#you are a person and you are inherently superior

[captainjonnitkessler]

literally. as a poc this is why so much leftism feels so alienating. there is this clear effort to remove race from the conversation in a way that is not at all reflective of peoples' priorities in reality. there is a large number of white people in the us who will vote against their personal, economical, and social interests, just because they don't want black people to also benefit. i have never seen white leftists provide effective responses to that point, they just handwave it away and pretend everyone is a secret socialist brainwashed by propaganda. and tbh, i'd argue it's mostly because talking about race requires them to confront their own potential biases, their capacity for harm as white people, and they would rather imagine a country we have never lived in than contend with the reality that they are not inherently Good And Superior.

(not to say poc don't do this or poc are immune to being racist or right wing, we saw in november that's clearly not the case, this is just an observation and frustration i have with so much leftist rhetoric)

Yeah I don't blame you. "It's time for a labor party that actually cares about workers instead of all this culture war bullshit!" is a common refrain on union subreddits and it's like, okay - so does this labor party address the plight of black workers, or trans workers, or female workers, or immigrant workers? Because what you're calling "culture war bullshit" is actually real people's lives and rights and the only people turning it into a war is Republicans.

The idea that The People are some homogenous group that are going to rise up and demand justice is a nonsense fiction. Republicans have been offered the choice again and again and again between "workers rights" and "being racist and transphobic" and guess what: it's not even a hard choice for 90% of them. If your political ideology isn't accounting for that then it's absolutely useless.

It also accounts for the other thing I think should net you an electric shock for typing, which is "Bernie would have won" or "dems just need to run on this wildly popular issue and they would win, are they stupid?"

Bernie polled well against Trump when he was a relative unknown who wasn't seriously considered a contender. If he'd won the primary, Fox News would have started 24/7 coverage about how communist Bernie was going to take your tax dollars and use it to give sex changes to illegal immigrants and all those Republicans who "totally would have voted for Bernie" would have fallen right into line. I'm not saying he couldn't have won - but he wasn't gonna do it by swaying Republicans like people like to pretend.

The same will hold true for any broadly popular issue - as soon as Democrats start championing it, Republicans will start opposing it. For example: the ACA starting as a Republican plan and ending as "Obama's death panels". By and large people do not choose a politician based on their views, they chose their views based on their politician.

So yeah. I think the Democrat party has repeatedly made a huge mistake in trying to move right to court Republicans who would never vote for them, but I think a lot of leftists are laboring under the same delusion that Republicans can be appealed to if only we find the right way of framing things. They can't. They value racism and transphobia over everything else.

[arkrow]

im gonna have a michie chrashing out because canon richie is actually a creepy weirdo and calls steph a waifu and fanon richie goes uwu and cosplays hatsune miku and i want that richie and max to kiss but they arent real and once frankenruth releases everything will explode :(

Me too :((((

The thing with Richie is that he is criminally mischaracterised but instead of a chunk of his character being removed, making him less compelling and interesting, a chunk is removed to make him more compelling. And that's because the romance story most fanworks with Michie use kind of don't work if Richie is characterised correctly, and by that, I mean acts like a creepy jerk. I adore Richie with all my heart, but oh lord would I hate him in real life.

I can throw all my headcanons and theories to excuse his behaviour that I like, but straight up, he's not a 'good' person. One of the Lang's (I forget which) once said that Richie and the nerds (or at least Richie and Pete) were never really friends and they just hung out together so they had safety in numbers, and you can absolutely see that in Richie's characterisation. He's a dick, he insults Pete literally whenever he sees an opportunity, he immediately turns on Ruth because she made a star wars analogy and he perceives his own interests as inherently superior, and then crumbles at the sight of Max. He's aware of his social standing, yes, but he's also a spineless coward.

But, that's not actually a compelling character to write about, especially when much of fanon Michie is built on woobifying him and generating sympathy. It's hard to do that when he's objectively a jerk. The only sympathy garnering thing he ever really did in the musical was die. Max has his off hand line about his dad that lets the fandom theorise about why he acts the way he does, but Richie's just a jerk because he is one.

