#irony is anti-horror

[cor-ardens-archive]

dorothea lasky | emily dickinson

[puppyeared]

i have an idea for a character design but what animals are usually associated with medicine??? the most common answer i got was snake, but i also thought of lab rats/mice, rabbits etc

[rock-a-noodle]

Went shopping today at a discount outlet and found books in the nonficton section spreading alt-right horseshit about the election being "stolen" and how "critical race theory is tearing the black community apart".

[physalian]

What No one Tells You about Writing Fantasy, #2!

I did this list about 7 annoyances about fantasy, but I write in this genre for a reason! Fantasy knows no bounds, it can encompass all other genres within it. You can write a fantastical murder mystery, fantasy horror, fantasy romance, political drama, slice-of-life, comedy, whatever you’d like!

Whether it’s urban or high fantasy, supernatural or scientific, here’s seven great benefits of writing in this genre:

1. No modern means of communication

Unless you’re writing a world with phones or phone-adjacent devices. Phones and instant communication seriously inhibits the plausibility of dramatic irony and tension when you have to keep coming up with reasons to keep your characters from calling or texting each other everything they know. It’s exhausting, I tell you, and such a relief when phones aren’t a factor.

With that said, without phones, you have complete freedom to design your own magical channels of supernatural FaceTime, as weird and zany as you want. But without instant connections? Your character who knew too much can’t pass on the intel before they die. Your hero team can’t call for backup in their darkest hour. Otherwise easily preventable tragedies and deadly miscommunications are now very real.

2. The Monster Allegory

Fantasy and sci-fi tend to overlap more than they’re set apart, and in that overlap sits the monster allegory. Everything from werewolves to vampires to witches, reapers, demons, angels, goblins, trolls, wraiths, fairies, mermaids, ghosts, to Eldritch horrors and your classic Hollywood cast of mummies, creatures from the black lagoon, and Frankenstein.

Most of the time, the monsters aren’t just monsters, they represent a monstrous aspect of society the author wants to challenge and caricaturize in a fun and entertaining way. Or, the monsters are the good guys and the humans are the real terrors. Or, you’ve got two kinds of monsters to allegory two human sides. Sometimes they represent metaphorical demons, like vampires often representing addiction and werewolves repressed identities.

What all of this boils down to is the hyperbolic nature of science fantasy that allows you to go over-the-top with your metaphor and allegory in a way that a book grounded in reality just can’t.

3. Magic Systems!

Do you love world building? Do you love filling pages upon pages with your cool and unique set of superpowers you want your characters to have? Do you dream about your fight scenes and dramatic slow-mo shots?

Then Fantasy is for you!

There are zero limits to how you want to define your magic system. You can go classic with the familiar archetypes of elemental magic, wizards, sorcerers, and witches. Or you can step off the beaten path and design a whole new funky system of power sets. Best part? Your readers will have an awesome time imagining themselves with those powers, and debating endlessly about how it works.

4. Real-World Politics, who?

Amazon’s Rings of Power was twice-doomed when they only got the rights to adapt the appendices of The Silmarillion and when they decided to inject current political problems into a timeless story written purposefully to be divorced from those politics. You *can* write about human politics, but in fantasy, you don’t have to. You *can* interpret Lord of the Rings to be an allegory about the World Wars, but no matter how hard you argue, it wasn’t written with that intent.

Which means: Even if your story is set in the reality-adjacent fantasy version of 1543, you are free from the following: Racism, homophobia, sexism, religious bigotry, mental health bigotry, gender norms, anti-feminism, toxic masculinity, and more. “But that’s how it was-”

Nope. This is fantasy. You built this world, you decided to keep in the discrimination. Or… You can fill your fantasy world with a rainbow of gays, POCs in power, women in power, men unafraid to be compassionate and caring, a religion that doesn’t foster hate and division, the list goes on. You. Are. Free.

5. Nothing is too “unrealistic”

Both that you will always have people whining about how X would never happen so write the book you want to read, but also because fantasy is fake. Fairies aren’t real. Mermaids aren’t real. There are no rules for how they must be written and that’s how we have so much variety with so much room for interpretation by so many creators. Twilight made how much money writing about vampires that sparkle like diamonds in sunlight and crack like marble?

This is fantasy, it’s supposed to be unrealistic. Yes, your plot should make sense, but don’t be afraid to get weird. Write at least some of your story dependant on those fantasy elements. Write a story that can’t just be told in the real world minus the spectacle. Don’t be afraid to be sincerely fantastical and weird. People love weird. People love loving weird.

6. You are in complete control

But you do still need to research, unfortunately. Unless this is urban fantasy that depends at least a little on the human world, yours is completely your own to govern like a god tweezing weeds from their garden. You get to design your own geography and weather patterns and seasons. Your own countries and kingdoms and politicians. Your epic pre-canon fantasy war and the stakes that it was fought over. Your species, races, and ethnicities.

