#right solution

[shmreduplication]

murderbot is really like "thru the power of all of the tv i have watched and my robotic components which include a lot of weapons, I can handle any situation"

[thesaltyace]

Y'all I did NOT know this about Harris, and I think it's really critical that we all listen and understand as we approach this election. Video at the end.

This creator's video describes how progressive Harris was as a prosecutor -- actively going against the grain to the point she was accused of being soft on crime. Accused of being a social worker, not a prosecutor. She calls it being smart on crime. She's pushing for systemic changes to give real pathways to reintegrate incarcerated folks back into society and prevent their past from continuing to haunt them moving forward.

"Kamala's a cop" is a catchy dismissive response usually used to shut down conversation rather than add nuance. But this kind of reform is ESSENTIAL to work towards a present and future that treats incarcerated people with value.

I fell for it in 2020 and have thought "Kamala's a cop" without further inspection since - and I'm sobered by the realization that (you guessed it!) I'm not immune to propaganda.

A better system only follows liberal democracy, because library democracy allows for exploration of better systems. If authoritarianism takes hold, it will not allow for the exploration of better systems. We will have to fight tooth and nail just to try to get back to liberal democracy, and I suspect we could not achieve it in our lifetimes.

Harris isn't perfect. But she's a hell of a lot better than many leftists have led me to believe. Don't let perfection be the enemy of good. Don't let perfection be the enemy of harm reduction.

We can either help elect Trump and usher in authoritarian fascism, or we can help defeat him and pull things back in the direction we want to go. Not liking the choices doesn't absolve you from participating and doing the most good you can with the options available.

I'll link the original video in the replies. The original video has captions if you need them.

[keferon]

So. I went online and bought this Transformers generations Blurr toy and holy shit nothing prepared me for the lore on the back of it’s box o_o

Also every time Blurr gets to be a sniper my soul ascends a little bit~

+ Bonus doodles

[inkskinned]

i wrote an interactive poem for my girlfriend in 3 parts. she said you need to read it.

go here: take only the final quiz or take all 3. i don't mind. it's sad, though. this is a poem about choice. about fate and mental illness and how love fits inside of all of it. this is a poem about a long dark hallway. mostly this is a poem about mango sushi rolls.

good luck. i love you. despite it all, i'm hopeful.

[egophiliac]

bring your son to work day

[angeloftuesdayy]

blood related sex magic

[ivoreene]

you know the rules wolfwood...

no smoking in the greenhouse (╥ᆺ╥；)

[maze-of-my-design]

Y'know what? In a dying world so cruel and bleak, I think loving is the most powerful thing you can do. In a world where capitalism wants us to break our backs, where peace is scarce, and where some of our brains decide to say mean things to us. It's so important, actually, to be kind and share joy and take care each other, and ourselves, in spite of the way the world is. To love is one of the most rebellious acts one can do

[outtamynoggin]

It's crazy what he gets away with (and who the ones letting him get away with it are)

Bruce: What Nightwing did might have been... unconventional, but it worked.

Tim: Exactly. I mean, sure, the plan might have involved hacking into Gotham’s power grid, a few strategic distractions, and, uh, some minor illegal surveillance-

Barbara: MINOR? DISTRUBANCES??

Tim: Okay, fine! The plan also had a teensy bit of hacking into the stock market, manipulating a few politicians, and borrowing a couple confidential documents, but nobody was harmed!

Bruce: ...In the strictest sense.

Tim: Yes! See, it's a win-win solution!

Barbara: *furious* You two are insane. You’re treating morally ambiguous like it’s a fun new hobby. He practically engineered an escape from a high-security prison by tricking the entire staff into thinking it was game night. In addition, he orchestrated a city-wide blackout just to steal classified documents, and you’re calling it genius?

Bruce: Very resourceful.

Tim: I mean... it’s not his fault they didn’t know how to play Dungeons & Dragons. Also, I want to see who else could pull off a high-profile heist while simultaneously launching a PR campaign for a new tech startup!

Bruce: *to Tim* Wayne Enterprise's tech gadgets cleared the shelves, we need to speed up production.

Tim: Already on it.

Barbara: You’re defending this? That’s not genius, that’s a psychotic breakdown wrapped in a cape! It's madness layered up in a three-piece suit!

Bruce and Tim: It’s Dick.

Barbara: I swear, if it was anyone else, you’d be throwing them in a cell for years.

Bruce and Tim: It’s Nightwing. He has plausible deniability.

Barbara: Plausible? I think he has a whole separate universe of deniability!

[soulbrand]

man you all were not kidding abt the therapyspeak in veilguard.

