#long post undercut

[3liza]

i mean the truth is that we do not need and should not have all this stupid plastic clutter in or houses. no one should be producing or selling this shit. everyone make your own merchandise and charge a living hourly wage to sell it 🤷 sorry to be so simplistic about this but it's one of the results of the lack of class unity specifically in the means of production-owning creative class, who is not mentioned or dealt with by the core Marxist texts as far as I know (i asked about this earlier on here, did marx ever address in his analysis people like, for example, a professional photographer who owns a camera ans prints his own dagguereotypes? or a portrait painter or idk, independent milliner or seamstress? these people all own the means of production and do not employ anyone, and the answer from better educated people than I was that no, Marx didn't mention them), I'm not well read on this at all, there is just a big void where leftist analysis of what modern economists call "the creative class"

I'm getting off topic. my point is make your own keychains in your kitchen. it's actually not hard. you can even mass produce (on a small scale) little plastic crap if you want, with resin and a UV lamp, or a 3d printer, or a laser cutter and acrylic sheets (or just use balsa wood damn, at least its biodegradable and less tacky).

all this stuff is available to little creators AND there are hundreds of people who already own these machines who will take work for you and produce your designs. you just have to actually find them and know them and email them. that's what I mean about the class unity issue with creatives. we have no large scale union, we have no large scale class consciousness, and we're all sending our orders for little plastic crap to sweatshops instead of emailing a guy with a laser cutter in his garage and saying "hey Keith can I get uhhhhhhhhhhh 50 laser cut keychains of this twerking Diggler design I made, like how much would that cost" and he's like sure here's the work and materials cost and tbh it's always always less than i think it's going to be. you just have to do some basic arithmetic and then order shipping, and I hate order fulfillment with my life but you can actually pay or barter with someone to do that for you too. learn to delegate and then factor that into your unit cost. this is basic shit every commercial creator needs to know. they should teach you this in art school but they dont

don't give me crap about "I can't afford a laser cutter" either because I just told you to email Keith. and all these machines get sold secondhand when a manufacturer or hobbyist needs to upgrade. i got a color laser printer perfect for making zines and wheatpastes and shipping labels from a retired lesbian on capital hill for $75 and it was still full of ink. my friend gave me her 20 year old canon dslr because she just didn't need it and didn't want to bother selling it. it works fine because I spent the time finding the right drivers and shit for my computer. and card readers exist. Craigslist. Facebook marketplace. nextdoor sales section. eBay. everyone always forgets eBay. eBay lets you save searches and will email you when it finds a guy selling his vinyl plotter in your city with local pickup. I'm serious

[cinematicnomad]

THE TERROR ▸ how crozier addresses goodsir

[artplague]

damn Essek you kiss Caleb with that mouth?

[himemeiya]

Ayy for those of you who remember my initial post about the RGU-themed Picrew project, I finally have some kind of update!

I have traced/redrawn just about every hairstyle in RGU itself BUT what I really need is input on the additional hairstyles I've added. I wanted to be sure to add a few options for kinky hair, undercuts, and a couple other styles that I personally associate with the 90s <3 I tried to keep them stylistically similar to RGU so I hope that reads. Just in throwing these together I could see some looked a bit off and needed editing so gimme your thoughts pleaseeee! I'll attach 10 different hair examples, each with a combo of bangs, fwips, backs, or ponytail options which would, in the picrew, all be separate. So take into account that you could switch things around a bit too.

I also randomized the body type, eyes, mouth, and eyebrows to give y'all a little sneak peak at those too :3 If you have any specific requests for a face/emotion speak now or forever hold ur peace

[the-rebel-archivist]

The reason Lucanis’s romance falls flat to me is not because I expected Zevran 2.0. It’s not because I wanted to go on many fluffy little dates. It’s not even because he’s generally missing content and his lock in scene is reused from when he tells you about his interest in Neve in a non-romance.

It’s because of the type of content that is missing. It’s lacking the development of emotional intimacy and vulnerability. He goes from 0-100 with nothing in between. A light, fluffy date would never have fit him, but a difficult, hard hitting conversation in which he could explain how he feels about you and what’s holding him back from you where you could support him? That’s what’s missing.

