#he is a genocider. he is completely and totally evil.

[fairuzfan]

Drives me crazy when people act like if you don’t vote for Biden it’ll be your fault if Trump gets elected. Actually I think it’s Bidens fault for becoming unelectable by supporting a genocide

It straight up is his fault. He underestimated the Arab population in major swing states yeah, but also he genuinely thought that he could get away with it. He thought that Palestinians would shut up and die or be subjugated. I have no interest in a war mongering genocider's protection and I believe if you feel protected by him then you are one of the people who benefit the most from the genocide of people around the world.

[luckybyler]

This was a reply to someone else, but I'm making this its own post because so many people are being so evil right now re: Noah Schnapp.

You can find other, longer explanations with history and all, but all the places I've seen more or less agree with this:

So you're all calling people to cancel Noah because he's in favor of a Jewish nation in what is today Israel. Which is a perfectly reasonable, decent and educated opinion to have, especially when you, to use a trendy term, "educate yourself" and find out why the state of Israel was created.

11000 dead Palestinians, half of them children

According to Hamas. Don't forget that, ever. They're the current, official government of Gaza, thus they're the ones who give numbers. This means that the real number could be 10, 1 million, anything in between. What I've read is that they probably give more of less accurate total numbers. What they fail to do, however, is distinguish between Hamas militants and civilians, and beteween civilians killed by IDF strikes, civilians killed by failed Hamas or Palestininan Islamic Jihad's rockets (which happens a lot), and Palestinians murdered by Hamas/PIJ (which also happens, a whole damn lot). They also don't specify how many civilians they have prevented or tried to prevent from evacuating or receiving aid.

11k dead people is a horrible number. Even 1 dead person is a horrible number. However, urban warfare in such a densely populated area is its own kind of hell, especially when the other side is fond of using civilians as human shields in every way possible. The fact that the number is 11k and not 50k, 100k, and so on, indicates that the IDF have indeed done a lot to minimize deaths. You don't genocide people by doing roof knocks, opening evacuation lines, dropping guided bombs, putting up an Iron Dome to deal with rockets while avoiding escalation, etc. simply because actual genocide, while a lot worse, is also cheaper, easier and faster than what they're doing. This is important because caling every act of war genocide dilutes the word, and there are actual genocides happening around the world. Also, there is a difference between striking military targets and causing civilian deaths as a side effect (what the IDF is doing) and planning and carrying out a massacre deliberately targeting civilians and inflicting as much pain and humilliation as possible on them. And there is a difference between doing so by breaking a ceasefire (which is what Hamas did), and defending your country because if you don't do that a terrorist group will anhilate you (which is what the IDF is doing).

Back to Noah. So far, these are the things that people have tried to cancel him for:

Traveling to Israel (a completely normal thing)

Having Israeli friends (another completely normal thing)

Condemning Hamas' horrible attack on October 7th (the decent thing to do)

Posting a statement saying he feels unsafe as a Jewish person in the US (which, given the rise of antisemitic acts in the world, including the US, including where he lives and where he studies, is a valid feeling to have)

Signing a letter, along with Shawn Levy, Brett Gelman, Ross Duffer and I think Cara Buono, asking Biden to press for the liberation of every hostage by Hamas. This especially shows the utter ignorance of the cancellers because, as it turns out, caring about every hostage implies a slowdown of IDF's actions (and, at the time, a delay of a ground invasion).

Supporting the existence and preservation of the state of Israel (once again, a completely normal thing). The fact that people are turning against him for these things says to me that the real reason you are all hating Noah is beacuse:

He's Jewish. Like, really really Jewish.

And the fact that this all comes from a place of antisemitism isn't hidden at all: I've seen y'all on here, on Twitter, Reddit, every other social media calling him slurs (such as "cunt"), censoring his name, pretending he's not part of the cast, asking the Duffers/Netflix to fire him, wishing him failure, doxxing him, calling on his classmates to physically assault him, etc. He doesn't need to educate himself: you guys are already teaching him a great lesson on why a Jewish state is necessary. If that's the treament he gets from his own "fans", what can he expect from the world at large?

[communist-ojou-sama]

I feel like a lot of people are confused by both the reckless actions of the Zionist Entity on the world stage and the US's continued support of it, even n seeming violation if its (long-term) interests. This kind of surprises me because it seems pretty obvious to me, but I want to take an effort to explain what's going on here.

First, I want you to accept a very general theory of the rise and fall of states. It is a Vastly oversimplified theory meant to be applied very broadly, and it goes like this: When a state is founded and on the rise, it is generally run by people who are amoral but intelligent and competent. Generally these early rulers and administrators found their way to the top of society from a state of chaos and fierce competition of all sorts; as a result, the people who end up on top, even if not the best of the best, are competent and shrewd and, above all, know that their positions are not promised and that they could be overthrown and killed at any time if they do too bad of a job governing. Moreover, this first generation tends to be highly diverse and represent people from all over the social spectrum of the society that preceded it, and above all competence and vigilence is prized.

This sense of internal vigilance and drive tends to be quite strictly impressed upon the first few generations of any given state, and as the state is on the rise, its ruling class, both for the purpose of growing their own wealth and to make government easier, develop a governing ideology and a legitimating narrative to justify to the common people their position at the top of the hierarchy. Crucially, in this initial stage of state formation and growth, the people in charge are pragmatists who understand that their governing ideology is a thing to be used to justify actions the ruling class deems necessary both for their short- and long-term interests, and are to be bent and violated at will if they threaten to get in the way of their true purpose.

Now, while there are all sorts of contingencies to how a state declines over time, I will put forward that the main dynamic that drives decline is the foreclosure of upward mobility and the increasingly jealous guarding of privileges by an increasingly insular ruling class, which is ruled by its governing ideology, to which they subscribe totally and completely. There's more but, let's leave it there for now.

Now, what all does this have to do with the Zionist Entity? Well surely you can see this coming, but what is the legitimation narrative of the Zionist Entity? It is first and foremost settler supremacy and it leads to the top positions in the Entity's military apparatus being occupied by demons like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Yoav Gallant who, drunk on cruelty and a false sense of superiority, have little more capacity for geopolitical reasoning than a wild animal. The reason why the Zionist entity isn't acting rationally in the service of the United States is because the people in power are not rational people, and they will not be for whatever the remaining history of the Zionist Entity is. They won't make rational choices to preserve the future of the Zionist settler edifice because they are uncapable of it; to do so would necessitate understanding Arabs as their equals, and they are incapable of that. As evil as Theodore Herzl and David ben-Gurion were, these demons lack their talents.

So why, then, is Genocide Joe and the democratic party supporting the Zionist holocaust upon Gaza, despite the fact that it is having an utterly apocalyptic effect on the long-term strategic interests and security of the United States? It is for the exact same reason. Genocide Joe doesn't support the Zionist Entity out of some rational calculation, he supports it as a function of his own hubris. Out of the long-term emotional investment he's developed in its wretched existence after many decades of safeguarding it from accountability and facing criticism for it. It really is that simple. The entire US elite, drunk on a fantasy of Western cultural supremacy, is stuck in a state of crackpot realism. I need you to understand that they have no concept that the possiblity of their defeat and the eventual collapse of the United States is a real possibility. And to the extent that they cannot engage with reality, their ability to appraise reality is also blinkered. They can't even see how severe the damage they're doing to the US's standing in the world really is because they are totally oblivious to the reality that in the coming decades the US and Europe will be surpassed in wealth and influence by Global South countries who all opposed the Zionist slaughter, literally no different from the white supremacist "rationalists" on tumblr who try to paint Operation al-Aqsa Flood as some sort of strategic blunder on the part of the Resistance.

The reason why the US is unable to bring the Zionists to heel despite the the whole purpose of the Zionist Entity's existence being as an attack dog for the western powers is because both the Zionists and the USians, having utterly abandoned rational statecraft, have basically forgotten that that's what their relationship is supposed to be. It's that simple.

[wisellamawerewolf]

I feel sorry for people trying to coherently analyze this mf:

*Rant under the cut*

I've seen people speculate that Adam hides his bitterness towards Lucifer behind his rockstar-like persona, because Lucifer essentially doomed his children to eternal suffering. Or talking about his friendship/partnership/relationship with Lute, ect.

Now, if it was a better show and didn't know anything about VivziePop, I might have been inclined to believe you, but honestly? I think the only reason Viv decided to make Adam a main antagonist for the season is because she could write Lucifer saying: "haha I fucked your wife". Well, this and maybe also to hammer in the "Heaven is hypocritical" narrative.

Honestly I wish people who try to look deeper into the character wrote the show, because this guy lacks a coherent motivation. And no, "I'm bored" is not a good motivation for someone who by his own admition commits a genocide of his own children.

To be fair, he also mentions how humanities was supposed to worship him but like... Why? Is there something in hellaverse version of bible about Adam? Is Adam like a legit deity in this universe? And even if the whole speach was just supposed to showcase an insane level of entitlement he has, I've gotta once again ask: why is he like that?

In my general review I mentioned how he straight up broke the lore with his existence, and I want to elaborate on that a little: Adam was supposedly created BEFORE the evil seep into the earth, but despite him and Lilith being created as equals and I assume roughly at the same time, he just demands control? For no apparent reason? And angels were not at all concerned about it? There's also no signs of favoritism towards him, because we don't know what other angels even think about him. I guess they like him enough to not kick him out of heaven, and they kinda correct his behavior sometimes, but there's zero significant characterization we're getting from the fact that he's in heaven. Honestly a single episode following him and the life in heaven in general could've given us so much, but then there wouldn't be any time left for the millions of other VivziePop's characters to show up and do jackshit, and we can't have that.

