#what-are-ethics-and-morality

[thepersonalwords]

If any morality or ethics does not include kindness as their fundamental ingredient, then they are just an absurdity.

Debasish Mridha

[doobledabbadoo]

got around making some more htf ocs!! i honestly cant stop theyre too fun to make actually

[glitter-stained]

Some Bruce & Batfam fans Jason antis will be like "emotions and affect shouldn't cloud your judgement killing is wrong!" and then rank Jason beating Tim up or kidnapping Mia higher in their list of his worse offences than the duffle bag of doom

[z3ahna]

a very funny thing about this game is the YouTube comments of lets plays being like “Omg…. The twist ruined everything… I really liked Lee Smith before the twist it was so disturbing…… most disturbing thing ever….” which is like??? Is this baby’s first yandere or what?

[marzipanandminutiae]

Not going to lie, friends, I love a bit of Twisted Fucked Up Gothic Romance but I'm team "no no, he's not twisted or fucked up in the fun way; give Ellen a stake and a mallet and let her do what she richly deserves at this point" re: Nosferatu

obviously you do you! they're fake people and it doesn't matter or say anything about you as a person! if you want to go all Dark Consuming Passion there, that's up to you and does not affect me! that's just where I'm at with it

[kessfansworld]

i’m gonna ask the question that has been on my mind for a while. what do people think about the fact that there’s accounts who have ai generated voiceover reading tumblr posts, because these videos get so many views. sometimes they even go viral. sometimes the username from the original user is cut down and there’s just no way to find the original account and give them love. it’s mostly from dc fandom, which i frequent. i don’t know, just how do people feel about this? how does the fandom feel about this, because what i would perfer is them sharing the original tumblr post, leaving a link for us to find the og post and give them our love and respect, and also leave the username in, don’t cut it out and not that ai voiceover. that’s what i would perfer but this isn’t about me. i just can’t imagine coming up with an idea and seeing it going viral and my username isn’t even there, and it’s ai voiceover. i don’t know—something about it is just off. i know i’m big believer of generative ai having no place in fandom

[reborrowing]

lab au scratches

[mxtxfanatic]

Xie Lian was entirely too kind to Mu Qing, cause how dare you use a mf CLONE to lecture me about MY traumas to my face? Shoulda called his bitch ass out right then and fucking there.

[yubnubforhire]

Listen I love agathario as much as the next gay but it’s simply incorrect to say ‘this show was supposed to be about agathario why is there so much focus on billy :((’

The show was never marketed that way — all the trailers very much focus on Agatha and Billy. Also, the way shows/movies handle press tells you everything. Kathryn Hahn and Joe Locke have been doing the most press and are paired together for junkets — they are the main characters of the show. Aubrey Plaza and Patti Lupone have also been doing a fair amount of press (though less than Kathryn and Joe) and they are paired together for junkets — they’re the most famous (aka highest billed) SECONDARY characters. Sasheer Zamata, Debra Jo Rupp, and Ali Ahn have done almost no individual press and were paired together for junkets — they are the rest of the secondary cast.

I also want more development for Agathario, but we’ve gotta stop assuming that just because a storyline or character is introduced early on it means that the show is going to center around that story or character. It’s just bad media consumption.

The show is very clearly about Agatha and Billy, their relationship, and their respective journeys of self-actualization (which are obviously set up to mirror each other). Agathario is at best a B plot.

[mythalism]

.

[sunlight-shunlight]

what do people mean by stuff like this? it's unhinged?

"well. the employees were mostly laid off. there was rampant crunch and overwork. some people were not paid their legally required severance in the province of alberta. people with decades of experience were fired, leading to immense talent loss. there was severe executive interference in development and a toxic-sounding work environment. multiple developers have said it was a miserable and draining experience. and these compromises... are what makes the game tremendous and incredible as long as we ignore the racist parts 🥰"

this is like when people go "ummm, i think mental health care is bad bc... van gogh wouldn't have made those paintings if he wasn't suffering a bit, right? totally worth it for him to have gone through that bc now we have starry night" ???

i think it's fine if a piece of media turns out not to my taste, as long as the employees got paid and felt creatively fulfilled in what they made. but in this case they clearly did not? why is anyone defending "compromises" like that?