“But Inner Demons?” you might protest. No. That is not romance specific, it’s a good insight into him but it should have been the jumping off point for an honest conversation that never happens. Inner Demons doesn’t explain why he ran after nearly kissing you. You can headcanon a million reasons for that, demisexuality, fear of inflicting Spite on you, fear of lack of control, but the fact remains that he never, ever explains it and it has to remain headcanon.

Imagine if you will a scene where he asks that you stay near him because he’s afraid of falling asleep, maybe after that codex where Spite blows out his time-tracking candle. Would you sit with him? Of course. He would have expressed a moment’s vulnerability with his own mouth to your own physical ears, and of course you would be there. The romance didn’t need grand sweeping scenes of passion, it’s missing the simple intimacy of the quiet moments where you get close enough to discuss feelings and fears.

You have to headcanon how he might feel about you the entire time, since the only clarity you gain about the state of the relationship is when he says that “whatever this is��� he likes it. That would be fine if he talked to you at all about what you wanted out of the relationship and you were on the same page about it being a little new and scary, but you don’t. It makes the passionate declarations of love at the end of the game fall pretty flat for me since I didn’t feel like I’d earned them, every “You have me” reminder throughout the bulk of the game felt shallow and like it was begging to be let in to his thoughts, which is… not great when it’s for 90% of the romance and not just the very early beginnings of it. It’s another instance of telling and not showing.

The moment at the end of the game when he tells you that he didn’t say anything because he thought you knew? That’s nice, but it should have been earlier, it should have been lock in content, because what do you mean we’ve been locked in to a committed relationship all this time and this is the first time you’ve expressed that you actually care when given new word of god context emotional intimacy should have been the top priority to develop and explore? The optics of the confession when we’re all probably going to die trope are pretty great, I won’t pretend they aren’t, but when you take a step back and ask yourself why then, and what were you two doing before? You end up with a lot of questions and holes.

But that’s the entire romance in a nutshell, really. Questions and holes that you have to fill in. It’s great for people willing to do the heavy lifting in headcanon to establish emotional intimacy, but it does not do that on its own and you have to connect the dots yourself.

[nagitosstolenhand]

@lesbiansanemi mentioned wanting some of my genderfluid akaza thoughts so HERE THEY ARE.

okay first of all i LOVE any form of trans exploration on hakuji because he already goes through his whole childhood ignoring anything that didn't have to do with her dad or taking care of him, social rules and taboos aren't something they cared abt because they all seemed stupid and pointless and they weren't gonna help her dad get better so why should she care about them. and already being branded a 'demon child' by people means any abnormalities he did notice abt himself he probably just wrote off as 'yeah, i am a freak, what tf are you gonna do about it' (and even if they did want to express how they felt the only one who'd they ever trust want to tell would be their dad, and she knows, she knows, he'd just smile at them, and ruffle their hair, and tell them that he loves them anyways, but he'd worry. and he shouldn't have to worry about them. so she can keep it to herself, for dads sake) but then he goes and dies. (and its her fault isn't it. her and this stupid world that they live in. why couldn't he have had a normal kid, a kid without fangs who didn't feel like they did, who wasn't so useless they couldn't even pickpocket without getting caught. why did someone as deserving of a good life as his dad get stuck in this shitty world with a kid like her.) and then the next few years they're barley cognitive enough to even move let alone to try and process or consider any feelings they might be having.

