#stop discoursing about this

[samble-moved]

post itself

false flags

trans/adjacent tags

accessibility features

tumblr live post (thanks for the link, @problemnyatic)

flashing / strobing / lights

unblockable flashing ad

buying ad free

staff @/macmanx guilt trip

list of staff + more issues

[watchingwisteria]

listen there really was just something about how in the book, snow’s 3-page descent from hesitant lover boy to deluded psychopath happens entirely in his mind. lucy gray gives him no indication whatsoever that she suspects him, that she’s going to leave or betray him. he’s just sitting quietly in the cabin waiting for her to return when that seed of calculated suspicion, which he has needed to survive the capitol, takes a hold of him and chokes the life out of any goodness left inside him. it really drives home your terror as a reader that “oh my god did he kill her? did she escape? what happened to her? why would he even think that?” in a way that when the movie had to adjust for visualization it lost some of that holy shit this guy has lost it emphasis.

[dunyun-rings]

I saw a post that said “Dragon Age discourse walked so that Baldurs Gate 3 discourse could run” and that’s absolutely false. Dragon Age discourse sprinted, foaming at the mouth, so that BG3 discourse could skip happily through a meadow

[aropride]

saw a tweet the other day that was like "outlawing diy hrt would kill trans people" which, yes, i agree. however it is already illegal for trans men. which is something i feel like people just ignore in discussions about diyhrt. i've also seen tweets along the lines of "it's easy to access and dose and it's not explicitly illegal so if you're concerned about us anti trans laws you're being stupid". which, the first part is completely untrue when it comes to testosterone, and the second part shows a mindblowingly uncompassionate view on anti trans legislation and is a genuinely bafflingly horrible thing to say to people who are scared for their lives and their futures

[brother-emperors]

something. about. the horror of being sent on an impossible (death) quest and obligations and hospitality politics. the trauma of not having a home, and then the trauma of being in a house that becomes actively hostile to you, one that would swallow you whole and spit out your bones if you step out of line. all of this is conditional, your existence continues to be something men want gone.

it's about going back as far as I can with the perseus narrative because there's always a version of a myth that exists behind the one that survives. the missing pieces are clearly defined, but the oldest recorded version of it isn't there! and there's probably something older before that!! but it's doomed to forever be an unfilled space, clearly defined by an outline of something that was there and continues to be there in it's absence.

and love. it's also about love. even when you had nothing, you had love.

on the opposite side of the spectrum, this is Not About Ovid Or Roman-Renaissance Reception, Depictions And Discourses On The Perseus Narrative.

edit: to add to the above, while it's not about Ovid, because I'm specifically trying to peel things back to the oldest version of this story, Ovid is fine. alterations on the Perseus myth that give more attention Medusa predate Ovid by several centuries. this comic is also not about those, either! there are many versions of this story from the ancient world. there is not one singular True or Better version, they're all saying something.

Perseus, Daniel Ogden

Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation, edited & translated by Stephen M Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephen Brunet

[dedusmuln]

yeah you support trans people but are you normal about trans men who choose to get pregnant

[doomdoomofdoom]

If you've been boycotting Eurovision, you may have missed out on how bad it truly was, so here are a few events in no particular order:

The opening act of the semi-finals was Eric Saade, a swedish-palestinian singer who participated in Eurovision 2011. He wore a keffiyeh, a palestinian headdress, around his arm like a wristband.

Despite not making any political statements or drawing attention to his accessory, he was reprimanded by the EBU for "compromising the non-political nature of the event".

During their semi-final performance, the Irish contestant had the word "ceasefire" in old irish runes painted on their face. They were ordered to change it for the final, as it was deemed too political.

The contestant from Israel was not allowed to mingle with the other contestants, due to supposed security risks.

During an Interview, she was asked if she felt any concerns over her participation potentially endangering the event and the people present. The host told her she did not have to answer this question. Dutch contestant 'Joost' asked "why not?"

Joost, while not openly antagonizing the Israeli contestant, has made covert critical remarks about the EBUs decision to allow Israel to participate.

