#both are rooted in the same ideology also... so...

[troutfur]

OOOOOOKAY! I'm sorry I said I'd write this post yesterday but didn't. Saturday evenings tend to be hectic for me at home. And Sundays I tend to be very all over the place as I don't have a schedule of any sort. Neurodivergence feels y'all get me? So, without any further ado: my problem with the StarClan trial as a worldbuilding element of WC!

To me the most glaring issue with regards to this addition is the way in which it undermines the lore implications of OotS. Explicit worldbuilding even because they make it a point to have Rock chastise the protagonists for the living cats remembering the stories of the Dark Forest cats and thus keeping them in existence. A huge deal is made out of the fact that their system of afterlives is sustained by the memories of living cats.

This has always been a very interesting part of the world building to me because it means the cats of StarClan effectively are a symbol for the historical memory of the Clans. The inertia inherent to any society personified as the people who set up this machinery in motion in the first place. The small-c conservative element that seeks to preserve the continuity of that which has been tested and true.

As such, I have always been of the opinion that StarClan rather than have true agency in the plot should mirror the social attitudes of living cats. It helps to explain away the flanderization StarClan cats tend to suffer once they are subsumed into their ranks and also presents a very interesting avenue for exploration. And it helps to explain as well why they would be so afraid of The Three and their meddling into their affairs. What would happen if it was uncovered that these entities posing as omnipotent deities were revealed to be little more than egregores that reflect the Clan zeitgeist back to them?

It is something that I have leaned into in my worldbuilding and fics, with the idea that StarClan cats actually change to accommodate the stories told about them. A Firestar who doesn't remember his kittypet background because the mythologizing and polite lies told about him quickly took root and made him out to be a more palatable hero of the Clans. A Mudclaw that over the generations is reconceptualized as a noble leader and foil to the ever more unpopular Onestar instead of a power-hungry opportunist who would have lead much the same. A Curlfeather that appears as both StarClan warrior and Dark Forest specter depending where one falls in the conflict over her contested memory at the center of RiverClan's ideological divide.

Thus, it bothers me that they are portrayed as if their decision to reject or accept Leafpool and Squirrelflight has true weight, rather than being something decided by the living. I would more have liked if the contested legacies of Leafpool and Squirrelflight was something that ThunderClan themselves would be deliberating at their deaths. This is one of the few points where I think WC could benefit to lean consciously into the cultural Christianity that pervades the text. It is, after all, not God who really admits the deceased faithful into the ranks of the saints, but rather the Pope.

Or at the very least I would have liked the flow of the argument to in some way obviously reflect that StarClan was acting as the mouthpiece of the living, rather than expressing opinions of their own. It would have been really interesting if the pool of seeing that was shown earlier in the chapter showed the living cats arguing in the same way as the StarClan cats were. Or that it reflected sentiments the cats across the super edition had already expressed.

Although, to tell you the truth, I don't think I would be fully satisfied by any iteration of the trial. Quite simply, that kind of institution doesn't exist in the Clans. It is by leader fiat that any punishments are ever administered so for there to be a panel of judges to convince doesn't seem like it has continuity with how the Clans operate in the living world.

[ghoulish-activities]

─────🜁⁺‧₊˚ ཐི⋆☥⋆ཋྀ ˚₊‧⁺🜁─────

Air

One of the classical elements, associated with colours blue, white and grey. Despite quintessence being the building block of existence the air is the one that controls the existence.

┏━━━━━━༻🜁༺━━━━━━┓

The air that moves water.

The air that spreads fire.

The air that pick up the earth.

┗━━━━━━༻🜃༺━━━━━━┛

☁︎.°────────────────────────.°༄

Air is the force that animates essence of existence, sustains and moves life, despite itself not having a physical form. It's invisible force moving everything forward. Not only in physical sense, the air is the carrier of all. The breath of life.

Air is the most social element, the one that prioritises the communication, social, spread of ideas and creation. It guides the free-spirited, the creative, the intellectual, ones that yearn for more. The guiding light of life.

Air embraces the change, the new. Symbolising the adaptability, dynamic forces in physical and spiritual way, movement, ideas and creation itself.

-ˋˏ ༻🜁༺ ˎˊ-

─────────♊︎ ♎︎ ♒︎─────────

[grison-in-space]

I'm genuinely sorry, I was really tired and couldn't think of the word that mad pride movements use. I'm new to all of this. I thought you would be more open to it because you've reblogged from radical leftists (anarchists and communists both) within the past couple of weeks and they're all for Veganism afaik. The argument that all brains are different but equal and should be treated the exact same is a primary aspect of mad pride from my understanding, and that speaks to me about animals just having different brains, and that they don't deserve to be exploited and killed for us just because they're different. I'm not spamming people with it, but I was inspired by an ask by a nonvegan and started asking popular bloggers why they weren't vegan to open up conversation and potentially change people's views on animals. If I've made you uncomfortable I'm sorry, though I admit I'm really confused by your standpoint. You do know that the only reason communism hasn't succeeded is because of America? Anyway, sorry again, I'm also autistic and I didn't mean to dismiss your legitimate dietary needs. Can I recommend acti-vegan's posts? While I understand that you can't go vegan, perhaps their blog will at least help you understand our points, they're much more well-written than my asks and they have plenty of legitimate science resources at hand. Thanks for listening, I'll take your advice into account. I'm not trying to not listen, it's just frustrating because so many people say they get it but they don't change, and if they truly got it they would, you know?

Okay, I get that you didn't mean to be offensive, and fuck knows I shouldn't throw stones when it comes to forgetting specific words. (This happens to me fairly frequently; it's a thing.)

The argument that all brains are different but equal and should be treated the exact same is a primary aspect of mad pride from my understanding, and that speaks to me about animals just having different brains, and that they don't deserve to be exploited and killed for us just because they're different.

So yesterday I actually wrote out and then deleted a whole paragraph to the effect of "part of my deep, deep frustration with animal rights activism hooks into my commitment to the phrase 'nothing about us without us,' because I frequently see the same kinds of emotional projection without making the effort to listen to animals on their own terms from animal rights activism groups."

The first thing I need to make clear to you is that this--veganism and animal rights activism (ARA) more generally--is not new to me. I am in my mid-thirties and I have never had a job of any kind that did not revolve around animals in some way, I've spent time in rescue spaces and vets and universities, I'm queer and I have spent most of my life in leftish progressive circles, so it's kind of hard to miss.

Essentially, you are proselytizing to me as if you were a newly baptized evangelical convinced I had never heard of Jesus, because if only I had heard and understood his holy word, I would be converted instantly to his light! It's not any less irritating when the belief system isn't explicitly a religion.

More under the cut, because this one is long.

Disclaimer one: Veganism isn't synonymous with ARA ideology, but it's deeply entangled with it, and ARA ideology drives the movement of veganism as a (theoretically non-religious) ethical decision. And I object very strongly to the framework imposed by ARA activists. When I say I am not vegan, I am saying that I have considered the ethical framework that underpins veganism as an ethics movement and I have deliberately rejected it.

The second piece of context you should know that when I talk about being a behavioral ecologist, I mean that I'm a researcher who works on animals and that my framework is rooted in trying to understand animals in their own natural ecological context, without necessarily comparing them to humans. There's a lot of ways to study animal behavior you might run into, including attempts to understand universal principles of behavior that transcend species (animal cognition) and attempts to understand how to better treat animals in human care (animal welfare). You know Temple Grandin? Temple Grandin is an ethologist (the field that gave rise to behavioral ecology, also focused on animals within their species context) who worked on animal welfare (finding ways to make slaughterhouses less stressful to livestock, among other things).

Third point: my profession also means is that I work directly with animals--in my case, currently mice--and that I do not think research with animal subjects is wrong as long as all efforts are made to ensure maximal welfare and enrichment for the animals involved. This is another major bone of contention politically between my entire field and ARA groups, and you should know that I have also spent my entire professional career under the shadow of, well, people who care strongly enough about those ideas to invade my workspace and potentially seize my animals and "free" them into a world they do not have the tools to survive in.

So there's where I am coming from. Let's get back to what you're saying. Here, I'll quote again in case you have the same crappy short-term memory I do.

The argument that all brains are different but equal and should be treated the exact same is a primary aspect of mad pride from my understanding, and that speaks to me about animals just having different brains, and that they don't deserve to be exploited and killed for us just because they're different.

