#how masterfully done

[moraymiso]

atsushi being selfish and wanting to basically stroke his own ego is what MAKES him such a flawless character. he is not infallible, he is not perfect, he’s not another “i just wanna save everyone bc i’m a good cool guy!” mc.

this kid is TROUBLED. his worldview is so black-and-white that it blinds him. he’s so close-minded that it makes him naive and oblivious. he’s so steadfast it makes him foolish. AND THAT IS WHY HE’S PERFECT

[hinamie]

hey hina, hope you're well! what were your fave moments from arcane s2??

hi mariam!! oh my god how to resist the urge to just say all of it ,, it was SO good i think ive rewatched it like 4 times through already and every time i do there's something new to notice :')))

it still feels like a copout answer but i honestly think . everything in act 3 is my favourite gjdfsdgdhd i loved jayce's madness arc clawing himself out of the trench the fucking. visuals of him breaking down the desperation and determination and self-hatred of it all...i did not expect jayce of all people to make me feel so much but he DID and he DID IT WITH LONG HAIR BLESS BLESS BLESS . real talk tho episode 7 as a whole might be my favourite fucking episode dont talk to me abt ekko and powder im so unwell abt them i can't believe ekko got isekaied into a cute science gf and jayce got a mindbreak

and i wld b remiss if i did not mention the other 2 eps in act 3 in ep8 we got . th jaymelvik confrontation in the council chambers heLLO THAT SCENE WS SO CHARGED i think they shld have had a threesome with the puppet i think tht wld have been hot i think that would have been a successful peace negotiation. AND TH JAILCELL HELLO HELLO HELLO HEL-

AND EP9 THE FINAL FIGHT I AM . every part of it was so well-coordinated and tense the fuckin??? cait/mel/ambessa mother/daughter and pseudo-mother-pseudo-daughter mentor/mentee fight??? in2 the fucking finale im UNWELL abt JAYVIK WHAT TH FUCK DO YOU MEAN "in all timelines, in all possibilities, only you can show me this" WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT HOMOSEXUAL CLASSICAL LITERATURE ASS CONFESSION

to answer your question. arcane s2 act3>>>>>>>

[cloudbends]

OH I AM INCONSOLABLE. DEVASTATED.

[circumstantialsimultaneity]

the fact that homestuck persona 5 and revolutionary girl utena were three of the things that coalesced into my brain the hardest as a sixteen year old in 2020… the Teenagers Lack The Ability To Imagine A Happy Adult Future For Themselves stories… oh i’m sure

[strechanadi]

There's probably not a better example of a love-hate relationship than me and the ballet Onegin.

Like I love the piece to no end. But I positively HATE so much of what Cranko did with the source material and its characters...

[colorisbyshe]

i am not returning to this blogs mid-life state of being a topical discourse blog like i won't be constantly posting about AI... just to make it clear

but i do find it distressing that people will twist seeming innocuous arguments to defend ai like 'oh its ableist to be anti-ai'

what the fuck are you talking about? deaf music composers exist. blind painters exist. there are people who draw with colored pencils held between their toes. people who use up all their spoons finishing a crochet project that took them months. people who have thrown water balloons at canvases to depict what it's like to live with physical, mental, and emotional conditions. people whose shaky line work caused by their chronic fatigue actually emphasizes the emotional tension of their work.

maybe this is an issue of what art is valued--maybe you don't value art that is seen as less skillfull, less intentional when made by disabeld artists. maybe you are talking about that being a larger issue but that isn't resolved by just... letting computers do it instead

who are you talking about when you imply that disabled people cannot create art? who are you to devalue the art that disabled people have already made? like?

and then who are we all to say okay if you can't make something, it's okay to just steal from anyone who can do it? what if i told you generative ai also stole from disabled artists? generative ai is used to replace commissioning artists, including artists who use art commissions for income they cannot otherwise make, as disability makes other employment difficult or outright impossible

is that ableism?

like... what structural oppression is happening in opposing generative ai which destroys the environment on a scale no other computer usage reaches? what structural oppression is happening in opposing programs that are made to eliminate EVER paying artists for their labor? what structural oppression is happening in opposing the ACTUAL slave labour used by these generative ai companies?

if we're whipping out terms about structural oppression... generative ai a more likely tool of oppression than opposing it

that's it for the day i'm not gonna argue with people but i would ask you to like... all reflect a bit more on what you are implying when you say opposing generative ai is ableism

[goldenflurry]

Heh.. sooo, Welcome Home anyone? :D

{but also- please support the creator @partycoffin if you can, they deserve it seriously !}

[astramachina]

...... oh I absolutely refuse to feel bad for the mimic. This novella had no right to make me slam it down with a resounding NO while choking back tears.

