#why did america do that to us. like why did we have to be not like the other girls about fucking degrees thats so lame

[ckret2]

I know that this is probably because you don't render Bill's body hair (you specifically mentioned his unshaved legs in the text!), but for some reason I'm disappointed that we don't see any fuzz poking from the bikini. Not, like, for sexual or scandal reasons, it just... feels like he'd be showing fuzz. It's so hard not to if you don't shave. Possibly intentionally, if it let him put another yellow triangle on his body.

Yeah, that's a detail I specifically thought about. I assume that Gravity Falls is much like the rest of the US, in that the women shave/wax their legs, pits, and bikini lines, and the vast majority of the men don't.

So, since Bill doesn't shave either, I figure that (after excluding beards & chest hair) he looks exactly as hairy as the average man in Gravity Falls. Such as the hair on the pits, groins, and legs of all these men:

Notice that (minotaur fur aside), all their pits, legs, and happy trails are baby-smooth.

When Gravity Falls wants to indicate EXCESSIVE hairiness, they do it through chest hair and, rarely, arm hair, on occasion making that hair look as thick as fur:

And that's it. (Notice that in the fire hydrant scene, which was used specifically as a "Dipper Wishes He Was This Grown Up & Masculine" scene: still no pit hair.)

Manotaurs aside, I was only able to find two examples of men depicted with leg hair. (And, in Sprott's case, maybe pit hair, though it's ambiguous.)

In both of these cases, the leg (and pit) hair are drawn on as jokes about how disgusting these men's near-naked bodies are.

I doubt that every male resident & tourist in a rural Oregon town waxes his pits & legs. Stan, the Manotaurs, America guy, the cops, Old Man McGucket who lives in a junkyard?? They are not shaving their pits. All the men pictured above probably have normal quantities of body hair; they just aren't illustrated in the show, because that's a detail the show decided wasn't significant to illustrate—like irises, or fingernails, or half the characters' ear folds.

The only time men's body hair is illustrated is to indicate that it's excessive and the only time it's added to pits or legs is to indicate that it's disgusting.

I did my research before deciding how to draw Bill! Based on the visual language that the show uses, if I had drawn his body hair—pits, legs, bikini line in any combination—I would have indicated that he's hairier than everyone else in town, and that it's disgusting enough to warrant rendering in greater detail than anybody else's body hair.

And going "HEY EVERYBODY! LOOK AT HOW THE CHARACTER WITH TITS DIDN'T WAX HIS BIKINI LINE!! ISN'T IT UNIQUE AND NOTEWORTHY HOW HE DIDN'T WAX HIS BIKINI LINE? EVERYBODY CHECK OUT ALL THAT HAIR POKING OUT! THIS SURE IS WAY MORE NOTEWORTHY AND DISTRACTING ON A CHARACTER WITH TITS THAN IT WOULD BE ON ANY CHARACTER WITHOUT TITS, SINCE WE NEVER BOTHER TO DRAW THEIR HAIR—BUT LOOK AT THIS ONE'S HAIR! IT'S WAAAY MORE ATTENTION-GRABBING THAN IT WOULD BE ON SOMEONE ELSE'S BODY!"

... is the exact opposite of what I want to do.

And I offer that as free advice to other artists, because this is something I keep seeing artists do: if you're giving a character a detail that isn't usually depicted in your chosen art style—body hair's a really common example—ask yourself if you're adding that detail on to every character that has that detail. If you are, great! But if you aren't, and if it turns out it's only one or two characters whose body hair you've fixated on... maaaybe ask yourself why, and what signal you're sending by highlighting that detail with them and only them.

[since64bce]

Trumper HC: AOT CHARACTERS AS TRUMP SUPPORTERS

I'm not in Amurica or nothin so idek the guy. All I'm sayin is I think he's a funny man so lets go baby yeehaw

CHARACTERS??: CONNIE AND SASHA, MIKASA, ERWIN, REINER, BERTHOLDT, HISTORIA, PIXIS, FLOCH Warnings: Racism, Sexism, ageism, STEREOTYPING, homophobia, transphobia, swearing, soft porn, guns, terrorism, mentions of violence and molesting. (istg im nitpicking here) A/N: pls don't report me.

CONNIE + SASHA 🥹💃🕺 (Cowboy conspirators)

-I have to group them together Im sorry

-"We juhst tew keids werkin togeyther on ower dayddies raynch in teyxas"🤓🤠

-Sashas fam are a few hardened Trump veterans (it's in the braus bloodline) can you imagine her father NOT being a republican smth

-Connies fam is the same.

-Both of their dads are those weird uncles u only see @ thanksgiving once a year. NOT WEIRD IN A PEDO WAY. They the ones who talk abt the flouride makin the rats n frogs gay an whatnot. its a whole thing.

-BAsically con man🧍‍♂️ and sack nut🧍‍♀️ spend their days chewing on straw and standing outside abortion clinics. 👫

-They're probably like 12 or somthing idk

-But yes they really like trump. Hail trump✋. Worship trump🙏. Trump trump trump. Donald J trump💋. Love trump🫶. want trump👀. lick trump🫵. kiss trump🫵. Trump 4 life💪. Trump all day baby🫦. Trump👨🏽‍🦲.

