It bothers me a lot how so much of how tumblr has decided is the “right way” to do disabled representation is so. Alien from actual disabled experiences. Your good disabled representation has to have a lightweight, low backed, sporty manual wheelchair. Dont think about the fact that many wheelchair users can’t self propel in a manual chair, or that most people can only afford the most basic standard hospital chair. Dont you know that’s bad representation! Your cane user OC shouldn’t be putting more than 20 percent of their weight on their cane because that’s Wrong, don’t worry about how canes are the most accessible mobility aid and be plenty of people who should actually be using crutches or a rollator are using cane out of necessity and will have to use them “incorrectly” that’s bad representation. They shouldn’t be embarrassed or ashamed of their medical devices, they should always wear their ostomy bag outside of their clothes, because that’s the way I can show my viewers that I care about representation! All feeding tubes go through the nose right? That way I can show off my representation! They can all help in their own way! Just because they’re disabled doesn’t mean they can’t lift heavy boxes, or join an adventuring party, or play sports, or be a punk rocker! They can’t be suicidal: that’s bad representation! They can be angry but only ever at the obviously evil ableist cardboard cutout villain. Never at their own limitations, or at the well meaning protagonist who doesn’t even have to be told how to make the setting 100% accessible. Everything less is Bad Representation!
I thought it'd be fun if I made aliens that respirate CO² into O² like plants but I started thinking about how I'm not actually sure how exactly those chemical processes work and now I'm on the wikipedia page for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate
hard sci-fi is when the last quarter of the book is made of research papers references, scientific footnotes and explanation of the rabbit hole that author committed
the “sexy lamp test” but for disabled folks: if you can replace your disabled character with a beloved pet dog that needs an expensive surgery to survive then you have to throw out your manuscript
the problem with knowing things about battle tactics is that an ever-increasing subset of popular media becomes impossible to enjoy properly because you have to sit there like 'wow Captain Protagonist good to know all those dead people on your own side are a direct result of your total lack of anything resembling brains'
seriously i'm not talking about anything elaborate, just basic common sense, but common sense is so much harder to ignore once you've got systematized data to back it up, like
what do they even think a fortification is for???
what do you think a shield is for. what do you think ranged weapons are for????
make the other sonuvabitch have a hard time killing you without getting killed first! most basic goal of combat! why are movies so bad at writing characters who actually attempt this on even a very small 'army' scale?
and like i said in the first post, it's not just that it's Dumb, the thing is that once you put the character in a command role, their ability to think their way through a combat situation with some degree of optimization becomes a reflection on their character on like. a moral level.
if your tactics are dumb and reckless but you usually win and it's just you punching people that's one thing. or even if it's you and five guys who've decided they like how you roll!
but if you are put in charge of soldiers. and you throw their lives away because you don't know what you're doing. that's not okay.
it's not always avoidable! one of the basic problems with armies! but when it happens in fiction it needs to be on purpose, to make sure the military elements of the narrative remain thematically congruent.
when you have a bit where Main Character is in command and then makes avoidable bad decisions and people die who didn't have to. either the protagonist has been put in a horrific position by whatever authority figure thrust them into a role they didn't want and weren't competent to handle, without support.
or the protagonist, voluntarily assuming a management job they suck at, has committed a grievous harm against others by not recognizing their own limitations.
even if they win! i don't want to be watching a movie where the main character squanders every tactical advantage and loses 40% of their forces totally unnecessarily for Narrative Tension, but the enemy retreats or gets eaten by a dragon or loses the MacGuffin or whatever, and then there's triumphant music and a party because They Won!!!
no! they fucked it up is what they did! this is some Light Brigade gaslighting shit! shut up. our boy just massacred people who trusted him.
kind of a tangent but this is also how I feel when the good guys mow their way through dozens of faceless grunts and then suddenly the big bad in charge is the life they face a moral quandary over
the random foot soldiers and henchmen's lives matter too! tbh
I think it’s worth noting that history is littered with examples of wasteful tactics. A common element is that often times technology advances while tactics do not.
For example, in the American Civil War, the tactics used of soldiers, marching into open fueled, and exchanging musket fire was not all that different than the tactics of the American revolution a little under 100 years prior. However, the rifles that infantry men were armed with were significantly more accurate. As a result, casualties, both in terms of lives lost, and soldiers, injured were horrific.
The concept of trench warfare in World War I was not all that different from wars, fought all over the continent in the century prior, and were designed to try and curb advantages of cavalry. But again, of mortars, more accurate, rifles, and chemical warfare meant that charging trenches resulted in truly grotesque numbers of casualties.
There is certainly evidence that World War I era generals were fairly callous when it came to casualty figures. They were more interested in territory gained. And it mattered very little how many lives that cost since soldiers were replaceable.
I agree that there should be some narrative coherence when protagonist squander advantages due to bad tactics, but when you look at actual history, it’s very clear that even if there are “good guys“ and “bad guys“ in war, there’s also just a lot of waste. That doesn’t make for a very sexy narrative, but it’s the nature of the beast. Militaries in particular are conservative institutions slow to change. you do things a certain way because that is the way they are done. That will always get people killed. But that’s also excepted as the way things are done.