I fear Frankenruth for similar reasons you do, that it will fracture the carefully crafted ignorance that holds itself in the fanon Richie. But then again, if they appeal to fanon it would feel disingenuous and I really hope they don't, even if the illusion does break and Michie kind of falls apart as a ship

I'm going to combust if I think about them any more

[therianconfessionsblog]

To bandwagon off of the "90% of alterhumans are actually psychological"

I want to start this off by saying, if you believe your alterhumanity stems from spiritual connection or past lives, that's perfectly valid. I'm not trying to demonize or invalidate your personal beliefs. Nor do I want you to change your beliefs or culture. You are all beautiful and awesome and i love all the different theories behind alterhumanity. This is just me talking about something I've noticed over the decade I've been in the community.

I think a good chunk (not saying all or even most) of spiritual alterhumans believe that their identity needs to be something grand. Like psychological alterhumanity is less valid, less grounded, or not a good enough justification. I think a lot of them even use it as a bandaid. It's easier to say "well I have autism and I don't identify as a wolf" as a way to disprove one's identity than it is to say " I believe in past lives which you can't prove or disprove".

I think a lot of them take things too seriously as well. Dreams aren't just random generated hallucinations created by the brain based on pre-existing information that you know. Instead, they have deep meaning, such as confirmation of one's past life or kintype. And while this isn't inherently harmful, sometimes it can go too far.

I've been in the community for many years, We're only just now getting to a point where psychological alterhumanity is mostly accepted, but there's still a lot of spiritual alterhumans who harbor superiority for their personal theory behind alterhumanity. And others who will even force their beliefs onto others.

🐾

[askshivanulegacy]

^^^^ This.

An AI checker is no more scary or problematic than a plagiarism detector, even if it's used as a normal part of submitting all your assignments.

This isn't even an issue about neurodivergence. It's about properly using the results.

The checker doesn't know what quotes and works cited are. It doesn't know the difference between one word and another. It's a dumb machine. You, the person with the brain, need to look at the results and dismiss them accordingly. You have the freedom to ignore all of it. You're the person here.

That's what I do every single time. 25% plagiarized? 35%??? I don't care. It's not relevant. There's no meaning there. I change nothing because I wrote it myself and it's cited properly. I submit with no further explanation. Any instructor with half a brain will figure it out and if they have an issue with it, I will correct them about it.

I won't change what I wrote, because I'm better than your machine.

Stick to your guns, people. You need to understand what a machine is and the limits of the machine, and dismiss accordingly. 18% AI is such a nothing burger. This isn't worthy of comment, let alone an unsourced rando tweet for people to angst unnecessarily over.

[bitchthefuck1]

I love how the conversation between Harmony and Helena shows the tension that Helena becoming severed creates in the power dynamics, because even as a temporary PR stunt under a different name to clearly delineate them, Helly's existence is still a huge crack in the Eagan mythology. Cobell, Milchick, and Graner could be drinking the kool-aid by the bucketful, but watching a descendant of Kier allow themselves to be severed and then being placed in a position of authority over them would still have a massive subconscious impact on the way they view Helena, and by extension their perception of the Eagan's as a whole. It's a direct threat to their illusion of divinity, and you can really feel how that colors their interactions.

[macchiatosdumptruck]

People will see two characters who are entirely devoted to each other and whose lives are intertwined in cosmic ways, and be like "what if they were just buddies? 😊" But then one second later go ape shit about a more popular ship with less than half the chemistry, but a dynamic that is considered more appropriate for the surface level, overused, interchangeable fandom tropes that have replaced any sort of genuine character interpretation

[starbuck]

Was thinking earlier about “People are not stupid, Ives.” “Really?” and how Ives’ self-centered misanthropy is so important within the larger thematic context of American Imperialism. Imperialists prioritize their own interests over all others since they believe that those they have deemed “others” are unworthy of human consideration. On an individual level, this comes down to believing that you are better than other people, more worthy of life and happiness. 