-Honestly they wanna see trump more than trump wanna see them.

-Actually trump don't want to see them.

-He'd get molested, turn around and there'd be two skanky ass lookin children standing behind him how horrific.💀💀💀

-These children aren't normal

-God bless murica ✊✊ yeehaw

Mikasa es tu casa (Chilled out chad)

-Mikasa is one of them chill ones that just mind their own buisness

-Unproblematic chad😌

-She sets an example for the rest of society and shes ripped so lets all take a leaf out of mikasas book shall we

-This aint aot fr this is america 🦅🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸 so she lived happily ever after with her mama and papa ok. no weird human traffickers or nothing🖕🖕. Her parents would've been quite traditional and conservative

-I think she'd believe in the nuclear family and gender roles and what not but her beliefs would be very mild

-You can't get her fuckin forearms from making sandwiches all day babes ❤️‍🔥💪

-but yeah shes a sweetheart ilhsm💋

-And lets just say her being a trumpee is like Gods way of containing this woman

-she wouldn't have missed fr🔫

-And God forbid if she did miss cuz otherwise she'd have gone up there and done it with her bare hands baby

-casual Trump enjoyer

Erwin👱‍♂️ (Facebook warrior)

-He's one a them grandaddy Trumps💪👴. There from the very beginning.❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

-You really think old people are bad at using technology?? WRONG.

-Levi helped him set up a facebook account 💋

-And It's the only fuckin thing he knows how to use on his computer. And he plays around on with his face this🤏 close to the screen, like gurl u don't need to do that 🧍‍♂️💀💀

-just use ur monacle or whatever🤷‍♀️

-But yeah whenever he comes upon gay 🌈🌈people posts on facebook my man has a heart attack. He clutches his chest falls outta his chair as he tries to get his breathing in control. 🤯😵

-Erwin will come across a post of two girls kissing an fickin collapse istg

-And then he'll get his talons out and start producing some juicy ass hate comments👹. He can't control himself, he's like a wild beast🥴😮‍💨, its like his arthiritis stricken claws have a gravitational pull towards that keyboard

-And he doesn't understand the whole algorithm thing either

There he squats with all these gay daddies on his facebook, hate spamming ALL of them AND HE STILL DOESN'T UNDERSTAND WHY FACEBOOK KEEPS SHOWING HIM THESE POSTS🤬🤬😡🫣🤷‍♀️

-He suffering multiple heart attacks a day people get this man off facebook🙌

-And then Levi will come over and see that Erwin has been writing hate comments under pictures of mens bulges on his computer🧍‍♂️

-Who gave this guy the tech knowledge to b able to cyber bully but not to close his damn tabs sheesh

-He's also become a top poster on one of the Trump groups that he follows ✊✊

-Also he uses the N word a lot 🧍‍♂️

Mr big tits (Bible, BBQ and an AK47)

-Oh my dear lovely big breasted Reiner Braun🍒🍒

-tells everyone abt how his papi went to 'nam and died when in reality his papi waz just a bich and left early🤫

-Not enough valour for him ig

-Even tho homeboy aint in the army 🫡 anymore he still stocks up more ammo than his local police department. 🫶🫰

-Hes just a🔅 cutesy little😻 hoarder with a cuetsy little collection of firearms too. 🤤🥰💖🩷🩵💙

-he will also wear cammo vests to the supermarket just to buy himself some spinach. He's a cammo boy. It's all he wears. 😮‍💨

-Aside from his gun collection and cammo obession, Reiner also loves a bit of BBQ here and there.

-believes the Founding Fathers’ original intent included God, guns, and smoked brisket.💪💪🦅🦅

-And country music of course.

-He's just a casual guy nothing too extreme😎🤠

-He owns a pair of american flag speedos tho, is confused as to why people need so many pronouns and passively aggressively competes in lawn care comps with his neighbor

-Somebody make this guy a father pls🥵😳🫃

Bechtolsheim :))))🦒🦒(Wall enthusiast)

-Oh my berty boy whom i love love love😤💕

-Let us b true with ourselves guys mr daddy long legs🕷️here has all our hearts and souls encaptured in his nice ol sweaty palms. I can tell ya now he's a man of the lord. He's down on those knees for j-dawg night'n day bro 🙏. He daps up the homeboy holy spirit on his way to bible study wit Reiner. ✝️✝️🫰

-Boy sure knows how to resist those temptations. Satan who? Sorry, B-dawg doesn't know him

-Everyone just thinks he's a nice guy 🧍🏽... which he is obv 🙄

-(In the daytime🌞, he's bertholdt, just a normal gurl💅🫦, living a normal life😸😝... but theres ✨something✨👁️👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨 about him🧌🥸😱 that, no one ⁉️knows yet⁉️.... 🤨🧐cause he has secrets🤭🥵🥵👹👹👹......)

-he used to b part of a terrorist group.

-☠️

-BUT HES IS(IS) A NICE GUY HE WAS JUS A LIL BIT CONFUSED BACK THEN an thats okay baby everyone gets a bit confused sometimes.

-AND this was before he met God mkay.