He might have been an interesting pick to pin against Charlie and her father if anyone but Viv were to write him, but as always, she had an interesting idea she completely failed to execute, because she's just not interested enough in it.

As to his relationship with Lute... Honestly, I have no idea what are they supposed to be besides maybe a boss and a subordinate. They have a total number of ONE dialogues, where they talk about Vaggie being an ex-exterminator.

The rest of their "interactions" are:

- Adam makes a remark, Lute nods;

- Lute makes a remark, Adam counteracts with another remark, often in a detached way;

- A single fist bump;

- Adam smiled at her before death.

People treat him smiling at Lute before his death as some sort indicator of character, but I think it was either an attempt to give some sort of last-minute charaterization to two hollow cardboards or just a cheap drama/shipping fuel. Lute NEVER showed she liked him once before his death scene, and even it was too vague to say certainly. It was never showed that she felt any emotion towards him or anything he says, at this rate this girl might also be madly in love with fucking air, because she also show zero reaction towards it.

In a way, I kinda find it funny how Adam calls himself "the original dick" while he is an embodiment of VivziePop's male characters: he's an overly confident genocidal maniac who makes misogynistic remarks, constantly talks about sex, swears every few seconds and has a big toothy grin.

He behaved the same as Angel Dust or Alastor, but the reason we're supposed to hate him is because he *checks notes* has a pastel color scheme and is fat, apparently??? I'm honestly not sure it was supposed to be the same as "Moxxie is fat" joke or Adam is really supposed to be fat, but do uh... do artists working on your show know that? Because in some scenes there's literally zero indication of him being fat:

Unless of course he hides a giant dump truck of an ass under his robe.

Concerning his possible return in the second season: idk, I don't really care? His addition so far has been very superficial, but Viv might like him enough to actually bring him back in a demon form and either kill him off the second time, or woobify him like she did with a couple of other "flawed" characters. I honestly doubt we will get more from this guy regardless if he's gonna reappear or not. I'm not even sure if the proper backstory is gonna save his character at this point, even if we're going to get it in the second season (I'm VERY sceptical that it will happen).

Conclusions: he's as flat as a cardboard cutout. Had the potential to be interesting, I liked him in concept, but the execution is lacking as always. I guess the fact that he was voiced by Alex Brightman is neat, and I liked his song from the first episode, but that's about it.

[qqueenofhades]

maybe i'm misunderstanding the concept, but it lately it's felt like Online Leftists™️ have been using homonationalism as a cudgel against lgbt people wanting to go abroad and feel comfortable doing so instead of as idk a way to critique american exceptionalism or whatever

The thing about Online Leftists and American exceptionalism in any capacity is that literally all their ideas and concepts of it are a) gibberish and b) completely contradictory and hypocritical. This is because it is all based on a reactionary Vibes ideology that has to constantly change itself to oppose whatever the Democrats/the US/the West in general is doing and therefore has no actual logical guidelines or consistent internal principles. To wit:

America is the most powerful country in the world, and that influence is always and forever totally evil because (insert terrible shit America has done here, which is then generalized and applied to all time periods and places without context or nuance). Indeed, America is so powerful that no other country or government in the world has actual agency or makes real choices for which they are morally and legally responsible; they're just helpless and manipulated pawns reacting to American/Western imperialism (which is the only kind of imperialism that exists, somehow). As such, nothing they ever do is actually "bad" or worthy of condemnation, because they're just totally victimized by America and everything they do is justified as long as it is anti-America. Hence, Russia genociding the Ukrainians is actually fine and good, the Ukrainians must have deserved it somehow (witness how many of the people currently screaming about Gaza were yelling that Ukraine was totally fine to attack actually!) and America is evil for trying to intervene. Russian propaganda calls America bad, we think America is bad, and therefore Russian propaganda must be correct, we love Russian propaganda a whole lot and have no interest in examining that fact any further. Russia is actually good because it used to be the USSR! Did you know that?

However, Israel genociding Gaza is utterly unforgivable and terrible and anyone who tries to offer any kind of realistic critique or appraisal of what can or can't be done to stop it is a genocide apologist. America should in fact be intervening to the point of invading Israel and/or dismantling the Israeli state, because maximalist American military intervention is Good when we say it is (but the rest of the time it's the most awful evil thing in the world WHY DON'T YOU CARE ABOUT THE GLOBAL SOUTH). America is still the most powerful country in the world and it should be intervening at all times, but actually it shouldn't do that at all because we're totally not the right-wing America First isolationists sent through the rabbit hole. If America does not choose to exercise its almighty godlike power to stop all the evil in the world (but remember, American military intervention of any kind is obviously bad and Ukraine should definitely still be genocided), it is just proving how evil it actually is. Remember, nobody else makes real choices. They're just reacting to America. America is all-powerful and also evil but still should use this evil power for good because it's good if we decide it is.

Voting is meaningless because the parties are the same, but it's powerful enough to produce a president god-king who could just decide to snap his fingers and end all bad things in the world but just doesn't do that (at least if he's a Democrat; we don't really care what a Republican president does). We think this is a good idea, but don't worry, America is still the source of all evil in the world. America should intervene everywhere and nowhere all at once. America should do nothing because everything it does is evil and past redemption and the only solution is The Revolution which destroys society. America is evil because it was founded on the violent oppression and exploitation of minorities, and therefore the solution is to let fascists be elected to punish those minorities even more because they get in the way of our purist thought experiments and their actual lived experiences don't matter when they contradict our Ideology. BUT ACTUALLY IT STILL SHOULD MILITARILY INTERVENE EVERYWHERE WE SAY SO BUT ACTUALLY IT SHOULDN'T EVER GLOBAL SOUTH. (We don't know what the Global South is or any of its issues, politics, problems, identities, languages, postcolonial developments or so forth, but we know that the Cold War happened and it was all America's fault. Have you heard this piece of Russian propaganda about how Joe Biden is the antichrist? SILENCE IS VIOLENCE SO YOU BETTER SHARE IT.)

Likewise, we support LGBTQ rights in theory but we don't think they're ever worth actually voting to protect (remember, voting is meaningless!) if that also contradicts our aim of The Revolution. We love virulently anti-gay groups like the Houthis if they theoretically support our Anti Genocide stance (don't look at Ukraine, that doesn't count) and also hate Jews. Israel is the only country in the world that has LGBTQ rights and also does stupid or awful military things, and therefore it alone is the problem because it's just pretending to be a democracy or have LGBTQ rights (in comparison to the rest of the Middle East) because it's just cynically covering for all its sins, but those sins are actually America, because Israel is just a white settler colonialist outpost of America, so America not stopping what Israel is doing (by being Israel) is bad. Remember, America is the source of all evil in the world and all other countries are its puppets, so it is also Israel, but it should stop being Israel, because it's the only country that ever makes any choices or has agency. We are very smart.

...basically, if your head hurt trying to read that or follow the logic, that's the point. It has to change constantly and contort itself around in order to both oppose those Weak Mainstream Liberals and act like it has the perfect moral high ground in doing so, regardless of what principles it has to change or what hypocrisies it has to embrace. As such, it has been stripped of any authentic critique or ability to say anything about anything, and I suggest we generally stop letting it pretend that it does. That is the only way to rescue western leftism and make it actually 2% of use at opposing fascism, because right now? Nah. Not in the least. It's actively and gleefully enabling fascism, and after so long hearing how us normie Democratic-voting losers were going to be the ones collaborating with fascists, it makes me just a little bit crazy. Good thing we can erase that too.

[intermundia]

the kenobi show has given me so much Jedi content and I’m so glad, but also as someone who’s Jewish, it’s made me Incredibly Aware of exactly how many people in the fandom would fall for Nazi rhetoric - like when I see people saying “the Holocaust was bad” but then going “the Jedi deserved their fall” in the next breath, it doesn’t give me a lot of hope that people actually know why the Holocaust was bad, or that they’d be able to see through the propaganda if it occurred today

Absolutely, completely, and totally. The inability of many fans to correctly parse a narrative, to evaluate the credibility of information based on the person delivering it, and instead believing obvious, malicious propaganda because it satisfies their vicarious craving for power, listening and trusting the people wearing literal black cloaks and surrounded by stormtroopers, it is all depressing at best and deeply concerning at worst.

We share a fandom with people who argue with their whole chest that fascism is better than democracy, and that genocide was not only deserved, but also a net benefit for society at large, either ignoring or accepting without problem the blatant, shouted, real world antisemitic parallels. I don’t know if they are projecting their religious trauma from Christian institutions onto the Jedi, and so don’t see the antisemitism of reveling in their genocide, but that’s my most charitable explanation.

It’s so frustrating how they happily share and support Sidious’s version of reality, the view that was put into Anakin’s mouth on Mustafar to show how far he had fallen into evil, not to frame him as being right. They aren’t guided by compassion for innocent people, or maybe even aware of the history of very real atrocities, but it’s no excuse when it’s a sign of being incurious about the experience of others unlike yourself, and unconcerned with their suffering.