On Friday, the day before the Finale, Joost was investigated by the swedish police for a supposed incident where he threatened an EBU crew member. Thursday, a female camera operator had followed him off-stage to continue filming, even though there was an agreement not to film him off-stage. After she ignored his requests to stop, he threatened her with some sort of gesture.

Joost was disqualified mere hours before the finale. He was slotted to perform just before Israel and considered a favorite and potential winner.

The show itself did not address his disqualification. The dutch entry was simply skipped with no further comment.

Israeli broadcaster KAN was confirmed to have broken EBU rules during their coverage of the Irish act in the Semifinal. The commentator spoke negatively about their act, condemning the very scary goth aesthetic, and noting their willingness to criticize Israel's actions.

Despite Irish contestant Bambie Thug lodging a complaint with the EBU, there was no penalty or other repercussion.

If you were hoping that the event itself would turn into some sort of protest, I have to disappoint you:

Despite rumors of other contestants dropping out over Joost's disqualification, all of them performed.

There was audible booing every time Israel was on-screen, including their performance, announcement of points, and every time they received points. There was equally audible cheering.

No contestant or spokesperson directly addressed the ""controversy"" (read: ongoing genocide being artwashed), although very few made covert remarks about peace, love, dignity, and equality.

The most explicit it got was the Austrian spokesperson, saying something along the lines of "It's hard to find only positive words in a time where heartlessness prevails. But we hope everyone can unite through music and show that everyone deserves to be treated equally"

No one stormed on stage or held up a palestinian flag or anything, if you were hoping for that. I certainly was.

Israel gave its 12 points (both Jury and public) to Luxembourg. The singer is half-israeli and born in Jerusalem.

Jury votes mostly ignored Israel, netting them a total of 52 points through jury votes, which put them somewhere in the middle of the scoreboard. Norway, Cyprus, and Germany awarded them 8 points each, making them the main contributors.

In contrast, Israel received 323 points from the public voting. They were second only to Croatia with 337. 15 public votings, including "rest of the world" awarded Israel their 12 points, more than any other country would receive. The only countries not to award any points to Israel in the public vote were Croatia and Ukraine.

Israel thereby placed 5th out of 25.

But hey, at least the winner (Switzerland) was nonbinary, diversity win amirite. Notably, they had to smuggle in their pride flag, since EBU guidelines only allow flags of participating countries and the rainbow flag. (This is also why palestinian flags were not allowed. It's not a new rule, but they certainly weren't going to start bending it now.)

If there's one thing to take away from this: Do not ever think the rest of the world is on your side, just because your social media is. The rest of the world has shown their allegiance, and it lies with Israel and Genocide.

Do not stop fighting for what is right.

[theminecraftbee]

alright, so, one more thing i've been thinking about during all of this, and apologies, because i normally try to keep my blog fairly discourse-free in the grand scheme of things. but.

there are hermitcraft fans who act irritatingly morally superior about this fandom. i think it's out of some impulse to try to distance yourselves from any other mcyt fandom. it needs to stop.

the worst behavior during the polls was from the hermitcraft fans.

period.

there were so many instances of hermitcraft fans accusing the other side of cheating, of hermitcraft fans making attacks on the character of their guy's opponents, i have heard what i HOPE are isolated reports of racism in the grian/quackity fight (it was genuinely impossible to keep up with the blog's notes that round without both going into a death spiral thanks to the horrible behavior of scar fans during techno/scar and also without losing track instantly of where we were due to the frankly insurmountable volume of notes, so i did not see it, but unfortunately i fully believe it). i have seen people receiving awful asks - saw people being accused of 'betraying' the hermitcraft side due to voting for quackity or techno, for example.

and for a fandom that likes to act like it's better than the other guys, well. the dsmp fans were generally very well behaved in comparison. (shoutout, for example, to quackblr - i saw maybe one or two possible instances of bad behavior, but for as intense as you all were, you all were normally mostly just retaliatory towards whatever energy was thrown at you.) it wasn't supposed "outsiders coming in" that was doing this bad behavior, either.

