*comes to the party 5ever late*

*but with no starbucks bc im an ill-prepared fuck* Ryan, 20-something, they/them, don’t “she” me if you don’t know me, I’m not female thx. Queer. Mobile-only user, so I know my formatting sucks. I’ve been here too long to care, frankly. Proud spouse of @industrialgradejesus. Terfs/Swerfs/Evangelicals/Pedophilia apologists/White Nationalists DNI you will be blocked.

[becquerel]

frustrations: sometimes inspired works of another media have their own things to say separate from the work that may have inspired them. i think this is why the hunger games can stand on its own without necessarily knowing battle royale, despite their considerable plot overlap in terms of children in a death game setting. the criticisms of media and violence in battle royale are different than the ones in thg. compared to, say, the hunger games and divergent, where divergent has used the aesthetic and idea of the hunger games without understanding the meanings and themes or creating its own!

i don't know, i guess i'm kind of sick of hearing the the hunger games and battle royale have the same base plot, but there's more to both of the base material than just that plot, and i think it's a bit of a disservice to both to think of them like this.

[becquerel]

its 2023 i feel like this sort of criticism of "well this media is inspired off another" is in the same boat as "well actually this movie toooootally didn't make sense because i didn't suspend my disbelief" kind of criticism

[becquerel]

the hunger games is the ultimate example of this because it does do new things in a new cultural context different than battle royale's. THG and BR are both great works and I stand by this. the other good comparison is madoka magica in that its derived from other works, but still comes away with its new takeaway being that the perseverance of young girls despite everything will overcome odds. And Yet the derivatives of madoka in the "dark magical girl" genre tend to... miss that overarching theme of hope and center it solely on the suffering. the reason shows like magical girl raising project and magical girl site suck isn't because they're madoka derivatives, they suck because they aren't written well and don't do anything interesting with the themes presented by their predecessors, and come off more insulting by not attempting to engage with that hope-in-spite-of-it-all theme meaningfully.

[becquerel]

cinemasins style movie criticism and "well this has a similar plot basis to something before it" aren't really all that meaningful in criticism of works in the long term and also don't hold up super well on their own

[prokopetz]

I feel like the legal institution of adoption is unreasonably limited by restricting it to parent-child relationships. If me and some random asshole want to legally be second cousins, I think we should just be able to do that.

[taciturn-nerd]

This concept is hilarious. Yes we're now cousins but there's no aunts/uncles/parents connecting us. Cut out the middle man completely. We're just family but not directly related ya know?

[prokopetz]

You understand me precisely.

[prokopetz]

For everybody saying "well ACTUALLY you can just decide to call whoever you want your uncle/cousin/whatever", this isn't about kinship – it's about bureaucracy. I want to cause problems on purpose.

[sidecast-text]

dog time AKA the only reason i've been managing not to overwork myself

[sidecast-text]

death of the author except when its funny

[hellomelancholic]

Direct byproduct of being neurodivergent and growing up isolated from your peergroup is having no idea when it's appropriate to define someone as your friend

[hellomelancholic]

Is this person I met yesterday my friend? What about this person I've been talking to every day for three months? What about this person I've known since middle school? Is friend a title I have to earn? What are the limits of friendship? Is it a static state, make-or-break, or is it some endless dance-dance-revolution style cavalcade of prompts and challenges and social cues I have to hit perfectly to keep it up? Does it bend? Does it break? I don't fucking know man I just work here.

[dubiousculturalartifact]

i still remember when the dude doing my autism assessment asked me how many friends I had, and I was like "okay but how are we defining friendship?" and he just like, stared at me for a second and then wrote down some notes

[hxgrl]

I don't Think ive seen anyone on here talking abt some US states forcing teachers to remove all books from their classrooms and force them to only have pre-vetted books available or else face possible JAIL TIME ???

[hxgrl]

Not to sound like a twitter user but why aren't people talking about this omg

[hxgrl]

(link to this cnn article) ^

Please note the third degree felony???

(link to this tweet) ^

Also lots of articles if you search "Florida book ban" or smth similar online. I'm just shocked I've not seen much about this, maybe people don't know it's happening??

[slowtovvn]

If you're not completely plugged in Ron DeSantis, the governor doing this, is the republican front runner for president next year.