It’s a shame that a movie like Avatar (2009) set out to be this wholly unique take on aliens with music completely divorced from earthly bonds, new languages and a visually and culturally distinct alien species… and ended up a largely generic blue Pocahontas in space. It forgot that it was fantasy and didn’t go weird enough. They have horses, monkeys, wolves, rhinos, and deer just re-skinned with some extra limbs and colors. It’s pretty but it’s so, so shallow.

It could have become a cult classic like many a positively *weird* 80s off-beat fantasies, and now it just… exists. It makes a whole lot of money but its impact on the cultural zeitgeist is negligible. I’m the only person I know that can name every major character in the movie, and I’m no Avatar obsessor. They had complete creative control, and this is what they did with it. Don’t be Avatar. Take your creative freedom and run.

7. Even if it has been done before, do it again

You can say this about any genre, particularly romance, but fantasy and sci-fi, by the gatekeep-y nature of their fans, can be a lot less forgiving when it comes to claims of “unoriginality”. No one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans. Fans of these genres can get… concerningly attached to their favorite stories (mostly because the people who like them had only their fictional heroes to protect them from very real bullies).

But Game of Thrones exists because the author likes Lord of the Rings and went “yes, but what if it was an R-rated parade of misery?” Dungeons and Dragons exists because people wanted to roleplay in an LotR-esque world. Legolas and Gimli single-handedly defined what a badass elf and dwarf looks like in high fantasy. And people still gobble up media ripping shamelessly, or even good-naturedly, from this one story.

So on my other list, I argued that the sum of your parts is still original, even if the components aren’t. On this list, I implore you this: It’s not stealing or appropriating to write another Legolas if you love Legolas. Everyone loves Legolas. How many generic buff action heroes do we have and love? How many Hallmark romances tread the same predictable path? Who gives a damn if it’s unoriginal? Just make it entertaining and have something fresh to say in the end (or don’t, that’s fine too), and people will read it.

And when people say “Oh, you mean like Legolas”, take it as a compliment, not an insult. Yes, exactly like Legolas. Here’s my new elf because I adore this other book, now watch him go on a new adventure that I wrote for him.

[opencommunion]

since zionists want to act obtuse about why we're criticizing a superbowl ad, here's an explanation from before the ad even aired. it was openly designed to act as pro-genocide propaganda. fighting antisemitism is a worthy goal but that's not what's happening here:

"The New England Patriots’ 81-year-old owner, Robert Kraft, writes seven-digit checks to the right-wing Israeli lobbying machine AIPAC, but his personal, political, and financial ties to Israel run deeper than the occasional donation. The multibillionaire married his late wife, Myra, in Israel in 1963 when Kraft, then 22, was older than the nation itself. Together they set up numerous business, athletic, and charitable ties to Israel, a record of which is proudly proclaimed on the Kraft company website. In particular, the Kraft Group boasts of its 'Touchdown in Israel' program, where NFL players are given free, highly organized vacations to see 'the holy land' and come back to spread the word about 'the only democracy in the Middle East.' (Not every NFL player has chosen to take part.) Kraft also attends fundraisers for the Israel Defense Forces, currently—and in open view of the world—committing war crimes in Gaza."

Now, as Israel wages war against the civilians of Gaza—more than 25,000 Palestinian have been killed with at least 10,000 of them children—Kraft is again flexing his financial and political muscles in order to defend the indefensible. His Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS) will be spending an estimated $7 million to buy a Super Bowl ad titled 'Stop Jewish Hate' that will be seen by well over 100 million people. Under Kraft’s direction, the ad’s goal is to create a propaganda campaign to counter the reports and images from Gaza that young people are consuming on social media. 

... The content of the Super Bowl ad is not yet known, but FCAS has afforded Kraft the opportunity to make the rounds on cable news saying things like, 'It’s horrible to me that a group like Hamas can be respected and people in the United States of America can be carrying flags or supporting them.'

This is Kraft enacting the mission of FCAS: fostering disinformation. He is far from subtle: A Palestinian flag becomes a 'Hamas flag,' and people like the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets of Washington, D.C., last month to call for a cease-fire and end the violence are expressions of the 'rise in antisemitism.' Without a sense of irony or the horrors happening on the ground in Gaza, Kraft says he is giving $100 million of his own money to FCAS, because 'hate leads to violence.'

Let’s be clear: What Kraft is doing politically and what he will be using the Super Bowl as a platform to do is dangerous. He appears to think any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. For Kraft, it is Jews like myself, rabbis, and Holocaust survivors calling for a cease-fire and a Free Palestine that are part of the problem. Kraft seems to think that opposition to Israel, the IDF, and the AIPAC agenda is antisemitism.