Point the first: Even within humans, I don't think that all brains should be treated the exact same. Especially in a disability context! After all, what is an accommodation if not an agreement to treat someone differently because they need certain things to access a space? Accommodations by definition fly in the face of this "treating everyone the same" understanding of fairness. I think all (human) brains are equally valuable, and I think all brains are worthy of respect, but I do not think that it's wise or kind of me to assert that everyone should be treated in the same way. For one thing, I teach students. If there's one thing teaching has taught me, it's that a good teacher is constantly assessing and adjusting their instruction to meet students where they're at, identify failures of understanding, and keep the attention of the classroom.

Point the second: animals do have different brains from humans. That does not mean that animals are inferior, but it does mean that they are alien. There's a philosophy paper, Nagel, What Does It Mean to Be a Bat, that you might find illuminating on this front. Essentially, the point of the paper is that animals have their own experiences and sensory umwelts that differ profoundly enough from humans' that we cannot know what it is like to be a different species without experiencing life as one, and therefore we must be terribly careful not to project our own realities onto theirs. That is, our imagination cannot tell us what a bat values and what it experiences. That is why we have to use careful evidence to understand what an animal is thinking, without relying on our ability to identify with and comprehend that animal. I have watched ARA groups deliberately encourage people to shut their reasoning brains off and emotionally identify themselves with animals without considering within-species context for twenty years. This is a mainstream tactic. It is not an isolated event and for that reason alone I would be opposed to them.

Point the third: there is a definite tendency in lots of people to care deeply and intensely about both animals and people who are seen as "lesser" in status--children, poor people, disabled people, etc--just as long as those groups never contradict the good feelings that come from the helper's own assessment of themselves and their actions. In humans, when the "needy" point out that some forms of help are actually harmful, the backlash is often swift and vicious. This is why animals are such an appealing target of support and intervention. They can't speak back and say "in fact, you are projecting my love of this frilly pink tutu onto me, and I think it's uncomfortable and prevents me from walking." They can't say "I kind of like it better when I don't have to worry about getting hit by a car, actually?"

(By the way: this is also why it's offensive to compare disabled people to animals, because this is generally done at least in part to silence the voices of disabled people speaking for our selves and our communities. We have access to language, and we use it, thank you.)

All forms of animal welfare intervention going right back to the founding of the first RSPCA have been incredibly prone to being hijacked by classist, racist, and otherwise bigoted impulses. This is because animals offer an innocent face for defense that conveniently cannot criticize the actions taken by their champions, and they therefore provide a great excuse for actions taken against marginalized members of human society. Think about the very first campaign the RSPCA ever did, which was banning using dogs as draft animals: a use that is not inherently harmful to dogs, which many dogs actively enjoy, but also one that was specifically used by poor Londoners and which in fact immediately resulted in a great butchery of the dogs that Londoners could no longer afford to feed rather than allowing poor people and their dogs to continue working together. No one was, of course, challenging the particular uses of dogs or any other animal favored by the wealthy. This kind of thing is so, so, so common. Obviously it doesn't mean that all interventions to prioritize animal welfare are inherently bigoted, but it does mean that we have to be critical about our choice of challenges.

On top of everything, the animal rights activist movement's obsession with "exploitation" is a function of the idea that humans are sinful or otherwise Bad in how we interact with animals by definition. For example, take the chicken rescue near me that is so obsessed with the possibility that some human somewhere might benefit from an animal in their care that they implant every hen they adopt out with hormonal implants such that the hens no longer lay eggs--a function that is normally a natural byproduct of a chicken's reproductive system, fertilized or not. A mutualistic relationship involves both parties benefiting, and that is the case for an awful lot of human relationships with animals. In general, the idea that associating with animals is a thing that can only harm animals rather than being a trade between two species to enrich one another is all over these groups. It's just so myopically focused on human shame that it prevents practical interventions that might benefit everyone, and often promotes interventions that don't directly benefit animals but sure do make humans miserable. For example, this kind of thinking is why groups like PETA are absolutely awful at effectively rescuing unwanted dogs and cats: they think pets living in "bondage" with humans are an essentially sad outcome, rather than one that might be mutually enjoyed by all parties.

I'm tired and my meds haven't kicked in, so I'm not currently going to handle the communism thing except to point out that while the US absolutely did destabilize a number of leftist regimes in South America and Africa, Russia and China between them have certainly not treated their own people kindly, either (and more so their own client-nations, as with the former members of the USSR). Please do some reading about the Holodomor and Lysenko in Russia (and frankly all of the details of Stalin's regime) and the Cultural Revolution in China in particular. Khmer Rouge might be worth looking into, too. I am not saying the US's hands are clean, you understand, because they are not; they're as steeped in red as anyone else's. What I am saying is that for people living on the ground, communist revolutions have this nasty habit of turning into bloodbaths and arbitrary slaughters. Do not let your distaste for the US's bloodsoaked imperialism (which, yes, is and was bad) let you fall into the trap of becoming a tankie.

And if you don't know what a tankie is, you really, really should take some time to learn.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Gurwinder

Published: Aug 8, 2024

Across the West, protests are getting larger, more frequent, and more disruptive. Over the weekend, the UK saw nationwide anti-immigration riots in which cars were flipped over and buildings set aflame. A few days before that, Just Stop Oil activists sprayed orange paint in the world’s second-busiest airport, Heathrow. The week before, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the US Congress, pro-Palestine activists rioted in Columbus Square, vandalizing memorials and releasing a swarm of maggots and worms in his Washington hotel.

These are just the latest examples of a growing trend of shock-activism that combines political protest and public nuisance, and which has this year seen activists across the West spray-paint Stonehenge, squat on university campuses, block access to roads and bridges, occupy museums and government buildings, storm sports events and movie premieres, attack priceless artworks and historical artifacts, and even desecrate war memorials and holocaust monuments.

Ostensibly, these “nuisance-protests” are carried out by distinct groups motivated by a particular cause, such as the environment, Palestine, trans-rights, or immigration. In reality, however, all are animated by the same, self-destructive ideology: neotoddlerism.

This movement has its roots in the digital revolution of 2009, when use of smartphones and social media reached a critical mass, allowing strangers to easily unite and mobilize around shared views, which led to a rapid increase in the size and frequency of protests around the world. But protests didn’t just become bigger and more frequent, they also became more outrageous.

In infants, the chief causes of outrageous behavior — impulsivity, grandiosity, attention-seeking, and a sense of entitlement — are considered normal, but in adults they’re key symptoms of the “cluster-B” personality disorders. All four such disorders — narcissistic, histrionic, antisocial and borderline — are characterized by overemotionality and a need for validation. They’re also associated with heavy social media use, likely because dramatic cluster-B behaviors, such as playing the victim and catastrophizing, excel at getting attention on such platforms.

The ease with which dramatic behavior gets attention online has convinced many political activists that a better world doesn’t require years of patient work, only a sufficient quantity of drama. Many activists on both the Left and Right now hope to bring about their ideal world the same way a spoiled brat acquires a toy they’ve been denied: by being as loud and hysterical as possible. This is neotoddlerism: the view that utopia can be achieved by acting like a three-year old.

It’s an ideology for an age of instant gratification, activism for the attention-deficit generation. Just as convenience culture has led us from hours-long films, to half-hour-long TV shows, to minutes-long YouTube videos, to seconds-long TikTok clips; so the same dumbing-down is happening to politics: the arduous process of discussion and debate is giving way to the instant hit of shocking outbursts and other viral moments.

Instead of trying to produce the best arguments, neotoddlers try to produce the most outrageous video clips, which typically involves vandalism, desecration, or some other kind of public meltdown. Thus, they outrage others by embracing their own outrage and lashing out at the world. This surrender to their own impulses makes them first-order thinkers, meaning they consider immediate consequences but not consequences of consequences.

This chronological myopia was starkly illustrated after the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel. Many pro-Palestine neotoddlers publicly celebrated the massacre because, trapped by their emotions in a perpetual present, they couldn’t think far enough ahead to realize that Israel was going to retaliate, and that its wrath would be catastrophic for the Palestinians. When the inevitable retaliation came, the neotoddlers’ joy turned to horror as it dawned on them that actions have consequences.

One young pro-Palestine activist, Riddhi Patel, learned this lesson the hard way. In April, she addressed councilors at a Bakersfield City Council meeting in California, and, outraged by their refusal to pass a motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, proclaimed to the councilors that she’d murder them, adding: “I hope one day somebody brings the guillotine and kills all of you motherfuckers.” Later, she appeared in court on 16 felony counts, sobbing uncontrollably as she was confronted by the second-order effects that her first-order thinking had failed to foresee.