[elumish]

I think one of the biggest things I've learned in my own process of trying to be more cognizant of my own writing is that guilt is one of the most counterproductive feelings for it.

I've looked back at things that I've written and realized that they had real, core, structural problems stemming from my own ingrained and socialized issues. These are not just one-line off-color things, but in some cases major elements of how characters are presented or engage with each other or how I did worldbuilding.

Some of it is stuff that came from my own messed up feelings about gender and sexuality and stuff growing up, and some of it is unexamined racism that came from growing up as a white person in the US. But I've looked back at them, including stories that I am still trying to get work, and though oh my god what was wrong with me.

And it's really easy to just live in that feeling. To think, what I did was so terrible and I'm so terrible and it's all hopeless and I can never do it right.

The same feeling can come from seeing posts about how white people write characters of color, about how so many people write women, about the racism and sexism and ableism and transphobia etc. in both fanfiction and published fiction. I'm terrible and it's an insurmountable problem so why bother try because I'll never get it right.

And then sometimes you end up feeling defensive about that guilty, because guilt feels bad, and defensiveness feels like an emotional fix to that, a way to say it's not really my fault or why is this MY problem when so many people are so much worse.

But if you go down that road, then you don't try and it never gets fixed. Because the people who don't feel guilty because they don't care won't fix it, and so we need the people who feel guilty because they do care to turn that guilt into action.

So my recommendation is this: if you look at your own writing or your own media consumption and feel guilty over it, or you feel defensive about it, turn it into thinking about what you can accomplish.

Because that guilt means that you recognize that you're doing something that doesn't match what you want to be doing. So think through how you can get it to be what you want to be doing.

Working to fix something is the way that you fix it. Things get better because we work to make them better, not because we feel guilty about them.

So anyway that's the lesson I've had to teach myself during my own process for this. Sometimes I am the problem, and I can feel guilty about it, or I can try to become part of the solution instead.

[tweefiend]

am I too late to this I couldn’t miss an opportunity to call this guy a cunt

[redhoodinternaldialectical]

"Murder is Werewolves" - Batman

I don't got the SPOONS to do this thought train justice, I have seriously been trying to write this thing for MONTHS so just, idk, have this half baked skeletal outline of the essay I guess:

I don't believe that Batman's no-kill rule is primarily about rehabilitation or second chances.

His refusal to believe that Cassandra could have killed someone when she was eight years old because "how could a killer understand my commitment not to kill" is absolute fucking MOON LOGIC from a rehabilitationist standpoint. No jury on the planet would think for even a second that she could reasonably be held accountable for her actions in that situation! Her past cannot condemn her to being incapable of valuing human life under a rehabilitation centering framework. However, Batman's reasoning makes perfect sense if he believes that killing is a spiritually/morally corrupting act which permanently and fundamentally changes a person, and that corruption can never be fully undone.

Dick Grayson killing the Joker is treated both narratively and by Batman as an unequivocally WIN for the Joker. The Joker won by turning Nightwing into a killer. Note that this is during a comic in which the Joker transforming people was a major theme! Batman didn't revive the Joker because the Joker deserved to live; he revived the Joker to lift the burden on Dick.

His appeal to Stephanie when she tried to kill her dad is that she shouldn't ruin her own life. He gives no defense of Cluemaster's actual life. Granted this is a rhetorical strategy moment and should be taken with a generous pinch of salt, but it fits in the pattern.

When Jason becomes a willful killer, he essentially disowns him, never treats him with full trust ever again, and... Well, we can stop here for Bruce's sake. Bottom line is that his actions towards Jason do not lead me to believe that he thinks Jason can become a better person without having his autonomy taken from him, either partially or fully.

The Joker is, for better or worse, the ultimate symbol and vessel of pure, irredeemable evil in DC comics now. He hasn't been just another crook in a long time. He will never get better, he will only get worse. If you take it to be true that the Joker will not or can not rehabilitate, then there's no rehabilitationist argument against killing him.

