#i genuinely just think they lack critical thinking skills

[stuckinapril]

Literally annoying as shit *someone makes a good point about how big events like award shows are used to distract from a violent attack* *random person on the internet * “oh so you’re saying I shouldn’t SLEEP now?! I’m not allowed to eat and take CARE of myself? How DARE you!” I am banging my head against a brick wall as we speak, I can’t.

Betting my MONEY on that person being American bc the relatability factor always has been & continues to be such a major issue here. Americans do literally think in terms of “I’m not Palestinian so why should I care” “I’m not Arab so this isn’t really my concern” “ok but do you expect me to just STOP MY LIFE???” and this entitlement ends up breeding actual disbelief for the idea that others could care about other people despite not suffering the same problems or hailing from the same backgrounds. Their recourse is either to shame you for it or get defensive for their own indifference. Its such a tired pattern

(Also worthy to add that it’s not just rooted in relatability and hyperindividualism and a lot of these people are in fact simply anti Arab racist lmao)

[makotonaegiunderstander]

imagine just constantly talking about an installment you actively dislike of a series instead of just. not doing that. If you think all the characters were written badly and you don’t like the game as much as the others, why are you focusing on it?? dude just move on to the shit you actually like instead of pretending you understand the series better than the people who have actually found things to enjoy abt it. this is abt people who talk primarily about THH despite hating it (with the exception of Ishimaru and Mondo for some reason? although these people usually think they were the Worst Treated Characters) and liking SDR2 and DRV3 more. Like I think every single one of these games has bad writing and problems but I think there’s good things abt them in each installment. I also don’t really prefer SDR2 or DRV3 but instead of talking about how bad they are (I don’t think this but as a hypothetical) I just. Shut my mouth. I leave it alone. It’s that easy folks!

[giantkillerjack]

Your stance on the Dunmeshi queerbait stuff is a bit selfish. Wanting this one manga to go exactly the way you want is a dangerous path - the way you phrase it is so entitled, making it clear it's not about consuming media about lesbians, but making one specific work suit exactly what you want. So many yuri mangas are written by sapphic women. It's a shame your stance is how it is.

And bastardizing the term queerbaiting does no good, either. Neither does the japanese manga market. You should research more before making such hurtful posts.

Hope you have a great day anyway.

[Anon is referring to this post, I believe.]

I mean, one of us certainly IS acting very entitled and weird about the media they like, and it ain't me. Like, I think you just have associated this piece of media with your own identity in an unhealthy way that makes you react to criticism of it with intense defensiveness. You don't own Dungeon Meshi. You aren't Marcille. Dungeon Meshi is NOT a yuri manga; it's a beautiful manga with either sapphic queerbait or a woefully underdeveloped queer relationship at its center.

Maybe if you had an argument besides "it does no good" to criticize it, but you don't. So.

Smh, it's a "dangerous path" - I'm screenshotting that bc I know it'll make my wife laugh. Like, friendo, wanting a piece of media to be better isn't dangerous. But calling someone selfish and hurtful for criticizing media while offering no clarifications as to who I've hurt or how (any fellow sapphics bleeding out in here? Or is it just me with my bonkers-heavy period??)... it's overstepping a social boundary in a bizarre way.

Like, I'm sorry that I'm better at media analysis than you (not actually sorry - I am being petty! :D), but I actually have studied queerbaiting!! I am willing to bet I have done more research than you! (Are you from twitter? You have that vibe. - Again, pettiness.)

... and I spend every day with my wife (the best writer I know; I'm so honored to share stories with her), talking of nothing but our shared special interest all day - i.e. media analysis. (I honestly don't know what neurotypical couples talk about lol)

And I've done enough research to know that one of the side effects of queerbaiting is that fans are often in denial about it and then get REAL MAD when someone points it out. I was there for the Sherlock/Supernatural fandom. Shit was crazy. (Not saying Super-who-lock bc my man Russell Davies was like MAKE THOSE BOYS SMOOCH! 😎)

Also like, my apologies to Ryoko Kui - I really do love Dungeon Meshi - but like, I'm just better at writing and illustrating queer rep than she is. I make real gay protagonists who do gay shit and are gay, and I will never queerbait my audience. Womp womp.

Also, honestly, even if I turn out to be wrong about the queerbaiting by the end of the series, this message was still rude and entitled and weird. We have a lot of issues facing our queer community that endanger real people; someone calling a story queerbaiting mistakenly is not one of them.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

How can you consider yourself any sort of leftist when you defend AI art bullshit? You literally simp for AI techbros and have the gall to pretend you're against big corporations?? Get fucked

I don't "defend" AI art. I think a particular old post of mine that a lot of people tend to read in bad faith must be making the rounds again lmao.

Took me a good while to reply to this because you know what? I decided to make something positive out of this and use this as an opportunity to outline what I ACTUALLY believe about AI art. If anyone seeing this decides to read it in good or bad faith... Welp, your choice I guess.

I have several criticisms of the way the proliferation of AI art generators and LLMs is making a lot of things worse. Some of these are things I have voiced in the past, some of these are things I haven't until now:

Most image and text AI generators are fine-tuned to produce nothing but the most agreeable, generically pretty content slop, pretty much immediately squandering their potential to be used as genuinely interesting artistic tools with anything to offer in terms of a unique aesthetic experience (AI video still manages to look bizarre and interesting but it's getting there too)

In the entertainment industry and a lot of other fields, AI image generation is getting incorporated into production pipelines in ways that lead to the immiseration of working artists, being used to justify either lower wages or straight-up layoffs, and this is something that needs to be fought against. That's why I unconditionally supported the SAG-AFTRA strikes last year and will unconditionally support any collective action to address AI art as a concrete labor issue

In most fields where it's being integrated, AI art is vastly inferior to human artists in any use case where you need anything other than to make a superficially pretty picture really fast. If you need to do anything like ask for revisions or minor corrections, give very specific descriptions of how objects and people are interacting with each other, or just like. generate several pictures of the same thing and have them stay consistent with each other, you NEED human artists and it's preposterous to think they can be replaced by AI.