folks, you can't blame the dsmp when the problem is inside the house. you can't blame twitter users when you're doing it here. you can't blame the reddit when you're the ones throwing the first death threats.

get off your high horses. we're all mcyt fans. we're all having the same fun. get off your high horses. you can hardly claim we're entirely all "unproblematic" when keralis accepted a sponsorship from the wizard game and xisuma periodically gets another round of getting shouted down over something he said on xisumasays. get off your high horses. you can't claim we're the accepting, good behavior fandom, unlike those other guys, when you're the ones causing the problems.

now, as always, i'm sure this is a law of large numbers thing to some extent. as technoblade, wise as he is, said: sometimes when you get a large enough group, you're going to have a few serial killers. but for the amount that hermitblr likes to act better than Those Other Minecraft Fandoms, and those Other Fandom Websites, it wasn't those guys that made me cry.

to be clear, the majority of you have been well-behaved. but there's a persistent tendency in this fandom to act strangely morally superior to other fandoms. and, y'all? you aren't.

you just aren't.

and the sooner you acknowledge that, the less likely this is to happen again, because once you admit that yeah, we can be toxic too? that's when you can start actually looking at yourself and trying not to be.

anyway, sorry again to make this post. i don't want to be a downer, hence why, outside of the official mod statements of "chill the fuck out", i didn't make this until now. (it also helps that i wanted to wait until i was no longer furious, upset, and death spiraling.) i have seen a lot of the best of this fandom over the past two weeks! i've just also, unfortunately, seen some of the worst, and feel the need to make this statement because it's just... been eating at me.

i don't want this to continue to be a trend. i think we can do better. do so.

[rockatanskette]

Semi-related to my post on how human conservation practices, but I have a cold today, and it's got me thinking about biological altruism—the biological imperative to put other creatures ahead of yourself, to benefit the group.

When talking about possible interactions with other species, we talk a lot about humans being crazy and thrill-seeking and impossible to kill. Never use a warning shot as an incentive to keep humans out of a fight; it'll just make them angry. And that's true. But a valid criticism I've seen in the "Earth is a death world" community is that according to our understanding of evolution, every planet must be some form of death world. Competition fosters evolution—the wolf with sharper claws survives when its litter mates die. You can't reach space travel without some casualties along the way.

But the dog survives because it makes friends with the strange ape carrying a sharp stick. And the strange ape survives because it befriends the wolf. Underneath the death world is an inextricable and undeniable layer of the bond world; the love world; the world, together.

I imagine some worlds are not death worlds. They're peaceful and tranquil. I suspect there are worlds far more deadly than Earth, where the skies rain diamonds, harder than any substance we know with the species to match. And I imagine that they are united in their confusion at the duality of humankind.

Today is a great example: I have a cold, and I want someone to take care of me, but the people who would are immunocompromised, also sick, or live 8 hours away, respectfully. I also want no one within the walls of my apartment or I will eat them. I feel gross, I feel tired, and I don't want a single human being anywhere near me, even if they did bring soup.

In my constant scrolling through my phone today, I decided to look up why the hell I feel so bad—why everyone feels so bad when they're ill. And the answer surprised me. I always thought it was because your immune system is active, so it's using a lot of your energy. That is part of it. Another part is that your brain and body are communicating across the blood-brain barrier to fight the infection, which is rare and energetically expensive.

But that doesn't explain everything, and according to more current research, it could also be what's called the Eyam Hypothesis: that we feel so gross, so we instinctively isolate from other people. We're too tired to deal with others, and so we don't infect them. Misanthropy for the good of the species. Of course, it can also backfire: one of the criticisms of the Eyam Hypothesis is that humans also instinctively care for each other. If my brother has a headache, I drive to the store for Advil.

Personally, I think it's a little bit of both: biological altruism. Either way, the majority live on. The first thought I had this morning when I woke up wasn't "I feel gross" it was "there's no way I'm going to work today." And while that might not be everyone's first thought, you don't even have to be a particularly altruistic person to not want to leave your home or your bed when you're sick. It's inborn.