Watching Episode 5 and hearing Reva’s story about hiding among the bodies, my first thought when I was watching was about the 33,771 Jews killed at Babi Yar, and the survivor narratives, which included hiding among the dead. I think everyone needs to know about the very real, historical analogies to the things depicted on screen and understand why it is so important for us to agree about who are right and wrong about genocide, even in a fictional form.

I am not Jewish, but it matters to me a great deal to protect Jewish lives and to make sure it never happens again, both specifically to Jewish people and to other vulnerable minorities as well. Our stories should inspire us to be vigilant about the creep of fascism, not inspire us to argue in defense of fascists and enjoy their violence. Yes, it is just Star Wars, yet it is also much more than that. The stakes of all of this are actually indescribably high.

[thewebcomicsreview]

The Webcomic Reviews Mini Reviews Masterpost, Part 1

People always ask me what I think of various webcomics, so I decided to start collecting my thoughts in one place! Click the images to go to the comic! Comic titles with a ⭐ after them are recommended, but even if I don't give a comic a star, that doesn't mean you won't like it.

[un]Divine ⭐

What is it: A highschooler sells his soul for a big titty demon gf, and now has to have anime battles against angels who keep trying to eat him.

The Good: Excellent art and monster designs, some of the better fights in webcomics.

The Bad: Danny is kind of a bland protagonist. The comic keeps threatening to veer into femdom porn, which may be a good thing for some of you. Comic is on permanent semi-hiatus and updates very infrequently

You should read it if: You wanna read a comic with big fights, big angels, and big titties.

Ava’s Demon

What is it: A bunch of kids possessed by demons have space adventures and are sad

The Good: Extremely good art. Occasional "high production value" moments with music and limited animation. The single-panel page format really highlights the art.

The Bad: Bland writing, weak characters. The single-panel page format really slows the flow of reading it.

You should read it if: Learning that the Wrath demon is named “Wrathia” doesn’t strike you as comically dumb

Awkward Zombie ⭐

What is it: It’s a comic that makes jokes about video games

The Good: It’s the best comic that makes jokes about video games

The Bad: If you haven’t played the game in question, you might not get the jokes. Awkward lack of zombies.

You should read it if: You like jokes about video games. I don't....it's not a complex premise.

Camp Weedonwantcha ⭐

What is it: A bunch of kids are left at summer camp forever by parents who’ve abandoned them to die. Wacky comedy and feel-good moments ensue.

The Good: Cute adventures with kids, reminiscent of some of the better Nicktoons from the 90s. Surprisingly emotionally effective when it wants to be.

The Bad: While the ending is satisfying in its own way, many plot threads go unresolved

The Terrible: Nickelodeon bought the rights and is sitting on them.

You should read it if: You like slice of life adventures with blasts of dark humor and feels

Cloudscratcher

What is it: Ducktales, with Genocide!

The Good: Cute and generally likable characters. Decently paced

The Bad: Doesn’t really excel at anything. Weirdly insistent about totally not being a furry comic even though it obviously is.

The Terrible: The author is a white nationalist, and the lack of link is intentional.

You should read it if: You like 80s cartoons and hate minorities

Cornucopia ⭐

What is it: A ninja is sent on a mission to literally steal candy from a nation of morons, fails.

The Good: Good art and well-paced storytelling. Clever use of different types of word balloons. High joke-per-page ratio

The Bad: Doofy tone may not be your cup of tea. Seems to have died young, though the first chapter is still a complete story

You should read it if: You like JelloApocalypse’s videos on YouTube, or his series Epithet Erased, since he made this

Dresden Codak

What is it: A genius inventor has wacky adventurers, then goes to a flying city and spends most of the comic’s run embroiled in a conspiracy run by evil anime villains.

The Good: The drawings are pretty. The early comedy adventures are quirky and charming.

The Bad: Panel layout and composition, especially early in Dark Science, is atrocious. Presents the comic as a feminist power fantasy, but the main character usually has her tits out and has had her clothes burnt off on multiple occasions.

The Terrible: The author is a notorious jerk. As of this writing, The Dark Science storyline has been running for eight years and has yet to reach a triple-digit number of pages, even though it’s a full-time job for which Diaz earns $4,000+/mo on Patreon.

You should read it if: You thought the best part of Ghost in the Shell was the lesbian orgy boat.

Drop Out (NSFW) ⭐

What is it: Two girlfriends go on a road trip to kill themselves in style

The Good: Short enough to be read in one sitting. Surprisingly good visual storytelling for a first comic. Realistic dialogue and high tension keeps you engaged even when not much is happening. Subtle details that don’t become apparent until a second read reward paying attention.

The Bad: Heavy subject matter. Lettering can be tough to read in early pages.

Content Warnings: Drug Abuse, Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Detransitioning….a list of all the difficult content in this comic would be so long it’d look like I’m making a joke. This is a heavy comic.

You should read it if: You like arty dramatic comics that deal with uncomfortable topics

Dumbing of Age

What is it: College students obsessed with late 80s-early 90s pop culture have relationship troubles

The Good: Of all the popular comics it’s trendy to shit on, this is by far the best. Solid gag-a-day strip with plots that move at a decent pace.

The Bad: Realistic depictions of abusive parents co-exists in the same comic as a literal superhero, leading to some jarring tonal confusion.

You should read it if: You like newspaper-style drama comics.

Everything Is Fine

What is it: Maggie and Sam are a normal married couple in a very strange world where proving your loyalty is the key to winning, and the best way to prove your loyalty is to show someone else is disloyal. And also everyone wears mascot suit cat heads all the time.

The Good: Well-written characters, a novel premise, and excellent pacing. I’m not the biggest fan of the webtoon “really tall page” format, but it’s taken advantage of at times for nice transitions

The Bad: The webtoon format can be irritating, and the worldbuilding is toeing the line between “compelling mystery” and “If there were two astronauts on the moon and one shot the other wouldn’t that be fucked up?”-ism.

Content Warning: Gore, Suicide themes. Every page with such content has a warning on it (which works better in Webtoon format, actually)

You should read it if: You liked the dystopian fiction fiction books you had to read in high school.

Gunnerkrigg Court ⭐

What is it: A girl attends a scientific school in a magical world that’s honestly not even slightly like Harry Potter but people say it is because they think J. K. Rowling invented British schools

The Good: Good art and fantastic panel composition. Slow-burning dark fantasy mystery.

The Bad: Takes a little while to find its groove. Starts feeling rushed and confusing near the end.

The Terrible: Boxbot

You should read it if: You like dark fantasy stories, or stories in general.

Homestuck ⭐?

What is it: A kid wants to play a video game but it’s downstairs and he doesn’t feel like talking to his dad yadda yadda yadda the universe explodes. Was briefly ungodly popular.

The Good: High production values, many updates are music videos with excellent music. Great character writing, especially in Act 5. Toby Fox, the creator of Undertale, did a lot of the music, and arguably isn’t even the best musician featured.

The Bad:The early part of the comic is brutally slow-paced, and is an impossible hurdle for some.

The Terrible: The ending is widely considered a major disappointment, and attempts to turn the comic into a franchise have been met with mixed reviews. The prose epilogues are deeply divisive.

Content Warning: A lot gorier than you might expect, mitigated by the cartoony art style, abusive relationships, the epilogue is just generally gross.

You should read it if: You want to see what the hell all those kids in grey face-paint at anime conventions were about

You should also consider: Just getting the music off the bandcamp, it’s really good.

Homestuck 2

What is it: A “dubiously canon” sequel to Homestuck, following from The Homestuck Epilogues, made by a different creative team. Follows two intersecting future timelines

The Good: The art is quite nice, and the new characters are fun and likable. Very bold in its ideas, for better or for worse it’s rarely boring. One of the few webcomics to be able to integrate trigger warnings clearly while remaining non-obtrusive with them. Faster-paced than the original Homestuck (low bar!) and has a few clever presentation ideas. Willing to be its own thing. If you’re worried it’s just “Homestuck 1 but more of it”, this is not that.

The Bad: Not at all a stand-alone comic, Homestuck 2 is completely incoherent if you’re not familiar with Homestuck 1 and the Homestuck Epilogues. Does not have the big multimedia productions Homestuck 1 was known for. Beloved characters from Homestuck 1 can come off really badly, which upsets a lot of people. If you’re looking for “Homestuck 1 but more of it”, this is not that.

The Terrible: At times, this comic is actively trying to piss off the readership by dragging out unpopular plot revelations. I actually like this about it, but unsurprisingly a lot of people don’t.

You should read it if: If you have to ask “Should I read Homestuck 2?”, the answer is probably “No”. This is a comic for people who are riding the Homestuck train to the bitter end.

You should also consider: Reading my Liveblog of it 

Kiwi Blitz ⭐

What is it: A precocious young girl gets a Kiwi-shaped robot and decides to become a superhero ridding the world of nefarious furries. More of a cute character drama than a superhero comic, and more of a superhero comic than a mecha one.

The Good: Cute artstyle. Not without dramatic stakes, but fairly light and fun throughout minus a few people getting shot. The android 42 is stand-out great character.

The Bad: Prone to long hiatuses as the author's main comic is now Sleepless Domain.

You should read it if: You liked Sleepless Domain, and are looking for a somewhat lighter comic by the same author.

Latchkey Kingdom ⭐

What is it: A girl goes on adventures in a magical land of idiots

The Good: Good but not overbearing comedy. Tight chapters. Strong side characters

The Bad: Thanks in part to Patron-backed stories in between the “main” chapters, can feel like an episodic series with no main character or driving plot

The Neutral: Willa is a semi-silent protagonist, and often gets overshadowed by the wacky people she meets. Cerberus Syndrome, executed well

You should read it if: You like adventure, silly characters, and jokes about Dark Souls.

