Did you hear? Texas just banned porn.
Did you hear the "offensive to minors" content bill that stipulated an age verification to access adult content or content deemed harmful or offensive to minors was passed??? Now you have to verify your age to view such content, which can be used to restrict minor access to LGBT resources, sexual health information, and anything else the government deems "offensive or harmful."
And also in a SHOCKING turn of events, Pornhub made itself and its two subsidiary companies unavailable in Texas, calling the bill haphazard and ineffective in protecting minors and actually harmful because it forces minors to interact with potentially harmful sites and denies access to other potentially useful sites. They also said it's an invasion of privacy and a violation of 1st amendment rights.
In order to access adult content in Texas now, it would need to be done by inputting your government ID numbers to prove you're an adult (and allowing the government to know what sites you're accessing, further watchdog activity) OR verify using 3rd party systems (by verifying your debts, student loans, education, job status, tax information, mortgage information to verify you're an adult), which opens the door for information to be sold to other third parties and can potentially expose all of your private life to outsiders.
Putting aside the porn thing, not out of a sense of moral righteousness, but because that is a whole different can of worms to dissect the way banning porn is awful for everyone. Putting that aside, how is this going to affect teens, children, closeted people?
To have zero access to LGBT resources that will be deemed offensive to minors? Goodbye Trevor Project. Goodbye resources on sexual health, what STDs are, and everything of the like. STDs and STIs will increase, health complications from such issues and from potential pregnancy complications (how do you have safe sex if you're not even sure what that means?).
Banning information will not guarantee people stop looking for it or needing it! Instead, they will get WRONG information from friends and other potentially misleading sources, and feel helpless when they have no way to figure out what is going on in their lives. People don't stop needing information because they can't find it. They just suffer because they can't find it.
You may not like Texas, but PLEASE, for the love of God, there are children here. They need your help. Don't turn your back on us. Don't forget the way you learned about sexual health online when your school wouldn't talk about it, or the way you watched that first porn and said, "fuck, I think I'm gay." Cast your gaze towards Texas! I'm begging you to have a little heart.
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What’s smithy’s favorite food other than pepto bismol?
Kevin's Smoothies
I KID. He tolerates those because food made specifically for him is always going to be his favorite food. He associates someone making something with him in mind as like the NICEST THING. So he'll drink / eat without a single complaint
It's hard to pick a single thing XD
#1 is his Grandma's pies.
You may say 'well that's dessert' you would be correct but also WRONG.
GS has range and she makes a mean Shepherd's pie and an even meaner Chicken Pot Pie.
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Okay here’s another controversial “Green family take” tell me if I’m wrong.
“People who hate Harumi and Lloyd family dynamic ignore that Lloyd and Morro also shouldn’t have a family dynamic, when Morro did the exact same thing”
Because besties I agree I honestly think green cousins doesn’t make much sense either since yknow Morro and the whole possession thing, but at the same time if you look at canon, they just aren’t the same thing and yknow I need people to actually stop looking at Harumi as the girl version of Morro and the only reason we hate her is because she’s a girl.
Because she’s not.
Like yes I agree there’s definitely a lot of bias towards Morro, if he was woman he would be demonised to hell and back but since he’s man then he is adored, and vice versa with Harumi and sexism fucking sucks.
But Harumi and Morro are different guys. Harumi is portrayed as worse in canon in Lloyd’s eyes. Yeah Lloyd got possessed by Morro and that’s obviously bad tm but other than what people assume possession entails, Lloyd was never as shaken as he was with Harumi.
In s5, we never saw Lloyd be conflicted about the possession thing. He had no fear of Morro. We have no reason to believe that a ghost possession feels worse than being a sleep and maybe having a vague awareness of what’s going on. He barely mentions Morro after s5. And I will say I think this is a writing flaw, obviously it would’ve been cooler if Morro actually had some kind of impact on the ninja, but regardless this is the canon. Lloyd hates Morro but he’s not traumatised yknow. It’s not to the point that Harumi got to.