Batman does not seem to consider it a possibly that he'll rehabilitate. Batman at several points seems to think that the Joker dying in a manner no one could have prevented would be good. Yet Batman fully believes that if he killed the Joker, he himself would become irredeemable.

Batman's own form of justice (putting people into the hospital and then prison) is fucking brutal and clearly not rehabilitative. He disrespects the most basic human rights of all criminals on a regular basis. It is genuinely really, really weird from a rehabilitationist standpoint that his only uncrossable line is killing... But it makes perfect sense if he cares more about not corrupting himself with the act of killing than the actual ethical results of any individual decision to kill or not kill.

In the real world cops are all bastards because they are too violent to criminals, even when that violence doesn't lead to death. Prison is a wildly evil thing to do to another human being, and you don't use it to steal away massive portions of a person's life if your goal is to rehabilitate them. In the comic world, Batman is said to be necessary because the corrupt cops are too nice to criminals and keep letting them out of jail. I don't know how to write a connector sentence there so like I hope you can see why this bothers me so damn much! That's just not forgiveness vibes there Batman!!

I want to make special note here of the transformative aspect. You don't simply commit a single act when you kill, no, you become a killer, like you might become a werewolf.

The narrative supports this a lot!

Why did Supes go evil during Injustice? He killed the Joker. Why did Bruce become the Batman Who Laughs? Bruce killed the Joker. Why was Jason Todd close to becoming a new Joker during Three Jokers? Because he killed people, to include the Joker.

Even if these notions of redemption being impossible aren't the whole of his reasoning (people never have only one reason for doing what they do) it is a distinct through-line pattern in his actions and reasoning, and it is directly at odds with notions of rehabilitation, redemption, and second chances.

So why does he give so many killers second chances?

Firstly because this doesn't apply to all versions of Batman. Some writers explicitly incorporate rehabilitation and forgiveness into his actions. You will be able to provide me with examples of this other through-line pattern if you go looking for them. The nature of comics is to be inconsistent.

Secondly the existence of that other pattern does not negate the existence of this one. People and characters are complex, and perfectly capable of holding two patterns of belief within themselves, even when they conflict to this degree. You can absolutely synthesize these two ideas into a single messy Batman philosophical vibescape.

Finally and most importantly to this essay: he has mercy on killers the same way that werewolf hunters sometimes have mercy on someone who is clearly struggling against their monsterous nature, especially if they were turned in exceptional circumstances or against their will. They understand that they are sick, damned beasts, cursed to always be fighting against themselves and the evil they harbor within. It is vitally kind to help them fight themselves by curtailing their autonomy in helpful ways and providing them with chances to do some good to make up for their eternal moral deficiency.

I think in many comics Batman views killers as lost souls. Battered and tormented monsters who must be pitied and given mercy wherever possible. (The connections to mental health, addiction, and rampant, horrifying ableism towards people struggling with both is unavoidable, but addressing it is sadly outside of the scope of this essay.)

Above all, the greatest care possible must be taken to never, ever let yourself become one of them, because once you have transformed the beast will forever be within you growing stronger.

To Batman, it is the most noble burden, the highest mercy, the most important commandment: Thou shalt suffer the monsters to live.

[iangallagherisadeadman]

the idea of svetlana and mickey being sooo good with numbers and yevgeny being absolute shit enlights me with such enthusiasm you guys have no idea

like listen just listen imagine little yevgeny being a disaster throughout all of his school life and struggling with math and physics and all that BUT he learns russian and ukrainian and other languages as easily as breathing and decides that for the future he wants to go to college for a language degree and specialize in translation

he likes things like literature translation which requires a lot of ability to properly convey an idea and sentiments when passing a text from one language to another, but he sees himself making a life with like legal translation, working with laws, regulations, codes, decrees and contracts etc and/or with personal texts specifically so he can help immigrants like his mother

[maximura]

Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue in Age of Ultron (2015)