Unfortunately, it’s unlikely she’ll learn much from her punishment. Not only do neotoddlers lack impulse-control, they also mistake their lack of impulse-control for morality, and mistake the impulse-control of others for callousness. “Where is the outrage?” they commonly yell, demanding everyone be as irrational as them. For the neotoddler, impatience is a virtue.

The Civil Rights movement succeeded because it was guided by leaders who had clear, specific, and realistic goals, and were able to negotiate to achieve them. Since neotoddlers “organize” mostly on social media, they’re decentralized, and don’t have leaders that can guide them or negotiate for them. They are therefore ruled by their loftiest ideals, in service to their basest impulses, and they don’t have the means to create, only to disrupt.

And so they disrupt, with the goal of spreading awareness. Yet their attempts to do so are misguided because, for all the issues they protest about, the problem is not a lack of awareness; it’s a lack of solutions. We don’t need to be told that war, crime, and pollution are bad, because we learned such lessons in primary school. What we need are clear, specific, and realistic plans of action. And the neotoddlers, being impulsive short-term thinkers, have only broad demands but no rational way to achieve them.

Anti-immigrant activists chant “Get them out!” as if there weren’t a host of legal and logistical challenges to doing so. Pro-Palestine activists chant “ceasefire now!” as if such a ceasefire wouldn’t quickly be broken by Hamas (as happened on October 7th). Climate activists chant “Just stop oil!” as if that wouldn’t cause Western civilization to regress technologically backwards into an age of famine, war, and superstition.

Neotoddlers are so shambolic they even try to disrupt attempts to meet their own demands. Many pro-Palestine activists call for peace in Gaza and yet support Hamas, the main obstacle to peace in Gaza. And many eco-warriors oppose fossil fuels but also try to stop viable alternatives such as electric and nuclear by, for example, storming Tesla factories and atomic energy conferences. And recent Right-wing protesters in Sunderland, who claimed to represent the unheard, burned down a citizens’ advice center, one of the few places to offer an ear to the unheard.

Unsurprisingly, nuisance-protests often end up alienating ordinary people. While the public supports climate action, it has a negative opinion of Just Stop Oil. And while the public supports a ceasefire in Gaza, it has a negative opinion of the campus protesters. The same is true of Right-wing nuisance protests: while the public generally believes immigration should be curbed, it overwhelmingly opposes the recent riots, which have achieved little except convince the public that Right-wing extremism is a serious threat. So, though nuisance-protests do get attention, little of that attention is converted to sympathy and a lot to spite.

But if nuisance-protests are counterproductive, why are they spreading? Because protests are usually motivated more by emotion than reason. Take the recent Southport riots. These have been driven not by any rational plan but by the frustrations of Right-wingers and ordinary working-class people that their communities have been forgotten and their concerns about immigration are not being taken seriously by politicians. These frustrations, stoked by fake news, have led them to engage in infantile actions like vandalizing mosques and setting fire to police cars, all of which hurts their cause more than help it. It does, however, make them feel good for the moment, and they live mostly for the moment.

As for Left-wing neotoddlers, their motivations tend to be more complex (but no less childish), because they’re generally much more affluent than Right-wing neotoddlers. For instance, an analysis by the Washington Monthly revealed that the Gaza campus protests were largely confined to the most expensive and elite colleges. And Just Stop Oil members are themselves quick to admit that their movement is “privileged” and living in a white middle-class “student bubble”.

This is no accident: it’s often the prosperous, not the downtrodden, who have a greater motivation to protest. As the philosopher Eric Hoffer explained in his 1951 book, The True Believer:

There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society’s ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom. In almost all the descriptions of the periods preceding the rise of mass movements there is reference to vast ennui; and in their earliest stages mass movements are more likely to find sympathizers and support among the bored than among the exploited and oppressed.

People need struggles. If their supply of problems dwindles too low, they begin to embellish the problems they already have, or invent completely new ones. As Hoffer writes:

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance.

The young and privileged are particularly prone to this. They don’t have to worry about money, nor do they have homes or families of their own, so they have nothing to lose, and nothing to conserve. This gives them both the need to find struggles and the luxury to be radical.

Overall, Left-wing neotoddlers and Right-wing neotoddlers tend to come from different demographics — with the former being younger, richer, more educated, and more female than the latter — and this gives them different motivations, and different modus operandi. For instance, research suggests that the cluster-B trait of narcissism takes a different form in the two groups. In Right-wingers, it mostly manifests as a sense of entitlement, while in Left-wingers it mostly manifests as a need for exhibitionism.

This is born out in the different approaches Left-wingers and Right-wingers take towards their public tantrums. The nuisance-protests of right-wingers are primarily attempts to relieve their frustrations at not getting what they want. As such, they typically take the form of straightforward thuggery and hooliganism: starting fires, overturning cars, and hurling bricks.

In contrast, Left-wing nuisance-protests tend to be less about relieving frustration and more about getting attention directly. As such, they’re usually more calculated and creative: throwing soup over paintings, releasing insect-swarms into hotels, or, most recently, painting the hands of a statue of Anne Frank red.

Generally, the Left-wing approach is more effective at getting attention; it took mass destruction by hundreds of Right-wingers in Southport to make news headlines, but it only took two Just Stop Oil activists with orange paint at Heathrow to achieve the same.

Left-wing nuisance-protests are also treated more kindly by the mainstream. Right-wing protests tend to be roundly condemned by polite society, firstly because they tend to be more violent, and secondly because upholders of mainstream culture — such as liberal journalists, academics, and entertainers — are culturally programmed to dismiss concerns about Islam or immigration as “far-Right”, placing such concerns outside the bounds of polite discourse (and into the hands of actual extremists).

In contrast, Left-wing neotoddlers are generally viewed by Western cultural elites as well-meaning. When Left-wingers recently flooded the streets of Walthamstow to counter-protest the Right-wingers, they were lauded by many Western outlets — from the BBC to NBC — as spreading peace and unity, even though the Labour councilor Ricky Jones used the protest to demand that his fellow Left-wingers slit the throats of Right-wingers.

The West’s mainstream knowledge-producing institutions, from academia to the liberal media, tend to be populated mostly by Left-leaning people who see Left-wing neotoddlers as a force for good because they’re broadly ideologically aligned with them and judge them by their perceived intentions rather than their results. For this reason, the mainstream treats Left-wing neotoddlers as its golden child, always seeing the best in them, while Right-wing neotoddlers are treated like the red-headed stepchild, worthy only of scorn.

This is particularly true at universities, where conservative speakers are routinely shouted down, and students are overtly encouraged to campaign for Left-wing causes, while also being taught that speech is violence and it is therefore acceptable to shut down speech they don’t like by making loud noises. The universities’ decades-long encouragement of cluster-B infantilism reached a tipping point this summer with the campus protests. We saw the students put everything they’d been taught — exhibitionism, catastrophization, and hysteria — into practice. The protests quickly came to resemble a LARP. Whenever the protesters occupied a new part of the campus, they hung banners and declared it liberated. All this liberating eventually made them feel hungry, but when they demanded refreshments from university officials, and were denied, they claimed they were being deprived of “basic humanitarian aid” and might die of starvation.

This kind of grandiose fantasizing is emblematic of people with narcissistic traits because it makes their struggles seem bigger than they actually are. As such, we commonly see similar kinds of catastrophization among other flavors of neotoddler; every flood or forest fire is an omen of “climate catastrophe”, biological facts about sex are “erasing trans people” and immigration is “white genocide”. Such histrionics, whether propagated in error or with intention, serve to manipulate other hysterical people into becoming neotoddlers.

And the grim irony is that, by believing the world is worse than it actually is, neotoddlers make the world worse. Their disruptions and vandalism exert a huge economic and social cost on society, and they prevent ordinary people from getting to work, attending funerals of loved ones, and meeting vital medical appointments.

Unsurprisingly, the harm neotoddlers cause to liberal democracies has endeared them to foreign dictators. The Ayatollah developed a soft spot for the Ivy League campus protesters, cheerleading them on X, and even writing them a letter of support. It also recently transpired that Iran has been funding and directing neotoddlers across the US, and that they even masterminded an anti-Israel protest at McGill University in Canada. Meanwhile, the fake news that sparked the Southport riots was amplified by pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and even Russian state TV.