There is a lot of art on the internet that consists of the most generically pretty, cookie-cutter anime waifu-adjacent slop that has zero artistic or emotional value to either the people seeing it or the person churning it out, and while this certainly was A Thing before the advent of AI art generators, generative AI has made it extremely easy to become the kind of person who churns it out and floods online art spaces with it.

Similarly, LLMs make it extremely easy to generate massive volumes of texts, pages, articles, listicles and what have you that are generic vapid SEO-friendly pap at best and bizzarre nonsense misinformation at worst, drowning useful information in a sea of vapid noise and rendering internet searches increasingly useless.

The way LLMs are being incorporated into customer service and similar services not only, again, encourages further immiseration of customer service workers, but it's also completely useless for most customers.

A very annoyingly vocal part the population of AI art enthusiasts, fanatics and promoters do tend to talk about it in a way that directly or indirectly demeans the merit and skill of human artists and implies that they think of anyone who sees anything worthwile in the process of creation itself rather than the end product as stupid or deluded.

So you can probably tell by now that I don't hold AI art or writing in very high regard. However (and here's the part that'll get me called an AI techbro, or get people telling me that I'm just jealous of REAL artists because I lack the drive to create art of my own, or whatever else) I do have some criticisms of the way people have been responding to it, and have voiced such criticisms in the past.

I think a lot of the opposition to AI art has critstallized around unexamined gut reactions, whipping up a moral panic, and pressure to outwardly display an acceptable level of disdain for it. And in particular I think this climate has made a lot of people very prone to either uncritically entertain and adopt regressive ideas about Intellectual Propety, OR reveal previously held regressive ideas about Intellectual Property that are now suddenly more socially acceptable to express:

(I wanna preface this section by stating that I'm a staunch intellectual property abolitionist for the same reason I'm a private property abolitionist. If you think the existence of intellectual property is a good thing, a lot of my ideas about a lot of stuff are gonna be unpalatable to you. Not much I can do about it.)

A lot of people are suddenly throwing their support behind any proposal that promises stricter copyright regulations to combat AI art, when a lot of these also have the potential to severely udnermine fair use laws and fuck over a lot of independent artist for the benefit of big companies.

It was very worrying to see a lot of fanfic authors in particular clap for the George R R Martin OpenAI lawsuit because well... a lot of them don't realize that fanfic is a hobby that's in a position that's VERY legally precarious at best, that legally speaking using someone else's characters in your fanfic is as much of a violation of copyright law as straight up stealing entire passages, and that any regulation that can be used against the latter can be extended against the former.

Similarly, a lot of artists were cheering for the lawsuit against AI art models trained to mimic the style of specific artists. Which I agree is an extremely scummy thing to do (just like a human artist making a living from ripping off someone else's work is also extremely scummy), but I don't think every scummy act necessarily needs to be punishable by law, and some of them would in fact leave people worse off if they were. All this to say: If you are an artist, and ESPECIALLY a fan artist, trust me. You DON'T wanna live in a world where there's precedent for people's artstyles to be considered intellectual property in any legally enforceable way. I know you wanna hurt AI art people but this is one avenue that's not worth it.

Especially worrying to me as an indie musician has been to see people mention the strict copyright laws of the music industry as a positive thing that they wanna emulate. "this would never happen in the music industry because they value their artists copyright" idk maybe this is a the grass is greener type of situation but I'm telling you, you DON'T wanna live in a world where copyright law in the visual arts world works the way it does in the music industry. It's not worth it.

I've seen at least one person compare AI art model training to music sampling and say "there's a reason why they cracked down on sampling" as if the death of sampling due to stricter copyright laws was a good thing and not literally one of the worst things to happen in the history of music which nearly destroyed several primarily black music genres. Of course this is anecdotal because it's just One Guy I Saw Once, but you can see what I mean about how uncritical support for copyright law as a tool against AI can lead people to adopt increasingly regressive ideas about copyright.

Similarly, I've seen at least one person go "you know what? Collages should be considered art theft too, fuck you" over an argument where someone else compared AI art to collages. Again, same point as above.

Similarly, I take issue with the way a lot of people seem EXTREMELY personally invested in proving AI art is Not Real Art. I not only find this discussion unproductive, but also similarly dangerously prone to validating very reactionary ideas about The Nature Of Art that shouldn't really be entertained. Also it's a discussion rife with intellectual dishonesty and unevenly applied definition and standards.

When a lot of people present the argument of AI art not being art because the definition of art is this and that, they try to pretend that this is the definition of art the've always operated under and believed in, even when a lot of the time it's blatantly obvious that they're constructing their definition on the spot and deliberately trying to do so in such a way that it doesn't include AI art.

They never succeed at it, btw. I've seen several dozen different "AI art isn't art because art is [definition]". I've seen exactly zero of those where trying to seriously apply that definition in any context outside of trying to prove AI art isn't art doesn't end up in it accidentally excluding one or more non-AI artforms, usually reflecting the author's blindspots with regard to the different forms of artistic expression.

(However, this is moot because, again, these are rarely definitions that these people actually believe in or adhere to outside of trying to win "Is AI art real art?" discussions.)

Especially worrying when the definition they construct is built around stuff like Effort or Skill or Dedication or The Divine Human Spirit. You would not be happy about the kinds of art that have traditionally been excluded from Real Art using similar definitions.

Seriously when everyone was celebrating that the Catholic Church came out to say AI art isn't real art and sharing it as if it was validating and not Extremely Worrying that the arguments they'd been using against AI art sounded nearly identical to things TradCaths believe I was like. Well alright :T You can make all the "I never thought I'd die fighting side by side with a catholic" legolas and gimli memes you want, but it won't change the fact that the argument being made by the catholic church was a profoundly conservative one and nearly identical to arguments used to dismiss the artistic merit of certain forms of "degenerate" art and everyone was just uncritically sharing it, completely unconcerned with what kind of worldview they were lending validity to by sharing it.