And so when the human named Ismail comes down with a case of the interstellar common cold, his alien friend Dyos grows very concerned. Ismail is usually intensely social, almost off-puttingly so. Some crew members joke about how his quarters are for sleeping and prayer only; if he's home alone? You should be worried. But when Dyos demands an answer to the severity of Ismail's malady, the other humans just nod knowingly.

"Nah, he's okay, the medics already cleared him. It's not a severe infection."

"But there are so many...fluids. And his body has changed color."

There is a moment of confusion there until they remember that Dyos's species can see in the infrared color spectrum.

"Nah, that's just a low-grade fever. It should break in the next couple days."

"But he doesn’t want to play chess today," Dyos insists.

"Ohhhh," says human Claudia, finally understanding. "No, that's normal. Humans don't like being around other people when they're sick, it's supposed to be one of the major evolutionary advantages. Protect your community from your illness and the genes live on."

"So we're just going to leave him alone?" Dyos is troubled by this. He can go for weeks without speaking to another life form, but he has seen Ismail grow despondent when unable to participate in social gathering.

"Oh, no," human Claudia says, laughing. "We're going to employ one of the other most longstanding human evolutionary advantages."

There are many to choose from and Dyos settles on, "middle age?"

"Sort of," human Claudia opens up a small shipping container and holds up a brown paper bag tied with a colorful ribbon. It glows brightly in Dyos's vision, almost as brightly as human Claudia's smile. "His nanni's hot soup, express delivery."

[thevalleyisjolly]

There’s a weird recurring take in D20 fan circles that Zac doesn’t play “complex” characters and that people are just waiting for the day when he “finally” plays an asshole, which kind of baffles me.  Quite apart from the idea that only morally grey characters are complex or compelling, are you sure we’re watching the same show?

In Fantasy High, we have Gorgug, an adopted biracial teenager whose journey includes realizing his self-worth, coming to terms with his rage (literally), seeking out and navigating new relationships with others (his birth parents, the Bad Kids, Zelda), and discovering what he’s capable of. 

From The Unsleeping City we have Ricky, a second-generation Japanese-American, who has a very personal struggle across two seasons between doing the dutiful/sacrificial thing for other people’s benefit and expressing his own needs, wants, thoughts, and feelings; it’s a very particular exploration of immigrant generations and the relationship between the sacrificial model of your ancestors and the culture you grew up surrounded by which emphasizes the self.

There’s A Crown of Candy and Lapin, whose snark and one-liners are honestly less interesting than the way he engaged with and sought to understand religion and faith; the different yet similar ways in which both the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Church exerted control over their followers, and the search for spiritual meaning beyond these figures/institutions.

Then there’s Cumulous, whose every character aspect navigates a space of tension - the ultimate war guy who made himself hardened (literally) and pragmatic to get the job done but who also remains soft and caring and empathetic at the same time; wielding the power of death without glorifying or giving into it; the cousin who both is a member of the family and yet who remains at somewhat of a distance from the centre; a literal warrior-philosopher who is single-minded in battle and quietly thoughtful about the mysteries of life and death outside of it.

As for actual assholes, we have Norman Takamori in A Starstruck Odyssey, a bitter man who is the living embodiment of both the Superior Orders excuse as well as scapegoating.  On a side note, the amount of absolute vitriol and double standards which people threw at Norman during ASO for being an unapologetic asshole -and he had less than two full episodes of screen time- kind of underscores the calls for Zac to play a “real” asshole.  Zac can and will play whatever type of character he wants, but is fandom really ready for him to play an asshole if that asshole doesn’t have a secret heart of gold?

From the same season, we have Valdrinor/Skip, who starts as the “prince running from his destiny” archetype with a dash of brain slug possession, has a humorous yet oddly profound exploration of what humanity is and what it means to be human, and springboards from there into “wait, who am I really and actually, why are we doing things (brain slug possession) this way when there are other ways to engage with the universe.” 