This is how Hart ends up working with Ives as a willing coconspirator… Even before Colqhoun’s arrival, Hart clearly looks down on the other residents of Fort Spencer. He describes them so uncharitably to Boyd that it isolates Boyd from everyone before he’s even met them. Hart hates his job and the life he lived that got him there and he copes by believing that he is, at least, a superior type of person to everyone under his command. 

In that way, Hart killing his former comrades in cold blood doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s the logical conclusion of his superior, misanthropic perspective pushed to the extreme. He’s better than them, so why SHOULDN’T he kill and eat them? Don’t you understand? You have to KILL! to live! You have to KILL!!!!!!! 

[steleart]

actually, since I can't sleep until I put this somewhere, I think the biggest thing that's missing in veilguard is intersectionality. what I loved about dao da2 and dai is how... unapologetic they are in the depiction of how fucked up society is, and how different people who are oppressed in very different ways (Anders and Fenris, etc) are not a monolith and can be at each others' throats about it. because that's the thing, minorities are not a monolith. yes, oppression is designed to keep certain people / factions in power, but the insidious thing about it is that it's a hydra with many, many heads. the sanitisation that is happening in media nowadays, because this is an issue larger than veilguard, blatantly ignores that the darker aspects of the world are every day occurrences to a large portion of the population. we need out art to call oppression by name. we need it depicted, because otherwise it means that the people who don't deal with it often, or at all, can just ignore it.

making art comfortable, not inviting conversation about the ugly things that are still very much an issue in our current society, feels like the whole 'we ended racism years who!! we're not racist anymore!!' thing, which not only kills conversation, but is also a blatant lie. there is no friction between companions or between the player and the world, and that is a shame, because it makes the world feel empty and bland

[synchodai]

My post about "girlboss eugenics" has reached 10k+ notes, and while i understand i can't control how people take a post once it's escaped containment and will ultimately interpret it to fit their personal blog and tastes, i can't help but resent that a good chunk of reblogs have completely ignored that i was complaining about the trope promoting eugenics. Instead, it's been read to be about chosen one narratives in general which oftentimes aren't about eugenics at all.

Just to be clear, chosen one narratives are not inherently eugenicist! ATLA is a chosen one narrative and explicitly anti-eugenics. The main character being special because she's secretly related to a special person is not eugenics! The Last Skywalker is not eugenicist and its core message that Rey can reject her Palpatine side and choose to be a Skywalker actively goes against bioessentialism. Eugenics isn't when a character is born special because of blood ties, genetic inheritance, or just being magically chosen.

Eugenics is actively breeding people to promote "desireable" traits and neutering, disenfranchising, or even just outright killing those with "undesireable" traits so they won't "pollute" the gene pool. Eugenics is the numerous amount of times I've heard someone casually saying "dumb people shouldn't breed." Eugenics is using genetic disability and illness as a narrative shorthand to convey that a character is twisted and evil, and that the kindest fate for such a "wretched creature" is death. Eugenics is a character saying she never wants to have children so she won't pass on her curse, dwarfism, or whatever else it is to her offspring and being lauded by the story for making the right, selfless choice. Eugenics is calculating how much percent race X character is compared to Y character and using them being more Valyrian/Illyrian/whatever race to justify why X is the better ruler instead of Y.

I get that some people are tired of biological and divine determinism and just want to see characters reject that and carve out their own path, but chosen one and secret princess tropes by themselves are hardly as deleterious as what I noticed in the recently published books I read that have this obsession with breeding. It's English royal family fanatic level of obsession over maintaining the continuation of a bloodline and calculating who's even distantly related to who to justify who gets to receive fame and wealth for basically just existing. It's glorifying a woman's womb and her pregnancy as something absolutely necessary for the continuation of a good and civil society. THAT is what I find absolutely horrific in what's supposed to be my escapist, meant to empower women readers, fantasy fiction.