-But yeah, now bertholdt has a burning descrimination against muslims.

-Its the trauma man.

-His stereotyping and racism is like a festering cancer, he fights it everyday like a champ 💃💃✊

-And what does this have to do with being a trumpee you might ask?🧐

-Immigration.

-He wants em' all deported

-SOMETIMES Berts inner darkness wins out. He wants to forget his past, he wants to throw it right outta his window!... and out of his country....🦅🦅🇺🇸🤠🍟🍔

-This boy has seen some stuff🙇🏻🥺. And he's slowly getting better with his muslophobia. He tries. The lawd is his chemo, slowly trying to vanquish this dark dark part of himself 👿🦹, bit by bit.

-Never underestimate the power of the lord. Amen.😗

(All u christians go hard tho fr, mad respect. And all u muslims out there we buddies, go snatch that Quran and be a boss kachow)

Historian Reiss (Progress? Don't you mean bull-kaka?)

-SOMEBODY CALL THE TRAD WIFES UP IN HERE👰‍♂️👰‍♂️👰‍♂️👰‍♀️👰‍♀️👰‍♀️👰‍♀️👰‍♀️

-Girly says that the 1950s were PEAK even tho the closest thing to diversity back then was whether or not u liked jazz 🎶🎶😎

-Oh yeah she sure misses them polio days 🤤😻

-But in all seriousness she probs wears those big pantaloon undies😱🥶 like gurl u aint going parachuting thru the clouds just wear normal ones

-She's always googling how to make her child rearing hips bigger🤰🤰

-Not a single pair of pants in HER wardrobe. Not that she'd be able to wear them with her double storage solution underpants. Dresses and skirts ONLY.

-Also they must all be FLOOR length to hide those temptatious ankles🥵🥵😩

-Our modest queen🫡

-She aint trust no supermarket ultra processed shit food either she gets her eggs straight from her own chickens ass🦆 and she grows her own veggies n stuff. Good for her 🤙💪💪

-Although she did once collapse ffrom an iron deficiency cuz she couldn't find her own meat source poor girl

-she hit her head and was unconious for lik 3 days

-Her neighbors saw her undies before they saw her🪂🪂🪂

PIXIS (Mommy, can we put grandpa back into the retirement home now?)

-Bros worse than the braus and springer daddies👹👹👹👹

-He could not only write an entire 500-chapter-50k-words-per-chapter-ten-part book series abt gay frogs🫦, fake moon landings🙀, reptilian politicians🐸, 5G towers, Big pharma, chem trails🥵😷 ect ect ect but he could fact check the entire thing with blurry memes off facebook sent to him by his cousin randy

-He's a fuckin conspricay chad, unstoppable, admirable, irrestistable, alcoholic, crazy, cute🥺, chic, chadilicious bald man👨🏽‍🦲👨🏽‍🦲

-His children shipped him off to a home as soon as he turned 60 and his knee vaguely started hurting

-Hes too powerful

-Pixis does gets invited to special occasions tho cuz his family feel slightly bad

-He be an anti-science, pro magic, potter grade, wizard baby🧙‍♂️. Of course the government control the weather, of course climate change isn't real. 🤷‍♀️

-And he tell everryyyboodddyyy @ the dinner table baby👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨

-There are actually 8 wonders of this world. His offspring. How the. frick did they turn out so normal?🤨

-Anyways he managed to manipulate his son in law once and accidently caused a divorce

-Now he only gets invited to christmas

-And somehow he sneaks flasks of whatever into his nursing home illegally seals them out to all his nursing home pals.

-He's got an army of at least 15 of them that he's planning a coup with.🥳😏

-He also owns a MAGAs hat and suffers from mild heartburn because he only eats steak

Floch (LIBERATE THE MEN, WOMEN ARE THOTS)

-Another country boy but hes a skinny country boy who doesn't own a diesel guzzling man truck or get high blood pressure from eating steak 24/7.

-He lives wit his mama and eats the pasta salad she makes him for sunday lunch. 🧑‍🌾

-But yes he's still a freaky lil fanatic👹🧑‍🌾

-Imagine he lives in a world without pimp-dawg Eren Tate-ger. Whose Floch supposed to follow??? huh??? Donald thats who. Donald trump💪🦵.

-And andrew tate of course👨🏽‍🦲

-He's one of them red pillers who can sniff out a womans virginity from a mile away

-"Wats ur body count???"

-and hes very patriotic too:

-TRUMP IS JESUS 2.0, MY MAN THONG HAS AN EAGLE ON IT,CKAWW CAWW CAWWWW SAY YOU CAN SEE BY THE DAWN EARLY LIGHT WHAT SO PROUDLY WE HAILED AND THE TWILIGHTS LAST GLEAMING🦅🦅🏈🏈🇺🇸🇺🇸???!!!!???? DADDY TRUMPS TAN IS NOT FAKE GUYS WTFFF😡😡😡😡🤬🤬🤬🖕🖕🖕

-He's like a freaky little jehovah's witness guys

-he's so alpha dont you think?🐺🐺🐺

A/N: Sorry I think i fell off a bit at the end but I couldn't b bothered. Also yes ik the bertoldth one was a little wild but dont report me babes thank u very much. later losers.

