#pointless and self defeating for a queer person to be doing

[scoobydoofenshmirtz]

I guess my crazy radical opinion that I'm low key surprised isn't more common on tumblr is that I don't actually believe it's possible to have a 100% canonically straight character.

[mattmcgorrysourceit]

Matt via Instagram: ""Laziness Does Not Exist" by @drdevonprice

Such an important book that so many of us need right now. Do yourself a favor and buy it.

"Instead of dismissing a person so quickly, it's much more effective to get curious. Every person has reasons for why they act the way they do. Even if someone's inaction strikes us as totally self-defeating or pointless, within the context of that person's life, it makes sense....Here are some questions to ask yourself:

What need are they trying to meet by acting this way?

What challenges or barriers are getting in the way of their making a change?

What hidden struggles (such as physical disability, mental illness, trauma, or oppression) might explain the difficulties they're facing?

Who might have taught them to act this way?

Do they have other options?

Are those options really attainable for them?

What kind of help might they need?"

"A queer, transgender Indigenous person, Xochitl knows very deeply what it's like to be impacted by injustice on a day-to-day basis. One way that ze deals with it is by giving lots of space for mourning and grief. 'I think we don't know how to grieve as a society,' ze says. 'I think lots of the conversation about activist burnout is actually about grieving, being really able to and willing to just sit in this space of *This is fucking awful. And there might not be anything I can do to solve this.’

…ze often mourns the harm that has already been done to the planet due to industrialization and climate change. Though society can take steps to reduce carbon emissions and slow the damage that's occurring, there's some harm that can never be undone.

'The Amazon is burning. So many animals have gone extinct because of climate change,' ze says. 'And there's always, I think, this natural impulse to make sense of it all. Like, *What are ways in which you can take action? Like, you sign some petitions? Can you commit to not using plastic?* And we can talk about those steps. But let's start with the grief. Let's start with the fact that even if I cut out all plastic from my life, that doesn't take away all the plastic in the ocean."

My Booklist:

bit.ly/mcgreads (link in bio)

#McGReads"

[arcticdementor]

I was talking to Sarah yesterday and I had a revelation I think is worth sharing.

Let’s begin at the beginning. About a month ago, Instapundit posted this.

Now, I’ve been thinking of the rise and fall of civilizations lately. I can’t think why it’s been on my mind. It’s a tale as old as time—a civilization emerges, establishes a new worthwhile order, the good things brought forth by said order soften up the people maintaining it, the softening turns to decadence, and the decadence gives way to the barbarians, who clean the slate. Where would you say things are lately?

…

In short—the federal government of the United States of America has become impotent at almost all good things.

Expanded out—There is no start to its talents. It cannot maintain its borders. Since the “election” it doesn’t even try. No surprise there. It cannot maintain friendly relationships with allies—as our recent screwing of Britain on our way out of Afghanistan shows. The “leader” of the “free world” could not be bothered to pick up the phone for our closest ally. Speaking of Afghanistan, it can’t win a war. It can’t even lose gracefully. In fact it fucked up leaving so badly some people are entertaining that it intended to fuck it up, because how the fuck does somebody above the age of six not notice that pulling the military out first and the civilians out second is not even a remotely workable strategy? Resulting in leaving millions of dollars of equipment—and—excuse me, what? Millions of dollars of dollars in the desert? Fantastic.

It makes self sabotaging and idiotic choices to stymie its own domestic oil industry, while accepting a pipeline not from Canada, but one that’s a joint Russian-German venture instead. Which means the problem, contrary to any environmentalist whining, isn’t the pipeline—it’s the pipeline with a friendly country. Big surprise— its only true interest in the environment lies in international agreements that hamstring us while doing nothing to China, the world’s largest polluter. It either can’t be trusted on energy production  and the environment, or is trying to get it wrong.

It can’t manage its economy. What could have been a “V” shaped recovery has been turned into an “L” shaped one. What could be contributing? Paying people to do nothing? Rampant inflation? Meanwhile all the dumbasses running the country can think of is spending several billion more dollars that don’t exist. The country has infrastructure problems for a fact, but they’ll only acknowledge that to the extent of cynically plastering the word on an “infrastructure” bill which is in fact just a far Left wishlist that largely ignores actual infrastructure, in the hopes people will be dumb enough to support it because it has the right label.

And on.

And on.

And on.

What aptitudes does it have besides taking money, trampling civil liberties, and ignoring constitutional laws at gunpoint? News flash, dummies: We don’t need peaceful protestors incarcerated without a trial. We don’t need the weight of the federal government turned to the problem of violating states rights because Texas passed a law Biden doesn’t like. We need military egresses that look like they weren’t planned by Bozo the clown and an economic plan better than something China would design for us as an attempt to permanently sink the country. Is there anyone at all in DC who can provide that? If not, is there anything useful they can do? I’ll wait.