... Right-wing Christian nationalists, with their belief in a Jewish state existing alongside their conviction that Jews are going to Hell, are welcome in Netanyahu’s Israel and Kraft’s coalition. Left-wing anti-Zionist Jews are not. The greatest foghorn of this evangelical right-wing 'love Israel, hate Jews' perspective is, of course, Donald Trump. Kraft, while speaking of being troubled by events like the Charlottesville Nazi march and the right-wing massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, counts Donald Trump as a close friend and even donated $1 million to his presidential inauguration.

No one who provides cover for the most powerful, public antisemite in the history of US politics should ever be taken seriously on how to best fight antisemitism. No one who funds AIPAC and the IDF and opposes a cease-fire amid the carnage should be allowed a commercial platform at the Super Bowl. But given that the big game is always an orgy of militarism, blind patriotism, and big budget commercials that lie through their teeth, perhaps that ad could not be more appropriate. We can do better than Kraft’s perspective on how to fight antisemitism. Morally, we don’t have a choice."

[awinterborn]

Slasher antis always get me tbh. God forbid someone likes an unhealthy fictional romance. A misogynistic serial killer though? Stanning material! Time to make all the icons overlaid with flowers and hearts 🥰

[burnt-scone]

Oh no, seeing the traumatized and injured people of Gaza makes you uncomfy?

We can't have almost 60, if not more, family trees being wiped from existence, making you uncomfortable. No, we can't have that. Those bloodlines, generations burned off the face of the planet, how rude of of people lifting their voices, because you feel bad.

Here, let me fluff your pillows in your nice, warm, and safe bed. Do you need a snack, a glass of clean water. Poor you. You must be so uncomfortable hearing about all those people who are now the last person in their family, the last person who lived on their block. The children, all alone, hurt and scared. They understand horrors you couldn't even handle the sight of through a screen. Must be so upsetting to look that 6 year old in the eye as all he wants is his mommy and daddy back.

Poor fucking you. I hope you're uncomfortable. That's a good thing. That's that crumb of empathy deep down in your empty soul. It hurts for the people in Gaza even though you don't want to because you ride the dicks of propaganda. You fear picking up a fucking history book.

And no, it's not antisemitic to be against a corrupt government funded by other historically corrupt governments. It's not antisemitic to be against Genocides. Stop trying to weaponize morality.

"Oh, (Palestinians) are everything anti-(Jews/Israel), we should get rid of them. They're not even human. In the name of G/d, we should eradicate them. They brought it on themselves."

Now, isn't that argument familiar? Replace "Palestinians" with "Jew" and "Jews/Israel" with Germany or literally Europe. That was the argument Hitler made. He convinced Germany and the church to start the Holocaust. He claimed Jewish people were corrupting Germany and the Christian way of life. They were causing the stock market to crash, and they caused the Great Depression.

Obviously, that was wrong. It was obviously excuses to commit ethnic cleansing and Genocide. And that's what's happening now in Palestine.

Hamas is not in the West Bank, which is fact, but that isn't stopping Israel from murdering thousands. Every heinous air strike on a school or hospital that try and say "Oh their were like 5 members of Hamas on the roof."

Bullshit. You don't need an airstrike on a few guys on the roof of a hospital. Especially if you aimed for the lower levels of the building.

I am Jewish, and I am not antisemitic. I do not see this as a Judaism vs. Islam situation. This is a corrupt power-hungry colonies government vs. innocent people.

We were not supposed to even be settled there yet. No messiah = no return to Jerusalem. This is just a fight over power and land, and I'm tired of the excuses being "Jews," "Judaism," "Jerusalem," "Judea," "Antisemitic," etc... because that's a stupid and horrible excuse.

How often throughout history has religion and culture been the excuse to try and kill us, to keep us in ghettos, to make us carry identification to show we are Jewish. Do you not realize Israel turned around and did the same thing to Palestinians? Before and after WW1, Jewish people lived peacefully in Palestine alongside Islamic peoples and Christian peoples. During WW2, Palestine protected Jewish people. But then, after everything England and the Israeli Colony pushed 20,000 Palestinian peoples into a tiny space (basically a fucking Ghetto) and to enter Israel they have to carry papers and Identification to show they are Palestinians.

I don't understand how people don't see the sad irony in all of this. It's heartbreaking. And I'm so tired of excuses.

Those children didn't provoke anything, it is Palestinian's home, it was colonization, and it's not religious or civilians' fault. It is those in power, it's those with too much power, too many funds, and too many weapons.

Free Palestine, free the children before there are none.