[fitzrove]

Help the new tdv cd only has the bad songs

[fiapple]

literally, i love nami so much, you do not even understand. you cannot begin to fathom.

[jlf23tumble]

Hi, Jen! Feel free to skip this if you don’t feel like discussing but I feel like you’re one of the few people who actually allows for ambiguity / the unknown, and the only thing I know for sure is that we can’t be sure of anything. If I had to guess, I’d bet the HL reality is messy and complicated and not the « soulmates who met as teens and have only ever slept with each other since 2010 (or period) » narrative that so many people have just accepted as truth. That said, do you think H is queer? I really can’t get past all of the signaling over the years, and I realize he could be queer and still with women, I just have never thought he seems straight, or even convincingly attracted to women. I never thought Holivia was real, but (1) an upper thigh tattoo is so intimate, it’s not likely going to be for a theoretical goddaughter, you know? And (2) the whole thing was just so messy and embarrassing. I don’t know, just wondered if you think he’s queer/bi/pan or leans mostly straight and has probably just fooled around with men a bit over the years (maybe Louis, others). 👀

My own belief is that Harry is not straight--what that looks like in the day to day is anyone's guess because people change, grow, experiment, etc., and it's a deeply personal thing, plus he's lived a lot of lives in less than 30 years, the shit he has seen and/or done, wowzers! I put a lot more of my thoughts in the tags, but he's way into cock, like WAY into it, and I think that's a lot of the that on the it's what it's of it all. But to one of your points, I honestly don't think the relationship with Oliva was all that messy or embarrassing, I think a lot of his fans were fucking messy AND embarrassing, people casually observing it all didn't have that vibe (and if you want to come for me on that, come for me with some actual non-larry facts about it). Anyway, Harry Styles having the most rigidly binary fandom in the world is an irony for our time, lmao (and also, ouch).

[xxplastic-cubexx]

I know that 60's Erik was a whole different beast from Claremont Erik, but like... I feel like more modern stories should have his goofy ass brought back

i love his goofy maniacal ass i cant even lie....

[aeris-blue]

What wonderful colors!

✨️✨️✨️

[unshatters-your-teacup]

IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE BABY????????

[chorrianderr]

The most beautiful thing about Designated Survivor : 60 days is how the story is about Agent Han Na Gyeong as much as it's about President Park Mu Jin. How their struggle mirrors each other despite chasing the culprit with a very different method and how hard they fight their own battles, Park Mu Jin on the merciless Political court and Han Na Gyeong on the shadowy streets of Seoul

[qqueenofhades]

I think its genuinely fascinating how Biden has somehow become the bad vibes sin eater for the party. I'm seeing people who were doing the whole "voting doesn't matter both old men are the same" pivot hard into voting as harm reduction. The anti voting rhetoric has COMPLETELY lost The Youths on tiktok. People suddenly remember the good things the Biden administration has done but don't associate Harris with any of the things they didn't like. In my swing state volunteers are signing up in droves. People feel ENERGIZED, the vibe shift pre and post Biden dropping from the race has just been insane

Y'know, that is a... good way of putting it. It's also why I'm quite sure that Biden has probably been planning it for a while. I don't think he was intending to step down, and didn't want to be forced out at the drop of a hat, but after he realized that the circus was never going to stop until he did, he did the honorable fall-on-his-own-sword thing and definitely, DEFINITELY spent some time choreographing this behind the scenes. Because while the roll-out has been very smooth, it could just as easily (as many of us were expecting) have been a total disaster, and that doesn't happen without SOME planning. It's also entirely possible that the campaign staff flipped from Biden to Harris are superhuman, to come up with a massive online roll-out, new branding, new signs (they had plenty of 'em in Wisconsin yesterday), new everything, but I'm guessing it's a combination of both. Biden has spent his entire political career being underestimated, and after we literally made a meme out of Dark Brandon juking the Republicans out of their shoes, we should definitely give credit where credit is due in how masterfully he pulled it off.

Because we have had eight years defined by the central question of Whether The President Is a God King Who Should Serve For Life (the MAGAts obviously think yes), the sheer idea of a president willingly giving up his power BEFORE he had to is also novel and admirable. It's sad that this is the case, but so be it. The Republicans also got a heaping helping of Be Careful What You Wish For that was undoubtedly brilliant; they've been yelling for years that Biden is old and frail and can't serve and should step down. Biden went "lol okay" and gave it to them, and now they're fucked.