but then they meet keizo, they meet koyuki. and for the first time in her life they have time to think about things other than survival. it's also the first time he's ever worried about societal rules in any form, because people already bad mouth keizo, they badmouth him for associating with hakuji. she can't make that worse by trying to express all the messed up ways they feel. but keizo notices her being distracted, being distant, and asks. and he wants to tell him, wants to tell him so badly how she feels, and so, she does. they tell him how they don't feel how they should feel, about being a boy, how sometimes they brush out koyukis hair and help her get all prettied up when shes doing well to cheer her up, and suddenly they want to grow out her hair like koyukis, to do her own hair in those hairstyles theyve made up for her. how sometimes keizo calls him 'son' and it makes him feel the happiest he's felt in years, but other times it makes all their insides cringe and their breath feel off kilter. how he likes being a boy. he does. it's fine. but sometimes he,,, wishes he could also be a girl, or be neither, or both. and they know it's not normal and theyve never talked about it before and. and keizo just, smiles at them, and ruffles their hair, and tells them he doesn't quite understand, but if they feel like a boy, that's fine, and if they don't, that's fine too, cause they're still hakuji, and he and koyuki care about him either way. (and hakuji knows, they know he's a bit worried too, but that maybe it's fine that's he's a bit worried, he's allowed to worry about them. it's okay.) and then they talk to koyuki too, and she says the same thing. and she says she thinks hakuji would be a very pretty girl if she wanted to be one, and then she squeaks, and her face turns red and she hides her face in her hands and starts stuttering around the rest of her words and. and hakujis never felt happier.

and then koyuki asks them to marry her, and says she doesn't mind if hakuji is a man, or a woman, or something else entirely, cause she wants to marry them. regardless of anything else. and now they're getting married, he still doesn't quite understand who he is, or how he feels, but it's okay, because they're happy, the people that matter know her and love her, and she's happy.

and then of course, there's poison in the well. and hakujis life comes crashing down.

and THEN they're a demon, they're akaza now. and akaza doesn't remember anything about gender or whatever feelings their human self had. that doesn't matter to them anymore, she's a demon, and she can shapeshift to fit however they want now, if he feels like having longer hair and larger breasts, he can. if they want short hair and smaller breasts, they can. if they feel like having a vagina, or a dick, or some combo of the two they just can. and no one really cares, akaza certainly doesn't, theyre fine as they are and shift whenever they feel like it, she's got other things to do and worry about now.

AND if we wanna get into some renkaza aspects, along comes kyojurou, honestly any version works, transfem kyo, transmasc kyo, another brand of enby kyo, or even just cis and gay kyo, and you get kyojurou surviving the initial fight with akaza where akaza looks one way, and then when akaza shows up again and again, and they look. different. at first kyo assumes maybe they just didn't notice things about akaza in their original fight, or maybe akaza just felt like growing their hair longer for a bit. but something about them changes or goes back to how it was almost every time akaza comes pestering him and so eventually he just up and asks.

and akazas like 'oh yeah i shapeshift to suit however i feel like looking, one of the many benefits of becoming a demon' and kyos like 'so, you just. feel like looking different, so you shapeshift?' 'yeah pretty much' 'but you're constantly changing your, um.' 'what? my tits?' 'your more gendered traits. is there a reason you do that?' 'you humans are so uppity about gender and how you think men and woman should look, why should i care about that, i feel like looking a certain way today, so i do that, easy as that.' 'ive referred to you as a man and you haven't had any problem with it?' 'you can call me whatever youd like kyojurou, doesn't much matter to me' 'do you, remember what you, originally were?' 'nope, and i don't care, it doesn't matter to me now, and it doesn't change the fact that this is who i am now,' and then conversation continues and veers off onto other topics.

and the AFTER THAT if it's some brand of trans kyo they're definitely gonna be stewing on that for a WHILE. until akaza eventually picks up on it and starts picking at what's bothering kyo like it's an open sore, and if she finds out what's been bugging kyo. immediately trying to crack kyos egg into a million tiny pieces. even if it's with cis kyo, it's still definitely gonna make them think because yk, somewhat repressed queer person meeting another brand of queer person who's unapologetically out and doesn't care about societal gender or sexuality norms, is gonna raddle the bars of your brain into confronting things about yourself and how you feel.