Most recently in Neverafter, we have Pib, who apart from the fascinating meta element of being a literal character archetype, constantly straddles the line between self-absorbed self-interest and putting himself on the line to help others; his repeated demonstration of both at various points throughout the season is a subtle yet intriguing manifestation of free will and choice-making in a story all about lacking free will and agency.

So, I mean, lack of complexity where?  Does a character need to be an asshole in order to be deep or compelling?  And because I’ve heard this specific rebuttal quite a few times now, does a character need to vocalize their innermost thoughts loudly and frequently in order to prove their complexity?  If a character is “less vocal” compared to other characters, does that mean they lack interiority? 

Also, other people have brought this up before, but I am once again asking that people remember the difference between fictional characters and real life people.  Zac playing one (1) himbo on the show does not make him a himbo in real life, nor does it make him incapable of creating or playing complex characters (especially as said himbo is himself an extremely complex character), nor does it make him a lesser player than other cast members.  You don’t have to find all or any of his characters interesting or complex, but can we stop conflating character with player?

[chrollohearttags]

y’all won’t be satisfied until you run every black writer off this app and I’m so serious. Yes, I’m being rude to anybody that takes time out of their day to post some dumb ass remarks (a recycled one at that) and uses it to disrespect black writers of any capacity. Sitting up screaming about wanting more representation and the black reader fics being nonexistent but y’all get mad about everything. Yes, I’m cussing y’all out everytime I see it and I’m blocking idc. Free, FREE content that people took time to create, y’all are being nasty about it. We don’t owe y’all grace or kindness. Especially when we can see the hypocrisy. Go to hell with gas undies on and leave us alone. And please write whatever y’all want and fuck these people. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk

[ftmtftm]

This isn't something I have fully articulated thoughts on yet but honestly? I really do think that transandrophobia and the way people who talk about their experiences with it are isolated is, in part, why transmedicalism existed (exists still? I'm very detached from that discourse now) as a primarily trans man/trans masc dominated ideology.

I'm going to share my own experience and I can only speak for myself here, but when I was a really isolated late teen/early 20-something dealing with a lot of unresolved trauma re: my assault (that happened as a result of me coming out as trans to an ex), some immediate family's reaction to my transition being "well why can't you just be a masculine woman", and frustration about not being able to medically transition yet combined with the mid-2010's pressure to be a non-threatening feminine soft boy, I got sucked into transmedicalism.

I do want to be upfront and recognize a lot of my feelings at the time were a trauma response and projection. I recognize this now but I had no resources to recognize that then. I just want to make it clear from the start that I know my own thinking was flawed, that's why I'm reflecting on it openly so others can potentially recognize something that resonates here within themselves and grow.

Getting back into it though- I felt really triggered all the time in general trans spaces because of that 2010's culture. I felt pressured to be feminine or a woman in trans spaces online, just like I did around my ex or at home. I didn't want to undercut my masculinity or manhood for other people's comfort, especially not for other trans people who I felt should've understood. In contrast to this though, transmedicalist spaces and the trans men within them DID actually offer the support I was asking for. I was actually given space to talk about my assault and the pressures I was experiencing with a bunch of other trans men/trans mascs who understood it for the first time, ever really.

The idea of "there is a medical explanation for gender dysphoria that can be treated with medical transition" was also really comforting to my traumatized mind that kept thinking "if I'm open about my assault someone is going to accuse me of just being traumatized and not actually trans, if medicine is on my side I can prove them wrong" Which - let me be clear again - was a very traumatized way of thinking. I do not think that way anymore thanks to therapy and cultivating a healthier relationship with my body and gender and transness. I was not the only trans man with a history of assault that felt this way in the transmed community at the time though.

And I'm not justifying any of this ideologically right? Like. Transmedicalism is fundamentally flawed and incorrect in many of its ideas about sex, gender, and gender identity. Many people who believe in transmed ideology spout some absolutely horrible, transphobic bullshit on the regular and often align their ideology with conservatism and TERFs. I'm not here to defend transmedicalism.