Remember when the discourse about the Gay Sex cats pic was going on? One of the things I remember the most from that time was when someone went "Tell me a definition of art that excludes this picture without also excluding Fountain by Duchamp" and how just. Literally no one was able to do it. A LOT of people tried to argue some variation of "Well, Fountain is art and this image isn't because what turns fountain into art is Intent. Duchamp's choice to show a urinal at an art gallery as if it was art confers it an element of artistic intent that this image lacks" when like. Didn't by that same logic OP's choice to post the image on tumblr as if it was art also confer it artistic intent in the same way? Didn't that argument actually kinda end up accidentally validating the artistic status of every piece of AI art ever posted on social media? That moment it clicked for me that a lot of these definitions require applying certain concepts extremely selectively in order to make sense for the people using them.

A lot of people also try to argue it isn't Real Art based on the fact that most AI art is vapid but like. If being vapid definitionally excludes something from being art you're going to have to exclude a whooole lot of stuff along with it. AI art is vapid. A lot of art is too, I don't think this argument works either.

Like, look, I'm not really invested in trying to argue in favor of The Artistic Merits of AI art but I also find it extremely hard to ignore how trying to categorically define AI art as Not Real Art not only is unproductive but also requires either a) applying certain parts of your definition of art extremely selectively, b) constructing a definition of art so convoluted and full of weird caveats as to be functionally useless, or c) validating extremely reactionary conservative ideas about what Real Art is.

Some stray thoughts that don't fit any of the above sections.

I've occassionally seen people respond to AI art being used for shitposts like "A lot of people have affordable commissions, you could have paid someone like $30 to draw this for you instead of using the plagiarism algorithm and exploiting the work of real artists" and sorry but if you consider paying an artist a rate that amounts to like $5 for several hours of work a LESS exploitative alternative I think you've got something fucked up going on with your priorities.

Also it's kinda funny when people comment on the aforementioned shitposts with some variation of "see, the usage of AI art robs it of all humor because the thing that makes shitposts funny is when you consider the fact that someone would spend so much time and effort in something so stupid" because like. Yeah that is part of the humor SOMETIMES but also people share and laugh at low effort shitposts all the time. Again you're constructing a definition that you don't actually believe in anywhere outside of this type of conversations. Just say you don't like that it's AI art because you think it's morally wrong and stop being disingenuous.

So yeah, this is pretty much everything I believe about the topic.

I don't "defend" AI art, but my opposition to it is firmly rooted in my principles, and that means I refuse to uncritically accept any anti-AI art argument that goes against those same principles.

If you think not accepting and parroting every Anti-AI art argument I encounter because some of them are ideologically rooted in things I disagree with makes me indistinguishable from "AI techbros" you're working under a fucked up dichotomy.

[cyber-clown]

OK final rant for now. i think you should be a bit pretentious and also you should engage with art that sucks. i don't necessarily mean "art that sucks" to mean like. you should watch marvel movies. but you should just to understand why they suck. but i mean more things like the works of controversial director Ralph Bashki and his works like Fritz the Cat or that really weird experimental Lord of The Rings adaptation he did. you should listen to genres you don't like and try to see if there are any songs there that you actually enjoy or at least aspects of them that you do. i think that turning your brain off and watching some mass appeal schlock can be fun (i am a notorious Hearthstone enjoyer after all) but its genuinely kind of pathetic to have that be the only way you engage with art

and also for a PRACTICAL reason if you are able to identify what you DON'T like then it will help you identify what you do. absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. and i think getting a broader general palette allows you to enjoy more art too because you've got more things to compare it to. i have been watching a lot of bad video essays about cartoons lately and it really strikes me how lacking a lot of the people making thems' critical analysis skills are and how little they're able to find value in things that are suboptimal or even seemingly pointless at least in terms of the Core Direction

[electricbathsalt]

Things I want to talk about/touch upon/see people mention more but cannot compile individual coherent posts about:

1. The fact Pops’ daughter apparently had a “falling out” with Pops (over her marriage??) that caused her to completely abandon the yakuza and maybe also cut contact with Pops (the dude is suspicious guys)

2. The fact that in the Overhaul-LOV initial meeting, Chisaki had to have intentionally chosen not to kill Mr. Compress.

3. The idea that many of Chisaki’s thought processes at least partially stem from his time in AFO’s facility. And of course, Pops.

4. How much Chisaki seems to lack a proper reaction to any sort of pain (He was beat to a pulp by Mirio & Midoriya, exploded himself, & got his arms cut off and I’ve never heard him so much as yelp) while still complaining about how overhauling himself hurts?? Yet he doesn’t show it.

5. (Highway scene) How Chisaki only screamed once the realization he wouldn’t be able to ever wake up Pops sunk in (isn’t confirmed but. I’m convinced).

6. The fact that there’s absolutely no way Chisaki wasn’t negatively impacted by being raised in the Yakuza. It’s simply inherent.

7. The blatant disregard Pops had to have had for both Chisaki and Eri’s well-beings to have designated Chisaki as her caretaker.

8. The endless amounts of potential for Chisaki & Dabi/Touya dynamics post-war, platonic or otherwise. (Multiple fics with this premise in my WIPs, lol)

9. The fact Chisaki seems practically incapable of holding a grudge. Like, think about it; is there a character you can say Chisaki genuinely, wholeheartedly hates and wishes the worst upon. You know what—what IS his opinion on Shigaraki/the LOV these days??

10. Realizing that in the initial Overhaul-LOV meeting, Chisaki literally just tone-matched them. Look:

Mr Compress says all that, and then Chisaki later explains:

Which, once you break down what Mr Compress said/how he said it, and what Chisaki said/how he said it… blunt statement of facts. Mr Compress told Toga how faded out the Yakuza have become with no sugarcoating, and Chisaki took that and said. “Well. Yeah.” But then when Chisaki did the same thing (blunt but true & valid criticisms of the LOV/Shigaraki’s leading skills (bc let’s be real, he was an ass leader at the time in terms of actual planning and execution)), the LOV got pissed. He pointed out all the relevant flaws and mistakes in Shigaraki’s leadership and then said it’d be better if he was the leader because he actually has a plan, and they got pissed at the mere prospect of serving under somebody else. Do you realize how much the story would’ve been altered if the LOV didn’t decide to just start attacking Chisaki here?? 💀 Sorry I’m exceptionally passionate about this bc the fandom gaslit me for a while into believing Chisaki was the one starting shit here 😔 but then I read it (a long time after I'd watched it in the anime) and was like. "what. he didn't initiate literally any of this shit. and everything he's saying is true??"