I feel like getting possessed should be worse than getting lied to, but Harumi did on top of it, start a cult in his name, Kill actual Characters (the royal family and Hutchins) and then kidnap Lloyd and his mother and his uncle and then resurrect his father removing vital parts of his father’s mind/personality/emotional cognitive abilities etc. on top of that she also nearly killed the ninja and wu (which Lloyd believed she did).
Somehow she was much more dangerous than Morro was, she was a much more successful villain.
Additionally I would say Morro has more of an excuse to be seen as family, even if I I’m less of a green cousins fan. Because Morro and Wu actually have a father son relationship, in which Wu was actually responsible over Morro. They had a normal albeit imperfect dynamic before Morro left. Regardless of Lloyd and Morro’s interactions, that dynamic was still present even in the very end.
It doesn’t mean and Lloyd and Morro have to be buddies, just because there’s a family connection doesn’t mean shit (this is the show of found family have we learned nothing? Blood connections don’t matter, only friendship).
But like in comparison to Harumi and Garmadon’s absolute parody of a relationship, where Harumi turns to the man who doesn’t remember what love is and asks him to be her father (at this point neither of them know what “father” even means), Morro does have a family dynamic and Harumi does not.
So in response to the original quote, Morro has a much more solid claim to any kind of family dynamic bc his relation to Wu is much more family esq, and also he was bad yeah, but the show portrays Harumi as worse especially in Lloyd’s opinion.
I just don’t like the argument that Morro and Harumi have done the same things, when the severity is definitely different imo and they aren’t just copies of each other. Imo it’s an oversimplification to reduce their characters down to each other.
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Actually one thing that fascinates me about the shift between the book and the movie for TBoSaS is the actual intent put behind two of Snow's biggest game-changing (ha) actions, dropping the handkerchief in the snake's tank to save Lucy and recording Sejanus' confession and subsequently betraying him.
Obviously with the shift of medium they have to make things more obvious, but it's just opened more depth of thought to me because in-book how he recounts these actions are as reflexive, things done in the moment without really thinking about it (when using the remote he literally says his hands "acted on their own [...] before he had been aware of deciding to do it") vs. how in the movie he seems to actively think through and enact them knowingly. You can still make an argument that the Sejanus situation is pretty much the same, especially given that he more goads Sejanus into talking, but with Lucy's situation he literally RACES out, tears his stitches and finds the tank and doesn't just drop the kerchief, he literally has to stuff the stupid thing in a side vent, a far cry from the book's version, where he drops it and wonders if he hallucinated the entire thing.
I actually really, really am intrigued by it as a narrative change though because a) him actually consciously doing these things puts more weight behind them, they're not just things that HAPPENED to him (a common stance he takes internally), they're things he cared about making happen so he did them, but also b) it places Lucy Gray as continually the one being who makes him most human, so it makes sense that his most kind-hearted action is a decision to try to save her.
One thing that made me saddest about his character from the book was that he has this seeming inability to view anybody as a fully-fledged human besides himself (even his Capitol classmates are differing levels of crass or try-hards until he needs a reason to be emotional about them, and THEN what he cares about with them is their shared childhood memories, almost never anything about them in the present day) but when he's a mentor is the time that he becomes most fully-fledged, he has sympathy (however fleeting and easily retracted) for Clemensia and Jessup besides wanting Lucy to survive. And perhaps he only does it because he feels that he owes Lucy a debt for saving his life, but it still happens, and he still ends up seeing them.
To me, this disproves his and Dr. Gaul's thesis; I don't really think the most base human instinct is for us to hurt each other, I think it's closer to not wanting to leave each other behind. When he has the least to gain from these people, what he cares about is their survival, the least amount of their pain. What we want from each other is for you to get home safe. That's what gives it such beauty that he would risk so much to get Lucy home safe, and so much more damning that he would throw Sejanus to the wolves. That there is equal impetus behind the choice to save somebody at risk to yourself, just as there is behind condemning somebody who placed their absolute trust in you; these are the choices that make a man. Sometimes, even a flicker of humanity can save your soul within you. The tragedy is he simply didn't want it to be saved, so the flicker burnt out before it could even take shape.
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