What I am saying is this: It makes sense that a group of ostracized individuals who felt like they had no space to express their traumas would cling onto transmedicalism because it was the only ideological community giving them space to talk about it. Hate movements thrive on preying upon those kinds of vulnerable, traumatized people.

I'm just thinking about a lot of the friends I met via transmedicalism back then and now they're all either TERFs with a lot of repressed trauma and internalized transphobia that I've since cut off completely or they had a similar realization to myself and discovered their attachment to transmedicalism was rooted in trauma and a desire for trans masc community, addressed it, and now they live much healthier, happier lives.

I'm losing steam fast thinking about all of this because recounting trauma takes a physical toll on one's body BUT tl;dr I really do think if we had healthier spaces to address trans male/trans masculine traumas within the wider trans community via conversations about transandrophobia back 5+ years ago we wouldn't fully be here now wrt: how large transmedicalism became as a movement. I genuinely think I wouldn't have been sucked into that space if there had been more resources and space to talk about the experiences I was having, all of which are things people naming transandrophobia are trying to address in healthy manners.

I think healthy, open, conversations about transandrophobia in wider community spaces can do so much good to protect people who were in vulnerable positions like I was and can absolutely potentially prevent more people from getting sucked into the false support offered by hate movements within our own community.

[nerdpoe]

Whenever I read anything in comics or in fanfic about "we can't kill the Joker because that would be doing what he wants, we have to let the law take care of him" I just. giggle.

He's shown multiple times premeditation, which indicates he does, in fact, understand the consequences of his actions. By law, he is mentally fit enough to stand trial.

By law, he would more than likely be sentenced to death, many many times over, after being branded a terrorist. He wouldn't even be housed in New Jersey, he'd be sent to someplace like Guantanamo Bay, ultra secure max prison. His execution would be sped up due to flight risk. It would happen out of sight and out of mind, in a glass box so that weird chest bomb of Joker Gas doesn't affect anyone, and then incinerated.

This is comicbookland, so that doesn't happen, but like, if this was the direction Joker's court cases were supposed to go, and it was an assistance program run by Wayne Enterprises that kept stepping in and using legal fuckery to get Joker to Arkham instead of standing trial?

All it would take is just. One little sign off from Barbara. One little tweak.

Joker isn't eligible for that outreach program anymore.

[luckthebard]

I don’t know why this is something we apparently need to re-explain to parts of the CR fandom every few years, but if I see one more post that implies that the way Samuel Oscar Riegel is approaching his character’s faith journey is “culturally Christian” I’m gonna McFucking lose it.

[hallaburger]

i'm actually really upset at the watcher "fandom"

y'all seem like a lot of fair-weather fans to a group of guys who have consistently put out shows that you love, you've gone to their live shows, you've bought their merch, you've followed them over the years as they've grown and built their own brand

and then when they come out to say "hey, we're proud to announce the next big step for us as creators, producers, talent, and directors," you fucking scream and rail and throw a fit because they are launching a paid service that allows them MUCH more creative control and freedom while also supporting their staff in a more sustainable way???

that's sick and pathological, and i wonder how many of y'all were blogging in support of the wga/sag-aftra strike, because if you were and you're pitching a fit now? check yourself. not fucking cute to say you support those folks and then bitch and moan when your so-called favorite creators take the initiative to support themselves in a way that they feel more confident in.

"but we liked the old content that looked like it was made in a basement and the blue and yellow text and--" okay, did you ever think that maybe?? MAYBE???? the guys wanted to do something better??? if you really supported them, you'd be in support of their creative ambitions, too.

[armoralor]

Emily Swallow’s face when d*nbo shippers in the crowd started yelling at Katee Sackhoff for saying Bo-Katan Kryze and Din Djarin have "no romantic undertones:"

Please don’t harass actors. Katee has been humoring inappropriate questions about a fictional romance for MONTHS. She has made jokes and played along to diffused awkward fan situations; ship what you want online but please don't bother actors with it (image from a different angle of this panel).