There’s probably more I could add to this but it’s getting long enough lol.

[cyberthot666]

the fact that even just saying you like jkr gets you forever labeled a bigot but all the ppl who openly supported depp get to quietly withdraw back to normalcy. no one sees an issue with that? especially considering one beat a woman & the other has donated millions to women. with the utmost sincerity, if you genuinely think jkr is some sort of dangerous transphobe I think you’ve got to be one of the dumbest fucking people on the planet. you lack the most basic critical thinking skills and follow along with whatever you’re told like a naive child. I mean it’s been years now and it genuinely baffles me. not once has she said anything bigoted. no one can even back their arguments of this claim. it’s just been decided and so the crowd follows.

[shantechni]

No one asked, but my favorite part of the scene where Mikey comforts Leatherhead in front of his brothers isn't just that they're witnessing it.

It's the varying reactions we get.

It's a literal "blink and you'll miss it" moment, but Raph hardly reacts to Mikey's display; he's the first to turn to Donnie and signal him to inquire about the power cell.

We've seen how he looks when Mikey genuinely catches him off guard, and this isn't one of those moments.

It's fitting that Raph would be the least surprised by the spectacle because he's often portrayed to be the one who best understands Mikey, even in the 2012 comics when Leo and Donnie scold Mikey for his lack of focus in one issue (there are other examples). While they argue with Mikey, Raph is seen chilling in the background because he doesn't have that big of an issue with Mikey's attention span, and he even calls Mikey out when he claims he's not bothered by their comments as he walks out in irritation. He then goes on to scold Leo and Donnie later for running Mikey off as they look for him. He may be the biggest culprit when it comes to calling Mikey out once his attention starts to stray, but contrary to what he said in New Friend, Old Enemy, he understands Mikey quite well, sometimes better than anyone else.

So seeing Mikey pull the therapist card on someone isn't out of the ordinary for him. He knows Mikey well enough to anticipate something like this.

Leo's next in line for actually reacting very subtly to Mikey pulling Leatherhead out of his headspace.

His eyes are already widened by the time the camera pans back to him, but they widen an extra notch before he too turns back to Donnie.

Leo has borne witness to Mikey's skills plenty of times prior to this episode, and we can take their decade-and-a-half spent underground into consideration, so seeing Mikey behave so compassionately doesn't strike him as anything supremely noteworthy. But he's clearly impressed that Mikey managed to befriend the hostile mutant in such a short amount of time; he recognizes that his youngest brother is mentally intelligent and strong enough to calm down the easily angered Leatherhead while no one else thought it to be feasible.

It surprises him, but Leo understands that Mikey is the most sympathetic out of all of them, and he doesn't take long to get over his surprise.

Donnie, on the other hand, takes the longest amount of time to move on from what transpired.

Unlike Raph's lack of feedback and Leo's mental approbation, Donnie is awestruck.

As I said before, I highly doubt this is anyone's first time seeing the level of maturity Mikey has, but (and it's a very close race) Donnie's the main one out of the brothers who both accidentally and purposefully sees Mikey as the tactless, accident prone little brother everyone makes him out to be most of the time. Though he knows Mikey is proficient at critical thinking when he's needed to be, bringing in a mutant with violent tendencies and perceptible trauma that gets triggered by the mention of a name isn't a territory they've frequented.

And yet, much like Leo, he sees for himself that Mikey was clearly capable of mellowing Leatherhead out and knew how to steer him away from his horrendous memories with the Kraang.

[weemietime]

There isn't a whole lot of content on Tumblr about schizoid personality disorder so I thought I would make a little informational post. SZPD is a cluster A personality disorder, of the odd/eccentric cluster alongside schizotypal and paranoid. It is on the schizophrenia spectrum, and comprises the negative rather than positive symptoms of schizophrenia.

This primarily means we have avolition, catatonia, flat/blunted affect (demeanor), limited interoception (emotional sensations), lack of bonds to others including primary family members, and indifference to the opinions of others.

Whilst this isn't a diagnostic criteria, many of us are also asexual and aromantic, meaning we don't want to have sex with other humans (but usually do masturbate) and have no interest in romantic companionship.

My most disabling symptom is avolition, because I have comorbid ADHD. This means when I don't have my medication (dextromethorphan 120mg) I just sit there and zone out and can't even hold a conversation or move my body, nor even do things like feed myself. It is genuinely crippling and I am unemployed because of this, even though my meds help, they don't cure me and I need a lot of time alone.

Schizoid is something of an "anti-human" disorder, because we fail to form basic social bonds with others including primary caregivers. As a child I got diagnosed with inhibited RAD because I could not tolerate human contact. This differs from autism because autistic people generally want to socialize, they just lack the skills. I don't want to socialize and it takes tremendous effort for me to do so.

To even make this post I had to wait for my meds to click in as I was just sitting there mindlessly beforehand. While we have low internal sensations of emotions like caring, love, happiness, trust, sadness, etc. we aren't typically antisocial/dissocial and don't have a pattern of exploiting others or dishonesty. This requires too much effort.

There is a schizoid version of narcissism but it is separate to narcissistic personality disorder. NPD is characterized by a very fragile ego. You can't contradict or disagree with NPD because they are unable to regulate the emotions caused by conflict. Conversely, SZPD does not care about the opinions of others at all and places little value on them.

Our sense of superiority is legitimate, meaning we just do genuinely believe we are smarter than other people. So your mileage may vary on how insufferable you find that. I recognize this trait in myself and work to actively challenge it since it is illogical for me to think I am more special than anyone else. But, my ego is very stable, so criticism doesn't bother me the way it would in NPD.

Interoception means the sensations you feel inside your body. We lack this, so even stuff like hunger and tiredness don't impact us until we are very hungry or extremely exhausted. I don't have the feeling you would to look at a family member and get a sense of love or trust. I have a logical sense of obligation that I developed through choosing what I value based on reason. I describe this as care, and I place importance on my friendships, but there is no emotional component to this, it is all cognitive.