…

This is what decadence looks like. When the government stops even attempting competence because nothing and nobody that currently exists can replace or displace them so who cares about results? When comfort and plenty have become so common, been taken for granted for so long, that the question of utility or even basic sanity isn’t even distantly considered. When it’s assumed that self-harming policies that will obviously damage the country won’t really matter because nobody has ever known a world without America and fundamentally has no idea how the present day came to be. When the country’s most educated start chasing bizarre and unimaginably stupid ideas on economics that boil down to “inflation won’t happen if you double the monetary supply by printing money, if only you just believe hard enough”. In fact, when education stops being a means to greater insight, more useful abilities, and a better life, and becomes a cult devoted to the kind of idiocy that can survive only with strenuous censorship, the tenets of the cult being treated by the indoctrinated as a collection of sacred mysteries and deeply-thought paradoxes— while to those not similarly trained it is self-obviously a collection of contradictory and self-serving lies.

Verily, decadence is here. We can infer that what comes next is the barbarians. And we have options. Mexican illegals? A heady mixture of poverty-stricken Marxists who have never known a system that wasn’t corrupt, functionally lawless, and devoted to the tenets of voting oneself rich; and outright criminals with lives like “a demon’s resumé”? Perhaps radical Muslims? By sheer numbers worldwide they’re the most likely option. The Taliban just got a huge infusion of cash and a big boost in morale. In a few short days we’ll know whether they’ve arranged a thank you gift for Zho Bi-Xen and his kleptocrat marching band to commemorate his intended pull-out date. But even if, and God I hope, they have not, we can expect an uptick in terrorism and quite shortly. Or perhaps China? The Middle Kingdom would laugh at being called barbarians, but I call genocidal communists like I see them. Mao was morally three steps below a pig and Xi has enough power to aspire to greater depths. As is I wouldn’t dream of feeding a pig Mu Shu Xi due to the great risk of poisoning the pig.

But there is a barbarian group not considered. Us.

Hang on. Before you balk, listen. Look again at what these idiots are selling as the fruits of civilization. Defenses of pedophilia and urinals as art. And more, too—sterilization and disfigurement of teenagers in the form of sex changes. Black supremacy as a panacea to made up threats of white supremacy. Books nobody reads, movies nobody watches, paintings that exist only to launder money—even the ones not made by Hunter Biden.

What good person would not be proud to be considered a barbarian by these miserable, over-decorated Faberge people? I’d be mortified if they agreed with me! So they think I’m a sexist or a racist or whatever. Fine. They do not use these words to mean the same things I mean, so it’s a pointless argument, and they are now officially beneath my explaining myself to them. When the people who are calling me names are so morally opaque that the Taliban can make devastating critiques of them just by referencing the foundational works of their own gender studies programs, I’m done caring about the names. Fine. I’m what you think is a racist. I’m what you think is a sexist. But you think a lot of very stupid things, and as the curtain continues to draw back on the carnival of madness that’s been behind the scenes the entire time it’s occurring to me that what you think and reality overlap so seldom that the only time not to ignore you is when I can ridicule you. If that is your civilization, someone hand me a pointy horned helmet.

…

Yes, this is a moment of peril, but also opportunity. See in your country what every hostile group listed above sees in it—the makings of great civilization, along other, less stupid lines. All of it guarded by weak, fat, stupid people with no will and no self-belief. Take that mindset and go forth.

Get involved in your local systems. There is an old prayer for God to make ones enemies ridiculous. Congratulations to whomever was still praying it. Your prayers have been answered. Will you tell me that you cannot defeat these people? People who lose casual debates to terrorists not on principle but on basic facts?

…

You can’t reason with them so don’t bother. Recent events have made it clear you may as well try to talk sense into a three-day-old mackerel. Just confront them with their own stupidity so that people who see the inevitable video understand what this is about, and don’t feel that you are too good to shout them out of the room. You’re the barbarian, remember? Not like the nice civilized people with their gender-queer Tik-Tokers pushing vaccine propaganda. That means you’re excused from conversations with morons. Don’t bother trying to find common ground. Look at where they’re standing! Do you want to try to find the midpoint between that and reality? Silly. Pointless. Send them back to their walled online gardens to whine to their equally stupid friends about the barbarians.

Can we take it back from the ground up? I don’t know. But hey, it’s got to be worth a shot. Join the fun! Find some friends and locate a low-hanging political event to raid. When was the last time you went to a town hall for your town? Isn’t just a part of you curious to know whether your local county commissioner starts by declaring her pronouns? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see someone like that made very uncomfortable? You can make that happen. You can probably do it within the next month. Bring a few friends! Or a few dozen. Some of the people reading this probably were afraid to do that kind of thing for fear of losing their job. The Biden economy might have freed up some of your time. What have you got to lose now? More importantly, the way things are going, are you going to lose it anyway if things continue as they are? Think on it.