BUT YEAHHH that's most of my genderfluid kaza thoughts (tho most of them apply to any brand of trans kaza) i LOVE this hc and i love trans akaza in general and i hoped you liked my thoughts on them <3

[classic-jamie]

You didn't trick me lol! Just a misunderstanding

I do want to reiterate how much I like that fan comic you made (the t-shirt one) because I think it works with both of them so well! And again, so relatable, Jamie is absolutely the kinda skinny guy to just not think through the logic of his shirts being too small.And Santiago isn't the type of guy to fw the tiny shirt thing. What kills me about Jamie is he's so inconsiderate but he loves Santi so much...

Honestly I don't really see them as like gay gay, but like gay in the way two girls who are besties in middle school are gay. Like they're not gonna kiss but they are gonna have complexes over each other forever...

I think Jamie and Santi are great examples of Satre's whole "hell is other people" thing tbh...

BAWWW HIII also I'm glad you like it! I do make a real effort on them both writing and art wise so yay!

Crazy thing too is, sometimes I'll go back to the source material, especially if I get self-concious when writing these two (ex: drawing Jamie getting really huggy and thinking "is this OOC? am i crazy?" then flipping open to page two of this goddamn comic.)

And when making the shirt comic I literally thought to myself "Did I fucking make that up? He did say Jamie steals his shirts all the time,right? It wasn't a one-time thing?" And checking back it was actually WORSE than I remembered. He steals his CLOTHES.

Which god, is even funnier because no way is Jamie fitting into those jeans. but funny to me because there's a non-zero chance he's worn that ratty ass hoodie of Santiagos' before.

ALSO I LITERALLY LOVE JAMIE SOOOO MUCH HE'S MY FAVORITE CHARACTER!!

And I refuse to woobify him he's a shitty friend and also a guy who sucks and is really bad at listening to/ considering other peoples feelings whatsoever.

BUT. he also does really obviously hold such a spot in his weird little heart for Santiago. There's him hyping Santi up to the crowd, insisting people will love him, totally dropping his party guy fun mood when he thinks Santiago is seriously hurt

AND the fact that he's bringing Santiago to this party to cheer him up in the first place.

Which like, people might be like "okay but that's crazy selfish AND stupid because Santiago HATES parties" and wow that's wild because Jamie doesn't KNOW that! (as far as we know) and on TOP of that totally has reason to think partying would cheer up Santiago because that's something theyre both used to doing TOGETHER!!

ON TRIPLE TOP OF THAT, SANTIAGO WAS THE ONE WHO AGREED TO COME TO THE PARTY!! HE ASKED!!

WHATEVERRR Jamie obviously sucks and is inconsiderate and stupid and obnoxious and pushy and not fun to be around for long periods of time, but I also think ! He obviously cares about Santiago ( a guy we KNOW will say shits fine when its NOT FINE!!! ) !! Which is a big reason both why their relationship fascinates me/ is what a lot of my fanart revolves around AND why i think Jamies the best in my heart forever.

Shitty guy who loves his roomate who thinks about killing them both every 5 minutes.

[spontaneousmusicalnumber]

I'm nearing 30 so judging the newest trends of the Youths is practically a requirement

Anyway why does the hip new hairstyle that I've seen on teens recently remind me of the Bayeux Tapestry Special

[jesse-cosay]

You know when someone shoves so many headcanons on a character and they become almost unrecognizable?

[cookiescr]

Hello what do i say to hairdresser if i wanna get the cut of the dude with black hair in this drawing https://x.com/miyu_kiyu/status/1840733767926735234/photo/1

[phonydiaries]

I want an undercut again having this much hair is unacceptable

[tortoisesshells]

if you were in control of a dark shadows adaption (or, hypothetically, could alter the original; whichever you find more interesting to think about!) what does your ideal version of 1795 look like? are there things you would change? things you’d want to keep?

Let me preface this by saying I do genuinely like or appreciate a lot of the 1795 arc! When it's at its best, it's a tragedy born out of hubris and the terrible things we'll do for the people we love (or the terrible things we'll do to hold on to love. or the problem of love without respect). I'm up to episode 741, and the confrontation between Joshua and Barnabas over the latter's coffin is still one of the best scenes in the show, for my money. That said; Broadly speaking, most of my problems with 1795 either have to do with characterization, or with historical context: that DS's unwillingness to delve into historical realities undercuts its ability to talk about monsters, and that it completely mishandles Vicki to the point of functionally ruining the nominal main character (who, to be fair, was already being pushed out).

