#but at the same time if there was a reason that it came up again and forced her to recon with it

[star-scrambled]

just got back from a shutdown over mario movie april 7th how we doing everybody

[the-random-phan]

Great selfie opportunity! Even if his phone broke right after he got the picture.

[lovecolibri]

Aside from all the other missed emotional beats, I am flat out amazed that this season had three parallel soulmate setups with three human friends, and this show managed to do precisely nothing with it. Not one conversation in sight. Kyle's conversation would have worked with either Alex or Liz, or even Rosa, who spent the most quality time with Kyle and Isobel this season and cares about them both. But suddenly having a heart to heart M*ria who's main contribution to their dynamic this season was jeopardizing Kyle's job and berating him after his near death experience??? Jesus.

Oh for sure. Where is my Liz/Kyle/Alex Team Human interactions? That scene absolutely should have been with Alex, though I would have accepted Liz or Rosa having it instead, but m*ria of all people?! The same m*ria who invited Kyle along to watch as she threw herself off a roof and jeopardized Max's life (STILL waiting on Liz and Isobel's reaction to that news. "Sisters" my ass...) then threated continued self harm until Kyle risked his career and medical license to help her induce visions that he knows are actively damaging her brain (supposedly, though we've seen zero evidence of ill effects) when she could have just been mildly startled by a bug? That m*ria?

And then, THEN, she fucking tells him to stay out of the way of Isobel's happiness?! The woman who looked Alex in the eyes and said she knew he was feeling hopeful again, found out it was about Michael, and then said, "fuck it, people are selfish sometimes and I want someone I can tell with my powers is in a bad emotional place and has with low enough self-esteem they'll do whatever I want" is trying to tell Kyle that it's wrong to get into the middle of someone else's relationship? She is the LAST person who should have been giving anyone advice, especially since she told Isobel the exact opposite of what she needed to hear, TWICE.

They literally could not have picked a WORSE person to have that talk with Kyle. I would rather have seen him have that moment with Heath. Or even Anatsa. It literally would have made more sense for Anatsa realize Kyle has a thing for Isobel than for m*ria to be present for this conversation.

[deadrlngers]

i've been loving playing the prologue with fenix bc every time there's an interaction with jackie all i can think about is "you two would hate each other so much"

[lo-sulci]

you know, if absolutely nothing else, p5r is absolutely the game that i have the strongest feelings about

[blessthishouse]

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[unproduciblesmackdown]

i love that obc loser geek whatever has "instead / i’ve” Yell, i also am always arrested by the “i’m frickin done with being the weirdo, the wuss, the underdog” et al by which i mean i’m reliably immediately like halfway moved to tears. i also love the rest of it b/c i just listened to it Accidentally b/c it fired up midway through a kitchen karaoke sesh, during which i usually don’t really partake of lgw b/c rather than singing along i just want to attentively listen

[selfcarecap]

babe you should definitely ask him just like ‘maybe we’ll see each other there’ or something like that

i know i should have😭😭 but just while we were talking about it the lecturer came in to see what we were doing so we had to pretend that we were doing the work😭💀

[helena-help-us]

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[oflgtfol]

i get that writing-wise, the mandalorian has some weak points and like i get being able to critique them but like. idk

my last big fandom experience was voltron so like. my expectation of “the writing is bad” is literally Voltron. so. a few weak points here and there i just cannot find it in myself to be too mad about. the most i’ll be like is “oh i wish x had happened instead of y” or whatever but i just, can’t bring myself to be too mad about it anymore. idk LOL

like voltron was terrible for many reasons, many of them actual bad things, but i think it’s also kinda overlooked how bad it was just like. objectively. like the writing was just so fucking bad in general the plots were all over the place you literally never knew what the fuck was happening, the characterization was wack, literally. i just cannot explain it it was just fucking incomprehensible. absolutely no regard to season structure, or even episode structure, or consistent characterization or plot points or anything coherent at all

so like idk. was the mando s2 finale kinda bad? sure. but even at its worse, this show is still 10000x better than what i consider to be Actually Bad Writing, so it’s just like. i literally cannot bring myself to feel strongly about it

[airbenderedacted]

All the math I gotta do to figure out some new markups for one of my prints on fineartamerica to make up for the fact that they’re aLWAYS DOING 20% OFF SALES 😅😅😅

[sheisbeautyweareworldass]

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[oldearthaccretionist]

So I just finished a reread of Pratchett’s Nightwatch (because it was just the 25th of May)... and it is intensely relevant to today.

While Pratchett has a few things I think he was overfond of (benevolent dictatorship and allowing his protagonists to use some questionable tactics because they are doing so with good intentions - particularly relevant to Vimes) he is quintessentially humanist and optimistic under the cynicism and there is a LOT in this book about what would make a cop a decent rather than bad cop. 