[ceevee5]

[quasi-normalcy]

I fear a fresh wave of the plague

[sarcasmgal-blog]

Update from twitter

[brunhiddensmusings]

i want to explain to people- the lower bit is accurate you probably pay way more in taxes/rent then a medieval peasants well as have less time off of work

[variksel]

i hate you ai art i hate you "unalive" i hate you youtube premium i hate you twitter 8$ checkmark i hate you nfts i hate you therapy app advertisements i hate you non-chronological timelines i hate you instagram reels i hate you subtle tiktok filters that cant be turned off i hate you family bloggers i hate you ads on true crime episodes i hate you facebook i hate you vr glasses on chickens i hate you dystopian social media

[frogmoss1]

I

LOVE

COCK!!!

[roycecoolldge]

Co-signed‼️

[mortimermcmirestinks]

people keep trying to make "ladies and gentlemen" more inclusive.

I think we should go the other way around.

make more and more weird false dichotomies in greetings. "gamers and pianists". "oil painters and swordsmen". "vexillologists and entomologists". "chess masters and diamond artificers". "accountants and gendered individuals".

we need to be dropping shit into formal meetings to make people say "wait what? which one am I?"

[lovetheirloves]

I have started referring to my students as “critters and creatures.” I then offer them the option to decide where on the critter–creature spectrum they think they belong. They enjoy this immensely. I teach some critters, some creatures, some 50/50s, some critters with creature tendencies, some creatures with critter inclinations.

[ztu2455]

all i have to say is 'hello cowards' and it shuts gendering up

[the-haiku-bot]

all i have to say

is ‘hello cowards’ and it

shuts gendering up

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[metanarrates]

you can instantly make a cool female character if you just take any stereotypically masculine character type and make him a butch lady. easiest trick in the book. you can try this at home

[metanarrates]

im not talking even about broad scale archetypes like Action Hero. those are cool don't get me wrong but if you take more specific stock characters such as "cartoonish mob boss" or "gentleman detective" or "elderly mad scientist" then you have an instant hit on your hands. lesbians WILL love you forever and you WILL be the most interesting person around

[headspace-hotel]

One of the things that struck me about Robin Wall Kimmerer's perspective when I was reading Braiding Sweetgrass was the way the ethical obligation to life she discussed contrasted with the colonizer's culture.

It is increasingly popular to find it inherently unethical and exploitative to kill animals for food or to farm them for animal products, and instead eat and wear "plant-based" things. This is an impulse toward ethical treatment of non-human living things.

But this way of seeing animals as "lives" and behaving accordingly, depends on seeing plants as non-lives. Asking whether we have ethical obligations toward plants is so absurd, it's dismissed as trolling.

I've known many people who farmed or hunted animals who had a great reverence for their lives. Some people would think that this is not genuine and that it is never morally acceptable to take a life for your own use.

Kimmerer discusses Indigenous use of animals. But when a tree needs to be cut down or a plant uprooted, there is the same vivid awareness that a life is being taken, that the plant's life is A Life.

Now I'm troubled by the dismissal of plants as providing total freedom from guilt and moral responsibility among many people and organizations who see animal life as deeply sacred. Plant based products are cruelty-free alternatives to animal products and plant-based diets mean nothing had to die for your meal.

I understand not wanting to support cruel industries or being uncomfortable with eating animals, but the more I learn about plants, the less I believe that all animals have something all plants lack, that means we have moral obligations toward animals and not toward plants.

Plants are incredibly unlike us, but they respond to their environments, they communicate with other plants, and they engage in behaviors. Objection to potential plant intelligence and sentience (ability to feel) is more cultural than scientific; we are just only beginning to scratch the surface of the inner world of plants. What if we have to respect plants as life? What does respect mean then, if we have to explore the idea that it doesn't necessarily contradict taking life?

[cha-c-san]

Gender thoughts with no satisfying conclusion :l 

[my-atla-fan-blog]

[space-feminist]

it's always so fucking funny to me when terfs are like "how can you say trans women and women are the same thing! being born as a man makes you different!" because like. yes. trans women and cis women are different. so are black women and white women. and straight women and queer woman. and women from different countries and different socioeconomic statuses. there's diversity in the experience of womanhood? what a wild concept

[space-feminist]

incidentally, this why terfs tend to be white women. from the combahee river collective statement, 1977:

...we reject the stance of Lesbian separatism because it is not a viable political analysis or strategy for us. It leaves out far too much and far too many people, particularly Black men, women, and children. We have a great deal of criticism and loathing for what men have been socialized to be in this society: what they support, how they act, and how they oppress. But we do not have the misguided notion that it is their maleness, per se—i.e., their biological maleness—that makes them what they are. As BIack women we find any type of biological determinism a particularly dangerous and reactionary basis upon which to build a politic. 