[that-was-anticlimactic]

i think it's about time that we acknowledge that, no, that character would Not change their name in a groupchat! especially not to that. and, no, that character would not change everyone else's names! especially not to that.

[dilbobloggins]

I’m watching boyboy’s video about Pine Gap and I’m just aghast. you mean to tell me that the same CIA base that saw Gogh Whitlam fired by a governor general who was being paid by the CIA is now (and has made australia) responsible for 28,000 Palestinian deaths? and no one’s going to do anything about it because the last time someone tried the CIA literally held a COUPE against the democratically elected leader of Australia?! what do I do with this? cry? How did I not know before? mostly, what the actual fuck?

[kralmajales]

Whatever I like to piss EVERYBODY off by telling them we need a Jill Stein/Cornel West team up.

[theriverdalereviewer]

everyone jumping to team kamala we will never experience true freedom in this country

[birdmenanime]

Can you believe that the 2nd most important person to the story BARELY had ANY screen time of his blackout. WE SAW HIS BLACKOUT 3 WHOLE TIMES. NOT ENOUGH FOR ME TO DISSECT HIS GAY TRAUMATIZED BRAIN!

[teddytoroa]

not that it matters anymore but im actually fucking furious that john oliver caused a bunch of meddling yanks to mass vote on the nz bird of the century poll. i hate it so much i cant even describe why it enrages me but it does. so many of these fuckass americans dont even know nz is a fucking country let alone know or care about how precious our wildlife is but hurr hurr lets all vote for funny bird bc tv man says so. i know its just a bird poll its not that serious but fucking. come on.

[stinkrascal]

i am SO cold I AM SO COLD. my FINGERS. owwwwwwwwwwwwww

[fingertipsmp3]

Anyone else having an absolutely unhinged week or is that just me

[fursasaida]

This article is from 2022, but it came up in the context of Palestine:

Here are some striking passages, relevant to all colonial aftermaths but certainly also to the forms we see Zionist reaction taking at the moment:

Over the decade I lived in South Africa, I became fascinated by this white minority [i.e. the whole white population post-apartheid as a minority in the country], particularly its members who considered themselves progressive. They reminded me of my liberal peers in America, who had an apparently self-assured enthusiasm about the coming of a so-called majority-minority nation. As with white South Africans who had celebrated the end of apartheid, their enthusiasm often belied, just beneath the surface, a striking degree of fear, bewilderment, disillusionment, and dread.

[...]

Yet these progressives’ response to the end of apartheid was ambivalent. Contemplating South Africa after apartheid, an Economist correspondent observed that “the lives of many whites exude sadness.” The phenomenon perplexed him. In so many ways, white life remained more or less untouched, or had even improved. Despite apartheid’s horrors—and the regime’s violence against those who worked to dismantle it—the ANC encouraged an attitude of forgiveness. It left statues of Afrikaner heroes standing and helped institute the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which granted amnesty to some perpetrators of apartheid-era political crimes.

But as time wore on, even wealthy white South Africans began to radiate a degree of fear and frustration that did not match any simple economic analysis of their situation. A startling number of formerly anti-apartheid white people began to voice bitter criticisms of post-apartheid society. An Afrikaner poet who did prison time under apartheid for aiding the Black-liberation cause wrote an essay denouncing the new Black-led country as “a sewer of betrayed expectations and thievery, fear and unbridled greed.”

What accounted for this disillusionment? Many white South Africans told me that Black forgiveness felt like a slap on the face. By not acting toward you as you acted toward us, we’re showing you up, white South Africans seemed to hear. You’ll owe us a debt of gratitude forever.

The article goes on to discuss:

"Mau Mau anxiety," or the fear among whites of violent repercussions, and how this shows up in reported vs confirmed crime stats - possibly to the point of false memories of home invasion

A sense of irrelevance and alienation among this white population, leading to another anxiety: "do we still belong here?"

The sublimation of this anxiety into self-identification as a marginalized minority group, featuring such incredible statements as "I wanted to fight for Afrikaners, but I came to think of myself as a ‘liberal internationalist,’ not a white racist...I found such inspiration from the struggles of the Catalonians and the Basques. Even Tibet" and "[Martin Luther] King [Jr.] also fought for a people without much political representation … That’s why I consider him one of my most important forebears and heroes,” from a self-declared liberal environmentalist who also thinks Afrikaaners should take back government control because they are "naturally good" at governance

Some discussion of the dynamics underlying these reactions, particularly the fact that "admitting past sins seem[ed] to become harder even as they receded into history," and US parallels

And finally, in closing:

The Afrikaner journalist Rian Malan, who opposed apartheid, has written that, by most measures, its aftermath went better than almost any white person could have imagined. But, as with most white progressives, his experience of post-1994 South Africa has been complicated. [...]

He just couldn’t forgive Black people for forgiving him. Paradoxically, being left undisturbed served as an ever-present reminder of his guilt, of how wrongly he had treated his maid and other Black people under apartheid. “The Bible was right about a thing or two,” he wrote. “It is infinitely worse to receive than to give, especially if … the gift is mercy.”