[project-pleiades]

There’s a deep deep irony in many of the pro-Israel posts I’ve seen recently and it’s that so many of them point out that America is also stolen land and argue that that therefore negates any anti-colonial sentiment said by those who live in America …and like…

1. Is that not admitting that Israel is in fact stealing land (“oh you can’t be mad they’re doing it because we did it once too”)

2. Is makes it very VERY clear that they think a people = it’s government in all aspects, which like….i don’t think I have to point out why it’s ironic to say that, given the everything about American history vs. the claims of pro-Israel people that they are standing up against anti-semitism…

(also very ironic because this belief conflates Jewish beliefs to equal Zionist beliefs and….we all see why that’s bad right?)

3. Just like, hilariously wrongfully assumes that all pro-Palestine people support the USA as uncritically as pro-Israel people support Israel. Like all of the people I go to pro-Palestine events for and who I see sharing stories on social media are the same people who show up for and support indigenous people and land-back, BLM, stopping AAPI racism, fighting the model minority myth, fighting Islamophobia, and just general “fuck the USA”-ness? I know whose land my apartment lays on was stolen from…we’re not pretending the USA is any less responsible (actually being pro-Palestinian is inherently anti-USA because it’s anti-colonial and liberatory)

It’s not the “gotcha” I’m sure they think it is… like I know the horrors of colonialism that have happened in the USA and THAT is part of why I’m so dedicated to stopping it elsewhere!

[sunnydice]

um. cschlatt finds out shes transfem post revival. is this anything.

AUGH IT'S EVERYTHING it'suwgwudgdhgh. hold on let me explain.

i think the cschlatt transfem throughline is, again, soso easy to read theres sm to dig into and chew on. i'm genuinely bewildered it's not smthng ppl hve picked up on more because it seems so v clear to me.

guy refuses to accept help bcs he sees it as weakness makes it v clear his narrative lesson is -> he should allow himself support and compassion w/o recoiling, because he's allowed to want it and need it, w/o masking it in disgust or irony.

on that point, guy refuses to see himself as disabled despite having very very blatent disabilities that leave him in horror of himself -> a panicked assertion of power to take back "control". ok ,what is he in "control" of, what can he wield, what can he have a narrative over.

guy likes being called a pretty princess and wears dresses "as a joke", using that same irony coated sheen he uses w a Lot of the things he's afraid of being more earnest in, like his care for other people or his wants. he likes being wined and dined and cooed at, and then reacts to "feminine" things, the possibility of being "not a man", in the same wild rejection as the other two, the rejection of the body. a real man doesn't care if he's betrayed, that's why he takes it so personally. a real man doesn't care abt sm partner, who needs 'em, and thats why the bow shot becomes a canon death that he feels personally heartbroken abt. a real man isn't scared and panicked and a real man isn't disabled and isn't needy. and he definitely isn't afraid. and he doesn't like the dresses. -> well. yknow how it is.

even the gym...we don't know his limbo specifically but i think it's pretty easy to infer that the gym is at least partially a manifestation of it? ghosts are confirmed to be able to be tied to locations, like mexican dream w el rapids. and in his, he has that "control", surrounded by that ideal figure, here he's powerful and on top and sooooo intouchable. the mask worked. and it doesn't actually because it still doesn't match up w how he acts. a "real man" doesn't need anything, doesn't care about anything, and glatt is still still still so deeply needy and clingy and longing for connection, and still tries to mask it w things like "spanish lessons" and "horror mansions" tht end up just being an excuse to throw little parties in. uuwgh. who even ca(blows up 320 walls with my mind)

additionally ppl forget that limbo is supposed t like..not actually be hell lmao? it's torturous for sure but it isn't like. supposed to represent their worse nightmare? it's supposed to, i think, represent a state of being unable to move on. the train that won't ever pick you up. a existence of blankness where you can't feel a thing except waiting for the other shoe to drop. a gym full of idols that you will never be able to "live up to".

bcs of that schlatt is bigender (✌️) to me specifically...cuz he clearly likes Parts of masculinity. the little conman shtick, the big guy-isms. it's smthing he enjoys, but he's v clearly fearful and panicked abt the "Ideal Masculine Figure™️", the mythologized toxic version in his quest for control. the conman thing is fun and easy, and the freaked out assertion of "i'm a man, i'm not weak or scared, i'm not like them." is smthng else entirely.

(and again the symbolism WHATT the fuck was going on in the writer's room. the gym is handled like a trap that he can't get out of by himself, and being in the sun, being visible is tangibly equivalent to being burned. Fucking Excuse Me? Answer My Emails.)

anyways this is very brief and i could talk abt this for 53 years and counting but the thesis statement is estrogen and anti psychotics could've saved her 👍and she does eventually get revived and accepts it abt herself and he's so happy and loved. forever and ever. happy tgirl cschlatt tuesday‼️

[spectroscopic-gayety]

There this undertale MV fic that literally makes me happy stim and I have thoughts. More importantly a very crazy idea on where this is headed.

