#or argue about positioning

[fuitgummybat]

Friends, as a massive new wave fan, I have developed a theory: Every new wave song is somewhere between punk, goth, and disco.

My proof:

Big thanks to @dartheritis for their help

[uncanny-tranny]

What I think is so important to learning how to truly appreciate life is learning how to appreciate the creatures and things we've categorized as "disgusting" or "gross."

When I learned to appreciate wasps, I realized how much they just... don't really care about anything, and they're not trying to be an asshole because they're uniquely cruel. If they have any wants, it is to live. Why would I punish that when I also want to live?

This isn't to say you need to fall in love with the creepy crawlies that stalk this world or to love what you cannot, but to recognize that in their arrangement of atoms, they are trying to persevere, and in the end... aren't we all?

[khalliys]

Critical Role is just such a warm and wonderful gift for wlw representation.

We have the two who saw each other from opposite ends of a bumpy broken road, who braved rain and thunderstorms and faced obstacles and hurdles but were always on track towards each other - even when they didn't know they were, even when they couldn't see they were - until the rain got lighter and they started walking with purpose. And then they finally reached each other in the middle, embraced and never let go.

And we have the two who started on a bumpy broken road together, who are braving red sand storms and go over obstacles and hurdles side by side and where at some point intertwining each others hands for support and comfort - so that they always know they're still walking together, even when they can't see and there's too much sand in their eyes - and then never letting go was just the right descision to make.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

You could say that I have strong feelings about this ongoing debate

[mariocki]

Lalla Ward makes a brief appearance as Lady Augusta, intended bride to an ill-fated aristocrat, in A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Ash Tree (BBC, 1975)

[strawberry-graveyard]

shout out to systems who use super common roles and terms!!

shout out to systems who use super niche roles and terms!!

shout out to systems who use “outdated” roles and terms!!

shout out to systems who coin their own roles and terms even if similar ones already exist!!

shout out to systems who don’t use roles and terms to describe themselves!!

shout out to systems who use a ton of roles and terms to describe themselves!!

and shout out to to everyone in between!! you should always use whatever terms you feel comfortable with. as long as it’s not inherently harmful then go nuts!!

plurality and it’s descriptors are not a monolith, and what works for someone else might not work for you!! use what makes you comfortable, and don’t let anyone make you feel bad about it.

[utilitycaster]

re: the previous post, I do think that variety of person, who keeps up with a fandom for something they clearly detest, is baffling and annoying. I also however think everyone ultimately calibrates what they consider an appropriate level of dislike for a work. I've definitely gotten weird anons accusing me of not leaving something I clearly can't stand for criticizing a singular aspect of something that I considered in no way a dealbreaker, and I absolutely have quit fandoms or shows before because I wasn't enjoying myself so I do know where my personal line is drawn.

I've also seen people who I would consider deep in the "no longer enjoying fundamental aspects of this work" levels still both remaining in the fandom and complaining that other people who clearly hate the work are in the fandom. This is in fact exactly how I perceive people who seem to both resent the moon plot of Campaign 3 and who also seem to be upset that many people who are enjoying the moon plot do not consider Campaign 3 their favorite but still like it. Anyway I think the point of this is that people are baffling and annoying but you do need to just block people you find to be a source of unpleasant and unhelpful criticism instead of throwing posts in the main tag about all those miserable haters because I've seen people call minor, mild, and humorous criticism "hate" and I've seen people I'd consider to be deeply unhappy insist they're having a marvelous time. It's far too subjective to even attempt to moderate.

[biioniic-biiohazard]

i love you systems with different or more specific experiences <3 i love you introjects with different/mixed sources dating or being friends <3 i love you undiagnosed systems <3 i love you introjects with multiple sources <3 i love you introjects with creators who are aren't the best people and/or not working on their source anymore <3 i love you factives that are nonhuman in headspace <3 i love you introjects with specific and lesser known sources <3 i love you introjects who look/act nothing like their source <3 i love you systems with detailed headspaces <3 i love you systems with little to no headspace or low detailed/smaller headspaces <3 i love you systems with small amounts of headmates <3 i love you polyfragmented systems <3 i love you frontstuck alters <3 i love you alters who are scared to front <3 i love you systems who switch all the time <3 i love you systems who rarely switch <3 i love you alters who are animals, objects, concepts, and songs <3 i love you brainformed alters without sources <3 i love you systems with complex sexualities and genders and romantic orientations <3 i love you systems with majority one gender or sexuality <3 i love you transgender systems <3 i love you disabled systems <3 i love you autistic systems <3 i love you schizospec systems <3 i love you systems with ocd <3 i love you systems with tic discorders <3 i love you systems YOU ARE ALL VERY COOL AND AWESOME MWAH you're all doing great and i hope every system who reads this has an amazing day and night ^^

[jewreallythinkthat]

I have started listening to Unapologetic: The Third Narrative. It's a podcast from two Palestine Israeli citizens and it's brilliant. I don't agree with everything the presenters say (but then again, I don't agree with a lot of things a lot of people say so what's new) but they have some of the most open and balanced and nuanced discussions I've heard about the Israel-Hamas war. It's also really good for people who are looking for diverse opinions and trying to understand different perspectives as the presenters are from very different communities and regularly disagree on things.