Leasebound

What is it: Two lesbians are contrived into sharing an apartment, then the comic becomes a polemic about how trans people are evil. The second-best TERF webcomic on this list

The Good: This comic has no redeeming qualities

The Bad: It’s hella transphobic, and not even particularly interesting about it the way Sinfest can be. Everything that’s not hateful is boring, and the comic is practically going “Go on, be offended, blog about me, give me atteeeennnnttttiiiiiooooonnn!”

You should read it if: You really shouldn’t, and I’m not linking to it

Least I Could Do

What is it: Rayne Summers is the best at everything and you should listen to him

The Good: This comic updates on time regularly. Sometimes it updates without word balloons by accident, making it surreally funny

The Bad: Poorly thought-out political rants; few jokes, severe overuse of beat panels, copy-pasted art.

The Terrible: Designed to go viral, not to be entertaining; makes panels wordless just so they can be used as preview images

You should read it if: You have committed horrible sins and wish to atone

Legend of the Hare

What is it: I wrote this! A white trash loser girl is peer pressured into becoming a magical girl by a pair of pushy rabbits. A spinoff of the print comic Blade Bunny, written and drawn by the current creative team of Saffron and Sage.

The Good: Bouncy and cartoony art. Strong and memorable characters. Very weird and freewheeling.

The Bad: The plot is an absolute mess, stalling out and even going backwards at times, though it mostly comes together at the end. The tone is wildly inconsistent.

The Terrible: Kind of South-Parky in its humor sometimes

You should read it if: You like Saffron and Sage and want to see a comic by the same team when they were less experienced.

Nan Quest ⭐

What is it: In this spiritual sequel to Ruby Quest, a goat girl electrician sets out to fix a broken fuzebox and ends up ensnared in a psychological horror conspiracy.

The Good: Much more effective use of the simple MS Paint art style, with more color and some simple animations (animated panels being marked [A], a convention Homestuck would later adopt for its [S] sound panels). The characters are better fleshed out than in Ruby Quest, and the horror is more effective as well, with less gore and more tension.

The Bad: Though used effectively, the art is still MS Paint doodles. The story mechanics behind the mystery are much more ambiguous, which can be a plus.

Content Warning: Gore, threatened sexual violence.

You should read it if: You like Ruby Quest and/or psychological horror comics that can be read in a few hours.

Moby: Back from the Deep

What is it: A zombie killer whale attacks a small town.

The Good: The art is nice

The Bad: Egregious overuse of narration.

The Terrible: It’s a beat for beat ripoff of the movie Jaws, down to some characters having their names only marginally changed from their Jaws counterpart (e.g. “Alex Gardener” is the name of the Alex Kintner analogue)

You should read it if: You can’t find a Jaws torrent.

Mokepon ⭐

What is it: A dickhead teenager is forced on a Pokemon adventure, and learns a valuable lesson about friendship while being dragged into a criminal conspiracy. A Pokemon fanfic that’s somewhat darker than the source material (though not really “grimdark”)

The Good: Good action scenes, nice manga-style art. Notable improvement in art and storytelling over time. Atticus’ slow-burn character growth is satisfying.

The Bad: The early chapters are almost a completely different comic, and it takes a little while to find its groove.

You should read it if: You liked Pokemon Special

Monster Pulse ⭐

What is it: Kids’ internal organs become sentient external organs, and they have to keep it a secret from an evil orginization.

The Good: Cool twist on the surprisingly rare monster pet genre. Not afraid to upend the status quo

The Bad: No real obvious flaws, but if you don’t find the premise interesting, you probably won’t like it.

You should read it if: You were a fan of monster-pet stories like Digimon Tamers

The Monster Under The Bed

What is it: A teenager finds a demon girl under his bed, rom-com ensues

The Good: Cute anime-esque premise

The Bad: Gets progressively hornier to to point where I'm not sure if I should even leave it on this list. Egregious use of photos instead of drawing backgrounds, making outdoor scenes look awful

You should read it if: You like trashy Japanese animes

Narbonic ⭐

What is it: A shlubby loser gets a job working for a mad scientist. Mad sciencey things occur, and the comic experiences an incredible jump in quality in the back half

The Good: Short comic, comfy and easy to read. The best and most satisfying ending arc of any webcomic ever.

The Bad: Some “LOLRANDOM” humor, especially early on.

The Terrible: The first few comics are almost literally unreadable due to messy handwritten lettering and low quality scans.

You should read it if: You love seeing a story build to a proper conclusion, and you don’t mind a rough start.

Octopus Pie ⭐

What is it: Slice-of-life dramedy where twenty-somethings try to become adults and/or get laid while navigating New York life. Completed comic.

The Good: If you direct your attention above, you will see the incredible coloring. There are other comics that have better plots and even better characters, but Octopus Pie is uniquely good at hitting a mood. Occasionally does some infinite canvas stuff that’s neat.

The Bad: This is a comic about exploring ideas and kind of drifting around through life, and isn’t a big plot-focused comic with a lot of big dramatic reveals. Which I don’t think is bad, but it might not be your thing.

You should read it if: You liked stories about adults trying to figure out how to grow up, and like seeing characters age.

Out-of-Placers ⭐

What is it: A human man is turned into a female rat creature, and has to navigate a low-fantasy world while learning their incredibly stupid ways and trying to get himself back to normal.

The Good: Really good worldbuilding, with interesting, fleshed out, and unique fantasy races. There are licensed Dungeons and Dragons books with less cool ideas for a campaign in them.

The Bad: Can get kind of edgy in ways that don’t always work, and occasionally gets a bit gross. If the premise made you think it was a furry fetish comic, it’s not, but it keeps threatening to become one if you don’t whap it with a newspaper and say “No” very firmly every now and then.

You should read it if: Your favorite DnD race is kobolds.

Paranatural ⭐

What is it: Kids bust ghosts in a parody of shounen anime tropes

The Good: Good banter, creative panel layouts, and characters you want to root for.

The Bad: The story rapidly increases in scale, causing the pacing to slow down somewhat. The story later transitions to an illustrated prose format, which some people can't really get into.

You should read it if: You liked Bleach before it became Dragonball

Prequel -or- Making A Cat Cry: The Adventure ⭐

What is it: An Elder Scrolls fanfiction, in which an alcoholic catgirl heads to a new land to try to make a better life, and generally fails.

The Good: Inventive use of the web as a storytelling medium. Great character writing. Lovable protagonist. Excellent payoff to years or life kicking the protagonist in the face.

The Bad: Years of life kicking the protagonist in the face. Can thus be depressing, especially early on, sometimes to the point of being offensive (see Content Warnings)

The Terrible: Very slow and irratic update schedule

Content Warnings: Alcoholism, Depression, the protagonist gets blackout drunk and wakes up in bed next to strange men several times, which is played for comedy.

You should read it if: You like slow burn character development. You like stories where the protagonist has a hard time

Problem Sleuth

What is it: A detective tries to leave his office using user-submitted commands, and gets in a few tangents along the way. Mostly known now as “The thing Andrew Hussie did before Homestuck”, but it was a popular comic in its own right.

The Good: Much better art than most reader-driven comics, bizarre and clever, with a dramatic finish.

The Bad: Holy shit, you thought Homestuck meandered? Problem Sleuth will do nearly anything and everything readers asked him to do, and this is a veeeeeery convoluted comic that has thus aged somewhat poorly.

You should read it if: You thought Homestuck was best before the Trolls got involved.

Questionable Content

What is it: Humanity achieves a technological utopia in the background while hipsters in Massachusetts complain about their dating lives. Later begins focusing much more heavily on all the robots.

The Good: A rotating menagerie of quirky cute girls. Had a major trans character before it was cool.

The Bad: The comic kind of transitions from being about one thing to being about another thing several times, to the point where onetime protagonists show up less and less or even get dropped altogether in favor of the New Thing the comic is.

You should read it if: You want a comfy and diverse slice-of-life comic.

[librarycards]

Is there a word for like, the phenomena of many people in academia positions calling themselves "anti psychiatry" but having a really shallow take on it that is openly reactionary and hostile to disabled people. Like they'll say "adhd isn't real" not in a "the way mad people critique and reformulate concepts of adhd takes precedence over the way the medical establishment does" way but in a "stop whining addict you are not medically corrupt but morally corrupt" way that is really obviously hostile to the self-actualization of the disabled. Or they have tunnel vision on deligitimizing all pharmaceuticals. Which seems like a very unthorough and flawed way to critique the medical industrial complex. Companies are lying about drugs, mis-prescribing them, AND with-holding them. You can't just ignore the last one. Entire countries are held hostage by threat of pharmaceutical copyright embargo, and these types could care less. Anyway what's their deal. They seem like fash wellness types in "anti psychiatry" clothing.

this is a dangerous pov that has been embedded in the antipsych movement for a very long time, and continues to be perpetuated by people whose antipsych scholarship doesn't have a strong disability studies conceptual framework. the most (in)famous figure representative of these views is Thomas Szasz, who believed, in short, that "mental illness" was an abdication of patient "personal responsibility" and an excuse for "malingering." He correctly identified mental illness as a sociocultural + medico-legal construct, but chose to blame persons experiencing psychosocial distress/difference for the insufficiency and danger of pathologizing labels, rather than the structural violence that undergirds both discourses and material realities of what is understood as "mental illness."