[qqueenofhades]

I think its genuinely fascinating how Biden has somehow become the bad vibes sin eater for the party. I'm seeing people who were doing the whole "voting doesn't matter both old men are the same" pivot hard into voting as harm reduction. The anti voting rhetoric has COMPLETELY lost The Youths on tiktok. People suddenly remember the good things the Biden administration has done but don't associate Harris with any of the things they didn't like. In my swing state volunteers are signing up in droves. People feel ENERGIZED, the vibe shift pre and post Biden dropping from the race has just been insane

Y'know, that is a... good way of putting it. It's also why I'm quite sure that Biden has probably been planning it for a while. I don't think he was intending to step down, and didn't want to be forced out at the drop of a hat, but after he realized that the circus was never going to stop until he did, he did the honorable fall-on-his-own-sword thing and definitely, DEFINITELY spent some time choreographing this behind the scenes. Because while the roll-out has been very smooth, it could just as easily (as many of us were expecting) have been a total disaster, and that doesn't happen without SOME planning. It's also entirely possible that the campaign staff flipped from Biden to Harris are superhuman, to come up with a massive online roll-out, new branding, new signs (they had plenty of 'em in Wisconsin yesterday), new everything, but I'm guessing it's a combination of both. Biden has spent his entire political career being underestimated, and after we literally made a meme out of Dark Brandon juking the Republicans out of their shoes, we should definitely give credit where credit is due in how masterfully he pulled it off.

Because we have had eight years defined by the central question of Whether The President Is a God King Who Should Serve For Life (the MAGAts obviously think yes), the sheer idea of a president willingly giving up his power BEFORE he had to is also novel and admirable. It's sad that this is the case, but so be it. The Republicans also got a heaping helping of Be Careful What You Wish For that was undoubtedly brilliant; they've been yelling for years that Biden is old and frail and can't serve and should step down. Biden went "lol okay" and gave it to them, and now they're fucked.

Aside from that, on the most basic level, it's far, far easier to see the actual difference in the parties with Harris as the nominee, just because it shows that one party is willing to make progress and reflect the new demographic reality and social mores of America, and the other one is not. Now to be clear, Biden deserves an incredible amount of credit for coming out of retirement (he was ALREADY 77 years old when he became president and had had decades of a long and respected career in public service behind him) to fight, beat Trump, and deliver an incredibly successful presidency. He held the line against authoritarianism at home and abroad, he rescued the trashed American economy and managed a world-leading recovery from Covid, he stood up for democracy, he spent four years filling the benches with liberal judges to reverse even some of the Trump/McConnell hack job, he finally passed comprehensive infrastructure investment and the Green New Deal under the name of the Inflation Reduction Act -- and so on. Many of these priorities had been languishing for decades or were completely trashed under Trump, and he could not have done so much in just 4 years without all that age, skill, and experience. Hence why all the Ageism!!! was (aside from being a Republican/media smear job) dumb. He's able to do the job because he has had decades to study. Turns out that makes you actually pretty damn good at it.

Yes, Biden could not do as much as he wanted or originally planned, had to deal with MAGA Republicans and Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema sabotaging him the whole time (lololol Manchin, possible possessor of the World's Biggest Ego and with Trump around that's saying something, popping out of obscurity to self-righteously announce he would not be willing to be Kamala's VP. YEAH ASSHOLE. LITERALLY NOBODY ASKED YOU. NOBODY WHATSOEVER. NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS AT LEAST WE WILL SOON NO LONGER HAVE MANCHIN IN THE SENATE). And yes, Biden made some serious mistakes of his own, because he IS from an older generation and a different style of doing politics/different beliefs that no longer resonate with the younger segments of the electorate. But this old white Catholic guy at the age of almost 80 still managed to be the most progressive president ever, coming in at a moment of incredible domestic and international crisis and getting us safely to the other side, and all cynicism, criticizing, and caveating aside, he deserves an incredible amount of credit for that. I mean that absolutely, and I am very grateful.

As I said, willingly relinquishing that power takes guts, and when Biden saw the writing on the wall that he had to sacrifice himself, he took his time, he didn't jump too early, and he didn't jump too late. On the most basic level, it becomes a hell of a lot easier to make the "both parties are not the same" argument when one is running a (comparatively) young brown woman and the other is still running their loathed felonious old demented orange traitor. Most Americans are not plugged into policy minutiae and details. They look at Biden-Trump, they see two old white guys. When you take one of those old white guys away (who goes in a self-sacrificially heroic manner and in sharp contrast with the coup-happy fascist) and put Kamala Harris in there instead, it generates an obvious jolt. People can see for themselves that there is a real difference that doesn't rely on closely reading news and tracking complex policy, because as noted, most Americans simply don't. The brown first-generation American daughter of brown immigrants is a quantifiably different story from "old white guy career politician," which for better or worse is how Biden was seen, especially the old part. We needed that establishment expertise to beat Trump in 2020; I still think Biden is the only one who could have done it, and as noted, we owe him a great debt for doing so.