At the end of the day, I’m just not sure there is a good way to organize two groups of people trying to kill each other.
I think the more interesting question is, should there be?
i mean maybe, but that's not what the post is about, it's about fiction that places warfare centrally, but then engages with it only on an aesthetic level.
thereby creating major ruptures in the narrative logic and characterization for anyone who knows (for example) what the point of a wall is.
this is a writing complaint, about failure to adequately situate motive within character and maintain internal consistency.
i'm not going to ask every piece of fiction that wants to have swords in it to engage in a meditation on the nature of conflict. that sounds boring, and also like it's asking too much of people. i'm aiming way lower here.
the problem is a general failure to care enough about the battle as an event within a narrative to make the pieces go together according to an internal logic. people being dumb is fine as long as they're dumb on purpose. people not doing The Most Winning Thing is fine as long as the priorities they're supposed to have are the priorities they're actually displaying.
There's nothing more frustrating as an audience than being told "this person is a Good Person who Cares about their men and is also a Genius Tactician" and being shown a clown that never thinks before getting most of their people needlessly killed.
friend of mine recommended a video essay that's like 5 hours long about why it's currently a whole Thing for fascists to claim they only eat meat and demonize vegetables etc etc, and it's genuinely quite well researched in many places and contains some fascinating history and has made me feel very weird about my status as an adult who enjoys drinking milk. but I've not finished it and I genuinely don't know if I will because at one point the ol' "you can't say you care about animals and also eat animals" chestnut got dropped by the white vegan essayist and it put such a bad taste in my mouth that I had to leave instantly
like idk man it just feels genuinely parodic to dedicate hours to analyzing how foodways have frequently been used as white supremacist propaganda and then casually toss out an argument that pretty invariably demonizes indigenous hunting practices with 0 regard for traditional knowledge and land stewardship guiding those practices
Every time I hear a white vegan say that I want to throw the rubble of the Klamath Dams at them.
The largest dam removal in U.S. history. So successful that the salmon that haven’t run freely in the river for literally over a century came back the next year. Not steady progress over a decade as expected, the very next salmon run they came home. No one alive saw salmon in that river outside the hatcheries kept by native’s tribes and the Department of Fish And Wildlife scientists desperately trying to save them. One of the activists who helped bring the suit spoke of their dying grandmother making them promise to bring the fish home, and they didn’t know how that was possible, but they spent decades doing it.
The legal basis for successfully suing the power company who owned the dams was Indigenous treaty rights to eat the fish. Eating the fish was the one thing in a century that succeeded in being a clear and legally binding right that superseded the desires of white capital and industry. I have been going to the public interest environmental law conference off and on for 20 years where a lot of organizing for Undam The Klamath happened. I’ve heard updates about every legal tact they tried as they happened, and they tried everything.
There are healthy, thriving salmon, trout, and lamprey in a rewilding and recovering Klamath River right now as a direct result of Indigenous people eating them. Of their legally binding right to eat them. They sure as fuck care more about those fish than any white vegan ever could. They are salmon people that the Creator sent Salmon to feed, while charging the People with protecting and stewarding them. It’s not possible to learn about salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest without learning this, and it’s unambiguously racist to dismiss this symbiotic relationship.
The white vegans are trying to get all hunting and fishing banned in Oregon, and that’s quite possibly the single most catastrophic thing that could be done to the animals here because we killed off all the major predators of creatures like deer and without anything hunting them their numbers will explode, eat all the vegetation, destroy the ecosystem, and then die along with everything else in that failing ecosystem. Controlled hunting of deer is vitally necessary for the deer to survive. This is something Native people know, but patronizing racist savior-complex white people refuse to listen to.
I have a whole collection of Oregon’s Public Broadcasting’s documentaries about Klamath River or the larger story of fish and people in the region. If you watch nothing else, watch Klamath Dams Are Coming Out, First Salmon Ceremony, After The Dams, and First Decent (Native made). It could not be clearer that the salmon are being protected and nourished by the people who eat them, and that stewardship is a massive part of their creation myths. But it contradicts political vegan dogma so they don’t listen.
#also do you have any idea how much conservation is funded by people who want to eat those animals#at least in the us anytime someone buys ammo or hunting equipment or hunting licenses that money goes directly to state wildlife agencies
ok i feel crazy reading through the tag for sinners because theres this very weird pervasive notion that it seems like people do not understand remmick and his kkk member first victims are in fact lying repeatedly throughout the movie. like they lie. we know they lie because they promise all they want is to come inside and play music for the juke joint. that is not true at all as they want to come inside and kill everyone.
so why are there so many posts resting on the notion that they are unable to lie when these same vampires say they dont believe in the kkk anymore and just want equality.