Personally, I think that this genealogy of antipsychiatry is libertarian in origin, distinct, though not disconnected, to bodymind fascism / wellness-reductionism. Szasz and his ilk are notable in that they believe/d in absolute bodily autonomy and self-determination, with the caveat that such autonomy is predicated upon the absence of social supports for people experiencing distress, and on the absence of compassion for those using violent language in an attempt to make sense of their lived experiences. The reason that I make this distinction is that Szasz is Jewish, and fled Hungary for the US in the 30s. He made the (correct) connection between the Nazi genocide of "undesirables" (including psychiatric patients) and state classification, incarceration, and "slow" genocide of Madppl globally and transtemporally.

But to return to your question: with this, as with pharmaceuticals, there is a fundamental discomfort at all levels of scholarship and discourse with identifying neoliberal capitalism as the enemy of self-determination, joy, community, and, like, an actual future for all life on this planet and beyond. The claim that pharmaceuticals are uniformly evil is a hackneyed way of attacking capitalism for those not yet ready or willing to acknowledge that, even absent a given pill or brand name, the structural violence that we associate with them would remain and simply morph. The fundamental danger of any and all medical "treatment," particularly that which involves significant alteration to an individual's bodymind and/or potential incapacitation, is that medico-psychiatric institutions function as zones of exception for many of the "rights" we are taught that we enjoy. Under the sign of patient, typical assumptions around autonomy, dignity, and equality –– while never fully existent in the first place –– completely vanish. Of course, it is far easier to blame individual people, companies, etc. than understand that disabled/Mad liberation will never exist without total abolition.

Equally, however, it's important to understand that "academics" discussing the abuses of big pharma or questioning the ontology of mental illness, as it were, are not somehow magically separated from psychiatric survivors. The academics dismissed as being unaware of the "real" struggles of psychiatrized people are oftentimes psychiatrized themselves, and their perspectives, writings, and movements are grounded in lived experience. People with academic degrees are not immune from emotional reactions rooted in trauma and anxiety, and in fact, to try to separate "emotion" from academic "reason" is a dangerous eurocolonial practice. In short: many who write, correctly, of the dangers of pharmaceutical companies and practitioner pocket-lining are and have been subjected to these abuses firsthand. This doesn't mean that a wholesale rejection of all medication is, like, "good." But it means that scholars are people –– people with more specialized knowledge in a given area than your average random person, but people nonetheless.

So, to conclude: there are a bunch of things going on that lead to the pervasiveness of reactionary antipsych perspectives. Sometimes, in the case of libertarian or fash (to say nothing of religiously-specific fascism) approaches, there is a willful refusal to distinguish pathologization from material need/suffering, and the assumption that eliminating diagnostic markers will simply neutralize the problem of mental illness-qua-human vulnerability. Other times, conscious objection to myriad genres of oppression under the (neoliberal capitalist) Med/Psy industrial complexes are shoehorned in with these reactionary approaches.

Overall, there are longstanding movements designed to oppress/abandon/eliminate disabled / Madppl in which scholars, wittingly and unwittingly, participate, and given the average joe's utter ignorance of any kind of antipsych thought, it is very difficult to address these issues with rigor and honesty.

Lastly –– I highly recommend doing more reading in critical Mad studies if you're interested in well-thought-out perspectives on Madness, antipsychiatry, and disability justice! Scholars like Liat Ben-Moshe, Jijian Voronka, Margaret Price, La Mar Jurelle Bruce, J. Logan Smilges, sarah madoka currie, Bren LeFrançois, Alexandre Baril, Cameron Awkward-Rich, Eric Stanley, Therí Alyce Pickens, Erica Hua Fletcher, and many others do incredible Mad work explicitly informed by disability and abolitionst frameworks! (and so do I –– at least, I'm trying!)

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

I found it. The worst Katara take.

https://www.tumblr.com/illycanary/748146862907867136/kataras-entire-arc-was-about-her-becoming-someone?source=share

Her entire arc was about becoming someone who could lead the Fire Nation!? The nation that GENOCIDED her people!?

Please… please I need to hear your take on this. It hurts my soul. Give me peace.

Zutarians: It's so disgusting how Kataang completely reduces Katara to just "The Avatar's girl."

Also zutarians: Katara's entire arc, trauma and struggles are not actually about herself, but about her Totally Real romance with Zuko and how she'll be great for his nation.

And she used to hate said nation because it was an elusive concept to project her insecurities onto. It was totally not because said nation had in place a socio-political AND military system that was hostile to her, her loved ones, and her culture by design.

It wasn't Zuko and the Fire Nation that had to understand that everyone else in the world was as human as they were, oh no. It was actually Katara and the rest of the world that had to understand that the Fire Nation ain't as bad as they thought - even though they WERE doing all the horrible things they thought they were doing, and ruining their lives by taking away everything and everyone they loved.

#UnhingedZutariansShutTheFuckUpChallenge

Also, can the fandom as a whole stop it with the bullshit "Characters like Jet and Hama existed to teach Katara and Sokka not to be racist against the Fire Nation"?

They were NEVER okay with killing, or even mistreating, someone just because they happened to be born in the Fire Nation or were under their control. Everyone they hated had done something to earn said hate: killed someone they loved, attacked their tribe, chased them around the world, held people prisoner and forced them into slave labor, etc.

You might think it was wrong of Katara and Sokka to do something like try to convince Aang to leave Zuko to die in the North Pole (and the show was very clearly saying that was the case) but you cannot act like that was based on some unearned hostility to anyone vaguely associated with a nation they "didn't understand" and not on, like Sokka said, not giving the guy that was trying to kill them a chance to try again and maybe succeed - hell, Katara gave Zuko a chance in Ba Sing Se, and look what fucking happened. Her best friend died right in front of her because Zuko jsut had to go help Azula take control of the city, and then he sent an assassin after them.

No one is fully good or evil - but people CHOOSE to do bad things, even if they have sympathetic reasons, and a political system CAN be inherently cruel, unfair and EVIL. And the Fire Nation under Sozin, Azulon and Ozai's rule very much was. And since Zuko went out of his way to keep that political system in place, he was doing something evil, and thus the people that were being victimized by him had every right to hate his guts for it.

Once again, let's hear it from Zuko himself:

"Growing up, we were taught that the Fire Nation was the greatest civilization in history. And somehow, the war was our way of sharing our greatness with the rest of the world. What an amazing lie that was. The people of the world are terrified by the Fire Nation. They don't see our greatness. They hate us! And we deserve it! We've created an era of fear in the world. And if we don't want the world to destroy itself, we need to replace it with an era of peace and kindness."

The Fire Nation screwed up. Zuko screwed up. They need to get their shit together (and Zuko did), and the responsibility to do so is on THEM, not on the people that are quite literally fighting for their lives because the Fire Nation gave them no choice.

It's not Katara's job to make Zuko, and an entire country, see reason. And her arc was about HER journey, HER struggles, HER accomplishments, HER life, HER culture, and HER loved ones - just because Zuko would eventually be part of the last category, that doesn't mean that it secretly all about him the whole time.

And Zuko knows all this. That's why his arc, and his friendship with Katara, works. The show already gave you the perfect scenario to turn that friendship into a romance in fanfics and headcanons, you don't need to pretend the Fire Nation wasn't the obvious bad guy in the war THEY chose to start.

You can respect the beautiful arcs both Katara and Zuko went through, or you can make excuses for the Fire Nation's choice to commit genocide by saying "Well, EVERYONE had something to learn from it." You cannot possibly do both, because their arcs are all about showing this "both sides" thing is NOT TRUE.

[soullessjack]

ok so carried on from this post theres a specific tag i wanna elaborate on which says ‘[jack] isn’t a pacifist he actually has a very complicated relationship with violence’ in relation to how he’s usually (mis)characterized by the fandom.

so first, Jack isn’t a pacifist. pacifism is a total opposition to all war and violence, and a belief that it is never justifiable for any reason or circumstance. He might be averse to violence as a first response or reaction, and he’s frequently shown to want to help the person before anything else—especially people he finds sympathetic or similar to himself (ie Mia Vallens, Sylvia)—but he’s not averse to it altogether.

Jack seems to really only be against violence when it’s used against innocent or undeserving people, including himself. Like in S13, he has no problem using his power to force an angel to stab themself with their blade or going to war with Michael and killing thousands of angels in his army for roughly 6-8 months (and we must remember, it was an effective genocide before he decided, completely out of the original plan, to kill Michael and made it a war) but he still has a total meltdown over accidentally killing an innocent security guard and almost strangling someone who did nothing wrong like he’d assumed. In Ouroboros he states that anyone who could hurt/kill an innocent person is a monster, even if they’re human, which is probably the clearest establishment of his moral code the show could offer.

I think Jack’s particular aversion to violence or even general aggression/anger is also caused by the fact that he, at three days old, was told by Sam that he would need to be kept from hurting other people while his powers were still largely uncontrollable (and therefore, still making him a threat and “evil” if he couldn’t do that). He’s also seen for himself what his power/his overreaction inadvertently causes for other people–like throwing Sheriff Barker into the vending machine (which he apologizes for later)—and is blatantly scared of it at first, so I think it makes a lot of sense that he prefers nonviolent behavior as an initial or default response. However, pacifism is still defined by the belief that no circumstance or reason whatsoever can justify an act of violence, which directly goes against how Jack personally feels about and uses it.

