#step one: make it seem like a good thing

[sojourner-between-worlds]

Criminal Markers and how they were so seamlessly integrated in NDC/Satellite culture with little fuss or blowback

I'm sure it all started with a "good idea."

(It wasn't good, it was never good, but politicians are pros at making remarkably terrible ideas seem good.)

The idea of being able to recognize a dangerous criminal on sight would seem to be desirable if taken only at face value. Consider: You're taking your kid to school and you see someone with the mark identifying them as an abuser within a mile of said school? Well, you don't want that person hanging around and potentially hurting kids, right? So you call the cops. All well and good, you may have just saved some kids some trauma. Or maybe you're driving around looking for a parking spot and see someone hanging around an open space with a grand theft auto mark? Well, you're not going to park there now and risk your car being gone when you get back. The person walking towards you on the street has the mark of a murderer? Give them a wide berth or cross the street so you won't be the next victim!

At face value, it seems great, right? So the politicians peddling it keep it that way, distract from anyone trying to look to too deep, get their bill passed, everyone is happy.

But the problem is that "good ideas" are very slippery slopes.

They start out only marking the "big offenders": murderers, sex offenders, "those" kinds of people. But prosecutors and judges alike slowly begin to push the bill. Murderers and sex offenders...and major theft. And they push a little more. Murderers and sex offenders and major theft...and illegal narcotic sales.

They do it slowly, one crime at a time, always with "good" reason -- so slowly that no one questions it because if x is punished this way, why not y? And the people who never questioned it in the first place don't stop to question it now either because why would they when it makes perfectly logical sense?

And they keep pushing, one crime at a time, right down the line.

And then, 15 years later, they find themselves marking an 11-year-old for shoplifting a candy bar. Because theft is theft, and it doesn't matter that this is a literal child or that the purchase price is barely anything at all. There is no line anymore of what "deserves" to be marked for because time has whittled it away and now this child has a past they will never be able to outrun because its literally written on their face.

It didn't start like this. It wasn't supposed to go this far. But it did anyway, and now there's no one to question the morality of it because everyone has been entirely (achingly slowly) desensitized to a process that is entirely dehumanizing and never should have been put into practice in the first place.

It doesn't matter that people can change.

It doesn't matter that sometimes a mistake is made.

And there's no one left to care to change it.

[coquelicoq]

what i love about the Famous Actor Natori Shuuichi of it all is that...it's not just that he's famous and therefore widely recognizable wherever he goes. like yes that is very funny because he was an exorcist before he became a famous actor, which means he CHOSE, on purpose, a day job that would make it harder to hide his double life/secret identity from the hordes of his adoring public, but it's more than that. it's not just that he's famous, it's that he's famous specifically for being an ACTOR, aka a person whose job it is to dissimulate, to make believe, to inhabit roles and emotions other than his own. like he decided he was going to become as visible as possible (which again was literally not necessary! he could have gone into any other career for his day job!!) but in such a way that everyone would see him but no one would see him - they would just see his various made-up personas, including the Famous Actor Natori Shuuichi persona. i can't decide if he's a genius or if he just made so many absurd decisions that they canceled each other out and circled back around to working out. he's either playing 9-dimensional chess or he's eating the pieces. too soon to say.

[autisticlee]

everyone likes to tell me that real friends exist, the right people for me exist, i'll find them, I just have to look, keep trying. etc.

but no one tells me how, where to look, or how to know who "the right people" even are!

not to mention the fact that I'm getting too old to "make friends" because it's mainly expected of kids/teens to do that. older adults are supposed to have their people already. most adults my age already have their established friend groups that i'm not allowed to join. or they're all pairing off and prefer their partners over friends. or I just simply can't relate or bond with them because we have nothing in common.

[kavehayati]

“In general I find the idea of being with a man disgusting but I don’t find it disgusting with him”

- spoken by a lesbian

[itspileofgoodthings]

also it’s interesting because. my family is deeply unsentimental (in a very powerful way) and society is divided into the pretty heartless or the pretty sentimental (generally speaking) and I’m sort of this walking heart wound of emotion trying to straddle these lines (and having a hard time of it!) but one of the things that does guard me from being more sentimental than I am is the secret cruelty and unfairness that lurks at the bottom of all sentimentality.