Tangentially: I'm somewhat of an optimistic nihilist, believing that there is no grand purpose to existence. Yes, even as a religious person. I don't think G-d ultimately has a purpose either, as an agent of the universe. (I don't believe G-d created the universe.) We have a human nervous system, so we base our rubric for morality on suffering and decide what is meaningful both collectively and individually.

I don't believe in true freedom of will (but I do believe we have agency), because we know that Bereitschaftspotential or reaction potentials occur in the brain up to two seconds before we become conscious of a volitional desire. Our consciousness occurs because of quantum synchronicity in the brain, so our free will is in a bit of an in-between state rather than fully determined or fully free.

So, we are not born deciding "I'm going to be an abuser," that happens because of brain abnormalities. It's no different than the forces of creation and destruction at work like a virus infecting a host cell. I don't place much importance on concepts of self-hood, I view myself as the electrical and chemical processes that occur in my brain, which happen without my choosing, that I can influence and impact through my own agency.

Anyway, these are just some basic schizoid meanderings for you all and I hope that this was informative or interesting in some way. Peace.

[figayda-rights]

hey im really sorry there's not a scene in mismag s1 where aabria looks directly into the camera and says 'RACISM AND TRANSPHOBIA ARE BAD' but some of us have the ability to pick up on themes and subtext. maybe dont make your lack of critical thinking skills everyone else's problem, and consider getting angry about something that matters

you people genuinely are not listening to me.

if you're going to wilfully misinterpret everything I say at least have the decency to not tell me about it.

Do I think Aabria and the cast are racist and transphobic? NO.

Do people have actions sometimes that have unintended consequences? Yes.

Do people sometimes attempt to do satire or critiques or parodies that don't entirely succeed in what they attempted to do? YES.

Mismag was doomed from the start. They wanted to take down every single bad thing about HP in a limited format with limited worldviews, limited cast, time, and in a actual play format where storylines and themes can't be planned or executed to a T. They were never going to be able to create a world that was everything they wanted, a perfect fuck you to JKR, while directly referencing her work. Because the only way to truly say FUCK YOU to a racist is to let their memory die and to uplift the experiences and stories of the people they harmed. They would never be able to do that while also trying to directly reference and do "funny/clever" takedowns of the original text.

They should have just done magical school. Unrelated to HP. There are many other magical schools to base shit on. Witch Hat atelier. Wizards of Earthsea. Fucking Owl House. AGUEFORT.

[radicalsansa]

A couple months back I saw someone on tiktok saying that the hotd fandom has too many 12-14 year olds in it and that they're all team green because "they lack the intelligence and critical thinking skills that come with age"

like I'm sorry but please get over yourself. People are team green because TB is FUCKING BORING, THE MOST BORING PEOPLE TO EVER LIVE!!

You've got Rhaen*ra "I'll just make a sad face after screwing up again and making everyone at court dislike me even more so my dad will sort everything out" Targaryen, Daemon "I'll spare this child and marry an even younger one after brutally killing my wife with a stone" Targaryen, 3 bastard sons, and some other children I've genuinely forgotten about cause who tf are they??? And that is genuinely their whole thing.

Team green is popular because the characters are nuanced and complex. Fucking interesting. Age has next to nothing to do with it in my opinion.

[fallinghunhan]

thinking about how obvious it is that slash holds and has always held a lot of love towards axl (and vice versa) if you dig even a little deeper into their story. you'll see people saying "oh but they didn't even like each other have you heard what they've said about each other" and it's like yeah they were slagging each other off for decades but that's not because of a lack of love it's because of the abundance of love. betrayal and distance can only hurt you if you loved that other person very deeply. like slash said himself there's a bond and it hurts even worse because you're forced out of that. he never did any of that shit with anyone else, say scott for example, he was just relieved he was gone, end of story. meanwhile he tried going up to axl's house drunk, tried to go see his show, sent him xmas cards every year etc etc etc.

we don't get a lot of documented slash/axl interactions anymore because axl doesn't want to do interviews and slash refrains from really talking about him in any personal way which i think is very respectful of axl but also shows slash is a very private person. that doesn't mean he doesn't care or that they're not close these days.

this is mostly just me being annoyed at people who lack critical thinking skills and believe saying things in interviews out of anger equates to actual hate and that they were never friends in the first place. people take slash's book as an example which again is funny because it was written while slash was still feeling some kind of way and obviously is going to say all kinds of things to distance himself from axl and downplay their friendship. he failed btw like why would you mention soulmates in the first place lmao.

bottom line, yes they loved each other, yes they were friends, yes they still loved each other even when they were beefing because intense feelings cause intense fights and if slash really never gave a fuck he would've washed his hands off axl ages ago, instead he tried his hardest to keep guns going and up until his last day never wanted to leave. there's an interview from like his very last year in guns where he's asked if he's leaving guns bc he was doing his solo thing and was obviously angry at the axl situation and he was genuinely confused like why would i leave i wanna make music with guns?? so like. he was wanting to go to the very end despite everything until he literally just couldn't anymore.

soulmates with a very intense history.

[saintsenara]

a duo i'd love to hear your thoughts on: bellatrix & harry (or even bellatrix/harry)

thank you very much for the ask, pal! an extremely interesting duo to think about.

and, obviously, the thing we have to immediately acknowledge is that harry thinks bellatrix is hot. he's always going on about her heaving breasts and shiny hair [and shiny hair is something he does seem to have a thing for throughout canon - hence why he spends one of his owl exams staring at parvati's], and she's definitely his "hear me out" candidate...

[i think if he's forced by ron to play fuck, marry, kill about the black sisters... he's fucking bella. he's depressed for weeks when he realises.]

more seriously, though, the thing which really stands out in harry and bellatrix's canonical relationship is that he sees her primarily as a catalyst - and, above all, primarily as a catalyst for loss - but in a way which feels strangely impersonal given the profundity of this loss to him.

she kills sirius - but harry can't summon up the rage to use the cruciatus curse against her [even though he can against amycus carrow, whom he has never met and whose crime is the considerably more minor spitting at mcgonagall]. she almost kills ginny - and harry "changes course at once" to try and protect her - but the person who get there first and who finishes bellatrix off is molly.

and while i don't think this is strange because i think molly wouldn't have the skills to duel bellatrix, i do think it's fairly strange narratively. bellatrix's death mirrors sirius' to such an extent - right down to the fact that she dies laughing - that it would have been an interesting conceit to have harry avenging his godfather by standing in as sirius' surrogate for a repeat of the duel before the veil, which then allows sirius to be avenged when the outcome is reversed...