Historical Context: DS loves the past, conceptually, but it really doesn't deal in historical conditions, and that's on full display in 1795 - witchcraft trials? zippers? claiming a house built in the early 20th century, with the attendant architectural style, was actually built in the years leading up to 1795? okay. I forgive that, because we do live, narratively, in a world with witches and vampires and curses and passenger rail service north of Portland, ME after 1965 - and in a make-believe world where the costumes are as good as a budget of a crisp single and a pb&j can make 'em. I say this mostly lovingly: DS simply is not the kind of show that cares about historical plausibility, let alone accuracy. Plus, Reverend Trask was great, and on the basis of giving Jerry Lacy scenery to chew on, the witchcraft trial plotline is excused.

More seriously and damningly, I do think it's a glaring omission on a show being made and aired in the late 1960s to have three characters said to be from the (fictional) wealthiest family of planters and enslavers on Martinique and have that go unexamined and unpacked, especially when commentary on class in Collinsport has been a constant undercurrent (sometimes more of an under-trickle, or under-vague-breeze) since episode one - and because Joshua Collins is very explicit about how beneficial the connection between the two families will be for the Collinses, who always need cargo for their ships. [Since David Ford's here, you'll forgive the reference to 1776: "Molasses to Rum" playing vaguely in the background] But that's the problem with Post-Barnabas DS. Since there's a Collins running around befanged and literally drinking the blood of others, the show's lost interest in discussing how, exactly, the Collinses became wealthy and powerful, beyond the odd occasional reference to the fishing fleet and cannery or, in 1795, the shipyards. We've got a real vampire, what do we need all that metaphorical monstrosity and class/race/gender analysis for?

As a choice the show's made, I think it fundamentally undercuts one of the show's most reliable and interesting points of commentary: how charming and human some monsters are, or that humanity and monstrosity are not entirely mutually exclusive conditions.

also speaking of monstrosity. the show excuses Barnabas for so much outright evil because he preys on sex workers, primarily, and other assorted poor men and women of Collinsport, who the show ... doesn't really see as people. but that's a separate but not unrelated rant.

Characterization: really, this is about Vicki. So much of what I dislike about 1795 has to do with Vicki's characterization changing for the worse (granted, I think this problem starts much earlier, but see digression a below) once she hits the ground in 1795, AND that the 1795 arc continuously insulates her from the important parts of DS's narrative. If the whole point of Vicki landing in the past was to explain how it all began (whether that's Barnabas's vampirism, or the opening of the great house at Collinwood - Sarah's ghostly goals are unclear here), she's party to neither: Vicki spends very little time in Collinwood, and is kept completely apart from even a hint of knowledge that Barnabas is a vampire. In effect: Vicki, as nominal main character, gets sent into the past, but not as a character - she's just a windowpane, or a magic mirror as far as her importance to the narrative goes. Which is unfortunate for her, because as a character taking up space, she's given screen-time without agency, intelligence, or inner life. The only change that being dragged by her puppet strings through 1795 effects in Vicki Winters is a rope-burn from a failed hanging, an infected gunshot wound, and a I-wish-he-were-more-permanently-dead rebound boyfriend whose response to Vicki panicking about being hanged was to slap her for being hysterical.

Forgive me for being unimpressed.

As far as fixing it goes - there's where I've been striking out. She's fatally passive in 1795 as written. Why doesn't Vicki try to figure out how to get back to her present? (and if she doesn't, perhaps ... gesture at why Vicki might feel like there's not a lot to return to in the present? She nearly jumped from Widows' Hill about 10 episodes before 1795 started.) Why does Vicki persist in making herself suspicious, when she was introduced as a character hampered more by inexperience than true ignorance? In the idea 1795 that lives in my head, why wouldn't Vicki try to figure out who the real witch was, because - given her experiences with the supernatural! - surely a witch might be any help in getting her out of the 18th century and back into the present? End of day, she needs a real plot which doesn't end with her in prison unconnected to the Collinses. Whether that's searching for an escape hatch back to the Swinging Sixties, or Sarah's ghost giving her clear instructions - some kind of a goal! - Vicki either shouldn't exist in 1795 (recycle Moltke as another Collins sibling? that would add a wrinkle to the question of Vicki's antecedents) or she has to be given something to do.