If you haven’t read the fic, you really should, it is some of the best Undertale Multiverse writing I’ve ever read! Here’s the link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43143874/chapters/108428305

——SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT——

Ok so one of the things I really like about Buddy’s fics is that Buddy very clearly has read the original error!sans ask blog. They describe Error knitting in ftfo and recognize Error as an alternate timeline of after!tale.

Why is this important? Well, these references don’t just exist in ftfo, they are also in Spilled Ink, but in a very interesting way.

For those who didn’t follow the original error blog, it didn’t really end with a finale. CQ, the author, graciously left us readers a summary of what she planned for the story. Specifically, I’m talking about Blueberror.

Blueberror, is an underswap sans specifically named Blueberry (this will be important later) who gets kidnapped by Error, left alone in the anti void until he goes insane and starts hearing voices. Notably, the voices of the askers (since it’s an ask blog).

Now, who do we know in Spilled Ink who hears voices and has anti void trauma? Yeah Ink!

Spilled Ink shows Ink heading the voices of the Creators, who like the askers in ask error!sans, live in our world and control his life. Unlike Error who is insane, Ink struggles through the existential horror of being played with for entertainment.

So, what I think Buddy is doing is linking the creation of destroyers to protectors.

They are both made in the anti void.

They both hear the voices of the creators.

This makes some very interesting parallels between Error and Ink.

It also makes some very very interesting parallels between Ink and Blueberror. Ink in Spilled Ink is implied to be a version of an Underswap sans, Rus compares Ink to his own brother in his pov chapters. Several other characters remark the ink is “short for a sans”.

In Crayon Queen’s, summary of how ask error would have ended, she describes Blueberror not becoming a destroyer but moving into the omega timeline. He eventually works to protect the multiverse by convincing Error to help fight a larger threat. Hmm, a protector, where have I heard that before?

So, conspiracy theory time.

What if the determining factor that makes a sans stuck in the anti void a protector or a destroyer is whether or not they’re a swap variant?

So, wouldn’t it be Wild if there was a theoretical swap sans that we don’t know the location of? And wouldn’t it be just insane if a future plot point of the askerror blog was that Blueberror let another swap sans take his place in his au?

THIS IS WHERE THE REAL THEORY BEGINS

What if, the Blueberry in Spilled Ink was turned into Blueberror? How? Great question, idk. Maybe Ink’s friends get too close to figuring out who took him and the creators want a red herring? But like remember in chapter 5 when they were at the omega council meeting and the whole council was convinced the new out code was evil? I wonder what would happen if blueberror showed up right after Ink gets kidnapped. He’s covered in errors, that must mean he’s a new destroyer to counter Sketch right?

Extra angst: the only person who can recognize him is currently be tortured by Nightmare, and no one believes him when he says he used to be a member of the star sanses. His whole world is gone, and everyone he loves hates him and he doesn’t know why.

Does this make sense thematically? Kinda, it’s one really angsty way Ink can get his dearly lost friend back, but at a sharp cost. It would also allow Buddy to use dramatic irony again like how Sketch is hiding his moderator status. Except in a sad twist, Blueberror is trying to show his protector status but no one believes him.

I love this fic so much, and I can’t wait to see where the author takes the story next!

[thesorcerersapprentice]

✦ C U C U F A T E ✦ CHARACTER PROFILE

Cucufate is Altaluna's (the protagonist) main ally in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Under the cut, you’ll find his complete profile! *I'll update this page as I come up with new details.

TAG LIST: (ask to be + or - ) @the-finch-address @achilleanmafia @fearofahumanplanet @winterninja-fr@avrablake​ @iced-ginger-tea​ @wildswrites​​ @tate-lin​ @outpost51 @d3mon-ology @hippiewrites @threeking @lexiklecksi

I D - CARD 

✦  Full Name: Cucufate or Cucuphas (I borrowed the name from the patron saint of petty thieves and kyphosis). Pronounced: "cook - ooo (as in "goo") - fa (as in "fa-la-la-la-la") - te (as in "telephone"). ✦  Age: Unknown ✦  Sex & Gender: Irrelevant, but I'm thinking male? ✦  Physical Description: Cucufate is a culpeo, a South American canid otherwise known as a Paramo Wolf or Andean Fox (although it bears a striking resemblance to the red fox, it's actually more closely related to wolves and coyotes). ✦ Occupation: One of Valeriano's Abandoned Projects.