So how do we end this age of neotoddlerism? The simplest way would be to cut off its main source of support. And that isn’t the Ayatollah or Putin, or even the universities. The neotoddlers’ main source of support is, in fact, you and I.

Neotoddlerism endures because it’s much more effective at making news headlines and going viral than traditional forms of protest. As a case in point, on 22 June, celebrity environmentalists like Emma Thompson and Chris Packham led a huge march of over 60,000 people through London, to raise awareness of habitat destruction and wildlife loss. It received little press coverage. Around the same time, a handful of Just Stop Oil protesters squirted orange paint on Stonehenge; it made the front page of every major UK newspaper and received coverage in the global press too.

Likewise, last week in London, there was a generally peaceful march against mass immigration, involving tens of thousands of people of all ethnicities, and led by figures like Tommy Robinson and Laurence Fox. It was ignored by most of the press. One week later, when Robinson embraced his inner-toddler and stoked violent riots, they made global headlines.

At a time when competition for attention is fierce, it makes business sense for the press and social media platforms to boost stories that outrage people into clicking and sharing. Such platforms naturally form a symbiosis with people who seek to outrage their way to fame: demagogues like Robinson; vandals like Just Stop Oil “poster girl” Phoebe Plummer; and more bizarre figures still, like the “performance artist turned political activist” Crackhead Barney, who wears little but a diaper and seeks to save Gaza by being as obscene as possible.

By giving these figures platforms, we’ve not only allowed them to proselytize to huge audiences, but we’ve also turned them into idols — living testaments that you can get what you want by acting like a baby. Imagine how horrifically a toddler would behave if his every tantrum made world news?

And we can’t blame the media for this; they’re just showing us what we want to see. It is ordinary people who have made being a public nuisance pay. Neotoddlerism needs nothing more than attention to thrive — it is physical clickbait — and we just keep clicking.

The more we share and comment on clips of people throwing soup over paintings, or graffitiing on memorials, or vandalizing mosques, or blocking roads, or spraying orange paint at airports, or pitching tents on university campuses, the more we’ll see such events recur in real life.

The solution to neotoddlers, then, is the same as the one to regular spoiled brats: to ignore their outbursts and deny them attention. The media will stop reporting on their meltdowns when we stop engaging with them. They’ll stop amplifying — and thereby incentivizing — the neotoddlers when we do.

If we gave less attention to those who outrage us, and more to those who inspire us, it would incentivize young people to invest their idealism in, and derive their purpose from, finding practical solutions instead of merely restating the problem in ever sillier ways. So we should learn to react more slowly to news, to pay attention to what we pay attention to, and give more of our attention to behaviors we wish to encourage. It’s not just the neotoddlers who need to be less impulsive, we do too.

And if we take the time to consciously focus our attention, we find there are many people in this world who actually deserve it. While Greta Thunberg became world famous by yelling and blocking entrances to public buildings, the Dutch inventor Boyan Slat has been quietly removing plastic from the oceans through his startup, The Ocean Cleanup. His project recently hit a milestone of 15,000,000kg of trash removed from oceans and rivers worldwide, but it’s hardly been reported by the press.

We don’t yet have any start-ups to clear the oceans of rubber dinghies, but such a thing is possible, if addressing illegal immigration can be made more palatable to polite society. And that will only happen when the people who wish to “stop the boats” refrain from acting like the violent thugs they’re often stereotyped as, and start supporting practical, adult solutions.

Every child begins life throwing tantrums. And every good parent learns to ignore them, because they know that acknowledging attention-seeking behaviors validates them, and prevents their kids from outgrowing them. If we wish to stop seeing good causes ruined by bad actors, we must stop rewarding immaturity. If we wish to usher in an age of post-toddlerism, we must stop making neotoddlers famous.

[ifyouarediablo]

CRUEL OR MISUNDERSTOOD?(spoiler alert: its BOTH???)

carla: the embodiment of machiavellianism

carla as a character isn't misunderstood, but his reasons behind being “cruel” are misinterpreted. (note: there's a difference trust me)

carla wasn’t raised to be a man, he was “raised” to be a ruler. within carla's first few scenes we see he gets DOWN TO BUSINESS.

hes a founder, so he doesn't have the same exact craving that the vampires do BUT. while yui's blood is "special" it doesn't change the fact that a lot of the times in which carla sucked her blood it was for shits and giggles (to instill fear). his goal was to continue the founder bloodline, and yui was an important tool in the plan.

endzeit (aka the disease that only affects founders and killed off his entire bloodline aside from him and his brother haha..) creates a desperation within him, but one he refuses to acknowledge outwardly. while he does say he doesn’t care how yui sees/perceives him, that obviously changes later on since he distances himself and refuses help. it was his curiosity regarding humans which led him to warm up to yui. he didn’t have much outside interaction at all, so reading gave him a lot of insight. all in all, he doesn’t want to be perceived as anything but the image he set for himself.

i dont think hes the type to be ashamed at all, though. he already accepted his fate, so like i said, he just wants to keep the image he set for himself.

(note: unfortunately it’s hard to make a solid point about endzeit bc rejet switched up sooo hard after DF and endzeit continued to affect carla even in lost eden…)

the validation he sought from his father when he was younger led him to be faced with an eventual "betrayal". he showed his father the magic he’d started developing (something which he believed would help him earn his father’s approval), but his father didn't praise him, though. he actually feared carla's strength.

(what does a machiavellian do when faced with a perceived threat? eliminate it.)

carla’s cruelty is not born from just sadistic pleasure but rather from an ideology rooted in survival and supremacy of the first bloods.

each of carla’s endings is a different answer to the question of what matters more: power or “humanity”.

(note: i especially love yui in this route because she indirectly challenges carla’s belief that vulnerability equals weakness.)

in his brute ending, he fully embraces ruthless ideals, giving in to the idea that emotions are weaknesses.

in his manservant ending, his downfall was set by his inability to act on his emotions until it was too late.

in his vampire ending, he finally acknowledges his feelings and allows himself to change.

--end

hi my precious freakalicious gangsters,, thank you for reading!!! let me know what you think,, I WOULD REALLY APPRECIATE IT!!!! carla is another one of my favorites,, i happen to think he's also very interesting.

[luna-azzurra]

Hi Luna🙂

Today I came across your account by chance and literally devoured many of your posts. Your tips are worth their weight in gold and are making me rethink my character (my OC).

One thing I've noticed... I think his lore is well developed, but I'm not sure how he's supposed to achieve his goal anymore.

Er ist der Sohn eines der berüchtigtsten Schurken dieser Welt und möchte nicht im Schatten seines Vaters stehen. Er möchte seinen eigenen Weg gehen, aber kein „Held“ werden, denn das würde eine Verpflichtung bedeuten, die er nicht eingehen möchte.

His problem, however, is that he looks very similar to his father and has almost the same quirk (ability).

This leads to everyone seeing him only as their father and not as the person he really is.

My question now is: Would it be better for such a character to give up and simply become evil over time, or would some kind of “anti-hero” be better?

Hey (◍•ᴗ•◍)

First of all, thank you for the kind words, seriously, that means a lot. And second? Holy hell, I love this character setup. You’ve built a character with some incredible tension at his core. He’s not just trying to break out of a legacy, he’s trying to break out of his own reflection. He looks like his father. Has the same quirk. People see him and immediately slap the “villain” label on him before he even gets a word in.

That does something to a person.

When you’re constantly treated like you already are something, especially something dark, something dangerous...it’s not just annoying. It’s exhausting. It's isolating. Eventually, even the strongest-willed people start to ask, “Is there any point in fighting this?” And that’s what makes your question so powerful:

Should he give up and just become evil? Or should he try to become an anti-hero?

Let’s unpack both...

╰ Going Full Villain – “If I’m gonna be hated anyway…”

On the surface, this path makes sense. People already expect the worst. They project his father onto him every time he walks into a room. They don’t see him, but just the shadow he casts. So at some point, yeah, it might feel easier to stop trying to prove he’s not his dad and just… lean into it.

But that wouldn’t be surrender, that would be self-erasure. It’s not a choice rooted in desire or ideology, it’s rooted in burnout. Bitterness. A kind of emotional collapse.

You can absolutely write this path if you want to explore what it means to become the mask others forced onto you. There’s beauty in tragedy. There’s pain in watching someone slip into the very shape they swore they’d never take, just because no one gave them the chance to be more.