"when remmick de-racist-ifyed the former kkk members" did we watch the same movie. no the fuck he did not. that woman was lying when she said they no longer worked with the kkk. because she wanted to eat the people still inside. good lord.
We established incredibly early on to the movie that the KKK lie! It's their main thing! They lie that the vampire ain't in their house, they lie that the Klan is gone, they lie about that musician to lynch him in a train station. Folks ain't got no media literacy.
FINALLY someone brings up how they were lying about the Klan from jump! We literally saw the dudes Klan robes in the house before/when the Choctaw hunters were chasing Remmick down! They dead just didn't pay attention to anything in the movie!
Corporate Glossary: every Friday, learn the secret meaning of common corporate words
“They’re trying to discharge her constructively. Do you know what Constructive Discharge means?” She asked.
As soon as I heard the term ‘Constructive Discharge,’ I knew I’d never seen it on a vocabulary quiz.
“No. What does it mean?” I asked.
She explained.
“Constructive discharge is a fancy way of saying “being forced out.” It’s not good. And if you’re not a lawyer or in human resources, you’ll probably learn what it means when it’s happening to you.”
“Oh my God. I’ve seen this my entire career and never knew it even had a name.” I thought.
You’ve seen constructive Discharge too. You may have experienced it. We’ve all made choices to avoid it.
Constructive discharge defined
“We can’t fire you, but we’ll make you so miserable you’ll quit, and then we won’t have to pay your unemployment.”
Then there’s the textbook definition:
“A constructive discharge occurs when your employer has made working conditions unbearable, forcing you to resign.”
Or as one person put it.
“I didn’t get handed a pink slip, but when you’re not wanted, people have a way of letting you know.”
HR isn’t always the secret police.
Employees aren’t always victims of evil-doers.
However, employers push employees out all the time to maintain and protect the, “We didn’t do anything wrong, YOU did,” power structure.
Constructive Discharge looks like this:
— Meeting invitations slow to a trickle, and you’re excluded from emails and generally looped out of what’s going on.
— People stop talking to you or stop talking when you walk in.
— Your emails don’t get answers, or they arrive too late to be of value.
— Suddenly, your work is not good enough, though nothing about your work has changed.
— Reviews, once good or even glowing, are now mediocre or bad.
— Instead of a bonus, you get a Performance Improvement Plan.
— Warnings and write-ups start so they can justify your eventual termination with documentation of your “poor performance”
— Your work, clients, assignments go away, or they overwhelm you with work.
— The words “Set up to fail” were practically invented to describe this scenario.
Constructive Discharge is illegal
It isn’t easy to prove you’re a target, and it’s even more challenging if you don’t even know constructive discharge is a real thing.
If you’ve ever experienced this and don’t fully understand what’s happening to you beyond knowing you’re in the process of being excommunicated, it can be hell. It’s not uncommon for the experience to leave long-lasting scars.
Talk to anyone who’s ever been through it. They’ll tell you.
Knowing constructive discharge exists and how it’s used gives you power to predict what’s coming and to protect yourself.
Seeing the endgame helps you in two ways.
You know what to expect. Having a sense of what’s coming next is enormously empowering.
You can go on the offensive and protect yourself. Constructive discharge works to crush your ego, making you feel you did something wrong and deserve this treatment.
Without strategy, you end up being a miserable pawn in your employer’s endgame.
Remember, they’re almost certainly building a case to fire you in the event the hellscape they create for you doesn’t persuade you to quit.
If you’re getting pushed out, and you know what to look for you can prove constructive discharge and you can get unemployment benefits, be released from payback obligations on a signing bonus, and protect your mental health.
You’re not crazy, incompetent, or a failure. This is real and it’s carefully executed to leave you holding the bag and feeling like you did something wrong.
If they force you out, in addition to feeling horrible, you lose your paycheck, benefits health insurance, and possibly owe them money.
It’s so funny how like. Spock is queer bc of the subtext, the Otherness inextricable from his character, meanwhile William Shatner was handed the straightest man of all time on paper and fumbled the bag bc he couldn’t stop giving Leonard Nimoy fuck-me eyes and now he lives in a bi Kirk hell of his own devising, forever enduring the conshatquences of his shactions
I always think of the description I saw years ago: Self-imposed deadlines don't help me, because I know the person who set them, and they're full of shit.
Not getting a ton of reporting in US news, but the Trump administration is going after donors to Palestine, including going as far as international extradition under the guide of "counterterrorism"
"my great grandmother who survived 3 wars and raised 10 children by herself while working in a factory watching me go to therapy because my parents yelled at me" ok but your great grandmother was also miserable. maybe your great grandmother would be happy you try your best to not be miserable
i mean "posts about Black people" in a broad sense, that can mean anything from struggles to Black joy, and when you see the notes, most of the time it’s double digits, three if I'm being generous.
start being comfortable posting Black people's words in your blogs, the same way you'll reblog posts about transness, gayness, disability, because these specific topics can affect you
start actually giving a fuck about Black folks and reblogging our words is the barest minimum