[although what i do like about the molly-bellatrix duel in canon is that voldemort ends up in the position his narrative mirror, harry, is in during the sirius-bellatrix duel - watching the one person he thought would never abandon him die.]

and so harry sees bellatrix as an agent of chaos - and he utterly loathes her - but he also sees the chaos she causes as, fundamentally, voldemort's fault. he views her as a puppet, a tool, a pawn - as so totally enamoured by the dark lord that she lacks any capacity for critical thinking - rather than ever seeming to understand her as her own person.

[him taunting her in order of the phoenix by pointing out voldemort's a half-blood always stands out to me when thinking about this - lucius malfoy isn't shocked at all by the revelation, but bellatrix is. it underlines the point made by her behaviour at her trial, which harry witnesses in goblet of fire - that her loyalty to voldemort is so absolute that it makes her deluded, and that she exists for him rather than for herself.]

equally, bellatrix clearly sees him as just a thing - an annoyance which voldemort just needs to eradicate - rather than a person.

and so i think that one of the very interesting "harry and bellatrix actually having to get to know each other" questions is what journey they would go on in order to understand the other as a real person. my favourite iteration of this - as i've said here - is to write bellatrix's non-battlefield personality as surprisingly similar to tonks', and to have harry having to face the fact that a woman he hates could be so much like a woman he adores. you can also obviously do the same with him having to realise she's very like sirius.

and her having to realise that harry is very like voldemort.

because the other thing which i think is fascinating about thinking about harry and bellatrix is that the best parallel for hinny in the text isn't ron and hermione, and nor is it james and lily...

it's bellamort.

i believe that harry's canonical love for ginny is completely genuine - and i accept that by the epilogue they will have settled into a relationship with a more equal dynamic - but it's very striking in the pre-epilogue canon that the power dynamic between the two is very much unequal.

harry's narrative purpose means that he has to be set apart from all others - even ron and hermione - in order for him to properly function as the encapsulation of all that is good [and as the series' allegory for christ]. as a result, he tends to interact with other characters either as people he needs to protect, or as people he needs to protect others from.

and we see this in his relationship with ginny at the end of half-blood prince, when he breaks up with her for - what he sees as - her own protection, in the belief that being associated with him will put her at risk from voldemort.

harry believes that separating himself from her is sufficient to bring ginny this protection, he never considers her to have the talent to fight voldemort herself - even though he acknowledges her as a skilled fighter elsewhere in the text - and he spends much of deathly hallows believing that he has guaranteed ginny's safety. he thinks of hogwarts as a safe-haven throughout his time on the horcrux hunt - and he is genuinely shocked to discover how bad the carrows' regime has been when he arrives at the castle immediately prior to the battle - and he treats ginny's role as a resistance leader in her own right [such as her attempt to steal the sword of gryffindor] as, essentially, a bit of a laugh.

for her part, ginny is set up in the text as ferociously loyal to harry - "i never gave up on you" - and as someone whose company he desires and values in a distinct way, but whose relationship with him is unbalanced by the paternalistic vibe of their power dynamic. harry is more honest with her than with many other people, for example, but he still doesn't tell her anything about the horcruxes, the prophecy, or the fact that he has to walk into the forest to die.

and this is exactly the same as bellatrix and voldemort.

bellatrix is clearly justified in saying that voldemort considers her his "favourite" - and he does behave towards her in ways which are meaningfully different from his treatment of his other death eaters. but their dynamic is still hugely unbalanced by the fact that voldemort is also required by the narrative to be singular - the literal embodiment of evil - and that this drives his secrecy about his true self. bellatrix is also treated by voldemort as someone whose role in his mission against harry is his to dictate, safe in the knowledge that she would never give up on him either, and who can be similarly kept in the dark about the horcruxes or the prophecy [although he clearly views this as for his, rather than her, protection].

deathly hallows, in particular, is full of explicit comparisons between the two couples. ginny trying to steal the sword leads to bellatrix giving away that there's a horcrux in her vault. ginny living while bellatrix dies [because of motherly love!] is the opener to harry living while voldemort dies [because of motherly love!]. and - of course - there's this in the forest...

Everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his. 

as i've said elsewhere, i think it's entirely possible to write voldemort as quite fond of ginny on the basis of her canonical similarity to bellatrix. and so the reverse must apply - harry can be written as fond of bellatrix on the basis of her similarity to ginny.

which means i also think - if you're so inclined - that the toxic wife-swap would genuinely work.

[fffirebreathingbitchqueen]

on some serious stuff I need majority of the SJM fandom to check their misogyny.

You will literally hate Nesta for being a complex character. She was abused by so many people in her life which is explained countless times in ACOTAR. She was abused by her mother, grew up in affluent and watched her whole world crumble apart (one she was literally bred for by her mother), watched all of her friends turn their back against her, SA’d and brought to a world she didn’t want part in. I think people seriously lack critical thinking skills as although the IC has been through hell and back I think you forget the have one thing Nesta doesn’t/didn’t have… each other. Nesta doesn’t have a family and it was made clear by the IC that they passed judgement because she didn’t help Feyre during her years of poverty. Feyre objectively did not lose near as much as Nesta because she claims herself that she was too young to truly remember how they lived. I also think you guys forget how flawed Feyre’s perspective is on everything !!! Nesta never had what Feyre has with the IC and she has self isolated herself out of struggle. Yet you guys will praise Rhysand all because he’s what… your tall dark and mysterious man??? It is shown multiple times that Rhys is a poor loser… he literally will allow the mistreatment of Illyrian women for the sack of diplomacy yet he’s your feminist idol?? He is the most powerful highlord to ever exist you think he would score some brownie points with the Illyrians LOL. Please just say you don’t understand mental illness and leave it at that.