[ihavetoomuchhomeworkforthis]

Crazy humans are weird idea I just had while I was brushing my teeth. Okay, so what if our world is the only one where people and animals are designed to be able to create and communicate with sound? Not that the other alien species can't hear or make sound at all, if they step on a twig it still snaps, if they clap their hands it still makes a sound, their breathing can still be audible, and a stampede of elephant-equivalents will still make a thunderous stampede noise you'd need to be able to feel and hear, but what if none of them have vocal cords? What if the closest they can get is a sort of hoarse screech of unconventionally forceful breathing? What if we're the only ones with speech and birdsong?

Alien species communicate through tap-stomp dancing and facial expressions and sign/body language and rhythmic drumbeat patterns and little handpats on whatever surface is available (including themselves).

Nothing could have prepared them for our thousands of languages, the sheer volume we're just effortlessly capable of, the precision and variety and eloquence in the sounds we can produce. The apparent cacophony of birdsong and crickets chirping and cats meowing and lions roaring and dogs barking and whalesong, and just all the vastly different sounds everything on our planet can make. The musical instruments which aren't just percussion and string, but also wind instruments.

Just- what if we were the only ones with speech?

If I were more creative and less tired right now I'd write a mini-fic thing, if anyone sees this and somehow gains that kind of inspiration, PLEASE do, I'd be honored, thank you.

[fiomeras]

I wonder how many mascot horrors we'll get to the point the toys and silly character designs they rooted and were based from lose the nostalgia that made the genre effective and normal toys arent recognized as toys anymore but scary escape boo boo's plush factory merch lookalikes

[caterpillarinacave]

So you choose not to step through the door, after all why mess with nonsense when you're already in nonsense? You check the items in your pockets, your phone you shut off to conserve power, the dog tag, key and top clink together but offer no help, and when you fiddle with the walkie-talkie you manage to get it to turn on, excitedly you call out to the void but only static responds, which is disappointing but predictable, so you put the items away and hunker down for the night, looking at the sky you can see that the stars seem strange, though you're no expert, and the moon seems to have a second smaller moon near it which looks pretty cool but is a stark reminder of how not on your own world your predicament has landed you.

In the morning you begin looking through the nearby bushes and plant life taking note of anything strange, you notice the berries you had been picking before you stepped through the door are also growing around here, they look and taste the same, and some other plants seem pretty similar to the forest from before as well, although the further away from the door you go the more unfamiliar plants you come across (of course that may just be your lack of familiarity with plants) and the few animals you have noticed are bizarre in a way that you can't explain, like the people from town, they seem almost perfectly familiar, just a little off and the noises they make have you thinking they wouldn't be able to communicate with their counterparts either, brushing aside another branch you come across a strange funnel made of metal which you pocket and what looks to be a regular whistle, you wipe it down and blow but hear nothing aside from the air going through, you consider it is either broken or maybe a dog whistle, as you go to put it away you hear something big running in your direction, before you can decide how to react a large creature storms out of the bushes and stops in the clearing before you, it's huge as a horse with paws and sharp teeth it licks as it looks around and spots you, it shakes its head again reminding you of a horse, then steps closer before turning and staring expectantly, you get the feeling it's waiting on you, impatiently, and you realize it seems to expect you to get on its back. Do you get on?

Yes.

[desperatepleasures]

spent a LOT of today thinking about how good my kansumi headcanons are I literally became this image

[beepmeepmeepbeep]

bridgerton not beating life ends with marriage allegations

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

underrated genre of character playlist entry: songs a character would relate to because they do not understand their situation, themself, or the song itself well enough to realize it is not accurate (and might well straight up be a callout for people like them). which song is your blorbo's fight club

[lisbonsteresa]

knees weak, arms are heavy

[cringefaildiaz]

I totally get not wanting to see Eddie go in circles again with Marisol but have you considered....he will break out of the circle. Y'know. Develop as a character.

[celibibratty]

This wude ending is worse than i remembered, it's a kinda of weird ending, like, we die, then we awake up in a place that seems like a heaven, then we walk to the top of the mountain, the character looks happy, then they close their eyes and the screen gets black and we hear a deep breath, credit start rolling

[moonsidesong]

ive been groaning at aa spirit of justice's extremely over the top on the nose character names but i also just remembered tgaa runs around with a curio collector named. kyurio korekuta. so. maybe im being too harsh AHAHA

[im-sorry-what-ii]

you will end up making neither