[turbo-virgins]

Sorry, but I just don’t buy the whole “actually Mythal decided after centuries of wandering Thedas as Flemeth that modern people deserve a chance” thing. Because the fragment of Mythal we’re talking about is the jaded old swamp witch who

-Inhabited the body of a woman betrayed by her lover(s) because they found common ground in their suffering and the injustices done to them. (“Once I was but a woman, crying out in the lonely darkness for justice.” - DAI)

-Resents that betrayal to the point she views men as disposable playthings that she can lure back to her hut, have her way with, and then… murder? I think? (Based on Morrigan’s own account in DAO)

-Abused her daughter under the guise of tough love in an attempt to prepare her for a cruel uncaring world. (Again, Morrigan’s account, DAO)

-Says during her appearance in Inquisition that she will have her reckoning.

-Spent centuries consolidating her power as well as cycling through different human women’s bodies via questionable means for the sake of bringing about said reckoning. (“I have carried Mythal through the ages ever since, seeking the justice denied to her.” and about the Inquisitor: “A Herald indeed. Shouting to the heavens, harbinger of a new age.” - DAI)

-During her scene with Solas at the end of Inquisition does NOT say ANYTHING about disagreeing with Solas’s plans, just that she considers him and old friend and is sorry things are going the way they are. (Seriously, is the dialogue in that regret scene in Veilguard supposed to be from a mental connection they had? Because that dialogue just isn’t in the Inquisition scene.)

And I’m supposed to believe that in her last moments, Flemythal backed off and went “actually I think we need to maintain the status quo”????

None of this paints a picture of someone who has gone soft over time. At least not to the degree that is presented in that regret scene in Veilguard. Sure Flemeth wasn’t all bad, she had some tenderness to her. She shows some genuine care for Morrigan and Kieran (if present) and seems hurt when Morrigan implies she was trying not to be the kind of mother Flemeth was to her.

At the end of Inquisition, we can’t tell for certain to what degree she approves of Solas’s methods. But it seems like a step in said methods was to absorb her power and doom her, an embodiment of Justice, to take a passive role once more. And we know what happens when a spirit is denied its purpose. Justice denied its purpose could turn to Vengeance. Which, to me, feels like it would better echo the themes of Solas’s pride/wisdom duality, inquisition’s themes around what it means to become a god-like force of nature, DA2’s question of whether violence is necessary for revolution (which literally has the Justice/Vengeance duality in it with Anders), and DAO’s theme of sacrifice for the greater good.

[royaltea000]

I love Bai Long Ma he truly don’t gaf

[egophiliac]

my neverending quest to draw one single Idia that I don't immediately hate

[originalleftist]

Here's a controversial opinion that really shouldn't be:

Palestinians have the right to live in their homeland (or any other land) with security and dignity.

Israelis and Diaspora Jews also have the right to live in their homeland (or any other land) with security and dignity.

These need not and should not be contradictory positions, because the entire point of human rights is that they're universal, and if they're not, then they're not rights, just privileges, and you don't really believe in human rights at all.

[vaguely-concerned]

This might be due to the fact that on my first playthrough I ended up creating a Rook more emotionally guarded than any of the companions except Minrathous-route Lucanis and perhaps Neve, so I was primed to look for it, but I never got the sense that the companions don’t care for Rook (the thought never even occurred to me until I saw other people post about it) — to me it seems much more like it’s Rook who keeps the last bit of distance, Rook who pulls away when the companions try to extend their care or worry too directly, who keeps themselves slightly apart. (Rook who is so full of grief they cannot know as grief and thus process that there’s no room inside them to let anything else all the way in, perhaps.) They deflect and flinch back when someone gets too close or approaches them too overtly about their feelings — especially when it brushes up against the theme of grief. They can offer care to all the companions who are grieving, come along to any number of funerals as emotional support, but the moment someone turns that towards them they shut that shit down Immediately, like when Taash almost gives the whole game away with ‘Like you’d know? You act like you haven’t lost anyone!’ and Rook just blandly responds ‘We’re talking about you’ and doesn’t engage. But they can also admit that they struggle with accepting compliments, or knowing what to say, or having confidence in themselves without Varric’s help.