[bonehilda-deactivated]

i don't like the pressure on artists to have a social media presence. i don't want to see your morning routine, in fact, i don't want to see you at all. Off you go to your cabin in appalachia to write 9 minute songs about the passage of time and the vastness of memory. You can still fuck your bassist but DON'T make a tiktok about it. your only existence to me should be on a name on the album cover.

[priestperverter]

thinking about my intro lit class that was like ok shakespeare play done, let's introduce u to his sonnets. fucking my mistress' eyes fucking shall i compared thee. billy kill yourself

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

Tbh the whole metal sonic having a hedgehog oc thing is honestly so good. Yes. The murder robot also deserves the joy of dressing up as a character she made. Reminds me of those sonic ocs that edgy kids used to make that were basically just like. emoer amy rose or something. And I mean that with the most love in the world cause i was one of them kids. He is kinda just an edgy kid too. They deseve the freedom

She literally is my emoer Amy Rose from when I was like nine she is just also in universe Metal Sonic's emoer Amy Rose. (her outfit is actually very vaguely meant to resemble classic amy's since like, metal cares about like three or four people enough to remember them by name and amy is one of them bc, y’know, sonic cd, she considers amy one of the few living things that was useful to her bc she used her as bait she is in universe literally designed after amy rose bc metal was trying to exploit sonic's heroism for like literally two minutes until they started bantering.)

[sunieepo]

i love going on blocking sprees for shit that literally just does not matter. its just so funny. oh you have a bad take on video game i dont even particularly care about? never interact with me ever ❤️

[jewishbarbies]

having a safe place you can unload the things that bother you on a day to day basis is so much more important than people understand. shit eats at you when it has nowhere to go. you don’t have to listen, but let people vent when and how they need to. it has nothing to do with you and you’re not a better person for not needing to do that.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

billions figuring winston shouldn't just also still be there in the end with the guys we accept so he needs to be sent out, which, it's also remarkable to recall like "okay does he still technically, partially work at/for axe global then? it's a 'maybe' but what matters is that he's not There even if so"....the way that even if we infer he did get to finally be sick of waiting on better, we weren't even given so much of an arc of a couple episode's leadup showing him markedly being more frustrated / fed up with The Usual bullshit or anything like that, the way it went with one ep to spare "oh right winston's catchphrases! we all know & loathe them" like don't strain yourselves....that even in giving up on things, winston still has to be further let down by everyone even after quitting, like well that's probably ultimately helpful for him but it was (a) forced on him and (b) not sure i'd give billions the credit for anything sympathetic towards winston versus "well the only thing to be done with winston material is have fun while epic winners shit on him however they want," the wags plotline had no point just like the later one that could've been scrapped & transformed into "how about taylor gets any dialogue this episode"....the way that billions may imagine like hmm what to do with winston? all that can Ultimately happen with him is he has to go away and die, for him it's [out of sight out of mind out of Existence], just as has been the show's approach for the consequences of him being shitted on all th time for years before this: there are none, b/c we're not looking at them, and winston is never not completely [othered] including right now, and if it helps for some reason we'll talk about how we might be fine if he literally dies. and so we're graced with a "who knows or cares, he's just gone, finally. after being kept around b/c it's so fun seeing winners torment him" ending as the only one they find imaginable for winston

[nucleargnocchi]

ok but the thing is that "hurt" is an adjective, verb, and noun. so the linguistic poeticism is still there, albeit in a slightly different way. yes, "hurt" as a description of a person's state holds true across tenses because it is indeed an adjective, but the fact remains that it's a lexicologically interesting word! personally, what i find really neat is that "hurt" is both an intransitive verb used for the person being wounded and a transitive verb for the act of wounding someone. it's an intriguing concept to think of pain as something that draws connections between people. something that weaves together victim and perpetrator in some inseparable way. that you can't hurt someone without it changing you as well. idk what exactly that says about pain as a human experience, and it's a lot of using imagination and metaphor to extract and extend meaning from language, but it's still fascinating!