On that note I will never forget how booktok persecuted Bryce for being insensitive to Hunt in HOFAS. She was trying to save the world tf??? Bryce literally lost her whole world with Danika and the Pack of Devils only to find out the person she loved most in the world was trying to rear her to take down the Asteri. Me personally, if my literal soul sister died for something and wanted me to continue her work I wouldn’t let her actions be in vain. Did we forget she’s trying to save the world and defeat an intergalactic super power ???

I genuinely think if ACOTAR was written in third person narration Nesta’s “nastiness” would be perceived so differently. I see so much overlap with Nesta and Aelin’s personalities. Esp the self loathing and hatred that made them so stagnant in times of need.

Never ever talk crap about my girls please.

[missmeinyourbones]

LIKE REAL PEOPLE DO 

cw: angsty fluff? is that a thing? light mentions of alcohol and weed, suna is drunk and silly, reader is designated driver (drink safely, my friends!!!), heavy mutual pining, inspired by that normal people scene (brothers...iykyk)

For a midsummer night, the breeze outside is surprisingly chilly. 

Feeling more like September than July, your car window is barely cracked to let a bit of air inside the small stuffy vehicle. 

The streets are barren as you drive through the backroads of your hometown—which is expected, as no one sane tends to willingly drive at 1:31 AM. Not unless they received a brief text from a blonde-haired setter asking you to handle a “liability” for him.  

Equally intrigued as you were annoyed, you agreed to his weird request and he dropped a pin to his location almost instantly. 

You remember him talking about some lowkey Inarizaki reunion this weekend—just like the old days, shitty booze in someone’s parent’s basement and cheap weed from the town’s local plug. Pro-volleyball players and all, you suppose some things never change. 

With the lack of details Atsumu gave you, you don’t know what to expect as you drive to the marker on your GPS.

Seeing how he was cognizant enough to text you, you doubt he’s the one in need of assistance. It’s unlike Osamu to get belligerent enough to leave a party early, so he’s pretty much ruled out of your list of suspects, too. And hell would freeze over the day you see Kita drunk enough to need a designated driver. 

So pulling up to the address and seeing a familiar headache comically slumped on the front steps of the porch, you don't know why you ever dared to be curious. 

When you see him, you think he’s sleeping. It’s not until you park the car and make your way towards his slumped frame that you can confirm; even while his eyes are closed and he’s not necessarily awake, Suna is very much not asleep. 

Nothing but an unruly mop of brunette slightly sways as he bobs his head from side to side, almost like he’s following along with a one-sided conversation in his thoughts. He’s alone, aside from a few discarded beer cans and the diluted thumping of the music from inside. 

The anxiety inside of you can’t help from asking, "Did they just leave you here?" 

You don’t expect an answer from him—more so thinking out loud at the brute stupidity and lack of safety from the whole situation. You make a mental note to scold Atsumu for his critical thinking skills the next time you see him. 

At the sudden sound of your voice, Suna notices you walking toward him. Wrapped in a sweatshirt nearly swallowing you whole, he grins brightly. Your genuine concern paired with your silly choice of apparel somehow fits the situation nicely, he decides. 

"Nah," he slowly shakes his head. Through squinted eyes, he hazily meets your gaze with a teasing smile, "They told me to sit and stay, like a good boy."

You don’t know why his words light a fire in your stomach, and even more alarmingly, you don’t know why you don’t hate it. You can’t help but laugh a bit at his drunken words.

Nodding your head to where he (somehow) comfortably sits on the concrete stairs, you hum in agreement. 

"I’m surprised you actually listened," you exhale.  

The summer breeze blows once more, and while it makes you shiver, Suna finds it refreshing compared to the stuffy confines of someone’s childhood basement.

He shrugs lazily as he presses his palms onto the porch, slowly bracing himself to stand.

"Only ‘cause I knew you were already on your way," he tries to play it off casually, like his insides weren't churning with acidic excitement to see you tonight. “More scared of you than I am of them."

He’s always been an honest drunk, more deadpan and blunt than his usual reserved facade. You bite your tongue at the pride that swells in your chest with the honesty of his remark.

"Good.”

As he stands, Suna stumbles slightly against the wooden railing of the deck, leaving you rushing to his side to support his stupor. He giggles at his own lack of awareness before regaining his composure, using the railing for support as he mumbles out a sleepy “M’fine.” 

Not fully believing him, you let your hands linger a bit by his side, not quite touching him but still close enough to be prepared for another tumble. 

Suna takes a deep breath to sober himself and opens his eyes to face you. He stares at you for a moment or two, eyes flickering through your features as he struggles to decide which one to focus on. The way your cupid’s bow scrunches in thought. How your pupils dilate with the lack of light. The stray piece of hair blown over your eyes and resting in the middle of your forehead. 

It’s beautiful, he thinks. All of it. How easily breathtaking you can be on a chilly summer’s night, in an empty street, wearing a giant sweater, with a man who is irrevocably in love with you.

But, he knows he’s too drunk to be thinking like this.

He closes his eyes once more, grounding himself with the crisp inhale. 

"It feels like the sidewalk is moving."

He hears your laughter and immediately opens his eyes again to see it—and, oh, he adores the sight. Flushed cheeks and glimmering eyes, he completely soaks in the moment of you entertaining his terribly lame joke. He’d take a moment to thank the stars watching above, but he doesn’t dare to look away for a second.

"I promise you, it’s not," you whisper, once again supporting his side and beginning the so-close but so-far-away walk back to your car. “How much did you even have to drink?”

His head plops onto your shoulder, “Never ask a man how much he’s had to drink. Weren’t you ever taught that?”

You scoff and he wants to kiss you, wants to taste it on his tongue and savor it forever. But he can barely lift his head, so he chooses to ignore the overwhelming urge. 

Before he knows it, as if his feet were moving on their own, he's leaning up against the passenger side of your car.

“I don’t consider you a man,” your voice calls his attention back to reality, “I consider you a nuisance.”

He hums at your words, again finding his drunk gaze unable to be pulled away from you. Leaning against your car, he giddily smiles at seemingly nothing at all.

When you're about to usher him into the passenger seat, he speaks up, and it's not what you expect. Eyes still lost in yours, he wonders.

"Do I still have pupils?"