However.... 2024 is not 2020, and it is not 2016. There has been this HUGE and unbelievable swing to Kamala because she represents the antithesis of what the last eight years of Trump-induced anger, fear, panic, chaos, and hatred has stirred up. That's why people are so ready to rally around her, just as they were (I daresay) around Obama in 2008, after the exhaustion, chaos, war, and mounting economic misery of Bush. Trump has been out of office for the last four years, but his shadow over the American political landscape has been omnipresent. Now people know that we finally have a real chance at getting rid of him forever, and just as Biden was uniquely positioned to capitalize on that in 2020, so Harris is now. Which is why, however tough it will be, she has a real shot at winning. I can guarantee the Republicans know that, and are shit scared. Because the Black Lady Army of Democracy has indeed arrived in force to Get This Shit Done and I don't know about you, but I found that incalculably comforting:

Yikes! All lined up for Kamala pic.twitter.com/Dt4OCDp7WX

— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) July 24, 2024

This, at the most basic level, is what scares fascists the most, it's exactly what we need now, and what Harris is uniquely positioned to mobilize, along with her gangbusters appeal to young voters:

This is the energy we need. This is what Biden saw and planned for and which he launched us into, and where all that experience and age paid off. This is why people, even people otherwise disengaged, disillusioned, or checked out of the tedious and mind-numbering drudgery and depression of American politics, are responding to it. Because it's easy to understand, it offers hope, and it tells a very simple story that is nonetheless long overdue:

Thanks so much, Joe. Go absolutely waste that orange fucker, Kamala. We got your back.

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Terry Pratchett about fantasy ❤

Terry Pratchett interview in The Onion, 1995 (x)

O: You’re quite a writer. You’ve a gift for language, you’re a deft hand at plotting, and your books seem to have an enormous amount of attention to detail put into them. You’re so good you could write anything. Why write fantasy?

Terry: I had a decent lunch, and I’m feeling quite amiable. That’s why you’re still alive. I think you’d have to explain to me why you’ve asked that question.

O: It’s a rather ghettoized genre.

Terry: This is true. I cannot speak for the US, where I merely sort of sell okay. But in the UK I think every book— I think I’ve done twenty in the series— since the fourth book, every one has been one the top ten national bestsellers, either as hardcover or paperback, and quite often as both. Twelve or thirteen have been number one. I’ve done six juveniles, all of those have nevertheless crossed over to the adult bestseller list. On one occasion I had the adult best seller, the paperback best-seller in a different title, and a third book on the juvenile bestseller list. Now tell me again that this is a ghettoized genre.

O: It’s certainly regarded as less than serious fiction.

Terry: (Sighs) Without a shadow of a doubt, the first fiction ever recounted was fantasy. Guys sitting around the campfire— Was it you who wrote the review? I thought I recognized it— Guys sitting around the campfire telling each other stories about the gods who made lightning, and stuff like that. They did not tell one another literary stories. They did not complain about difficulties of male menopause while being a junior lecturer on some midwestern college campus.

Fantasy is without a shadow of a doubt the ur-literature, the spring from which all other literature has flown. Up to a few hundred years ago no one would have disagreed with this, because most stories were, in some sense, fantasy. Back in the middle ages, people wouldn’t have thought twice about bringing in Death as a character who would have a role to play in the story. Echoes of this can be seen in Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, which hark back to a much earlier type of storytelling. The epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest works of literature, and by the standard we would apply now— a big muscular guys with swords and certain godlike connections— That’s fantasy. The national literature of Finland, the Kalevala. Beowulf in England. I cannot pronounce Bahaghvad-Gita but the Indian one, you know what I mean. The national literature, the one that underpins everything else, is by the standards that we apply now, a work of fantasy.

Now I don’t know what you’d consider the national literature of America, but if the words Moby Dick are inching their way towards this conversation, whatever else it was, it was also a work of fantasy. Fantasy is kind of a plasma in which other things can be carried. I don’t think this is a ghetto. This is, fantasy is, almost a sea in which other genres swim. Now it may be that there has developed in the last couple of hundred years a subset of fantasy which merely uses a different icongraphy, and that is, if you like, the serious literature, the Booker Prize contender. Fantasy can be serious literature. Fantasy has often been serious literature. You have to fairly dense to think that Gulliver’s Travels is only a story about a guy having a real fun time among big people and little people and horses and stuff like that. What the book was about was something else. Fantasy can carry quite a serious burden, and so can humor. So what you’re saying is, strip away the trolls and the dwarves and things and put everyone into modern dress, get them to agonize a bit, mention Virginia Woolf a few times, and there! Hey! I’ve got a serious novel. But you don’t actually have to do that.

(Pauses) That was a bloody good answer, though I say it myself.

[dare-to-dm]

As I said before, I grew up watching the Olympics with my mother.

And there was one year when I was pretty young that we had a conversation while watching that has always stuck with me (I think it was the '96 games in Atlanta, during which I was 7).

We were also following along with the medal counts in school and celebrating all of America's wins as a class, which felt very fun and patriotic. So I noticed in contrast that my mom would often cheer for other teams and get excited when people from different countries won. And I asked her why.

She said something along the lines of "Of course it's exciting when your own team wins. But the American athletes have a lot of advantages. And I like to cheer for the underdog too."