&, finally ...

Digression A: In fairness to the 1795 arc, I think the arc was only following a pattern of characterization and plot involvement that started with Barnabas's arrival: first, that Vicki initially wasn't really involved in the Barnabas plot because she was more involved with the Liz & Jason plot, and, unfortunately for Vicki, everyone still talks about Barnabas, where no one (alas for Patrick and Bennett!) talks up the blackmail thing; second, I think, that the one-two punch of the definitive end of the era of metaphorical monsters & the Burke recast meant that a lot of the dramatic tension that Vicki was carrying either got dismissed or dissipated. We're not playing Jane Eyre any more, we're doing Dracula: Vicki's relationship with Roger and David no longer bears any dramatic weight. We've completely sidelined the question of Vicki's origins, so whether or not Liz is her mother doesn't matter (and the revelation and dismissal of Liz's not-actually-monstrous conduct sort of defangs that relationship, too? oh, Liz isn't actually a murderer? so mother or not, there's no strain on her relationship with the conspicuously virtuous Vicki.). Burke's no longer threatening to burn down Collinsport for revenge, and all of his various relationships with the Collinses or Collinsport denizens have gotten abruptly normalized, so there's no tension to his relationship with Vicki any more: he's rich (don't ask where the money came from), he's in love with her, and now he's chummy with all her friends/stand-in family members. He doesn't even have conversations that are totally just about pens or guns with Roger, for god's sake. The show kicked out all the pillars Victoria Winters as a character had been built on, and it only gets worse after 1795. No wonder Moltke left.

[yardsards]

today i decided to take a lil walk after my haircut and i was like "i'll just go down another block on this road" but didn't realize the block system had ENDED on that road. and then i was like "well i don't feel like turning back around, i'll just keep walking til there's a turn" but there were no turns even after over a mile of walking

so i pulled up my phone gps and saw that the two options for getting home were "turn around and walk that shitty road home" (easier but more boring) or "walk farther down this road, go into the public forest, and cut through there to get home" (more fun but more difficult)

and i ended up going with the latter

but i had then realized by the time i was entering the forest that the sun was setting. and my phone battery was getting low.

and my legs were getting tired but i couldn't stop and rest because i needed to be out of the woods before dark and i was cutting it awfully close

so like. irl horror game protagonist simulator.

[t4tails]

also laurie is being treated like shittt theyve taken away so much of her bite and anger and given it to other characters. why move when they talk about the comedians assault on her mother? scared of making rorschach unsympathetic? LIKE HES SUPPOSED TO BE?

[impossiblekittydelusion]

Welp its a good thing my hair is too heavy to wear up because I just took a notch out of my long hair while shaving my undercut. And folks it is noticable.

[thedandelionresistance]

So, aside from the fact that you just straight up did not read my post about marginalized humanity in alterhuman/nonhuman spaces (for those who have not seen it, talking about were-creatures, fictionkin with human identities, metahumans, people with multiple identities that are human, nonhuman, or even a mix of both, and so on)...

Aside from the fact that I've LITERALLY heard ter//fs and transrad//fems make this EXACT argument about men, including marginalized and especially trans men, claiming men being violent is an innate trait...

This is just species essentialism, and it's bullshit.

There is no universal human nature, and the nature you've assigned to people, whether it be from trauma or privilege, whether you've decided humans are by default good or evil or violent or peaceful or altruistic or self-serving - that doesn't exist.

Humans are capable of uniquely horrific AND incredibly compassionate acts. Sometimes the same person will have done both. How many times have you found out a historical "good guy" was actually a shitty person interpersonally, despite what their actions achieved societally (in cases where the credit is correctly assigned) or a historical horrible person was actually someone who loved and protected their family and loved ones above all else?