The question catches you off guard, has you shaking your head in disbelief and adoration at the nuisance before you. His eyes bore into yours, pupils still intact and practically shaped like hearts as he awaits your answer.

"Yeah," you reply. "They're about the size of saucers right now, but yes, you have pupils."

"S'fine,” Suna, as sleepy as he is, doesn't miss a beat. “They always get like that when I see you, anyways."

And something is suddenly different. In the streetlights illuminating from above, the moment turns intimate like the magnetic flip of a coin.

His words aren't flirty or teasing, they're genuine. Pure. His gaze leaves little room to argue with the fact that while he’s dizzy and mumbling and not nearly in the right state of mind, he’s honest, nonetheless.

And it feels wrong to take advantage of that.

“Okay,” you softly decide, opening the door and gently ushering his lanky body beneath its roof, “let’s go.” 

He complies without restraint, lets you cover his head when it nearly skims the roof and buckle him in with caution. He rests his cheek against the cool window for the entire way to his apartment. It’s a quick drive, and you learn that Suna looks just as pretty illuminated in the red lights as he does in the green ones. 

When your car is parked and his apartment complex taunts you from across the street, you call his name. 

“Suna?”

“...”

“Rintaro?”

“Hmmph?”

Your hand is gentle on his shoulder, a featherlight weight to let him know you’ve arrived. And he knows—in fact, he was awake the whole drive. Watching the moon follow your car and relishing in the smell of your perfume invading his senses. 

He feels you tap his shoulder again, “Do you need help getting out?”

“Y’know,” he turns his head to lazily send you a smile, “you shouldn’t try and get your hands on a man when he’s drunk.”

Your palm sweats against the steering wheel. He’s so infuriating and you want to kiss him—two things you’ve officially decided are not mutually exclusive. You choose to fight off a grin, instead. 

“Well, you don’t usually need help getting out of the car when you're sober.”

“Yeah, but even if I was sober, I’d still want y’to touch me.” 

The coin flips again. Words that are usually meant to be dirty or promiscuous are pouring out from his soul and directly into your heart. He means them, and both of you know it.

Something inside of you aches to grab his hand, so you do. You scratch the inevitable itch and hold his palm in yours. He lets you with ease, even squeezing it for good measure as he delicately plays with your fingers. 

You squeeze his hand right back, and he knows it's saying all the things you can't right now. 

With a warm belly, you smile softly, “Go to bed, Rintaro.”

Hearts in his eyes, he nods and opens the door. He leaves your car and crosses the street with a newfound caution to get home safely. Because he knows that while tomorrow inevitably will come, tonight—that feeling in your car—can never be taken from him. 

On the elevator ride up to his apartment, he can’t help but flex the hand in his pocket—the one that squeezed yours a few moments ago. 

Still trying to relish in the faint feeling of your skin on his, Suna begs himself not to be a coward when he’s sober in the morning.

[grahambaham]

Something that has always annoyed me is the habit of many fans to declare that a villain of a certain piece of media is in the right when they are most definitely not.

A few examples that I can think of right now are Thanos, Magneto and Doom. What. The. Fuck.

First of all, Viktor Von Doom barely even has anything to be right about. The guy’s goal in life is to get as powerful as possible and use that power to rule the world or whatever, prove to everyone he’s smarter than Reed Richards (he is not) and to inflate his own ego as much as is psychically possible. Though that last one could be a result of the first two I guess. He basically wants the basic ass stuff all villains want, even if it’s not what they’re focusing on specifically. There is nothing for him to even be right about, my guy. Alright so the wanting to rule the world thing isn’t for his ego, though it helps. It is because he has a fucking god complex and thinks he’s the only one who can truly do it and properly protect the Earth from any future attacks. Everything about Doom basically boils down to his ego.

Now, I understand how Megneto, otherwise known as Max Eisenhart (Erik Magnus Lehnsherr is just an alias), can be a sympathetic villain. He’s gone through a lot and when very simplified his goal seems fairly noble. Dude just wants to protect mutants, make sure they’re safe and living their best lives or whatever. The problem is that he believes mutants are the superior species and treats humans how you might treat a mosquito. He wants to eradicate them completely, and so the world would be there for mutants to rule over and live happily ever after or whatnot. Any of that sound familiar to you? Yeah… Anyway, the point is that even though we can understand how he might’ve come to the point where he’s willing to do such horrible things, that does not mean he is right at all. People seem to think that the humans deserve it for the way they’ve treated mutants, even though there are a lot of good ones who most certainly don’t do that shit AND so many of them are children too. Because you do know that Max would legit murder even the little toddlers? Not for any reason other than ‘they’re human’. So yeah, he was not in the right. He was not the good guy all along or whatever. He is a villain and a horrible person who has also been treated horribly their whole life. Those two things can both be true. Having a bad childhood does not excuse your shitty actions though.

Last and certainly least we’ve got Thanos. First of all, that fucker did not give a shit about overpopulation or whatever in the comics. Bro wanted to court Death so he went around murdering people and destroying planets to impress her. Not very noble of him, I gotta say. Now as for the MCU, his goal is in fact to kill half the universe so more people could get more resources because he’s seen the way the poor live because of that lack of food and other things essential to living. Now, instead of using that infinite fucking power that he had in his hands to create more shit to give to everyone or, I don’t know, anything else? They’re called INFINITY stones for a reason? This fucker instead decided to just commit genocide real quick. I genuinely believe the only people who think this loser was right are actual children. Twelve years old at the most. Because there is no way in holy hell that grown men and women think Thanos was good and smart to use the INFINITE POWER IN HIS HANDS to just KILL A BUNCH OF PEOPLE INSTEAD OF SAVING MORE BY JUST WISHING FOR MORE RESOURCES OR FUCKING WORLD/UNIVERSE PEACE OR WHATEVER THE FUCK? Thanos is secretly twelve years old and hasn’t gained any critical thinking skills yet, I swear to fucking god.

So yeah, I guarantee whichever villain you think was right was not in fact right, they’re simply easy to sympathise with or their cause is. But if their way of making that sympathetic idea come true is murdering/torturing/conquering etcetera, then THAT MEANS THEY AREN'T RIGHT AT FUCKING ALL.

Good night.