(emphasis mine)

[dentes-mentis]

"To argue that transsexual women should not enter [women-exclusive spaces] because their experiences are different would have to assume that all other women's experiences are the same, and this is a racist assumption. The argument that transsexual women have experienced some degree of male privilege should not bar them from our communities once we realize that not all women are equally privileged or oppressed."

(from "Whose feminism is it, anyway?" by Emi Koyama)

[stele3]

This. This is the core of it. This is why trans-exclusionary radical feminism is rooted in racism, colonialism, and imperialism. It excludes the idea that there can be any other type of “woman” except one very (white, colonialist, imperialist) definition.

[animentality]

[thebibliosphere]

Our home security system is being updated today, and the guy in charge is just peak Gen Z, no professional fucks given vibe and it's hysterical.

"I mean, I'm supposed to recommend stuff, like you should probably put a sensor on that window too, but like, that's really a you decision. I just have to say this stuff out loud so I don't get sued if you get broken into."

[thebibliosphere]

"So, like, just to clarify, you don't want the cameras, right? Only I need to make sure because sometimes people say no on the phone, and then when I'm leaving, they ask me why I haven't installed the cameras yet, and I'm just like, that's a you problem, I'm going home."

[thebibliosphere]

*leaning around the corner of my office to talk to me* "Hey, do you know where [Mothman] went? Actually, never mind, you're probably the detail-oriented one. I can tell by the *gestures at my candy-floss-colored goth office* whatever this is.

So like, the new alarm panel is smaller than the old one, and the old one pulled off some of the paint, I can try to hide it, but it won't be perfect... You don't care? Sweet. I'm always ready for people to yell at me."

[thebibliosphere]

"Hey, so I need to test the smoke alarm before we put it up, but I don't want to frighten your little dog. I'll try to muffle it, but you might want to hold her." *clutching the alarm to his abdomen like Steve Rogers falling on a grenade* "I'm sorry little dog, I'm so sorry."

[marxistprincess]

This is a picture of a cis woman, y’all are literally just racist

[marxistprincess]

[torchickentacos]

TERFS DID THIS TO ME ON TUMBLR. I got an anon telling me I passed terribly. like. I'm literally cis and by telling me I do not pass, you are showing that you view womanhood in ways that are not only regressive for trans folk but also regressive and harmful for the very cis women you claim to support and prioritize. They uphold the very beauty and gender performative standards they seek to diminish. Fuck terfs.

[thelovers-thedreamers-and-me]

reminds me of the time i got an anon saying i would NEVER be a real woman no matter HOW much makeup i wore. like, thanks for the affirmation bud i guess

[godloveyell]

Allow me to introduce you to the WTF, World! of transvestigators. Seriously, this is actually a thing

Unhinged ‘Transvestigators’ Think They’re the Only Cis People Left

Once you buy into their hateful conspiracy theory, you’ll turn against anyone

[facelessoldgargoyle]

[image ID: Elon Musk in profile walking behind another man. A curvy black line has been drawn behind his shoulder and back. Pink block letters read, “Even when wearing a suit, Elon’s curvy female spine is evident.” /end ID]

[varietysky]

someone in the notes brought up the TERF to White supremacist pipeline and it made me think of this tweet:

[charlesoberonn]

America has a weird relationship with cults where they’re terrified of small cults (or organizations they think are cults) but completely normalized massive cults that hurt many more people (eg: LDS Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Amish, Scientology, most Megachurches)

[charlesoberonn]

To anybody asking if the Amish are a cult, the answer is yes, very much so.

They’re a high control group that isolate you from society. The cult decides how you dress, how you behave, who you marry and how. They control what you know, blocking all information from the outside world. They control how you feel and what you’re allowed to think with threats of both social and supernatural harm. They’re a cult.

[charlesoberonn]

The best method to determine if a group is a cult, in my opinion, is Steven Hassan’s (cult expert and former cult member himself) BITE model.

BITE stands for Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control, and Emotional Control.

The more points a group “scores” on the model, the more of a cult it is.

I think this model is the best one for several reasons:

It’s more nuanced than “cult” or “not cult” and doesn’t make false equivalences between groups

It’s versatile, applying to groups big and small, and cults of all kinds, religious, political, financial, etc.

It focuses on what’s important, which is what the cult does to its members, and those members’ experiences, and not on irrelevant details like how uncommon their doctrines are or whether they have a charismatic leader

[charlesoberonn]

This is a great example of Thought Control used by cults whenever they’re confronted with criticism.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

#you might notice that there are a lot of similarities between cult techniques and those of abusive partners#and that is an important thing to be aware of

yah that goes in the post

[charlesoberonn]

The creator of the BITE Model considers abusive relationships to be two-person cults.