spend 20 episodes teasing your audience like "ooooh what is vash?? clearly hes not human!! clearly there's something going on!!! don't you want to know whats going on?? keep watching and you'll totally understand whats going on!!" and then your big reveal is that. He Is Not Human. which is something that any idiot who has watched the last 20 episodes has already figured out. the question the audience ACTUALLY has at that point in the runtime is what, EXACTLY, is vash, and what the context is behind the conflict he and knives are in. the backstory episode explains that Knives Is Here, and it gives context to the setting and everything, but it pissed me off that it STILL didn't answer the actual mysteries i cared about, i.e. vash's real identity and the thing with the gun and his fucking arm and knives's motivations and everything. maybe that gets answered in the last episode that i neglected to watch but personally I prefer a story where i UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING ON by the time the final confrontation hits. with trigun it got to a point where vash was going out for the final battle with knives and i STILL didn't know who vash was, who knives was, where they came from, or what the hell their motivations were. that just made that final confrontation seem so wholly uninteresting to me that i didn't even feel like watching it. it was like "hey look vash is fighting a cardboard cutout that he is Afraid Of. Why? lmao idk man. probably has something to do with that weird spaceship that shows up in one whole episode before this point. not going to tell you how tho." I think some writers have this tendency to think that mystery = good writing and that not revealing anything to your audience will consistently draw them in for more, but that only works for so long. after 20 episodes of virtually net 0 information it got to feel like I was being strung along and like my questions were never going to be answered, so I gave up on the show in the final hour. Again, i'm not saying it was BAD necessarily and i understand the context in terms of writing and production that led to the show being produced that way but i think it really noticeably suffers due to the fact that it refuses to give the audience ANYTHING but crumbs of information for about 80% of it's runtime. that being said. i did genuinely like a lot of it. it has its moments. im not trying to discourage anyone from watching it or anything lol i just think stampede is a little more successful in keeping the viewer engaged in the story throughout by constantly feeding you bits of information and actually answering your questions as they become plot-relevant.
#asks#wow hi. trigun essay intermission sorry everyone#this same thing applies to virtually every villain in the show. nick. zazzie. the guy with the blue hair whose name i dont even remember.#you get like. the barest snippets of information about them. you know theyre working for knives somehow#you know that they've been somehow modified? and that their titles identify them as relating to knives#in nick's case you know that his whole thing has something to do with the orphanage and the priesthood#but beyond that you get... nothing. and you're expected to just speculate?? figure it out somehow???#nick especially pissed me off bc it got to a point where he was DEAD and i still didn't understand what the fuck his deal was#despite him being a supporting character for almost the entirety of the show. he still got only like half an episode dedicated to explainin#his backstory and motivations and EVERYTHING. and then he DIED#and like. to be fair. i think the lack of explanation worked in some places. it worked decently with vash#but it worked with vash BECAUSE vash is pretty much an open book as a character. you can easily tell what he's thinking and feeling#and it's not hard to extrapolate things about him from what you see. his pacifism. the fact that he's not human. his past trauma etc etc#you can get a good portion of that just by watching him throughout the show#but i think that only works BECAUSE he shows so much of himself. for a character like nick who is deliberately closed off#and NEVER shows his true self expecting the audience to be able to understand & empathize with him based solely on what he projects#just doesn't work. because it's made clear to the audience from the getgo that nick is not the person he claims he is#and that he takes steps to never show too much of himself. so when his backstory shows up randomly in one episode#and then he immediately dies. it leaves you kinda like. okay. what the hell was that. who was that guy anyway#you know???#ok rant over fr
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i love literature but this sort of literary chauvinism drives me fucking batty. like. you’re really going to pat yourself on the back about how
Tenderness is deep emotional concern about another being, its fragility, its unique nature, and its lack of immunity to suffering and the effects of time. Tenderness perceives the bonds that connect us, the similarities and sameness between us. It is a way of looking that shows the world as being alive, living, interconnected, cooperating with, and codependent on itself. Literature is built on tenderness…
when the original blog is the commonplace book of, and reblogged by, hedgehog-moss, who used to be vicious terf sespursongles before she remade and went crypto (i don’t have receipts offhand but i have seen them), and blocked me for objecting to her claim that a designer getting excited about concepts and forgetting about practical concerns was somehow an Inherently Male phenomenon?? like... clearly all her engagement with literature, which is obviously pretty extensive, has not in fact instilled much humanism in her when it comes to not just writing men off categorically!
and in general i just feel like—sitting by yourself imagining your way into sympathy with another imagined person or people is great! but absolutely does not necessarily translate into actual interactions with actual people you can’t just shut the book on when you aren’t in the mood to deal with them.