But… is that really what he wants? Or is it what he thinks is left?

╰ Becoming an Anti-Hero – “I’ll make my own damn category”

This, to me, is where his heart probably lives.

Because from what you described, he doesn’t want to be a villain. But he also doesn’t want to be a hero, like not in the clean, performative, cape-wearing sense. Heroism, to him, feels like a cage made of expectations. He doesn’t want to be anyone’s symbol. Doesn’t want to be a PR-friendly redemption arc. He just wants to be free—to exist outside the script written for him.

That’s anti-hero territory.

And the beautiful thing about anti-heroes is, that they fight for things they care about, not things they’re told to care about. They help people, but they break rules doing it. They’re messy, unpredictable, and wildly human.

Let your character become someone who carves out his own moral compass. Someone who helps the helpless but refuses to smile for the cameras. Someone who uses his father’s powers but twists them into something new. Something meaningful. Something his own.

And let him struggle with it. Let him wonder if he’s becoming what everyone feared, and then have a moment, one small, honest moment, where he chooses not to.

╰  One more thought, What if the real story isn’t about what side he chooses…but about who he becomes when no one’s looking?

Not villain. Not hero. Not symbol. Just… him.

A kid born in someone else’s shadow, learning, slowly, painfully, that he can make his own light, even if it flickers. Even if people don’t see it. Even if it scares them. And maybe that light doesn’t look heroic. Maybe it’s sharp-edged. Maybe it hurts people sometimes. But it’s his. And that is more powerful than anything he could be labeled.

You’re already thinking so deeply about this character, which tells me you care. And that’s how stories get written with soul. Don’t rush the answer. Let him show you who he is over time...

[mirroredmemoriez]

I always have thoughts (I can't be asked to rename this- Rigged traps and etc thinking)

We discuss Amanda rigging her traps so much and it has to be one of the most depressing aspects of her character. It’s somewhat obvious that she doesn’t actually think she should’ve survived her own test, which is why she doesn’t believe that anyone else should either- Amongst other factors.

I sometimes wonder whether she’d come to this conclusion without having to go through as much as she did. For example, if Gabriela hadn’t died and let’s say Cecilia did? If Adam somehow escaped… Or was Amanda always destined to doubt John’s ideology and be doomed. The reason she stuck around was because of him really, not anything to do with the ‘’rehabilitation’’ of others. She always tends to react negatively in the face of any game too. With Saw X I think we literally get to watch any hope Amanda has for John’s methods be crushed. I always get confused with the timeline but with a quick search this movie falls between the first Saw movie and Saw 2… Anyway the bathroom trap, Amanda is quite removed from the game itself, even though she is slightly one of the reasons Adam fails with how carelessly she throws the key. The most hands on Amanda gets in regards to this test is when she brings Adam to the bathroom and then also when she returns to suffocate him. 

But if we look at the traps for the scammers? Amanda plays a very active role in their test throughout the entire process. She not only brings them to the location, but she interacts with them whilst they’re playing their game. Amanda seems to be rooting for Gabriela, being quite empathetic to the younger woman’s struggle with addiction…. And in a sense, Cecilia is Gabriela’s John? Because to me both Cecilia and John are kinda predatory, just in different ways.

John knew of Amanda from the fact she was a patient in the Homeward Bound Clinic, testing her in her own words because she was a ‘’fucking junkie.’’ So he puts this clearly mentally unstable woman in a reverse bear trap and when she survives the ordeal, John proceeds to use her misplaced gratitude to recruit her. However, I do think there is genuine care between them, it’s just a shame the one person Amanda latches on to is JIGSAW. Whereas with Cecilia, she targets Gabriela because it’s easy to hire an employee whose main focus and drive is money. You can say that’s most workers and sure it is! But addiction can blur and shift your morals by a lot. The same way that Amanda got Cecil to attempt to rob the clinic, I don’t believe Gabriela is focused on the good and bad of what she’s doing. She is purely focused on funding her drugs, making her very easy to be taken advantage of. This could have been Amanda in another life. 

Back on track though- Another little detail that always makes me sigh is the fact that Amanda likely was the one to put Valentina’s hair up for her. It’s such a simple consideration and that is what makes it all the more saddening to me. She then watches with her own two eyes, almost every single one of their deaths… EXCEPT CECILIA WHO SURVIVES AND IS THE REASON GABRIELA DIED. Shit man. I’d crash out too. Like, what do you mean the person behind the scam in the first place and who has just stomped on another human being's neck like she’s killing a bug is the person who wins this? What because she did it in the time frame? Because she physically overpowered the other person within her test and KILLED him. That’s who we’re letting out??? Gabriela won but died and even someone like Valentina actually was successful in cutting off her own leg, she just didn’t have enough time. Oh! Did I mention this happens in Saw 2… Like so much of this is a repeat. Xavier physically overpowers almost everyone else in that group, throwing Amanda into a needle pit and killing Jonas. Laura did about nothing wrong except shoplifting and having Eric frame her, yet she succumbs to the poison and dies in Amanda’s arms. Oh! AND SOMEHOW THERE IS A MINOR IN BOTH OF THESE GAMES, DANIEL IS JUST A FUCKING TEENAGER AND CARLOS IS A CHILD!!! DID I MENTION WE HAVE SEX WORKERS HERE TOO? BYE VALENTINA. BYE ADDISON. Oh and people being forced into traps not intended for them. Amanda was never meant to go in the needle pit and a whole CHILD shouldn't be BLOODBOARDED.

All of this is so close together timeline wise too. Amanda is catching no breaks and that’s why it’s not surprising given these circumstances that she’d become unhinged and start actually just murdering people. Might as well everyone else seems to be doing it and getting far. But, let's say things were different as mentioned. Gabriela survived… Laura survived… Adam survived…. So on so forth. Would she have her existential crisis crash out? Because her belief nobody changes is partially engraved in her experiences with others but also based upon herself. If she was helped the first time, why did she keep getting tested? If not the fact of her drug addiction, what was wrong with her? The fact she still self harmed even after surviving the whole ordeal with the bear trap? AMANDA WHAT YOU COULD’VE BEEN IF YOU LATCHED ON TO JILL INSTEAD.

Like I know it's because John's method worked in comparison to the standard rehabilitation but God.

[fishymom-art]

So I have her pre corrupt form drawn already, and I was gonna wait until I made her corrupt/dejammed forms, but I don't want this ask to get too long 😭

Here's her pre-corrupt form, since in the main timeline I have her in, she was the only not corrupted Beast. But I also very much enjoy the timeline where she Is corrupted, especially since Rose Water exists there :]

Anyways, long story short, after she was corrupted, she took justice into her own hands, deciding that all Cookies were full of sin and all deserved to crumble, so she basically became a nihilist. She adopted an 'eye for an eye' type ideology. You steal something, she'll have your hands cut off before executing you, etc. Even thinking that the Witches themselves aren't above judgement. She holds herself and the Beasts to the same standard though, thinking that their all deserving of crumbling as well. Even Shadow Milk, who she was closest to out of all the Beasts. I can imagine them having a mega fallout after their unsealed. In my mind, Shadow Milk goes to her, and she treats him harshly, which gets harsh anger from him in return, and then she straight up denounces him and any scrap of friendship they had before. Calling him the weakest of the Beasts, etc. I can imagine her denouncing the idea of redemption, and being 100% willing to crumble rather than that. But I can imagine maybe Smilk doesn't give her a choice. Either out of initial spite of not letting her get what she wants, or a small reluctant scrap of him that doesn't want to see her crumble, or maybe both. I can imagine Rose Water immediately jumping to help her with her redemption, since, Paragon of Redemption. Hes a Cookie that believes anyone can change, that nobody is past redemption, even someone like her whos committed *many* atrocities. (I can also imagine him showing a lot of kindness to the other Beasts if given the chance.) So, he'd be the ancient shes assigned to. I can imagine her being assisted by Rose's royal advisor/royal wizard, Peppercorn Cookie, who Rose successfully redeemed. He would 100% be a snarky little shit to her, especially considering I imagine her MEGA traumatizing Rose, but that's a whole other story/yap and I feel like this is already long 😭 But I can imagine him having reluctant faith in Rose's judgement, being willing to trust him, since for lore reasons, he would trust him with his life without question, no matter what he says or does. I can imagine Rose and her having hour long debates that don't really go anywhere at first, having philosophical conversations about morality, principles, beliefs, what is truly right and wrong, etc. But Rose is patient with her, and isn't really all that uneased by her philosophies at this point in his life, since he's seen a Lot, and has already seen the depths of her darkness. So he goes into their conversations with an open mind (and a pot of tea and food so she doesn't Starve), and tries to get to the root of why she believes all these things, how she became the way she is. I can imagine him taking a similar approach with the other Beasts as well, if given the chance. Looking past their actions (though not ignoring them), and trying to figure out why they corrupted in the first place. Not being pushy, just lending an open ear if they want it. (And possible snacks.) She also has her minions/helpers, Black Cherry Cookie and Maraschino Cherry Cookie, who would absolutely not be happy about this at all, but would still be loyal to her. I can imagine them both needing to be imprisoned as well, since they would 100% try to break her out. Their her 'executioners,' so you can guess that they are absolutely Feral. Anyways, I have a lot I could say, but this has gotten LONG. I hope you enjoy the info dump lol, I love my nuggets :] And your Dejammed au has given me a LOT to chew on in my brain. I'll definitely send in her corrupted/Dejammed appearance when I've drawn them!!