Going back to Ouroboros, he personally defines a “monster” as anyone who would willingly harm or enjoy harming someone who doesn’t deserve it, even if they aren’t actually a particular species of monster. And going back to S13, he has no problem murdering Michael’s army or even torturing Michael himself (which he specifically does because Michael “hurt his friends, hurt his family.” Ergo, Jack does believe in using violence, so long as it’s only used as a justified defense, and I think that is also a part of why him torturing Nick so horrifically is meant to land on us as Something Ostensibly Wrong. Did Nick deserve it? Yes. Mary isn’t even upset about him being killed; she just halfheartedly tells Jack “not like that.” Nick deserved it, but he is still barely a threat to someone like Jack (which everybody knew)—and because he isn’t a veritable threat, none of what Jack does to him can actually qualify as a “defense.”

It’s violence for the sake of violence, with a personal grudge for motivation, and while it’s shown a lot throughout SPN, it hits a lot harder coming from Jack specifically because he, again, is generally averse to [ab]using his power like that—even against other enemies. He believes in necessary and defensive violence and acts accordingly, which makes the completely unnecessary violence he uses against Nick more disturbing; it’s not about defending his loved ones or even stopping a nefarious plot anymore (he literally banishes Lucifer within seconds of getting there). It’s just about making someone suffer and enjoying it. In Absence we also get the vague implication about Jack’s particular fears and insecurities: he’s afraid that he isn’t really loved or wanted for himself, but rather that he’s valued for being “the muscle to take out enemies,”—that he’s nothing more to the Winchesters than a pet monster and easily discardable if he’s no longer useful to them.

On the flip side of that, he’s also canonically very happy to be wanted, needed and helpful to his family/friends—which is to say, again, he’s perfectly fine using violence as a justifiable defense that serves his family (which is also why he chooses to burn Nick to death after Sam indirectly wishes it on him, and why he’s happy to murder all of Dumah’s targets under the guise that it would make Sam and Dean happy). Once he realizes the truth and horror of his actions, however, he tells Dean that he is a monster, by his own definition. But how exactly is this complicated, you might ask? Well I’m glad you did, because I’m getting to it. Throughout his entire short-lived life, Jack has had to be painfully aware of the damage he can and does cause, and what it means for how he’s perceived and the ever present debate about his “true” nature.

I can’t find it now and probably won’t bother looking, but i had another post about how Jack inwardly perceives himself and wants to be perceived in return, particularly when he’s perceived as a threat. To summarize: because of his particular moral code, Jack inwardly knows he would never [want to] use his power against his family or friends, and is therefore not a threat to them, and therefore does not want to be perceived as one despite the danger he still poses with the potential alone. The eggshells that people walk around him are solely based on the fact that he has immense potential and capability to hurt them, all prevented by his simple continuous and impermanent choice to not hurt them.

The only thing standing between them and everything he’s ever done to their enemies is the fact that he considers them friends and has no reason to want to hurt them, and that’s exactly what Jack himself personally lives by. It’s the same blind trust that Sam and Dean have built with Cas; they know what he can do, and they know when he would or wouldn’t choose to do it. It’s a mutual understanding that “I know you can hurt me but I care about you enough to trust you not to do that,” and “I know I can hurt you but I care about you enough to not hurt you and Im glad you trust me to not do that.” I also mentioned it in the post that in Last Holiday, Jack doesn’t deny it when Mrs. Butters says that he’s insanely powerful; he does, however, deny her saying that Sam and Dean should be afraid of him, because “[he] would never hurt them.”

Insanely powerful? ✅

Potentially dangerous? ✅

A threat to be feared? ❌

(This is also what makes Mary’s death by Jack and Sam and Dean’s subsequent actions exceptionally tragic on both sides; their mutual trust is inadvertently, yet still effectively, broken. Jack has also effectively gone against his own morality by harming people he loves and people who don’t deserve it, and now in S15 is struggling with the loss of said trust and the need to earn it back).

That, my hypothetical audience member, is the complicated part. Having to find a middle ground between necessary, defensive, justifiable violence that his surrounding community would approve or appreciate, and the completely unnecessary abuse or misuse of power (ie violence) that would register him as an evil monster and/or a threat to be put down for the justifiable greater good. There’s also the additional middle ground between presenting and maintaining the image of himself as docile and non-threatening (the behavior of which is hugely infantilized by the fandom), while also still being able to defend others with the same violence that could easily lead to him being seen as a threat.

in conclusion (1): Jack is not a pacifist but he has an extremely complicated relationship with violence and the fluctuating justifications surrounding it which he must meet in order to continuously be perceived as safe and trustworthy in spite of his capabilities.

In conclusion (2): this is the truest of jack true forms:

thank you for coming to my yap session, don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you on the way out 🫶

[yanyanderes]

ok here me out; yandere rottmnt reverse isekai au where (y/n) is the villain of the show/game/movie.

raph constantly tries to defend (y/n)’s actions like, yeah, he knows they do bad things, but that doesn’t mean they’re a bad person! i mean, yeah, they killed off half of the cast, but like… people can change! he’s just silently begging that the writers will give (y/n) a redemption arc, because he really doesn’t wanna see them locked away, wants them to be happy, wants them to change, and he’ll defend them ‘till the day he dies.

you know where this is going; mikey coming in with his fanfiction, slow burn enemies to lovers. (y/n) could be the most cruel malicious creature imaginable, mikey doesn’t care. he’ll give them a tragic backstory that totally justifies the multiple genocides they committed, also rewrites them so they’re not as heinous as they canonically are (ex.: if (y/n) slaughtered a whole village, that village was actually evil and was secretly plotting to rob and kill the main heroes all along), makes it seems like they’re just misunderstood and has his self insert oc be the only one willing to hear (y/n) out, littered with angst, fluff, bro practically writes a completely different story.

while raph and mikey see (y/n) and go “i can fix them” leo and donnie look at them and go “i can make them worse”.

leo loves how fun of a character (y/n) is, how they’re so unapologetically evil and relish in it, not sorry, doesn’t take any bs from anyone, they’re an absolute inspiration. (if they have a catchphrase, you can bet he’s gonna be using it no matter the context-) he loves it when (y/n) pulls off a stunt that annoys the fans. he loves it when the fans hate them but they can’t do anything about them. loves seeing them get pissed off and just going “lmao cry louder”

donnie’s the same when it comes to seeing (y/n) as an absolute inspiration. loves himself a crazy villain who relishes in their insanity and malice and is the biggest fanboy. makes inventions based on (y/n)’s deadly weapons (which have to be confiscated due to their deadly nature) but unlike leo, donnie doesn’t like it when people get annoyed with (y/n), going on rants about how they don’t understand the complexity of their motivations and personality, but of course someone so simple-minded wouldn’t be able to handle the sheer greatness of their character.

[mxtxfanatic]

... Warning, rant in coming. Sorry.

Hot take, the only morally gray character in mess, that fits the exact definition of it, is Nie Huaisang.

I've seen more and more people trying to tone down Jiang Cheng's terribleness by saying that he's morally gray. I'very also seen those same people say that Wei Wuxian is morally gray because he did terrible things for good (and, no, lmao, he didn't. Most of those come from people not understanding how his cultivation works.) and that that was why he is so interesting. (Again, lmao. Lol even. Just say you don't appreciate depths and confuse "kind" with "boring", so you gotta give every character that you don't find boring a label to justify why you like them.)

I think the term "morally gray" has become a buzz word thrown around for any kind of character that isn't one dimensionally good or evil.

Jiang Cheng isn't morally gray. He is a bad person. Again, a PERSON. Not a monster, not some sort of creatures that has no concept of humanity, just. A bad person.

Society's habit of separating people that do bad things from themselves, that "us vs them" mantality, that dehumanization of bad people, it just leave a bad taste in my mouth. Even fucking serial killers have qualities, can be smart or charismatic or empathetic. Even pedophiles have hobbies and people that love them. Even rapists have people that they love and respect.

Being a terrible person doesn't mean that they're not human. There is no one in the world that has absolutely no redeeming qualities to them. But because of that separation that so many people take for the truth, because of that "they did this because they're a monster, but I'm not so I would never do this", people just cannot accept when a bad person isn't bad all the time.

They'll look at Jiang Cheng that, ultimately, loves his family and is arguably hard working, and they'll think that that means he's "morally gray", because he possesses good qualities, completely ignoring the fact that he's just a trash human being in general.

Low key, it pisses me off. Especially the people that relate so hard to him, and ask me if I wouldn't do the same in his shoes. Because no. I fucking wouldn't cause genocide. I wouldn't torture and kill complete strangers because they dared to have a surname I don't like or because they make me think of someone I resent from my past.

Like, I took can see myself in him, totally. He IS well written, and between the cartoonishly bad Xue Yang and the paragons of moral virtue that is Wangxian, he's definitely the one that feels closest to an everyday man, in personality if you ignore all the murders. I am petty, I hold grudges, I can be entitled and selfish, I am overall a massive rude cunt, but I do not want to hurt people and everyday I strive to be better than the last, even in infinitesimal ways. As should anyone. But that is something that Jiang Cheng doesn't even acknowledge, stuck as he is in his victim mentality and inferiority complex.

But Jiang Cheng is morally bankrupt. He is not morally gray. Not even dark gray. As an adult, he is painstakingly human and in general, a bad person.