The things that are about "human society" is usually a biased and bastardized view of the society a person currently lives in - usually violent capitalism and fascism, in the modern world - but that's not something humans default to, it's just something that we fight against in cycles. Both the fascism and the fighting it are part of humanity.

Like yeah, you'll distrust any identity if you focus on what the worst of them have done. This is especially true if you focus on those who have seized, built, maintained, and benefitted from violent hierarchical power structures. Peri/allo/cishet men, white people, abled people, sane people, neurotypical people - yeah, when you ARE born into privilege and indoctrinated into maintaining a status quo of systemic injustice which benefits you, that does make it easier to do the horrible thing than the compassionate one.

And yet, people still unlearn their shit and fight these systems. Some people with all the privilege and power in the world do so, even if imperfectly.

AND, people who are marginalized despite seeming to have privilege (conditional privilege is not actual privilege) exist. Stealth trans men and closeted trans women; intersex, aspec, multigender, nonbinary, and otherwise queer men; abled-passing people and neurodivergent/mad people capable of masking - I do not feel confident speaking to white-passing experiences, especially where they may also overlap with marginalized ethnicity, but I welcome people to do so.

Anyway, cherry-picking what good or bad things an identity, even a privileged one, has done, is not the rational, unbiased viewpoint you seem to think it is. Refusing to acknowledge the good or neutral things an identity has done to feed your bias is literally an example of why people, including humans, invented statistical tools to scrape as much bias from the scientific process as possible.

There is no universal human nature. There are trends in society, but there are also countertrends. You can focus on things like torture, rape, and genocide, or you can focus on things like humanitarian aid, community-building, and resistance, but focusing on either to the EXCLUSION of the other is missing the forest for the trees.

Anyway, I deleted this reply, because I'm not actually here to argue MY own understanding of MY own experiences on a post about how misanthropy DOES hurt vulnerable, marginalized, alterhumans and yes, nonhumans.

Yes, it is EXACTLY about privilege, and if you feel threatened by that as a person without privilege, perhaps you're ignoring deeper biases and beliefs about whether you'd rather deconstruct systems and hierarchies of oppression or simply be on top of them.

Or perhaps you've just decided humans as individuals are an acceptable target, regardless of what privilege or power they have, and me talking about how that always ends up hurting marginalized people in your own community first and hardest is forcing you to confront a reality of harmful actions in the mirror that you're not ready to confront.

After all, you might actually have to process your complex feelings about your oppression, mistreatment, and trauma if you no longer have an accepted punching bag to take it out on.

Maybe when someone tells you that you "punching up" isn't punching up if the hit connects, you should listen. Maybe when someone says your flailing rage is the reason for the blood streaming down their own face, you should listen. Maybe when another member of your own community talks about their experiences being caught in two worlds without an iota of privilege from either, and how attacks on one ignore their own lived reality, you should listen.

Maybe, you should just listen.

Or, you can keep on insisting that "human nature" is why every person you've ever assumed to be human has mistreated you (even the ones who never actually were). You can ignore that when someone is metahuman, or werewolf, or being a changeling has made them identify as part human or even transhuman, or so on, that they're relationship to humanity is not so simple as "inherently violent and evil oppressor" - and neither is that of nonmarginalized humans, either, though there's nuance around the systems which benefit them and their role in nonhuman and alterhuman oppression.

You can keep not helping your community by turning around and spitting on anyone who's experiences contradict your tidy storybook beliefs about how the world works. You can keep denying the actual experiences of the alterhumans and nonhumans around you, and claim that those of us who are also human are inherently bad and a threat because of it.

You can whine all day about how "that's just how humans are", (treating nonhumans as more morally pure and inherent victims) and I'll never say that doing so is in your nature, because I know you can do better and have chosen not to try. Don't get me wrong - I know indoctrination and radicalization are powerful forces, and that that decision is not one uninfluenced by powerful external factors. I know you are as much a victim of the "radical antihumanism" (or "radical nonhumanism", phrases that I'd hate for misguided misanthropes to "reclaim" but which would at least make most easier to avoid) as te//rfs are victims of "radical 'feminism's' " misogyny.