It was clear that I didn't understand what she meant by advantages, so she asked me why I thought the Americans won so many medals. I answered something like "Because they are the best? Or maybe because they work the hardest?"

She replied "It's important for you to understand that everyone who makes it to the Olympics is very talented and works very hard. They deserve to be celebrated. But most of the athletes from America have more time and money to spend on things like the best equipment and the best training. Many of the other countries that get a lot of medals are like this too. They do the best they can to make the games fair, but that doesn't mean everyone has the same opportunities. So it's even more impressive in some ways when someone who doesn't have those advantages wins."

Looking back on this, I take away 2 major things. One is that my mom did a great job teaching me about privilege before we developed the current language we have for those ideas. And the other is that I really appreciate all the situations she used as learning opportunities for me and never talked down to me even when I was very young. The fact that it stuck just proves the value of those conversations. You're never too young to learn!

[stephobrien]

Is your pro-Palestine activism hurting innocent people? Here's how to avoid that.

Note: If you prefer plain text, you can read the plain text version here.

Over the last few days, I’ve had conversations with several Jewish people who told me how hurt and scared they are right now.

To my great regret, some of that pain came from a poorly-thought-out post of mine, which – while not ill-intentioned – WAS hurtful.

And a lot of it came from cruelty they’d experienced at the hands of people who claim to be advocating for Palestine, but are using the very real plight of innocent Palestinians to harm equally innocent Jewish people.

Y’all, we need to do better. (Yes, “we” definitely includes me; this is in no small part a “learn from my fail” post, and also a “making amends” post. Some of these are mistakes I’ve made in the past.)

So if you’re an advocate for Palestine who wants to make sure that your defense of one group of vulnerable people doesn’t harm another, here are some important things to do or keep in mind:

Ask yourself if you’re applying a standard to one group that you aren’t applying to another.

Would you want all white Americans or Canadians to be expelled from America or Canada?

Do you want all Jewish people to be expelled from Israel, as opposed to finding a way to live alongside Palestinian Arabs in peace?

If the answer to those two questions is different, ask yourself WHY.

Do you want to be held responsible for the actions of your nation’s army or government? No? Then don’t hold innocent Jewish people, or Israelis in general (whether Jewish or otherwise), responsible for the actions of the Israeli army and government.

On that subject, be wary of condemning all Israeli people for the actions of the IDF. Large-scale tactical decisions are made by the top brass. Service is compulsory, and very few can reasonably get out of service.

Blaming all Israelis for the military’s actions is like blaming all Vietnam vets for the horrors in Vietnam. They’re not calling the shots. They aren’t Nazis running concentration camps. They are carrying out military operations that SHOULD be criticized.

And do not compare them or ANY JEWISH PERSON to Nazis in general. It is Jewish cultural trauma and not outsiders’ to use against them.

Don’t infuse legitimate criticism with antisemitism.

By all means, spread the word about the crimes committed by the Israeli army and government, and the complicity of their allies. Criticize the people responsible for committing and enabling atrocities.

But if you imply that they’re committing those crimes because they’re Jewish, or because Jewish people have special privileges, then you’re straying into antisemitic territory.

Criticize the crime, not the group. If you believe that collective punishment is wrong, don’t do it yourself.

And do your best to use words that apply directly to the situation, rather than the historical terms for situations with similar features. For example, use “segregation,” “oppression,” or “subjugation,” not “Holocaust” or “Jim Crow.” These other historical events are not the cultural property of Jews OR Palestinians, but also have their own nuances and struggles and historical contexts.

Also, blaming other world events on Jewish people or making Jewish people associated with them (for instance, some people falsely blame Jewish people for the African slave trade) is a key feature of how antisemitism functions.

Please, by all means, be specific and detailed in your critiques. But keep them focused on the current political actors – not other peoples’ or nations’ political or cultural histories and traumas.

Be prepared to accept criticism.

You probably already know that society is infused with a wide array of bigotries, and that people growing up in that environment tend to absorb those beliefs without even realizing it. Antisemitism is no exception.

What that means is, there’s a very real chance that you will screw up, and get called out on it, as I so recently did.

If that happens, please be willing to learn and adapt. If you can educate yourself about the suffering and needs of Palestinians, you can do the same for Jewish people.

Understand that the people you hurt aren’t obligated to baby you. Give them room to be angry.

After I made a post that inadvertently hurt people, some were nice about it, and others weren’t. Some outright insulted my morals and intelligence.

And I had to accept that I’d earned that from them.

I’d hurt them, and they weren’t obligated to be more careful with my feelings than I had been with theirs.

They weren’t obligated to forgive me, trust me, or stop being mad at me right away.

I’ll admit, there were moments when I got defensive. I shouldn’t have. And I encourage you to try not to, if you screw up and hurt people.

I know that’s hard, but it’s important. Getting defensive only tells people you care more about doubling down on your mistake than you do about healing the hurt it caused.

Instead, acknowledge that they have a right to be angry, apologize for the way you hurt them, and try to make amends, while understanding that they don’t owe you trust or forgiveness.

Be aware that some antisemites are using legitimate complaints to “Trojan horse” antisemitism into leftist spaces.