WAIT HOLD ON I LOVE HER!!! She looks like a starry sky but a cookie, she’s beautifuuuuul

And the LOREEEE

Mate, this is a BANGER!!!

[lunalit-river]

Just read a quote that I really liked.

"Equality is the simple form of love"

I’ve been thinking about that a lot—especially in the context of my OC and L. Writing two characters as equally intelligent is easy. But writing emotional parity, them as emotionally equal—believably equal, to myself and to readers—that's the challenge.

And then I thought of L and Light.

I have to note that "love" here is not limited to romance.

They’re intellectual equals. Their ideologies around justice, while different in execution, are rooted in a similar willingness to bend morality for a higher goal. L cheats, lies, manipulates. Light kills. Neither hesitates to get their hands dirty.

But when thinking about that quote, the focus would be the emotional parity of the two. They also understand each other on an emotional level—at least, I think L understands Light. And maybe that’s what makes L’s relationship with Light feel strangely intimate, even if it's adversarial. Does that make L love Light more? Not romantically, perhaps, but existentially—he recognizes Light.

L always knew Light was Kira. But he didn’t try to save him. Perhaps it's L's way of working; perhaps he doesn't care about justice (which is very possible), and he only wants to solve the case and catch the culprit, but what he did didn't necessarily align with the mentioned traits.

He never tried to convince Light to abandon his god complex or accept another form of justice. Throughout the anime and manga, there was no moral education on Light or to the audience and readers. Instead, L stayed. He watched in person. They are handcuffed together to let L keep an eye on Light, continuing to let L understand him closely (physically and emotionally)

During moments like the rain scene, L acknowledges that they are alike. “You and I are the same,” he implies. They are both monsters.

Even if L despises Kira, and even though the authors said so (When he told Light that Light was his first friend, it was a lie. L could never have a friend, as he found humans to be a very cunning species) when you adopt the ideology of "The Death of the Author," which states that it is up to the readers and audience to interpret the work, rather than the author, (...meaning of a text is not determined by the author's intention, but rather by the reader's interpretation.) interpreting equality is the simple form of love-

L still kind of likes Light. Or maybe, he just accepts him. Not the Kira, but the person. And I like to think that L understands he cannot change anyone, only comprehend this person. With mutual understanding (dunno if Light does, though, at least L does), there is equality and, therefore, love.

It's interesting to think of it this way, and maybe canon does give us a glimpse of how L shows his emotional parity to another individual.

[tamelee]

What do you think of the will of fire and konoha? Do you support them?

Ah, I think a lot about that. It's challenging to dive in without getting completely lost in it, though, and without me having to go and take a million screenshots. Most scenes include some sort of example why the current system or why WoF have failed a certain character, and that is important because those are the messages within the story that support the overall theme. Specifically how a character reacts to a situation. 

And in the end, it's the Shinobi system that needs changing one way or another. 

Creating a village that prioritizes unity, loyalty, and protection is great. I definitely support what Konoha was supposed to be, and it had been necessary. But it failed because there are bigger issues.

I've read a lot of pro- and anti-WoF posts, and I think most of them are right in some ways, but I don't think you can judge the operation of an ideology that's part of a system without questioning... the broader system. And that's exactly what it distracts you from; the WoF never addresses the root cause of any conflicts. 

The ideology itself isn't to blame. The WoF doesn't inherently promote anything harmful, but it's too simplistic. Hashirama's ways to achieve peace were ambitious but perhaps too naive, whereas Tobirama operated from his own biased sense of realism. I don't like how authority applied the WoF, that includes Hiruzen and Danzo, of course, who manipulated and abused it in a way only to serve their own interests and encourage people to sacrifice themselves for it or do that sacrificial part for them. Prioritizing a single village or nation without questioning the system that applies to all Shinobi is bound to fail. 

Hence, Naruto wanted all Shinobi to work together, or why Sasuke believed there had to be a single enemy that would force all Shinobi to work together. 

And why Itachi made it a point that certain things like a clan or village should be questioned. Or why it was so significant to question what personal bonds meant as opposed to the collective belief that made Shinobi with the same headband comrades automatically.

There are many issues, so do I support it? Maybe? But only if applied responsibly, and we haven't seen a good example yet. So maybe it's not even possible, but that also makes it interesting. 

Or—hear me out—you can introduce aliens, and none of that matters anymore because now Sasuke is right and Naruto gets his wish without any creativity while both are miserable regardless—tadaa~ 

[put-me-out-of-my-destiny]

Not so long ago, a friend brought to my attention a passage from Deadly Fortune that really sheds some light on how Nero sees the world.

He believes that there's no inherent morality to the universe, except for the morality imposed upon it by those in power. It's essentially Vergil's "might controls everything" slogan, but as a real ideology instead of a mere reaction to trauma.

The same friend shed some light on Nero's feelings toward Kyrie. As much as he admires her selflessness and compassion, he acknowledges that as a human civilian, she has no strength to act on her ideals. This is precisely why he believes he has to be strong, to stand up for what Kyrie believes in.

This makes me wonder what would happen if Kyrie's ideals changed.

In my "Kyrie gains demonic minions like V's" plot (all details in my pinned post), Kyrie allows many Fortunians to be subjugated and tormented by demons she has chosen not to form pacts with, due to their cruelty toward her and her family, and for taking her kindness for granted. Would Nero stand by her as he always has?

With the above in mind, I'm inclined to say no. He would relate to Kyrie's bitterness, and might take a little too long to admit that she's crossing a line, but ultimately he loves Kyrie for her goodness, not the other way around.

At the same time, I'm not sure he believes in those ideals strongly enough to stand against Kyrie. She's his role model, his reason for fighting. If she no longer fit into that role, I think Nero would just walk away.

In that passage mentioned above, Nero remarks on a scene in Devil May Cry 4, where Kyrie shields a child from an attacking Scarecrow with her own body. Nero remarks on the futility of the gesture, that they'd both get torn apart anyway. This sheds some light on another scene from Devil May Cry 5, after Dante loses to Urizen, when Nero callously walks away from the Qliphoth as a civilian is impaled by a root. He believes in himself less than ever in this moment, and he isn't one to throw his life away for a good cause if he knows it's hopeless.

Nero fights for Kyrie and her ideals, and if he could no longer believe in that, I don't even think he'd continue being a devil hunter. He might even lose his powers, Spider-Man 2 style, as it is implied that he gets his powers back at the end of Devil May Cry 5 because he found a new reason to fight. He might get some menial job to make ends meet, but he really has nothing to live for at that point.

And what I like about this outcome is that it finally presents an opportunity to tie the Kyrie plot into the Machiavelli Duology (also explained in my pinned post). If the Kyrie plot and her falling out with Nero happened before the Trish/Lucia/Lady side of events really kick off, it could explain why he doesn't get involved. Maybe Nico alludes to what went down in Fortuna, mentions trying to get in touch with Nero, but to no avail.

As for what solves this whole mess...

I think I've said before that I like the idea of Dante being the one to get through to Kyrie. He helps her understand that fighting for the good of humanity doesn't have to mean being nice to them, as he consistently does the right thing while also being an unpleasant jerk very frequently. Kyrie finds a way to be true to herself without totally giving in to hate.