The most recent episode has a guest who's family were kidnapped (5 have been released, one is still in Gaza) and they asked her about how she has stopped herself wallowing in hate and her answer was she literally doesn't have space for hate. Hate is so overwhelming, and there's so much work to do to actually push for a sustainable peace an end to this that there is not time to waste on petty spiteful hatred. With the amount of time I spend thinking about the hostages and their families, the people starving in Gaza, and trying to work out if there is anything I can do from the UK to try and actually help, I simply do not have time to hate. Maybe if more people put the energy they are spending screaming at those who disagree with and forcing randomers to choose sides, someone might actually manage to come up with meaningful ways to end this without the death toll increasing dramatically on either side.

It's also a super harrowing listen for me personally as all I could think is that I could have been her if my cousin hadn't been on holiday in Crete that weekend. People who lived near him were killed, one had to play dead with a bullet in his leg while his wife and daughter lay slaughtered beside him. I am so grateful that he was not home and so I have not had to experience people I know being killed an kidnapped, frankly I'm lucky in that respect - a lot of my friends were not as lucky as I was in that regard.

[fortyfive-forty]

i've been ruminating a lot on it because i think i'm bad at putting my thoughts into words but i need y'all to understand that while there are absolutely a lot of Not Good Things about the finals being held in saudi arabia for three years...the way people seem to treat is as morally black and white is shortsighted and unhelpful.

realistically the players traveling there will be protected. it may be uncomfortable, it's certainly not ideal, but they will travel there for a few weeks, play their tennis, then leave. there are a lot of women, a lot of queer people who actually live in saudi arabia who cannot just leave, who are actually subjected to laws and social climates...and to me it just seems very disrespectful to that actual lived experience, for everybody to sort of turn their noses up and get on their high horses. of course, if the players wish to opt out, that is their choice, but that is their choice to make. that's their judgement. not ours.

and then, what about a tournament like miami? florida is literally experiencing one of the worst active regressions that i've seen in the us (granted i'm young). things like critical race theory and lgbtq+ ed are being removed from curriculums, rights for trans youth, trans healthcare, etc. are going backwards. abortion rights? gun violence? and yes i know that the laws and climate in saudi arabia are different gravy, i understand that, but my point is, no one would ever DREAM of arguing against hosting a tournament in miami despite all of these issues. and we can extend this to a lot of other tournaments! i mean, all the outrage about fifa hosting a world cup in qatar, but we don't have any of these sentiments about doha? i've seen other people bring up that the finals were hosted in singapore when gay marriage was still illegal there. we've already talked about italy's fascist prime minister. and i could go on and on and on about the war crimes of countries like the us or the uk - is the us not participating actively in genocide right now? where is the standard? if you argue against hosting the finals in saudi arabia for the reason of human rights, to me it seems you have to uphold that standard for the location you do land on. and i can guarantee, you will not find a single country in the world with clean hands.

i want to be clear i am not arguing that hosting the finals in saudi arabia is a good thing, especially for three years, especially because it's definitely going there because of money, and not for any of the "good" reasons i think some people want us to believe about "improving the region" (which is very weirdly white savior-esque anyway). i don't really have an official "conclusion" to this discussion.

what i am arguing is that i think a lot of the protests against saudi arabiahosting the finals are more an example of implicit anti-arab bias and islamophobia, rather than genuine discussion. key word implicit: i don't think most people are purposefully trying to be anti-arab/islamophobic. or at least, i'd like to believe nobody is. but i also think, particularly in the west, there is already so much of this xenophobic sentiment ingrained. and this is why i think it's really really REALLY important to check ourselves when we talk about it instead of just jumping straight to the human rights conversation without a second thought.

i'll say it plainly: i don't think the finals should be held in saudi arabia. but for me, it has more to do with sportswashing, with the dangers of the way money is thrown around in sports, and because i think it's more evidence that the wta doesn't care about player welfare but rather about making a profit (what else is new). human rights are absolutely a concern of mine, but how is it fair to hold saudi arabia to a standard that we don't seem to care about for literally anybody else?

literally look at the us's ugly ugly history, past and present, and tell me why we deserve to host a tennis tournament.