And guess what, NONE of our real ass cops in our real ass lives, live up to even near HALF of what they would need to to qualify. 

The premise of Nightwatch is it takes place during a period of unrest in Ankh Morpork due to corruption and abuses from those in charge and by the police (particularly the division known as the unmentionables). A series of protests become riots as people are killed.

Vimes takes control of one small precinct and takes a series of actions that I would be flabbergasted to see any cop actually take:

He repeatedly insists that police are civilians and that when they start thinking that they aren’t it means bad news because they only thing they can be then is soldiers. And if they’re soldiers they are likely to start treating the public as the enemy rather than the people they are meant to protect and he refuses to let that be the way he will treat it.

During some of the first riots:

Orders all those under his command to go unarmed and to in no uncertain terms NOT even slightly threaten the protesters or they’ll answer to him. 

Arrests 3 members of the unmentionables who were lurking ready to cause trouble (armed with none of their IDs, uniforms etc of course because they weren’t meant to be easily IDd)

When one of the protesters is injured (though there’s some underhandedness involved in that in a way I don’t actually agree with) Vimes makes sure he gets prompt medical attention and that several others come in with the injured man to see that he is treated well so that everything happening is completely transparent

Invites anyone else who wants to come in, in for a cup of cocoa

When people start building barricades as things start escalating all over the city with the military called in etc.

Vime’s captain orders them to dismantle the barricades and shoot at the people making them. Vimes refuses the order and then when it’s clear the Captain will make sure something bad happens even if he has to do it himself actually knocks him out and puts him under lock and key. “We didn’t swear to obey orders.”

Instead of dismantling the barricade he asks the people if they would be willing to move the barricade to a different place that is more easily defendable as a bottleneck as well as building some in several other locations and then he has his watchmen help do so AND stand with them at the barricades (inside these barricades basically becomes the safest place in the city and they allow anyone through to join them

TL;DR: 

Nightwatch is a work of fiction that shows exactly what a decent cop would look like in this situation. And we DON’T see any decent (let alone good) cops. A decent cop, a decent person would:

refuse orders to attack citizens or break up protests. 

Would never lurk in crowds trying to incite anything or catch people out.

Wouldn’t be arresting people for being upset or present at a protest

Would not use/threaten force against protesters even those that are riled up and angry enough to use force (and they certainly wouldn’t escalate)

Basically they wouldn’t be doing ANY of the things we are seeing them doing

But most importantly:

They would be standing WITH people against those trying to do them harm (i.e. BAD cops... honestly Vimes and the Watch manning the barricades WITH the people to protect them from the military/ militarized police is particularly poignant and important in this context)

They would be recognizing the right of the people to protest and that they have real and important grievances and fears that have led them to protest

they would be PROTECTING people and trying to MINIMIZE danger to any citizen present including (and particularly) those protesting (and therefore those least able/equipped to protect themselves)

They would be blowing the whistle repeatedly and documenting any underhanded or illegal actions by elements within their own organisations (and arresting those who are breaking the law to gain the upper hand)

They would ACTIVELY work to protect all people before property

They would ACTIVELY show they care more about and are more committed to protecting people than order, orders and authority

When people say there are no good cops it’s because basically none do the first list and NONE of them do those last things. And those that might try basically get pushed out of the system.  

“I was following orders” is NOT a defense. 

“I thought I could be threatened so I used brutal methods” is NOT a defense. 

“They were saying things I didn’t like, so I arrested them”, is AN INDICTMENT. 

“I thought they might damage some inanimate objects/buildings so I damaged some human beings instead!” is also AN INDICTMENT

Any cop who doesn’t protect protestors is NOT a good cop

Any cop who actively harms protestors is AN AWFUL person

If we had a Vimes type doing all the above maybe we could say they were okay (and even then I don’t think the Vimes of fiction would translate to reality in a way that he could be considered actually good) but in reality cops don’t even live up to okay/ halfway decent when faced with this sort of situation that really shows their true colours.

Edit to add: To be clear a lot of my feelings about this are about how different fiction and reality are... and how much I wish reality could live up to fiction sometimes. I think the fact that we don’t see any of the above points in reality actually tell us how useless and awful the whole policing system ACTUALLY is. It ISN’T about what it pretends to be and about what it should be. We often see reflections of what it claims to be or should be in fiction that sometimes blind us to how it actually is.  I just feel like Pratchett was particularly skilled at showing how it should be while calling attention to how it actually is at the same time.

[galacticchaosminion]

So.. I woke up to everybody screaming at each other at the top of their lungs and threatening to beat each other and telling the other to hang themselves and one being held off of the other so they don't start fighting and it was very loud and scary. Maybe coming here to live with them wasn't such a good idea..

[notapineapple1]

Me, excited for Steve and Nancy in dbd: :D

Me, realising that this means there probably both going to die in the show: D:

[fizzysquish]

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