And conversely, perhaps Vergil is the one who gets through to Nero. He's the furthest thing from Kyrie's ideals of kindness, and yet Nero stepped in between him and Dante to save him anyway, which began Vergil's own path to healing and growing. Nero did this primarily because he remembers the pain of losing Credo, even after the awful things he participated in. Nero realizes that if saving someone like Vergil can be worthwhile, then it'd be foolish to give up on Kyrie.

I could imagine Vergil encountering a depowered Nero, and provoking him to fight, announcing his intent to make good on his promise not to lose this time. Mocking him about his lost power, until Nero becomes motivated (hehe) enough to trigger and kick Vergil's ass again.

[grison-in-space]

Hi! Just wanted to say, re:veganism discourse: Excellent Opinions, Great Delivery, Immaculate Vibes 👍 have a great day :)

cheers, ty! it is honestly sort of surprising to me that folks are reading along--as I said to someone else in DMs, I kind of figured that response was mostly something I was putting together in my own head, so I'm pleasantly surprised it's resonating with other people.

I am also just. :| not thrilled to have to be typing up all these "and here's how caring about animal welfare can radicalize you down all these shitty pathways if you add X and Y and Z" because at the end of the day I do think all species are worthy of basic respect; at the end of the day I do think there's nothing fundamentally better about me as a human than any other species. At the end of the day it actually matters a lot to me that my research mice are kept with as much enrichment as I can give them and that their lives and bodies and effort are honored and used wisely. It matters to me that the dogs I teach and the people I teach to train their dogs are learning with minimum stress and maximal confidence. These are all really important planks of my personal code of ethics!

It sucks to feel like I need to sit down and enumerate all the reasons that I think this other perspective of people who start in the same place I do--animals are neat individuals who encompass both the alien and the familiar, which share our lives in a multitude of ways--has developed in such a way that I think it encourages a really toxic way of relating both to animals and ourselves. In general I prefer to focus on places where I can agree with other folks, even if their opinions are different from mine. Someone in the notes brought up "struggle sessions," which are kind of the epitome of toxicity within the left: good values and a desire to help one another get so channeled through perfectionism and backbiting that you wind up with people gathering to literally torture and destroy each other. (Not just in China, either; it keeps happening, cf. Synanon in the US and the dissolution of the Japanese United Red Army.) That's not the kind of way I want to interact with people I'm supposed to be working together with.

So I try not to do that shit too much. I think about the places where people who have values just like mine go down rabbit holes and wind up in bad places, and I try and build barriers so I don't get burned out and angry and dissolve in a puff of flame. (I'm not directly engaging further with this anon for that reason, actually.) But just--aaaaaaaaauuuughhh, ARAs really irritate me because I can see where the roots are, and yet the entire ideology means that there essentially can't be listening. You can see that in the way I'm sitting here going "No, I know what your ideas are, here's why I have rejected them," and still I am getting exhortations to just listen and understand about ARA ideology. No. I did that, the last time there were protests about it in my workplace I went ahead and read the actual detailed IACUC reports released by FOIA that the protestors were shouting about, and bluntly it was a) not convincing and b) exactly the same appeals to emotional knee-jerk reactions and emotional flooding that I decried yesterday. Twenty years I have been checking my responses to these people, and it's never anything different.

I don't think that removing emotion totally from ethics and morals is wise or even possible--we use emotion for decisionmaking and encoding our values, after all, a person without emotion literally cannot decide things--but I do not like or tolerate subcultures that won't leave space to sit, think, and let the first knee-jerk rush of gut response die down. Sometimes, often, I do decide that my gut reaction is right! But I need the space to sit the fuck down and think about it, and if you take that to an ARA space you will mostly get flooded with more emotionally reactive imagery until you agree or leave. And that is coercive.

[genderkoolaid]

the transandrophic talking point of like. "trans men/mascs were socialised male so are just as misogynistic as cis men" is so confusing to me, because they say the exact same thing about trans women/femmes? that they were also socialised male? which is so weird how they seem to think just any trans person has male socialisation, i cannot figure it out at all

The key thing here is that the people who say transmascs were socialized male aren't the same people saying transfems were socialized male, although both tend to be radical feminists or have beliefs that align with/are influenced by radical feminism.

Trans-exclusive radical feminists divide people into a binary by sex, and say that socialization occurs only along the lines of sex. If you are of the male sex (which includes any intersex people they decide are "really male," with little to no nuance), then you were socialized male. If you are of the female sex (see above), then you were socialized female.

Trans-inclusive radical feminists divide people into a binary by gender. They view socialization is more of an internal process- if you are a man, then you were always a man, and you internalized the socialization people raised male received regardless of whether you realized it or not. Similarly, if you are a woman, you were always a woman, and you received the socialization of people raised female.

What both have in common is the idea that socialization is a simple binary, and that the effects of socialization stay with you forever, unchanged. If you were socialized male, then you are forever tainted with misogyny and male chauvinism. The most emphasis is put on "male socialization" in discourse because the idea is, if you were socialized male (and therefore eternally and essentially Male), then you are a privileged oppressor. This is why it's a good way of targeting other people within a radical feminist framework- to be oppressed (woman) makes you part of the in-group, deserving of having your issues addressed (which is why there is an obsession over "protecting womanhood from invaders"), while being an oppressor (male) makes you part of the hostile out-group who can neither be trusted nor in genuine need of help. Trans people, being socially placed in-between and outside the cisbinary, will be placed into whatever group is most useful for the patriarchy at any given time while also being denied actual acceptance into either (check out transunity theory for more on that).

With TIRFs, the root of the ideology is that, by saying that trans women experienced female socialization, they are defended from transmisogynist TERFs who insist they are male oppressors. The idea is: if trans women are essentially female, and experienced female socialization, then they have equal claim to female oppression & trauma. This is a noble goal, because trans women are oppressed by misogyny and should have their oppression as women recognized.

The problem is, this radical feminist framework is inherently cissexist. It is a static binary which bases itself entirely off of cis gender relations. It asserts that all trans people must have an experience which fits in with either experiences of cis women or cis men; there is no room for discussing the ways that trans people have more in common with each other, or how hatred of people who are clearly outside of the cisbinary affects gender relations. So even though TIRFs are "trans-inclusive," their only concern is reproducing transphobic radical feminism but in a way that supports trans women. It insists its pro-trans men because it doesn't misgender them as women. But where TERFs erase the "man" part of trans men, TIRFs erase the "trans" part.

Gender socialization does exist, in that people are perceived in a certain way and are treated uniquely based on that perception, and that shapes how you think about yourself and others and your place in the world. But it is far from binary and static. So many different things can affect how your gender is perceived & how you are treated as a result, and that can change from person to person as well as over the course of your life. The idea that anything relating to gender/sex is static and binary is cissexist, and any movement that claims to seek trans liberation must deconstruct that cissexism and interpret gender relations from a trans-centric lens.

[danmeichael]

look if i think about domsubverse for even 2 seconds too long it becomes too silly to tolerate but in many ways it is such a pure unadulterated expression of kink in a way i find myself fascinated by.

omegaverse is generally impossible to fully separate from social commentary because it is rooted in exaggerated bioessentialism for the sake of fetishism, as well as in many case being like, an estranged cousin to sissy fetish. see: bitching

a lot of people like to lean into this, and to explore the sociopolitical aspect of it but even if you try to ignore it it's still there, because it's hard-coded in in a way a lot of people don't necessarily realize or want to deal with when writing their fetish porn.

it is a campy blown out of proportion porn parody of real life gender politics that also doesn't quite fit. it sticks out awkwardly at the edges. it is to gender what zootopia is to race. if you try to 1-to-1 map feminist theory onto omegaverse you are going to shoot yourself gloriously in the foot and descend into accidental tradwife ideology by virtue of omegaverse, first and foremost, being fetish porn about getting so horny you feel like you're going to die.

domsubverse is almost completely separated from this by virtue of not being so directly analogous to gender, but also by being so fucking unserious.

i've rarely seen dsv where the dom/sub status of the characters impacts their job prospects nearly as much as omega/alpha does with omegaverse because that would feel incredibly outrageously stupid. we can't hire you because you like getting your ass spanked even though half the population also likes getting their ass spanked. your ass is just too spankable. people will die. sorry.

doms particularly are granted more control over their actions than alphas in omegaverse. the characters may fall ill due to not domming or being dommed, but they are rarely completely overcome by instinct to the degree of putting others at risk.

the genre ends up being used more as an allegory for a fear of intimacy than anything, of people who feel the necessity to hide a vulnerable part of themselves out of fear that it would be detested.

the drama is typically just usual relationship drama reframed through the lens of the dsv. i never effectively communicated my wants to my partner and that left both of us hurting, i wanted more than my partner was comfortable giving me, my partner and i decided to break up because we needed different things out of the relationship.

it is, despite being significantly sillier imo, somehow way more grounded than omegaverse and the fact that it's more grounded prevents it from falling into the same pitfalls as omegaverse.

however i cannot stress enough: it exists purely as absurdist fetish porn that is really just hypno with extra steps and an omegaverse sheet on its head.

and then guideverse is perhaps the purest distillation of omegaverse-style fetishes in that it has almost entirely abstracted itself from gender roles entirely and is instead used moreso as allegory for being a workaholic with intimacy issues.