[seagreenstardust]

I’m gonna say something that’s probably not going to be well received in certain circles so let me start by saying this: I believe, with only a few rare exceptions, that you should be able to ship whatever speaks to you the most. And just because I don’t ship something doesn’t mean it’s wrong for anyone else to ship it, and the same for things I do ship, no one else has to ship it too. Who you do or don’t ship will never be a reason I pass judgment on you, ever. Live your best life.

That being said, I want to talk about Horikoshi and straight ships.

(And bakudeku.)

Here’s the thing: Hori has written straight ships into MHA and he’s done it so masterfully that it’s made me ship them without even realizing it. I don’t know if we can call them canon because as far as I know no ship is actually canon yet, but what is canon is the care Hori put into building these relationships.

Kirimina. Hori wrote in a backstory that parallels bkdk that I just adore. There is something about Kiri looking up to Mina and being so inspired by her bravery that it shapes the hero he becomes that is such good content. They’ve had multiple mid-battle moments of protecting and helping each other. I ship Kirimina so hard because of the canon Hori gave us.

I am a low key Denki/Hitoshi shipper but season six kinda hit me in the face with whatever we’re calling Kyouka/Denki these days and now I guess I’m a multi-shipper???? That is how hard Hori hit me with the Kyouka/Denki feels. And he did it the same way as Kirimina, because we have years of content of Kyouka teasing Denki mercilessly, plus the cultural festival band, so when they’re separated in Season 6 and Denki has this intense moment of realization that she’s who he needs to be brave for and it actually works??? I’m a goner.

Heck, I ship todomomo too you guys though I can’t blame Hori for that one, that’s just me being me. The point is that I ship it because the characters Hori gave me struck a chord inside.

But there is one straight ship Hori never once made me ship.

Every time izu*cha showed up I just kinda endured it? It just wasn’t for me. I didn’t see two kids with chemistry, I saw two kids who didn’t know who they were or what they wanted fumbling their way through a will they/won’t they without either of them seeming all that invested in it.

In six seasons and nearly 400 chapters and multiple times revisiting the story I have never once felt any inclination to ship izu*cha

Hori can write straight ships. Hori made me ship his secondary straight ships nearly effortlessly. So if izu*cha was meant to be canon why have I never once felt the chemistry?

You know who has the chemistry? Bakudeku. But here’s the thing: I wasn’t thinking about Katsuki as a possible love interest for Izuku the first time I watched the entire story. I honestly wasn’t paying much attention to him at all, he was everything I didn’t like on the surface so I more or less ignored him despite Izuku holding onto him for dear life. Katsuki never once colored my opinion of izu*cha, they did that all on their own.

It wasn’t until after my first watch through, when I was hungry for more and trolling around tumblr, that I realized people shipped Katsuki and Izuku and it was literally like something out of alignment popped into place in my head.

Oh. Duh. That’s the ship.

I went from zero to a million in a handful of seconds because the chemistry was there, the backstory was there, and boy are Izuku and Katsuki loud about how obsessed they are with each other. Just like Kirimina, just like Denki and Kyouka, Hori planted the seeds throughout the entire series so that when it was brought to my attention everything about the narrative and character development supported it.

And I have to take a moment to explain my dislike of Katsuki at first: I honestly fell for the surface-level interpretation of his character and then kinda wrote him off without much more thought. Which is insane to think about because you can’t really understand MHA without Katsuki, he is so integral to the story as a whole that any version of it without him is skewed so far out of alignment that it’s not even the same story anymore. But I just saw angry boy who yells for no reason and put Katsuki in a box and left it at that.

It wasn’t until I was willing to give his character a second look that I started understanding him, and more importantly, his relationship with Izuku. And it helped that when bkdk was presented to me as a ship that my brain understood immediately why it worked. The canon source material supports bkdk at every possible moment.

I really don’t think it does the same for izu*cha.

[imakemywings]

Feanor had a complicated relationship with Indis’ children, but I do firmly believe it was that: complicated. Not cut-and-dry antagonism and opposition. Why? Because I think the story characterizes Feanor as someone to whom family is extremely important. I think in other circumstances (ie: if Miriel had been the one birthing his siblings), he might have been delighted to be a big brother.

Feanor is obsessed with his mother’s legacy, not just as it pertains to his own legitimacy, but for her sake; his grief over her loss is arguably a catalyst for much of his behavior. He adores his father ( “...his father was dearer to him than the Light of Valinor or the peerless works of his hands; and who among sons, of Elves or of Men, have held their fathers of greater worth?” Of the Flight of the Noldor; The Silmarillion). He married his wife in defiance of the expectations of the Noldor and hers was some of the only counsel he would take. He had seven children among a people who conceive only by choice, and named them all after Finwe.