[teamwynn]

The Night Voice Retrospective, Pt. 7

[Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 11.5 | Part 12]

Hey, Chuillyon was in this book! It wasn’t quite expected and it didn’t quite make sense, but there he was. Let’s discuss that, and then also some other gross shit not pertaining to Chuillyon.

Chuillyon Ex Machina (That ability got vaguely foreshadowed once, get the hell out of my face, Chuillyon.)

Okay, okay, okay. I will concede this point: Chuillyon’s teleportation nonsense was foreshadowed in Of Truth and Beasts. I can’t argue that, and I’ll even give credit for subtlety. Hats off to you, Chuillyon.

The branch thing was bullshit, though.

Just to make sure we all remember how this went down: The branch was the key component to defeating the Night Voice. They literally could not have trapped the Night Voice without this branch. And, yeah, the branch was brought up slightly more than the teleportation thing (once in Rebel Fay and once in The Dog in the Dark), and, yeah, it was established in Of Truth and Beasts that the tree is apparently more powerful than the Fay. But what was not established was the fact that that tree is apparently sentient???? And it deliberately wanted to fight the Night Voice, but didn’t bother to actually do anything until the last possible minute when it prompted Chuillyon to take another branch and chase after Our Heroes? And this act was so significant that it basically rendered the actions of every other character in the book as a bunch of pointless filler because none of it came even within the ballpark of mattering as much as Chuillyon’s Stargate Tree?

Um. Okay.

I mean, I’m almost impressed by the brazenness of just chucking out all of the established characters, their powers and resources, and everything they’ve gone through to center entirely on this one-time quasi-villain from Series 2 and his god-modded stick who single-handedly resolved the entire Night Voice conflict for everyone.

...sorry, I know I’m not being fair. Of course Chuillyon couldn’t have saved the day if Ore-Locks hadn’t also been there to hide the orbs and stick the staff in the ground. It’s completely unreasonable of me to suggest that only one secondary character who has been out of focus since Series 2 solved the entire plot while the main cast sat around with their thumbs up their asses. Clearly, there were a whole two of them. Sorry, so sorry.

Regardless of My Personal Feelings On Any Given Ship, How to Resolve a Slow-Burn Romance (Not like that.)

Look. I have a confession. And it’s really embarrassing, so y’all can’t tell anyone about it. This needs to be kept under a tight lid, okay?

Okay.

I was a billion percent ready to get behind Wynn/Chane.

Now, yes, obligatory “shipping according to Tumblr’s ideological purity” disclaimer: I know it’s gross. Okay, I read the books, I saw how that all went down. It’s gross. Chane’s a stalker, Wynn’s verbally abusive, they’re both emotionally manipulative, he never gets un-undead, there are problems all around. (But mostly with that first point.) Regardless, after having dealt with these assholes for 13 books, and considering that they are two of my favorite assholes in this series of terrible, terrible monster people, it was kind of hard not to get invested in their weird platonic rivalmance (romantically-charged frienemyship? Regular queerplatonic partnership but between jackasses? I don’t know how to categorize it.)

All that considered, there’s a great opportunity in this final book to resolve a 13-book-long slow-burn, but this resolution is being built on a perilous foundation, and must be handled delicately. Well, at least sort of delicately. Or, really, handled at all. It’s been 13 books--the mere dedication of this slow-burn has to count for something, as long as there’s some payoff.

Um…

...there is at least some payoff, right?

Right! Because here, we have Wynn reciprocating feelings, and Chane’s response is… to immediately change the subject.

Um…

Well, okay, okay! It’s because he’s a socially-inept douche, that makes sense. This is just a tease for the real resolution, which will involve, like, an actual conversation between them that addresses all of the tension from the course of the entire series.

...aaaaand they pretty much don’t interact with each other again until the Under the Mountain nonsense. So, the climax to this slow-burn legitimately was that single, abrupt moment of “ilu”, “lol, anyway…”???

Oh, come on. This isn’t a millennium-long cross-continental civil war or an army full of self-interested and self-destructive undead slave-warriors or anything that actually requires world-building and plot consistency and effort to resolve. These are two mostly-human characters acting out a fairly simple emotionally-intimate relationship, and all they need to do at this point is take 5 minutes to acknowledge that are they emotionally-intimate in some way. My queer ass doesn’t even need it to be romantic intimacy, I just needed them to openly acknowledge to themselves and the other that they care about and value each other. Holy hell, after being strung along with this for 13 books, is that so much to ask?

Blegh. Anyway.

Tune in next time for an analysis of the big final battle of the saga. (We’re getting close to the end of the story and yet I still have so many complaints left!)