[mesetacadre]

What do you think of this excerpt?

https://www.tumblr.com/beguines/755310368521355264/what-the-theory-of-labour-aristocracy-tells-us

What [the theory of labour aristocracy] tells us is that there is not a monolithic working class and that achieving working-class unity is not merely a matter of getting beyond ruling-class maneuvers of "splitting" workers. Workers are not split because of an ideological conspiracy; they are split according to numerous structures that are built into the operations of global capitalism. Workers who experience a higher standard of living because of imperialist exploitation are materially invested in keeping this higher standard of living, just as a faction of workers who experience better working conditions because of race or gender or ability are materially invested in keeping these working conditions at the expense of those workers whose marginalization prevent them from getting the same jobs. Hence, if we follow the line of reasoning behind this theory, we will arrive at a notion of class that resists class essentialism. That is, to assert that there is a labour aristocracy, and that some workers who benefit from the exploitation of other workers are embourgeoisified, is to also assert that simply being a member of the working class is not enough to be, at root, akin to the proletariat of classical Marxist literature. Some members of the working class do not have "nothing left to lose but their changes," [sic] which means that being a worker does not mean having an inner revolutionary essence.

J. Moufawad-Paul, Politics in Command: A Taxonomy of Economism

While the reasoning is very agreeable and pretty uncontroversial among the people who find value in the concept of labor aristocracy (although the I think the mention of class essentialism is unnecessary), I find the conclusion a little bit exaggerated. It is true that workers of the imperial core benefit, (almost always indirectly), from the looting of imperialism. It is therefore in their immediate material interests to support imperialism. But regardless of how relevant the divide between workers on both sides of the imperialist system is, the relations that define it don't operate in a dissimilar way to other axes of privilege/oppression, such as misogyny or racism, and the author also shares this perspective, he uses the same in this excerpt. So I think it is a misstep to claim that «being a worker does not mean having an inner revolutionary essence», on two counts:

First, the set of privileges afforded to certain categories of workers does not make them less revolutionary, but rather tends to place the workers who suffer from more axes of oppression at the forefront of revolutionary struggle, exhorted by their generally worse material conditions and greater sensibility towards all kinds of oppression, such as class. Russian women were at the frontlines of both the February and October revolution, often among the very first to stress the necessity of a second revolution after the February bourgeois government revealed their inability to meet the workers' demands. In India, it was the workers at the lowest castes who often set an example in revolutionary consciousness, and it was the analysis of the caste system that developed the CPI in the years of stagnation following the intervention in Hungary.

Second, I think the author has misunderstood two elements of «classical Marxist literature». First, there is not a concept of «revolutionary essence» to be found in Marx's writings. If he has ever written such words, it's most probable he uses it more as a rethorical device or flourish rather than an actual argument of the existence of an «essence». The revolutionary potential of the working class springs from its objective relationship to the property of the means of production. There is no proletarian, platonic essence to speak of. Then, I think the author should also brush up on the two kinds of consciousness Lenin describes in What Is to be Done: economic-spontaneous consciousness and political-revolutionary consciousness. The first kind arises naturally from the worker's own experience with class antagonism, the kind manifested with non-revolutionary trade unions. The second arises from both a political education and an active participation in the class struggle within a revolutionary Communist Party.

Only that first kind of spontaneous consciousness is very vulnerable to the material benefits afforded by imperialism, and a proper education and construction of political-revolutionary consciousness will place any imperial core worker in anti-imperialist positions. The problem the author describes is real, don't get me wrong, but it's a problem that has been thoroughly described and solved more than a hundred years ago. We can debate about the degree to which imperialism makes this education difficult nowadays, but this main thesis the author expresses is wrong, or at least founded in opposition to a problem that is not relevant.

[summersreality]

Hello, I have a question as a fellow radfem!^^

I’ve been struggling to find the right people to talk to about this, since most of the radfem spaces I’m in are strictly trans exclusionary and I worry that asking questions like this might get me pushed out. I haven’t really shared my views on trans people yet, which is probably why I’m still welcome in those spaces.

As a gender abolitionist (which I am), it makes sense to oppose the concept of transgenderism, since the term itself is rooted in gender. And if we believe gender is a social hierarchy that needs to be abolished, then yes, I get why many radfems are critical of transgender ideology.

But what about transsexuals? That’s where I feel conflicted.

While I fully understand that biological sex is immutable, chromosomes can’t be changed. But I still believe transsexuality is valid in its own right. Not as a mental illness, but as a legitimate and personal experience that some people go through.

I’ve used the label trans-exclusionary radical feminist before because I do believe biological women should have their own spaces and I don’t think trans women should compete in women’s sports. But at the same time, I feel uncomfortable with how quick TERFs are to dismiss TIRFs or even people like me who just want to ask questions. They’re often called libfems or even misogynists, which feels overly hostile.

So my question is, why do trans exclusionary radical feminists think the way they do? And why is there such a strong rejection of nuance, especially when it comes to transsexuals?

Before I answer, know that I am not taking this from any actual speech, literature, etc. because quite frankly all my radfem exposure comes from tumblr. But for the record, I study social science and I’ve written multiple A-level essays relating to this subject.

My answer to your question is that there is not just one answer.

There are some of them who are just transphobes hiding behind the term “feminist”. This goes for any of them who just ignores actual data, rage baits, enforce that women are just their bodies or biological functions, and similar things. In some situation it’s even just straight anti feminist. This is also the reason I usually ignore any terf that interacts with my tirf content, because it’s like arguing with a pro russia bot on TikTok.

There is also the fear and fear mongering, I believe. If we believe everyone that’s AMAB is inherently evil and there is nothing we can do to change society (which is false if we look at history), and being a woman is defined by experiencing abuse and misogyny, it will create hate for anyone with a penis. It is true that in a lot of places in the world, being a woman is the last thing you’d wanna be. But instead of targeting trans women, who in there countries are probably equally as hated, we need to demount those cultures and values that oppress women.

Like you mentioned, I too agree with some things that are usually seen as TERF ideology. That lesbians should be allowed to choose wether they only wanna date women who have vaginas, for example. But there’s a point when it’s not about that, and instead using inherently anti-trans dialogue. I also thing feminism should be about the liberation of women, not transgender people. But trans women are women in their right, and in discussions like these it’s good to bring it up. A lot of TERFs complain about trans women, and then go on about how radfems talk so much about trans women instead of cis women. Like check yourself, maybe?

But I am gender critical, if that’s the right term for this discussion. You can’t choose wether to be born with a penis or vagina, or both if you’re intersex. Gender identity on the other hand, is much more vibrant. There are historical records of trans and non-binary people, thousands of years ago. To think all trans women are just men dressing as women because of a fetish is desinformation and transphobic.

If people like TERFs continue to make femininity to be a certain thing or experience, it will just end up excluding and targeting cis women in the end. See how Imane Khelif was treated in the Olympics because she was considered looking too masculine. Plus the fact that saying “real women have boobs” “real women have cycles” is exclusionary to for example cis women who have had their breasts removed surgically due to cancer, women who don’t get their cycles due to medical conditions, etc. This, along with the usually blatant disregard for actual facts and data, is the reason I usually see those TERFs as conservatives calling themselves feminists.

The point is, a lot of TERFs aren’t actually gender abolitionists. Many of them believe there are things that make you a woman, things that make you a man and nothing in between. Of course you can’t change what you were born as or your chromosomes. But modern culture and expression is. True gender abolitionism in my eyes is denying femininity and masculinity as concepts altogether, and any gender roles tied to them.