And that is OK.

To make him a better person, you don't have to change his entire character with half assed head canons, just make him acknowledge his flaws and let him (finally) grow as a person, past that stubborn mentality he has had for decades.

He IS a bad person, but even bad people have a capacity for growth and change, of the moment they allow themselves to. If he ever gets forgiven for his past actions, that's on the people he has hurt, not that it should even be considered in his journey towards growth.

(Frankly, I don't think he would be. I think he shouldn't be, but that's not for me to decide. However, I can definitely JC finally making some tiny progresses but for all the wrong reasons, and get insulted when, if he ever even get to that point, his apologies don't end up fixing everything. He is totally the kind of person that would see you being mad at them and feel like he's the one being victimized because you didn't accept his half assed apologies. The emotional maturity on this man is below -100.)

(Also, Wei Wuxian isn't morally gray in the total opposite, in that he is such a good person, be it morally or emotionally, just. God, I envy his mental fortitude and his capacity for forgiveness and love.)

Sorry again for the ask, just had to rant somewhere about this and I am kind of curious about how you consider the "morally gray" argument. I think it's total bullshit, if the entire post didn't tell you, but yeah, I'm curious.

I hope I was coherent enough, I did not plan this ask at all, it was all streams of consciousness.

So before I get to the actual material of your rant—of which I agree with—I want to go on a tangent. Bad people as a category are not “dehumanized.” Dehumanization is the act of stripping someone or a group of people of their humanity as a tool of oppression, and it must come with material consequences. Saying that a continent of people are only capable of non-human animal intelligence to justify centuries of enslavement is dehumanization. Saying that a country of people are born terrorists to justify flattening their homeland and claiming it by a different name is dehumanization. Claiming that the man who called you out on your desires to be the new oppressors is a literal demon wanting to destroy your heritage in order to justify leading an army to kill him and his charges while attempting to remove their ability to reincarnate is dehumanization. Calling a child abuser a monster is not dehumanization. It is just an insult.

In fact, the “human traits” of terrible human beings do not need to be defended, because more often than not the absolute worst human beings are materially protected from the consequences of their actions by people who want to defend their “humanity.” In mdzs, I don’t give two fucks about Jiang Cheng’s one “human” trait of loving his nephew, because his “inhumane” traits of abusing said nephew and everyone else in his life intentionally overshadow that by his own design. Jiang Yanli loved her son just as much and lost much more than Jiang Cheng ever did, but she didn’t become an unrepentant monster. Humans are not “monsters-in-waiting” whereby we must act as if every individual is always one step away from committing unspeakable acts of depravity. If that was the case, we would not have survived as a community-dependent social species. Therefore, I do not find Jiang Cheng as the most relatable character ever because I do not find the way that he gives into anti-human behaviors to be relatable to me on a personal level or to be representative of most people’s actions throughout the course of their lives. To feel pain is human, and to have outbursts about it is understandable. To abuse about it? To murder about it? To mass murder about it??? Absolutely anti-human, anti-community, and the type of behavior that can only survive and thrive in an environment that privileges people with those specific “inhumane” traits above everyone else. (One might even call it the environment of a corrupt hierarchy of power that mdzs critiques.) The exact opposite of dehumanization. So if I choose to call Jiang Cheng a monster, it is to intentionally point out the ways that his conscious actions as a character in this story are a negation of human life and community.

On that note, I’ve discussed how this fandom uses “morally gray” in this ask (excuse the fact that I switch between “grey” and “gray” lmao). To bring back a point from my rant from above, Jiang Cheng has his one (1) good trait leveraged by fandom to whitewash his crimes under the guise of “morally gray,” while Wei Wuxian is the one actually being dehumanized by that same label as people use it to justify his literal murder (and those of the Wen remnants) in the story, so that’s my feelings on that. Whether Jiang Cheng can be redeemed or not, I frankly do not care to speculate because the story concludes his character arc at him regressing back into Jiang “hunter of Wen” Cheng, still rich, still single, and still only loved by his nephew. At the end of the day, he is not a real person and I’m only here for wangxian.

[njordr]

no because anakin was never dealt with a winning anything, my dude spent years as a slave’s kid working in the junk shop building droids as a form of fun.

i always enjoy the whole “Anakin just expected Obi-wan and Padmé to trust and listen to him?? Asshole” discourse because like… yeah??

not trying to self insert here but as a mentally I’ll individual 🫡 who in a fit of mania sometimes believes they are absolutely, 100% right and has the irrational thinking of; “im right, and you love me, you’re the person I love most, you should get it” & is totally irrationally emotional when they DONT, yeah… I GET THAT SIR!!

Even if it’s completely understandable, deep down I know they’re not at fault for not getting my own emotions, I’m in control of those — not others. I know this. Still, when my partner says something that goes against me it’s like nails against chalkboards sometimes

Again, when looking at Anakin he had nothing. He was a slave all his life, just to a different master each time. on Tatooine, to the Jedi/code, Palpatine and even to the Darth vader suit, he is never of his own free will. It was Qui-gon’s choice to win Anakin, to take him from his mother and home to what he thought would be a better life. granted it is, but he also finds himself isolated from what is imo what is supposed to be his “placeholder family”

MORE IMPORTANTLY Padmé is the love of his life, telling him that what he thinks they need, what he’s done for her and their family etc to be at peace/alive was actually WRONG!! BAD!! All meanwhile he doesn’t have any of his support at his side; Rex is off with ahsoka, obi-wan is fighting grievous on utpau meanwhile Palpatine has puppy Anakin at his every whim and call ((lets not forget that Palpatine had to have been grooming Anakin from a relatively young age)) They don’t get it, they didn’t see Padmé die before their very eyes, they don’t know what’s waiting them. Anakin is trying to save his family. Obi-Wan going against him is salt in the wound, even if Anakin himself knows it’s wrong and against the code and just completely evil.

I mean, Padmé FORGAVE him for the whole tusken massacre smh is it such a stretch to believe she would stand by his side as he waged war against the galaxy? i mean… isn’t that what love is…..? selfish, passionate, narcissistic, messy? she herself is a politician who often prioritized Anakin over her own duties I bet my man expected some “if you have a body in your trunk I’ll bring the shovel” type beat which also, i reiterate, WHY WOULDN’T HE when his wife forgave him for mass genocide, children included?,

he is emotionally/mentally fragile, he just recently slew younglings and killed Mace — you think this mf is thinking logically? Stop giving him the benefit of the doubt; he was a mess throughout the series, not once did he ever have his feet on the ground. He isn’t suddenly going to make the “right” decision, especially if it means sacrificing his loved ones. He’s an extremely flawed character, stop expecting him to make the right call.

The blocks of Anakin’s character have been set up to fall, Obi-Wan and Padmé are two of his most beloved relationships aside from his MOTHER that are completely dogging on his only hope of SAVING THEM. Anakin was never simply, “you have to do what I say or else I’ll get upset!” that’s a disrespect to his character — he can think logically. He isn’t a child. He is strategic, effective, in tcw he is the most efficient victorious warrior making Palpatine’s efforts look even better as leader of the republic. He builds droids from the time he is a young child all throughout his formative - adult years to the extent where knows how to understand their bleep bloops.

Anakin is flawed deeply, he was doomed from the get-go, never had a chance. His feelings are complex and deep and he questions the faith he swore to follow/protect. His character is so interesting to me and I have such a difficult time depicting the raw duality of man he wears on his shoulders everyday. Our desire to do good, yet to be evil; our desire to be unselfish, yet we are selfish.

This beautiful, scarred, monstrous mosaic of a man who from the very beginning, had a huge amount of pressure on him was meant to be so horribly dismantled. What other choice did he have? He is the chosen one, how could he be wrong? How could his idea of saving his family be any less honourable than the Jedi of the Galaxy?

He isn’t simply angry at them for not agreeing with him/falling with him, he feels betrayed. Personally. Obi-Wan and Padmé are pieces of Anakin, people that he loved so fiercely he labeled them as his enemies once they hurt him, he is too far gone to give them any semblance of second chances

anyways yep happy Thursday guys

[nateofgreat]

the dumbasses who think they know everything and were in George’s mind or something when he was writing the prequels and therefore their interpretation of them is “Right” and definitely what he meant and not completely opposite fanon….

just taking everything the fucking evil ass Sith Lord who manufactured a fucking galactic war to destroy the Republic and create the Empire/used the Clones to commit genocide/abused his power/played everyone and goddamn Anakin Skywalker says abt the Jedi as fact and totally correct and not biased at all.

like no i don’t think that’s the point of those conversations….you just wrongly think it is. the Sith are not “good” and murdering the Jedi and their babies was not getting rid of a “corrupt” (what the hell are they talking abt with that tired excuse? shut up) org. but also new official d*sney SW content feeds into those takes on the Jedi? especially with the sequel trilogy and D*ve Filoni’s works.

i mean say what you want abt the Obi-Wan Kenobi show and but it at least respected and admired and mourned them properly and showed how devastating Order 66 was from the POV of a youngling survivor and how traumatized Obi-Wan was from Anakin’s actions.

The dangers of writing fictional propaganda I suppose lol.

What's funny is that a lot of the things that the Jedi Order is blamed for are actually Palpatine's fault (an intentional design on his part) specifically for the purpose of distracting them or making them look bad.

Like everyone complains about the Jedi fighting in the Clone Wars when it was Palpatine himself who orchestrated the war and conscripted the Jedi to fight in it.