INSPIRATION

✦ Socrates & Bartleby: (*I'm in the process of rewriting this section, as it isn't very clear. Thanks for your patience!) Cucufate is based on two figures: the ancient philosopher Socrates and Bartleby from the short story Bartleby, The Scrivener by Herman Melville. What I wanted to do with Cucufate was find a way to have an animal speak without necessarily resorting to a 'human' voice (a voice that furthers our aims, mimics and thus elevates our culture, clarifies and informs etc.). This is where Socrates and Bartleby enter the picture. They both provide a language model that subverts standard communication. For instance, despite being the primary character in Plato's Dialogues and one of the most famous philosophers of all time, Socrates makes no positive or prescriptive claims (thou shalt not blah, this is that etc.). Instead, he talks in (flattery &) questions, undermining any certainty his interlocutors might feel by prodding and probing their knowledge of x, y & z until they are forced to reveal their ignorance (this is known as Socratic irony). Socrates' speech is thus a kind of anti-speech. If it spotlights a topic, it does so only to reveal the immensity of the darkness that sustains it, its lack of substance. Indeed, whenever Socrates opens his mouth, he widens the abyss that will eventually swallow his interlocutor's thoughts and beliefs whole, and terminate the discussion (silence). Hence, Socratic dialogue successfully humiliates and confuses us. It strips us of that very human arrogance, our intellectual bravado, so that we too can become wise: so that we too can share in the wisdom of knowing that we don't know. Doesn't the natural world do the same? Isn't that precisely the horror of climate change? Bartleby, on the other hand, taps into the ambiguity of certain language formulas. His signature phrase "I would prefer not to," which he repeats whenever he's asked to do his job, expresses a hypothetical that... never seems to go anywhere? It's the Schrodinger's Cat of phrases, simultaneously dead and alive; he'd prefer not to, but... will he or won't he? Yes. The ambiguity, the inaction of it, dumfounds and incapacitates his employer. Bartleby's speech thus provides an example of a language that resists, confounds rather than clarifies, and complicates rather than simplifies. Like Socratic irony, Bartleby's masterful use of the conditional and modal auxiliary verb "would," disrupts the status quo. Because Cucufate's speech pattern draws from both of them, he becomes an effective helper to Altaluna; by engaging with her, he counteracts the temptation to think along the lines of a simplistic, "heroic" fascism (good vs. evil, light vs. darkness, us vs. them), and forces her instead to adopt a more nuanced stance, capable of aptly handing contradiction and ambiguity. (*Appropriated from this post).

✦ Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society by Marcel Detienne & Jean-Pierre Vernant: "When Oppian describes the cunning of the fishing frog squatting in the mud, motionless and invisible, he compares it to the fox: ‘The scheming fox (agkulómetis kerdō) devises a similar trick; as soon as it spots a flock of wild birds it lies down on its side, stretches out its agile limbs, closes its eyelids and shuts its mouth. To see it you would think that it was enjoying a deep sleep or even that it was really dead, so well does it hold its breath as it lies stretched out there, all the while turning over treacherous plots (aióla bouleúousa) in its mind. No sooner do the birds notice it than they swoop down on it in a flock and, as if in mockery, tear at its coat with their claws, but as soon as they are within reach of its teeth the fox reveals its cunning (dólos) and seizes them unexpectedly. The fox is a trap; when the right moment comes the dead creature becomes more alive than the living. [….] If the metis of the fox is immediately detectable in its skill at playing dead, it is dazzlingly apparent in this sudden reversal. In effect, the fox holds the secret of reversal which is the last word in craftiness." (pp. 35-36)

© 2023 The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. All rights reserved.

[olderthannetfic]

Antis: "Stop comparing us to conservatives!"

idk maybe you should stop purposefully using universally passion-evoking buzzwords like "pedophilia" in attempts to lure people to your side and brainwash them. They will steal from the conservative playbook, choosing a topic everyone hates and presenting themselves as the sole bastion against the horror, and then expect to not be compared to conservatives. Even using the same "think of the children" and "video games cause irl violence" arguments but switching the nouns. And not seeing the irony.

It's like they conveniently forget that the big thing that got people on board with insane Q-Anon conspiracies was the assertion that there was a pedophile ring out of a pizza joint. Yes, because this is a topic everyone feels very negative about and it's easy to make people listen if they think a child is being abused. Except in the case of fandom, there isn't even a living child victim. They're milking people's inherent nurturing outrage for pixels.

--

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Brendan O'Neill

Published: May 16, 2023

The chattering classes are mad at Suella Braverman again. What’s she done this time? Brace yourselves: she said racial collective guilt is a bad idea. She said we should not demonise an entire race just because some members of that race did something bad. She said we should never engage in racial shaming. Is there no end to this woman’s nastiness?