Despite all their determination and even in their most stoic no-nonsense incarnation, Rook is awkward, with the struggles that entails. Someone who is eager and happy to be the helper wherever they can, and helplessly unequipped to know how to be the helpee, as it were. It’s not that the companions don’t return Rook’s attachment to them, there’s MUCH more of a ‘okay so what are the ways you will allow me to be good to you??’ desperation of care vibe behind all their invitations to conversations and hangouts together, to my mind. They bring Rook to their favourite places and share the things they love with them, they ask to spend time together (many times just to have their company, not because they have a problem they need help with! Sometimes the problem arises anyway b/c video game quest narrative of course), they bring them out for some direly needed grass touching, they introduce them to their families. Everyone is clearly getting the sense that Rook does Not want to talk about Varric especially (this is in fact what Harding says in banter, if she’s still alive after the reveal :’( ), but they are absolutely SCRAMBLING to find ways to show that they’re there for them even so. AND from the companions’ perspective, with the situation as they have the means to understand it, accepting that Rook isn’t ready to have that conversation and backing off is also a kind thing to do. (tl;dr: To Me Rook is that weirdly socialized friend who is a great hang once they’re actually there but you have to directly invite them or they don’t quite know how to initiate the contact themselves lol) 

Just as a crushing sense of responsibility for their family is a trait that is built into Hawke no matter how you play them or how you make them respond to that, I feel like Rook — however helpful and earnest, warm, charming, jocular, stoic or straightforward they seem at a surface glance — is always someone who struggles deeply with connecting to themselves and other people. (Emotional Intimacy, the Final Frontier.) As, indeed, is the case with all of the Veilguard companions too! It’s clearly a deliberate theme. These are all lonely people struggling with their sense of identity and belonging in some sort of way. AND having, working on and eventually starting to overcome these difficulties also makes Rook a direct foil for Solas, who doesn’t learn that lesson unless you corner him at the end of the world to force feed him his medicine lmao. They don’t manage to break out of the regret prison under their own steam, it’s because even struggling and grieving they have managed to create mutual bonds with other people who show up for them in turn now — and with all the protective walls of denial around what happened to Varric crumbling and making them less of a stranger to themselves, Rook is finally able to let them. An outcome Solas seemingly didn’t even consider to guard against, because he’s become that deeply entrenched in his loneliness, the utter isolation of the self — he can no longer truly imagine an alternative. (It’s not that he can’t form these bonds, obviously, it’s that he resolutely refuses to value them. Whether it’s because he feels like he doesn’t deserve it or out of a need for control or the martyr complex where he must sacrifice everything he loves on the sacrificial pyre of fixing his mistakes, all of the above and more, the result is the same. Mind!Varric, who I think is mostly Solas speaking, even calls this out directly. So yet again a situation where he has some self awareness about it and it doesn’t help At All haha. Solas falls to the temptation of making people into tools again and again and again, no matter how many times it comes back to bite him in the ass and the eternal solitude it traps him in.) 

And that deep deep loneliness… There but for the grace of… well the theological state of thedas being what it is right now, let’s just go with the grace of Something, Presumably go you as well, Rook. The same capacity/tendency to pull away from connection clearly lives in them as well in some form (again, for whatever reason and with whatever motivations and instincts behind it for any individual Rook). Solas and Rook coming together to create a blood magic paper doll of the mind Varric in response to acute loss and loneliness is one of the most deep , deeply fucked up and invasive acts of intimacy I’ve ever contemplated. I don’t think that’s accidental, there’s something There’s Something Wrong With You (there’s something wrong with you that’s also wrong with me (derogatory)) here that resonates no matter how both parties would hate to hear it. (A fitting legacy for Varric and his wild ‘I made my best friend into a story because it’s the only way I know how to love with this desperation of sincerity’ brain to leave in the narrative, methinks. I feel he’d appreciate it on a craft level, if nothing else.)

If you read through all of Rook’s potential backstories, one of the common threads through all of them, along with a certain maverick ‘I’ll do whatever it takes’ streak, is a sense of profound alienation. They did something or have some sort of quality that made it hard for them to fit in with the group they’re from, causing a conflict that cuts them off from parts of their identity as it’s been up until now. All of which also adds to how important Varric is to them — he was clearly able to break/see through some of that and be closer with them, even in the relatively short time they spent together. No matter what else goes to shit, they can trust that a) Varric sees them, b) he genuinely likes them and believes in them not despite who they are, but for it, and c) he’s got their back, we’re in this together kid. And then he is gone, and it takes them the whole game to be able to bring themselves to accept that and know themselves again, be able to let new relationships in fully. The very understandable ‘the last time I let someone in, they got stabbed before my eyes and the world ended’ flinch away, even if they’re not consciously aware that’s what it is. Anyway I love Rook. So much space to play around in here as to WHY they might feel or react like this, even when the framework is more defined.