#idk. i fucking love books and i DO instinctively want to think they've made me sympathize more with other people#but intellectually i think that's honestly kind of bullshit#i just have a degree of instinctive sympathy in me that can be turned towards both fictional and nonfictional people#the books didn't cause it#anyway cf that one quote about how it's really easy to feel patient and sympathetic in the abstract#when you're like. spending all your time by yourself thinking high-minded thoughts abt how you totally like and value humanity#and how often that comes crashing down to earth really abruptly when you get confronted with the reality of humanity#which is that people are often mundane selfish dicks it's hard to romanticize!#anyway. to be clear i am FULLY @-ing myself with all of this#but i just like. if we book people are gonna claim to be magically enlightened we have to do better than swallowing this bullshit#and then puking it back up in order to pat ourselves on the back about it
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this mindset that comparing other genocides to the holocaust is so immoral and wrong and offensive is so nonsensical. comparing in this case is not about evaluating what was/is "worse", downplaying the severity of it, or erasing the unique contexts and characteristics that EVERY historical event obviously comes with, or anything like that, it's about identifying what genocide looks like and how it happens so that we can act to stop it if we see it. the "exceptionality" thinking when it comes to the holocaust has not helped anyone. in fact it prevents solidarity to others suffering a similar fate.
#i started that book once that spent an endless section debating whether the exceptionality of the holocaust was legit or not. i never even#reached the conclusion bc it was so unnecessarily long and the answer was so obvious to me.#yes it was unspeakably atrocious and a failure of humanity but to claim it as the single worst thing to ever happen... it is among one of#the worst things to ever happen certainly but to position it as the peak of evilness that no other events can ever come close to is stupid#and inhuman in its own right.#t
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“You must test your own religious claims and texts by the same standards you apply to other religions.
If your religion's claims and texts fair no better, then your religion is just as false as theirs is.”
-- Richard Carrier
Intellectual integrity is the downfall of religious belief.
#Richard Carrier#god claims#book of claims#god existence claims#book of human claims#religion#which god#integrity#intellectual integrity#religion is a mental illness
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I find it very funny that I enjoy reading Corpse Knight Gunther yet stopped reading a romance because the couple was slightly mean to each other and their friends.
Maybe it's all about my expectations? Promise a sweet kind relationship and give subtle cruelty that's never addressed and I am out. Promise grimdark and have the character be just slightly less of a relentless asshole twenty chapters in? Hell yeah I am cheering for them.
Brains are weird man.
#webtoons#corpse knight gunther is great hoghly recommend#is quite dark (tw for violence mainly) but due to the core friendship slowly developing#and many valient side characters given full humanity and personhood even if just for a brief moment#before being taken out#somehow bolsters and reassures me in a way that things claiming to be sweet but are shallow and cruel (even just mildly) don't#just#bizarre really#brain why are you like this#I think it might be because in Corpse Knight the callousness is why the world is called grimdark#it's acknowledged you're allowed to grieve for it#but in that romance book it was subtle and I knew it would never be adressed#no one in the comments even noticed#personal log#oh hey look brain is braining again#aha words are mine to comprehend once more#I can play and revel and delight in language I have missed this sort of clarity I hope I get to hold onto it for a while#mild analysis mostly rambling
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"i'm not like those Other People, i only consume Unproblematic Media™ with Good Representation™ and i don't like Irredeemable Media™"
"i'm not like those Other People, i don't like this Sanitized Media™, i only like Real Art™ with Bad Messy Representation™"
you are literally the same people wearing different hats the only things you disagree about are what counts as bad media and what counts as good representation
#bats makes a post#oh this ''bad'' representation you love was made by an actual queer person? depicting their lived experiences?#and/or you like it because it in some way reflects your own actual lived experience? so you think it's good rep then.#and this other queer media doesn't reflect your lived experiences at all?#and it feels too clean like it was made for straight people and not actual queer people? you might even go as far as to say it's... bad rep#''i don't like Show A because there's not enough good rep'' ''i don't like Show B because there's too much good rep''#You Are Both Grown Adults Arguing About Shows For Children. You Are The Thing You Claim To Hate.#everyone needs to chill the fuck out and get some nuance and recognize this a giant community where everyone has different needs#and that we all have better shit to do than argue over ultimately nothing#and to be clear i'm not different from any of these people either! none of us are! we all like it when things are good#and don't like it when things are bad#and it's completely within human nature to argue over pointless shit so i don't necessarily blame anyone#back in the day you had to get books published and shit to be a philosopher#but now anyone can be a philosopher for free and share their ideas with the world#and that's wonderful! but god is annoying to read sometimes#(and to be absolutely clear i'm not coming specifically for people who love ''bad'' rep#those are just the takes i see more often due to content curation#and therefore the side of the debate that annoys me more because i actually see it regularly#and generally is the side i agree with more often in the broad strokes which Makes It Worse when they're annoying about it)
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I don't understand how there are people still supporting your content after it's clear you are an emotionally unstable narcissist. I swear some people care about their dumb fandoms more than common human decency.