I’m old enough to remember when comments like these would have been utterly uncontroversial. When they would have been treated as decent and progressive, in fact. Right-thinking people once railed against the ideology of collective racial punishment, against the ugly idea that the sins of the individual should be visited upon the ethnic group he or she hailed from.

No longer, it seems, judging from the audible intake of breath that greeted Ms Braverman’s insistence that racial shaming has no place in our society. It was at the National Conservatism conference in London that she uttered the incendiary words. White people, she said, should feel no guilt for the crimes committed by white people in the past.

‘White people do not exist in a special state of sin or collective guilt’, she said. ‘Nobody should be blamed for things that happened before they were born’. To my ears, this is as commonsensical as it gets. The idea that white Brits should feel culpable for a vile, cruel practice like slavery that was abolished more than 200 years ago is crazy. It had nothing to do with them.

Braverman’s words will infuriate the identitarian left, however. Because they do buy into the ideology of collective racial guilt. They do think people in the present should self-flagellate for the horrors of the past. 

That’s why writers for the Guardian go on about ‘white debt’ – the need for whites to acknowledge and even apologise for British slavery. Why there is pressure on King Charles to say sorry for slavery, despite the fact that he’s never owned a slave. Why articles are published with headlines like ‘How to apologise for slavery’, advising white nations on the right way to repent for historic wrongs.

Under identity politics, white people are expected to beat themselves up for every bad thing done by white people. They’re told to ‘check their white privilege’, to repent for their original sin of racism.

‘White Christians’ must ‘repent of our own prejudices’, as the Archbishop of Canterbury said in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in 2020. As if every white – including the little old lady who worships in a CofE village church – bears some kind of collective responsibility for that terrible American crime.

And yet we’re expected to believe that Braverman, with her critique of collective racial guilt, is the bad person, while the modish left, with their belief that all white people should do penance for the wrongs of others, are the good people.

There’s a delicious irony here: the right-on activists who damn Braverman as a racist pox on British society behave in a far more racist way than she ever has. Braverman’s articulate stand against the fashionable rehabilitation of racial shaming is anti-racist in the real meaning of that phrase.

Here’s the twist in this tale. The reason some will be bristling at Braverman’s takedown of white guilt is because they like feeling guilty. Confessing their white privilege makes them feel good. In fact, racial self-loathing, bizarrely, has become a shortcut to the moral high ground for the well-connected. 

This is the most important thing to understand about white guilt: it’s a moral boast disguised as racial remorse. In checking their privilege, in expressing regret for the crimes of their forefathers, in apologetically saying ‘As a white person’ before their every utterance, the white middle classes are really advertising their heightened moral sensibilities. They’re making a big, noisy display of their superior levels of racial and social awareness.

It looks like they’re saying, ‘Oh God, I’m white, how awful’, but really they’re saying: ‘I am a virtuous person. I am a special person. Behold my righteousness.’

In a sense, white shame is the new white pride. It’s the means through which well-educated white people demonstrate their social superiority to others, to the less racially aware, to the gammon and the chavs. 

It provides them with the tingle of moral superiority in relation to black people, too. There’s a saviour complex to these nauseating theatrics of white guilt. Guilt-performing liberals fancy themselves as the therapists of the black community, arrogantly believing that their mawkish, self-serving displays of historic regret will help to fix those allegedly wounded people.

This is the dirty secret of white guilt. It recreates the unequal relationship between whites and blacks, only in this instance the whites are not oppressing black people but rather are delivering them from their sad, broken state by telling them how sorry they are for old white crimes. It is breathtakingly paternalistic.

Hence the discomfort with Braverman’s stinging aside against white guilt. White guilt is the soapbox from which the new elite signals its specialness and builds up its cultural power. They cannot believe an uppity woman like Suella might take it away from them.

[ Archive: https://archive.is/aErbp ]

==

Reject Original Sin in all its forms.

Especially when it's as obviously performative as Thoughts and Prayers.

[adelle-ein]

i’m exhausted. i’m stuck between “friends” who don’t care about jews and a family who doesn’t care about palestinians. finding people willing to be humane, to be antizionist without being antisemitic, to disavow hamas without being islamophobic, to not blow dogwhistles, to speak up against all killing of civilians and call out retribution as disproportionate, to not recirculate lies about how everything was all made up…feels impossible rn. i’m reading so many explicit details and seeing explicit photos of horrific things that have been done and are being done in palestine and israel and watching monsters pick those details apart, gleefully pointing to every fleck of blood, every little “win” for their “side”, heedless of who has to watch, of the corpses they are trampling.