[littlefankingdom]

Bruce tried to avenge Jason, not Dick

This is just a rant about a lil thing that keeps coming up in fics I read. Often, Dick is "forgiven" by Jason because he "avenged Jason" by killing the Joker and Bruce "ruined it". Or Dick is written to have tried to kill the Joker after Jason's death but not Bruce, and Bruce may have tried to stop him.

First of, Dick did not try to avenge Jason. Y'all really want him to be okay with killing and ready to kill to avenge his loved ones, but Dick is better than Bruce, and that also means he is less likely to cross the line. No, Dick did not want to kill Zucco (Apart from the Titans show, but this show's characterization is awful), and no, he did not want the Joker dead. When Dick killed the Joker, it was in a moment of rage because Tim was in danger. He did not plan it and he immediately regret it. Bruce, with the help of HELENA who is fine killing people, brought the Joker back to life for Dick, because it would have broken him. And Dick still hates himself afterward, for killing the Joker even tho he is alive. And, again, he did not do it for Jason.

And, sure, you can have your hc, but the moment they are in conflict with who the character is (Dick is disgusted by the idea of being a murderer, killing someone or letting someone be killed, even the murderer of his brother), then we are going to have a problem.

Now, about Bruce. Upon discovering Jason's body, Bruce was settled on avenging him. It's why he took away every evidence, so he would not have anyone interfere between him and the Joker. He spent the days following Jason's death, and then Jason's funerals, looking for the Joker to kill him. He refused to call Dick because he did not want him to interfere, he was only thinking about his revenge and did not think the emotional importance of telling Dick about Jason.

The man is not thinking straight. And when he thinks he found where the Joker may be, Superman shows up, telling him that a Gotham's criminal is now under diplomatic immunity and the US gov doesn't want Batman being a bitch about it. And Bruce punches Clark in the face. That's how fucking unstable he is at this point, punching Clark without kryptonite because he is standing between him and killing the Joker.

Clark learns the Joker killed Jason, and he tries to make Bruce accepts to only kill the Joker, the only justice Bruce is accepting at this point, once he isn't a diplomat. YES, SUPERMAN DID NOT STOP BRUCE. Batman nearly succeeds in killing the Joker, but the helicopter they are in is going down, so Superman saves him. Bruce, the fucking madman he is, obsessed over bringing justice to his boy, doesn't care about his safety, he wants the Joker's body! And when it isn't found, he isn't satisfied but accepts to go home.

The Joker will come back at least a year later, and with some ptsd from his last encounter with the Bat and escaping death. Bruce, doing better mentally now that he has a new child to take care of (which he sends with his whole class to Japan to protect), is afraid he will kill the Joker. He keeps bringing up to Alfred how much he wants to kill him for TAKING JASON FROM HIM. But Alfred reminds Bruce again and again that he is a good man and he will resist. He does. This was not the last time Bruce faced the Joker after Jason's death and thought about killing him for Jason.

And, let me be clear, I do not expect Jason to know Bruce did that. The only people who know he did that are Clark, Alfred and Bruce himself (who will probably never tell Jason himself what he did). And maybe Dick, if you want to think (like me) that Bruce sat down with him (way later, after Tim is in the picture so Bruce is better mentally) and explained his mental state when Jason died, and how he didn't tell him not because he was trying to push Dick away, but because he was obsessed with killing the Joker he wasn't thinking rationally about his decisions; not to excuse his actions but to explain how it happened.

Dick is better than Bruce, which is why he grieved Jason surrounded by his friends, people that would support him and listen to him. He did not went on a vengeance mission because he had a support system. Was he mad? Yes, but he tried to open about it to others (the Titans, Koriand'r who was his gf,...) Bruce, on the other hand, is one unhealthy mf that immediately isolated himself once Jason died. He stayed in the cave and dedicated himself only to work, taking all his emotions out on beating people up because he was sharing it. And when people tried to talk to him, he would explode the moment they say anything that he could interpret badly (Clark telling him the Joker has immunity, Dick blaming Bruce for Jason's death...) This is why Bruce tried to avenge Jason and then went out every night being extremely violent and suicidal, and not Dick.

Dick did not avenge Jason and he did not try to, but that doesn't make him a bad brother. He cared deeply about Jason's death, but he is not Bruce, he is better, and that means he is also better at handling grief and not become a self-destructive bomb like Bruce was.

Avenging our loved ones is, in Batman & co's comics, demonstrated to not be the healthy way to deal with grief. Revenge isn't the healthy way to deal with lost, it will only lead to more destruction and pain. It will not bring the dead back, it will only add more bodies in the ground, and it will not heal the wounds.