First - I refuse to let my lore posts, drawings and theories be called 'content'. I protest. It is a very soulless term that reduces creativity (the very expression of the soul, mind you!) to some sort of shallow and more importantly, replaceable good. "Why you consume the content from this PROBLEMATIC :( person" in the same vein as "Why you buy your car fuel from an unethical corporation" is absolutely absurd in any way, because creations are not physical goods but something unique.
Second, you seem to be confused on what the fandom entails.
Being a fan of something, in fact, doesn't... really entail all that much? Being a fan of something doesn't, and will NEVER mean that you subscribe to certain cultural, religious, political or humanity values or opinions, it will NEVER be only for the ones the loudest people in the crowd deemed "right" and "pure" enough, and certainly it will NEVER be only for people with clear history *cough cough* or people of "proper" mental state *COUGH cough*.
The only, and only, and only, and ONLY "requirement" for being a Bloodborne fan is - to care about Bloodborne. Ironically, this is something people I tend to become antagonists with often fail at, as there is a difference between 'Bloodborne fan' and 'Mariadeline fan that knows nothing about BB lore and holds only interests in how to shame men more and what kind of fans to declare "problematic"' *COUGH COUGH* god sorry guys, got a bad cough attack during this ask fhdhgfds
But, again, I think we the people that obsess with this or that media came to the conclusion that gatekeeping leads to another extreme - the whole thing with shaming artists that draw something not accurate, and think something not 100% correct to the canon is 'dirtying' the canon. You know, the whole 'oh you are fan of X band? name 40 songs' thing. So I think gatekeeping should be avoided unless someone appears who is both completely uneducated about lore AND tries to set their own rules.
*COOOOOUGH COOOOOUGH*
But, yeah. Your confusion is likely caused by the fact that people who like Bloodborne... love to read about Bloodborne, and not about what user should be blacklisted and what character is this or that identity and what this or that character is "problematic" etc. I object the idea that certain game/movie/book/etc is only for "right" kind of people and I think we as society at this rate are capable of separating interaction with the fictional universe and personality/personal lives.
#ask replies#personal#disco horse#/negative#i think my line of thought started with cringe statements YEARS ago such as the stuff like uhhhhh...#like people being like 'hey CIS MEN stephen universe is for women and trans men and nb folks we take it back!!!'#i then thought 'wow bitches really think enjoying a fictional thing is only for certain type of people????'#but by now it seems to have came the full circle#that said i welcome everyone in this fandom who likes bloodborne#because art is supposed to unite people not divide them#and certainly no game or movie or book is ONLY for 'certain' type of people#art is supposed to have default capacity of reaching everyone despite everything.#yooo you remember how j k rowling claimed ppl who still love hp support her ideals? NEVER do that shit folks#granted there is grey area of people not wanting to get money from people that are on polar different side of politic/humanity compass#which is valid? but i'd appreciate it if that wasn't forced onto people who do NOT benefit anything and just want to enjoy stuff#also emotional stuff is somewhat absurd tbh#i am making conscious effort ever since sp*de blocked me without explaining why to hold people at far emotional distance#so they do not have to be exposed to possibly questionable emotional stuff they don't know how to address#like... i do not in fact cling to people nor i make friends anymore unless they are PROVEN to be as chaotic as me#but again for some people bad once = bad forever and I don't play that game anymore lol
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Actually I think the serial killer of children mad scientist abusive father works far better as a villain of a story than the protagonist of a fall from grace tragedy. Bold claim I know but also any other character around him works far better as a protagonist and heroic figure than simply as a supporting character in his story.
#fnaf#five nights at freddys#William Afton#martin speaks#no i wont say sorry for being salty. explode#i love William afton i despise everyone who tries to rewrite reality and say that there's no official books that show him to be an abuser#when the novels exist and they were written with by scott and a co-author. and William is in there talking and shown to be a total shit head#and they are literally one of the few sources of how characters are.#like no hate to people with aus who write William to be a human character. shout out to a skeleton in melonland.#my problem is when people try to claim that there's no official material depicting how William acted. when the books are right there and he#fucking treats Elizabeth like shit#actually sorry for writing so much#i will go to sleep now
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reading the terraformers by annalee newitz but it’s going slowly because it is just… annoying me. still working out exactly why, but i think it’s the emphasis on technology as solution and the moralizing of particular ecosystem functions. broadly speaking.
on the other hand, the interplay between well-meaning ecologists and the corporation hiring them is interesting to me. just hoping that will be explored with more nuance
#i’m still reading bc i want to see if they change or question it#but my hopes are not… high#books#hello world#wait also annoyed by the enhanced animal characters being valued for their ability to act human#the narrative positions human behavior as the pinnacle and then claims that’s progressive#maybe that will change though! i’m only 17% in#i also just don’t really like the writing style and that’s not helping lmao
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