There's nothing radical about moralizing inherent parts of a person's identity. Essentialism has never been, and never will be, anything other than the status quo itself rearing it's ugly head while pretending to fight itself to appease you and keep you chained. Real liberation requires rejecting all points on the pendulum swing, and questioning what could free us from that trajectory entirely.

Also, as a couple asides: Every marginalized identity I compare being nonhuman/alterhuman is one I personally hold. I also think that there's difference between distrusting humans, disliking them, expressing that dislike in both private and public spaces (particularly where nonhumans and alterhumans whose humanity is marginalized by the humans in power who are hurting us for both our type of humanity and nonhumanity), and acting on that dislike to mistreat others on the basis of identity.

(Note: There's also a range of things that "private" and "public" can mean, so there's nuance there. All of these things are different from one another.)

I think there's room to let people have complex feelings while also holding them accountable and not letting them be radicalized into harmful essentialist beliefs. I also apply these morals I hold consistently - yes, I do think it's wrong to mistreat a man who isn't queer in any way, just for being a nonqueer man. I do believe mistreatment, interpersonal toxicity, and even abuse by misuse of oppressive structures is possible to do to someone who is a part of your oppressor class and has power over you, because the way systemic oppression plays out at an interpersonal level is not straightforward. I don't believe any and all violence against anyone who has ever held power over another (especially when actively working to dismantle the structures that give them said power) is justified.

And, on a personal petty note, I am hyperverbal as a result of multiple disabilities - autism, complex PTSD as a result of abuse as an undiagnosed neurodivergent person for years, ADHD, and even to an extent DID, since often multiple headmates have stuff to add. "Yapperoni" was neither necessary nor kind, unintentionally ableist (I choose to believe it was unintentional, at least, but that doesn't make it less ableist), and just belies, like "I'm not reading all that", that you choose to remain ignorant to the point that it becomes indistinguishable from malice and is therefore malicious regardless of intention.

And since I know someone is going to ridicule my claims of ableism, to whoever does so: sweetie, doubling down on ableism is not LESS ableist. And if you haven't experienced that as a form of ableism, you're just admitting that you either got lucky or haven't experienced the specific intersection of identities that strips you of the right to not be treated that way. (Literally 99 percent of the people I've seen say "I'm disabled and that's not ableist" have simply lacked an axis of marginalized identity that the person calling it ableist had. The other one percent of cases are highly specific and nuanced and also often relate to further marginalization.)

I can't make you listen, learn, and grow. I can't make you choose to discard your ignorance instead of both clutching it as shield from accountability and wielding it indiscriminately as a weapon that you claim is being used in self defence as you hit only the people within your reach and never those in power with it.

I can't make you believe me.

But I can challenge the very core of those beliefs so that less and less people will be convinced they hold any meaning or value, until you either choose to prune away the beliefs that no longer serve you or let them strangle out all the sunlight and leave you in the dark alone.

And whether or not you are ever ready to choose kindness over casual cruelty, my hand will remain outstretched to uplift you - not because it's in my nature, and in spite of you snapping and biting at it when I do - because I've chosen holding to my values over reactive violence.

You were never interested in "what the fuck I was on about", so this isn't for you. You're blocked, anyway, because I'm not here to debate my own suffering/pain/trauma, joy, or any other aspect of what I've lived through with anyone. Even the parts that expand into theory are deeply rooted in the things I have personally experienced, and my understanding of my own experiences is not here for you go deny.

So this is for anyone willing to actually listen. If you're not, kindly move on and leave me alone. If you have genuine questions, I'm may not be able to answer them right now, but you're welcome to ask regardless (and if you're nervous about how I might take them, I really do try my best to give any benefit of the doubt there is to give). Above all, please remember that we are all people/entities who deserve basic decency in actions and whatever compassion anyone has to give.