This is a really easy stumbling block to trip over, because most people probably don’t look at every post a creator makes before sharing the one they’re looking at right now.

I recently shared a video that called out some of the Likud and IDF’s atrocities and hypocrisy, and that also noted that many Jewish people are wonderful members of their communities.

I was later informed that, while that video in particular seemed reasonable, the creator behind it is frequently antisemitic.

I deleted the post, and blocked the creator. I encourage you to do the same if it’s brought to your attention that you’ve been ‘Trojan horse’d.

EDIT: Important note about antisemitism in leftist spaces:

While it's true that some blatant antisemites are using seemingly reasonable posts to get their foot in the door of leftist spaces, it's also true that a lot of antisemitism already exists inside those spaces.

This antisemitism is often dressed up in progressive-sounding language, but nonetheless singles Jewish people and places out in ways that aren't applied equally to other groups, or that label Jewish people in ways that portray them as acceptable targets.

If you want to see some specific examples, so you can have a better idea of what to keep an eye out for, I suggest reading this excellent reblog of this post.

Fact-check your doubts about antisemitism.

Depending on which parts of the internet you look at, you’ve probably seen people accused of antisemitism because they complained about the Likud and/or IDF’s actions. So you might be primed to be wary, or feel unsure of how to tell what counts as real antisemitism.

But that doesn’t mean antisemitism isn’t a very real, widespread, and harmful problem. And it doesn’t mean many or even most Jewish people are lying to you or being overly sensitive.

So if someone says something is antisemitic, and you aren’t sure, I encourage you to:

A. Look up the action or thing in question, including its history. Is there an antisemitic history or connotation you aren’t aware of? For best results, include “antisemitic” in your search query, in quotes.

B. Understand that some things, while not inherently antisemitic, have been used by antisemites often enough that Jewish people are understandably wary of them. Schrodinger’s antisemitism, if you will.

C. Ask Jewish people WHO HAVE OFFERED TO HELP EDUCATE YOU. Emphasis on WHO HAVE OFFERED. Random Jewish people aren’t obligated to give you their time and emotional energy, or to educate you – especially on subjects that are scary or painful for them.

@edenfenixblogs has kindly offered her inbox to those who are genuinely trying to learn and do better, and I’ve found her to be very kind, patient, reasonable, and fair-minded.

Understand that this is URGENTLY NEEDED.

In one of my conversations with a Jewish person who’d called me out, they said this was the most productive conversation they’d had with a person with a Palestinian flag in their profile.

THIS IS NOT OKAY.

I didn’t do anything special. All I did was listen, apologize for my mistakes, and learn.

Yes, it feels good to be acknowledged. But I feel like I’ve been praised for peeing IN the toilet, instead of beside it.

Apologizing, learning, and making amends after you hurt people shouldn’t be “the most reasonable thing I’ve heard from a person with a Palestinian flag pfp.”

It should be BASIC DECENCY.

And the fact that it’s apparently so uncommon should tell you how much unnecessary stress and fear Jewish people have been living with because of people who consider themselves defenders of human rights.

By all means, be angry at the Likud, the IDF, and the politicians, reporters, and specific media outlets who choose to enable and cover up for them.

But direct that anger toward the people who deserve it and are in a position to do something about it, not random people who simply happen to be Jewish, or who don’t want millions of people to be turned into refugees when less violent methods of achieving freedom and rights for Palestinians are available.

Stop peeing beside the toilet, people.

[hetalia-club]

Somthing I love about Hetalia is we all just accept anything he gives us. Like he just randomly decides that in the MAIN manga he’s just going to start doing a mafia AU out of nowhere with no transition or announcements that it will be driving away from the main “plot” for a bit plot is in quotes because we all lost the plot long ago. Then he invented a card game to go with it and we are just all like “yes understandable more please” I simply cannot imagine joining this fandom in todays age I would be so confused what the show even is lmao. Like “Yes they are countries. But sometimes they are high schoolers, sometimes they are just like guys hanging out, Santa is real and one of them is Santa but he’s also a country and also not Santa only sometimes, sometimes they are in the mafia playing a card game about themselves and the rules are kind of hunger games-ish where they are playing to move up in power with the other districts and it’s implied better districts have access to better things but they are still countries just also leaders of gangs but the gangs are the country, One of themselves has a best friend who is an alien, and just so you know animals can talk but not all animals and they can only talk to the countries who own them and other animals. Mythical creatures are real and only some countries can see them like Americas pet unicorn that he cannot see and England friend flying mint bunny that only he can see & Norway has head set that only trolls can call him on, sometimes they are all gender swapped and all of the gender swapped versions have their own personality and human name, oh right human names! They all have 2 names the county name and human name and if you don’t learn them quick you won’t have any idea what half of us are talking about, don’t even get me started on 2!p it’s them but slightly edgier and yes they all have their own separate names that you should at least learn the main 8s version of, other times they are all cat- why did you cut me off? What do you mean you are confused? What’s not clicking? Hua fine let me start over. It all starts with the tomato box fairy and Mr. stick…..Hey! Where you going? Come back I haven't even told you how some of them are related, but also not really, but also yes they totally are!"