Clearly family is really important to Feanor.

Therefore I do believe that despite his negative associations with his half-siblings, there was affection there. There were times they got along and he did things with/for them and maybe even times he would admit to enjoying having them around, but he could never get over his insecurity over what they represented (Indis’ attempted usurpation of his and his mother’s positions, in his mind) or his resentment about his father’s remarriage to have a more positive, less complicated relationship with them.

[cancerian-woman]

daily reminders no one but Bonnie was cheated on in tvdu. my mutual on Twitter asked me why I hated b e r e m y and I had to remind her!

[anarcho-sin-dicalist]

Based Kase-san

[onthevirgooftears]

not to be insane or anything but it really pisses me off when people say whit killed arei 💀 it is objectively never that serious but everytime i see someone come up with a theory or whatever it just shows such a fundamental misunderstanding of his character and not that I'm a veteran or anything but i just wanted to right some wrongs.

whit is not a killer. he exists in a sphere of kindness and prosperity and nothing else. people only think he's suspicious because we've been dispositioned to think every 'nice' character in danganronpa is secretly evil. whit does not have a facade, he's truly and 100% a good person.

looking back at some of his character defining moments it's so striking that he was one of the only people to give his kindness to the two people who were at the time not very nice people themselves. its striking that he doesn't reveal charles' secret in the first trial until he feels as though charles is comfortable enough for everyone to know and how he does the same thing with david in the second trial because it simply isn't his secret to tell.

he extends kindness to those who probably don't deserve it and actively is willing to put aside his own personal grievances in order to comfort someone when they’re in need. like, it's insane to me that you can look at all of that say "yep 💀 that guys definitely the killer!" HES A GOOD PERSON like literally what more do i have to say.

[takumishu]

I don't want to get mired into that discourse at all because I just want to vibe in my corner, but just so I have the thoughts down somewhere; I wonder if debates on whether MVK is "abusive" are really just about the semantics?

Like the undeniable here is that Damage was Done, or else neither Franziska nor Edgeworth would even be like that to begin with + a framework for personal success as harsh and demanding as Perfection cannot be enforced without some level of violence (however you think that violence would look like: in the context of a parent and a child, it can look as simple as a threat to withhold affection and/or acceptance, two things that are crucial to any growing child's emotional and mental well-being).

That enforcement doesn't have to be intentionally evil, nor does it preclude any softer, not terrible moments between the parent and children existing. But the thing is, the relationship parents have to their children is always to the child's disadvantage; it's a tight form of ownership and control, and children notably lack a lot of autonomy within their household growing up that just causes inevitable damage to them regardless of how hard the parents try to prevent them; as in, the parent can get tired, can lose patience, and (like is the case in most relationships) can hurt their children a great deal. It's just that it's especially worsened given the context of the power they inherently have over their children, and the little options children even have to escape it.

MVK is pretty undeniably not the sort of parent* who cares to tend to the minutiae of his children's well-being; like, he's obviously not a guy who would, say, preach for "soft parenting" or anything similar, but very clearly has a set expectation for how and what he wants the kids he is raising to be, all the while being a very controlling and imposing man who actively dislikes one of the kids he has underneath his roof. This is not a man fostering a healthy environment for a child to grow up in, but as far as I can tell most people can agree on that end.

^ all of this is what I think isn't much in question; which means that what IS is whether or not you can define this as "abuse".

I can see the argument for why you wouldn't, and would think that the (indisputable) harm done needs to reach a particular threshold of confirmed damage for it to qualify as abusive. There's nothing proving that MVK was beating his kids, for example, and I'd agree that speaking about him in terms of him doing so textually is inaccurate.

Though abuse also comes in many forms, some more subtle, but all imply repetitive harm done in which one party has explicit control over the other, to the point where the latter is scared of the repercussions of going against the former. What with the way Edgeworth and Franziska spend significant portions of their lives trying to stay within the limits of the standards MVK sets, and especially in Edgeworth's case where the man has never had a positive word to spare for him, there's just as much of a convincing argument for it all to be the effects of the subtle control of emotional abuse.

At the end of the day, what MVK does in the empty spaces where we don't see him at all is just a question you cannot answer nor argue for with certainty. All we can say is that there was damage done, and whether or not it was "abuse" depends entirely on how you personally define the word and/or interpret those gaps not taken into account by the text.

My personal stance is I'm not especially caught up in definitions, and my own personal politics are pretty harsh towards parents in general, so if there is damage done and there's no sign of remorse or introspection on the parent's end (which clearly doesn't exist in MVK's case, lol), then they're a bastard to me whether or not I think they're "abusive".