Aside from that, on the most basic level, it's far, far easier to see the actual difference in the parties with Harris as the nominee, just because it shows that one party is willing to make progress and reflect the new demographic reality and social mores of America, and the other one is not. Now to be clear, Biden deserves an incredible amount of credit for coming out of retirement (he was ALREADY 77 years old when he became president and had had decades of a long and respected career in public service behind him) to fight, beat Trump, and deliver an incredibly successful presidency. He held the line against authoritarianism at home and abroad, he rescued the trashed American economy and managed a world-leading recovery from Covid, he stood up for democracy, he spent four years filling the benches with liberal judges to reverse even some of the Trump/McConnell hack job, he finally passed comprehensive infrastructure investment and the Green New Deal under the name of the Inflation Reduction Act -- and so on. Many of these priorities had been languishing for decades or were completely trashed under Trump, and he could not have done so much in just 4 years without all that age, skill, and experience. Hence why all the Ageism!!! was (aside from being a Republican/media smear job) dumb. He's able to do the job because he has had decades to study. Turns out that makes you actually pretty damn good at it.

Yes, Biden could not do as much as he wanted or originally planned, had to deal with MAGA Republicans and Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema sabotaging him the whole time (lololol Manchin, possible possessor of the World's Biggest Ego and with Trump around that's saying something, popping out of obscurity to self-righteously announce he would not be willing to be Kamala's VP. YEAH ASSHOLE. LITERALLY NOBODY ASKED YOU. NOBODY WHATSOEVER. NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS AT LEAST WE WILL SOON NO LONGER HAVE MANCHIN IN THE SENATE). And yes, Biden made some serious mistakes of his own, because he IS from an older generation and a different style of doing politics/different beliefs that no longer resonate with the younger segments of the electorate. But this old white Catholic guy at the age of almost 80 still managed to be the most progressive president ever, coming in at a moment of incredible domestic and international crisis and getting us safely to the other side, and all cynicism, criticizing, and caveating aside, he deserves an incredible amount of credit for that. I mean that absolutely, and I am very grateful.

As I said, willingly relinquishing that power takes guts, and when Biden saw the writing on the wall that he had to sacrifice himself, he took his time, he didn't jump too early, and he didn't jump too late. On the most basic level, it becomes a hell of a lot easier to make the "both parties are not the same" argument when one is running a (comparatively) young brown woman and the other is still running their loathed felonious old demented orange traitor. Most Americans are not plugged into policy minutiae and details. They look at Biden-Trump, they see two old white guys. When you take one of those old white guys away (who goes in a self-sacrificially heroic manner and in sharp contrast with the coup-happy fascist) and put Kamala Harris in there instead, it generates an obvious jolt. People can see for themselves that there is a real difference that doesn't rely on closely reading news and tracking complex policy, because as noted, most Americans simply don't. The brown first-generation American daughter of brown immigrants is a quantifiably different story from "old white guy career politician," which for better or worse is how Biden was seen, especially the old part. We needed that establishment expertise to beat Trump in 2020; I still think Biden is the only one who could have done it, and as noted, we owe him a great debt for doing so.

However.... 2024 is not 2020, and it is not 2016. There has been this HUGE and unbelievable swing to Kamala because she represents the antithesis of what the last eight years of Trump-induced anger, fear, panic, chaos, and hatred has stirred up. That's why people are so ready to rally around her, just as they were (I daresay) around Obama in 2008, after the exhaustion, chaos, war, and mounting economic misery of Bush. Trump has been out of office for the last four years, but his shadow over the American political landscape has been omnipresent. Now people know that we finally have a real chance at getting rid of him forever, and just as Biden was uniquely positioned to capitalize on that in 2020, so Harris is now. Which is why, however tough it will be, she has a real shot at winning. I can guarantee the Republicans know that, and are shit scared. Because the Black Lady Army of Democracy has indeed arrived in force to Get This Shit Done and I don't know about you, but I found that incalculably comforting:

Yikes! All lined up for Kamala pic.twitter.com/Dt4OCDp7WX

— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) July 24, 2024

This, at the most basic level, is what scares fascists the most, it's exactly what we need now, and what Harris is uniquely positioned to mobilize, along with her gangbusters appeal to young voters:

This is the energy we need. This is what Biden saw and planned for and which he launched us into, and where all that experience and age paid off. This is why people, even people otherwise disengaged, disillusioned, or checked out of the tedious and mind-numbering drudgery and depression of American politics, are responding to it. Because it's easy to understand, it offers hope, and it tells a very simple story that is nonetheless long overdue:

Thanks so much, Joe. Go absolutely waste that orange fucker, Kamala. We got your back.