an otherwise perfectly normal post about supporting palestine will have a cruel little aside about “beheaded babies” (grotesque rallying cry in either direction and it’s so constant, just hundreds of people using dead jewish children as either “Why We Should Kill All The Muslims” or “Proof The (((Jews))) Lie About Everything.”) an otherwise perfectly normal post about jewish suffering and loss will have a little note about why radical zionism is the only answer (“who cares if people have to die for it?” the chorus echoes, like human life is acceptable collateral?) both outright mock the fear, trauma and despair that jewish and palestinian people suffer worldwide, wrapping everything up in scare quotes and baby talk and memes and buzzwords in that classic online irony way. i think it’s that mockery i might find most abhorrent of all, because it makes it so clear that this has all, always, only been a game.

and because i am jewish, if i speak up about any of these things, i will be deemed a traitor, to one cause or another. i am always the backstabber, always the liar, always the infiltrator, always the filthy k*** who needs to go back to (israel/long island, pick your side!)

i am tired of being the Good reform, antizionist, diaspora, sephardic, leftist jew. i may still be all these things. but i’m tired of being the cudgel used to hit the Bad jews with. i may not like what the Bad jews say, but i still don’t want to be a weapon. but i will not change my morals to placate anyone. i believe in a free palestine, and i believe in a world without antisemitism. that combination may not be allowed anymore, as i have learned there are few allies in agreement, but i will continue to strive for it anyway.

it is not wholly "the left" that is antisemitic and it is not wholly "the right" that is islamophobic and anti-palestinian. and vice versa. the horror is coming from all directions. and yes, many on the left have been kind, but the sheer amount of horror is drowning out the kindness, and even most of that "kindness" comes coached in hatred for the Other Side (whichever it is for that particular person.) to most, it seems all collateral damage is acceptable, so long as the Other Side is dying too. it’s all a game, a sporting match, between two groups they do not see as human, and all they want is as much blood as possible.

most of my friends are antisemitic. i didn’t know, or refused to know, before this week. it’s painful to find out that they only care about dogwhistles and conspiracy theories when it's elon musk and his ilk spreading them (and even then, only enough to briefly wag their fingers.) i know this post will most likely not make a single one of them stop and consider anything they have said, because the only ones willing to listen are the ones who don't need to hear it.

i have no solutions. i’ve never felt more alone in my life.

[headless-horsepossum]

So I watched little shop of horrors recently for the first time since I was like A Teen and realized that Seymour and Audrey are like...... the most T4T a theoretically-cis couple can possible be. Their outfits and their mannerisms and their VOICES, and the choices they make and the things they want are like. SUCH SPECIFIC TRANS ENERGY. like insecure low-income shitty-environment trans people. Like I KNOW that goofy little trans guy with his three-sizes-too-big short sleeve button-downs and his Smallness and his silly little baseball cap. I have HEARD that Voice that Audrey is doing, I've seen that Makeup and that Dress and those SHOES!!!!

So the problem is that like. I am now fucking Desperate to see a production of little shop where seymour and audrey are a t4t couple. I feel like it would change the tone, add sincerity in with the irony in a way that would be REALLY COMPELLING AND SEXY!!!! I feel like there's a way that talented actors and singers could play it that would be so caTHARTIC and it would fucking RULE!!!!

But!!!! There are uhhh. 3 problems. With this.

1. Audrey 2 and Mr Mushnik (idk how you spell that) are. At least in the movie. Pretty Fucked Up and Racist and Anti-Semitic I Think. I have no idea how you get around that (or what to do with Audrey II at all, honestly, though I feel like there's def interesting directions you could go with it). I kind of think this is surmountable if you worked with people from the appropriate communities, Maybe.

2. It absolutely has to have the movie ending NOT the show ending and idk if that's, like, Allowed

3. I. I wanna be seymour. I wanna be seymour so bad 😭😭😭😭

[runonthewater]

Resident Garth Ennis saltshaker hours:

I was listening to Knowledge Fight on my bike ride and it helped me articulate part of what pisses me off about Ennis' politics: they're virtually indistinguishable from an Alex Jones conspiracy.

In this episode, #590, Jones goes on and on about how elites have parties where they mutilate themselves and eat buckets of feces. And like, tell me that doesn't sound like something that would happen in a Preacher issue or in the Royal Blood arc of Hellblazer. It's pure shock value and gross-out horror, playing on an anti-elitist sentiment that's often just a few wrong moves away from straight up anti-Semitism and appeals to disgust that backlash on outside groups.

Like, listen, I'm pretty sure that briefly, Ennis and I are more on the same political side than either of us are with Alex Jones. But you could lift the entire "the Vatican is breeding incest babies from the bloodline of Christ in an affront to God and man" storyline, yell it in a gravelly Texas accent, and have an InfoWars episode, and neither of them would have enough irony or satirical strength to make me comfortable with it.