They complain that the Jedi command a "slave army" when the Clones are intended to be a metaphor for the draft, when Palpatine's the own who ordered their production and then literally enslaved them with inhibitor chips.

The Jedi "steal babies" (not true) and then Palpatine has all of the same babies everyone's so upset about the Jedi raising killed.

I don't understand why Disney's insistent on playing into it. It's like they don't get that the Jedi are the main selling point of Star Wars, they're not going to have much luck with the franchise if they waste all of their time complaining about them and acting like they all deserve to die.

As much as the Last Jedi's panned for this it at least presented the idea that the Jedi Order's failures didn't define them and that they could pass on what they learned from it all. Filoni looks more like he's going the route of, "They failed, they suck, they're wrong about almost everything, and they need to completely change." Which is uhh, not very intriguing.

I also prefer Kenobi, it was a good show. Most the complaints I see about it are mostly just minor plot holes and contrivances that I think could've been caught if they'd given the team a little more time to iron things out. So I blame Disney for that one. And showing how terrible Order 66 was fit nicely into it.

[samasmith23]

The Anti-Fascist Themes of X-Men: Age of Apocalypse

One element that I’ve really grown to appreciate about the 90s crossover event X-Men: Age of Apocalypse when I recently re-read the storyline last year in omnibus format, is just how effectively it functions as a complete refutation against fascism as an ideology.

For some context, the "Age of Apocalypse" (or "AoA") is an alternate-dystopian-future timeline which was accidentally created when Professor Charles Xavier's neurodivergent son Legion (aka, David Haller), went on a misguided quest to make his father's dreams of peaceful human and mutant co-existence a reality by traveling back in time to assassinate Xavier's current archnemesis and former closest friend Magneto (aka, Erik Lehnsherr) before he could initiate his war against humanity. Instead, Legion accidentally killed Xavier when the latter hurled himself between his Erik and Legion's psionic dagger. Xavier's premature death resulted in a disastrous time-paradox where not only was Legion himself erased from the timeline, but Xavier never lived to form the X-Men. Matters were made even worse by the fact that the ancient and evil mutant Apocalypse (aka, En Sabah Nur) took advantage of this opportunity to begin his plans for world domination 20-years ahead of schedule, conquering all of North America and implementing his program of "cleansing" humanity's gene pool of all he considered weak and unfit to live. However, seeing Xavier die to save his life changed Magneto's pessimistic outlook on life, resulting in the Master of Magnetism devoting his life to bring about Xavier's dream of peace and founding his own version of the X-Men who fight against Apocalypse's reign of terror.

In regards to how AoA effectively functions as an anti-fascist text, it is important to discuss how the villain Apocalypse's goals are fundamentally fascistic in nature. En Sabah Nur's primary motivation in the AoA timeline (as well as the main Earth-616 continuity) is promoting of his extremist Social Darwinist philosophy of “survival of the fittest,” in which all normal humans and even fellow mutants with lesser powers are labeled as “unfit” and are condemned to total slaughter. Apocalypse and his followers are essentially framed as being the mutant equivalents to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, since their empire not only actively promote fascist eugenicist beliefs of racial supremacy and genocide, but it is also reflective of fascism's nature as an inherently self-destructive ideology which is ultimately destined to result in the eventual deaths of everyone it impacts.

This ouroboros element of fascism is evident through Apocalypse's enablement of war against the Human High Council overseas in Europe despite his knowledge that they’ll retaliate with a nuclear carpet bombing in self-defense. But Apocalypse is willing to risk the deaths of even himself and his own followers all for the sake of his single-minded goal of determining whether or not the strong will rise from the ashes of those deemed "weak" and "inferior."

The parallels between Apocalypse's empire and Nazi Germany are made incredibly overt throughout the narrative. In addition to conducting routine mass cullings against those deemed to be “genetically inferior” (including both humans and mutants), Apocalypse's strategy of intentionally breaking the "Kelly Pact" peace-treaty he signed with the Human High Council in order to expand his empire into Europe bears a lot of parallels to how Hitler historically violated the non-aggression pact he signed with Josef Stalin by invading Russia during World War II.

Plus, the AoA version of Hank McCoy, aka Dark Beast, conducts barbaric eugenics experiments on mutants that Apocalypse has labeled as “unfit,” and one of En Sabah Nur’s four Horsemen and own son is literally named “Holocaust” (who personally carried out the mass-culling of Japan's entire population of which the X-Man Sunfire was the sole survivor of). Furthermore, another of Apocalypse's Horsemen and his centuries'-long right-hand man is Mister Sinister, whom later during Chris Claremont's run on Excalibur from the early 2000s was revealed to have once been a literal Nazi scientist who worked under Josef Mengele at Auschwitz.

But as much as fascists love to boast about their alleged strength and superiority, in reality said-strength is nothing more than a facade. For all the immense physical power that Apocalypse and his Four Horseman possess, they are ultimately weak in character they were only able to they have to show for their power is mountains upon mountains of corpses of innocent lives that they have stolen. This is evident through Holocaust’s desire to convert the remains of the victims of the latest Culling into an army of Infinites (cloned cybernetic mutant foot-soldiers), something which the X-Man Sabertooth accurately points out as being inherently antithetical to Holocaust’s alleged “superiority.” After all, if he’s so strong and “fit to survive,” then why does he need an army of artificial soldiers bred in a lab in order to boast about said “strength”?

Heck, even the usually non-serious jokey member of the X-Men, Morph, alludes to the fact that fascist’s illusion of “strength” is only made possible through the demonization of others.

"No matter how strong, no matter how powerful, it always comes down to name calling."

As Linkara pointed out in the third part of his Secret Empire review, at the end of the day, fascism is a loser ideology that is entirely dependent on the illusion of “strength” whilst simultaneously destroying itself and everything and everyone else around it. Rogue said it best whilst fighting Holocaust:

“How many lives have to be lost, how much blood has to flow, until y’all are satisfied?!”

In stark contrast to Apocalypse and his Horsemen, Magneto and his X-Men represent not only hope and perseverance in the ongoing fight against fascism, but also true strength. Not the illusion of strength based on power obtained via the deaths of innocents but fighting against oppression and annihilation. As Magneto so eloquently puts it to Apocalypse:

“To fight… is to survive. I and everyone like me who believes you and your Horsemen are wrong… will never stop fighting…”

Additionally, the AoA version of Magneto serves as an interesting role reversal of his mainstream Earth-616 counterpart wherein instead of becoming a mutant-terrorist Erik has adopted the late Xavier’s dream of striving peaceful mutant and human co-existence. In the original timeline Erik's background as a Holocaust survivor influenced his pessimistic outlook towards human and mutant relationships, prompting him to wage war against humanity to ensure mutants will never suffer through a similar genocide. And plenty of stories since the classic Chris Claremont era have simultaneously portrayed Erik struggling with falling prey to ideologies of mutant supremacy, as he fears that such a path could turn him into someone just like those who once persecuted him.

AoA expands upon this element of Magneto's characterization through portraying Erik as actively opposing the ultimate destination in which mutant supremacy ideologies inevitably lead towards. He fights against Apocalypse’s extreme Social Darwinist “survival of the fittest” doctrine that has already murdered millions of normal humans and fellow mutants alike.

In essence, the AoA version of Magneto is a Jewish Holocaust survivor who grew up to become rebel freedom-fighter striving to achieve Xavier’s dreams of peace by fighting against the mutant equivalents of the Nazis who once persecuted Erik as a child! At the end of the day, AoA is ultimately about the rejection of "might makes right," as the so-called “strong” are ultimately defeated by those they discriminated against for their perceived “weakness." A thesis which is laid bare during the final battle against Apocalypse in X-Men: Omega, wherein Erik delivers one of the most badass refutations against fascism that I've personally ever read:

"'Survival of the fittest' indeed. You preen and posture as if your were the first dictator to discover the concept and stake the world's fate on its nonsense. As a child, I heard the very same babble from a Berlin house painter... a madman whose Aryan race tried to wipe out all it deemed 'dirty' or 'impure.' And do you remember who won the war he began? The 'weak'... who rose in righteous triumph... TO OVERTHROW THE STRONG ONCE AND FOR ALL!"

Overall, X-Men: Age of Apocalypse's anti-fascist themes and framing is quite honestly the element of the storyline that I’ve grown the most fond of upon re-reading this event crossover after several years!

I originally didn't notice all of this rich subtext when I first read AoA a few years ago, but I recognize it now upon my recent re-read and it has greatly elevated the overall quality of this storyline in my eyes!

[spurgie-cousin]

i’m voting for Biden, not because i support his actions as president or the genocide, but because i’d rather have him than trump. we need to band together and vote biden as much as it hurts and sucks if we don’t want trump 2024. this is just 2016 all over again - vote for the lesser of two evils.

There are just so many leftists calling for everyone to boycott voting this year, particularly due to Palestine which I completely understand but I feel like in that arena, isn't trump just going to double down on supporting Isreal if he's president??

I'm just trying to understand the thinking of what the plan is after a boycott, like maybe there's something I'm missing, that could be totally possible. It just seems like realistically, we cannot overhaul the system at a federal level in 7 months and maybe I'm just being pessimistic but I'm not seeing a lot of organized communication or agreement amongst leftists. So I'm getting scared man for real, Trump has laid out his plan to strip everyone except white male gun owners of their rights, and realistically I feel like he has the support to get at least some passed......