Fruit Mush and Air Conditioners

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[stigmatagloryhole-deactivated20]

[stability]

this is modern art

[juan-the-gecko]

Oh great, looks like the ‘vikings and leprechauns are gem culture‘ critter is back.

[bilations]

“You don’t suffer on the same scale as us so I’m just going to ignore your problems” is not and never will be a good argument.

[anti-anti-a-la-bi-bi]

Like, stop pretending that suffering is a contest. Everybody experiences it differently.

[snow-white-shadow]

THIS. THESE. ALL OF THEM ARE 101% VALID.

[hawlucha]

[sketchyfool]

you forgot this panel

[pissvortex]

[givinginandsigningup]

This is kind of bullshit on Jim’s part. She’s not responsible for her grandfather’s sins.

[pissvortex]

he didn’t even mention alessandra she went out of her way to defend her dead fascist grandfather

[iwilleatyourenglish]

Alessandra Mussolini is an adamant nationalist who has worked to glorify Italy’s past.

she founded Social Alternative, a coalition of alt-right political parties, when the conservative group to which she previously belonged, National Alliance, tried to move away from their fascist past. 

she also produced fraudulent signatures for an election in 2005 and, when she was criticized by transgender Italian MP candidate Vladimir Luxuria for being a fascist, she replied “better a fascist than a f***gt.”

in october of last year, she declared she’d sue anyone who spoke ill of her grandfather. 

as someone who has family that literally fled italy during his rise to power, all i can say is she is a fucking monster and i hope she rots in hell. the fact her family continues to have political power is a fucking disgrace.

[greenreticule]

I regret every moment I spent with “The Prequels Suck” crowd. I am, at this point, angry at the overwhelming reaction from people older than me that gradually shifted me into disliking The Phantom Menace.

I wouldn’t realize until [checks watch] 8 hours ago, but Ahmed Best as Jar Jar Binks didn’t “just” make me feel less lonely as a kid. He may very well have saved my life. But because I wanted the respect of the adults and the older kids around me, I joined the “Harhar Jar Jar sux” train.

Tying into more recent discussions… don’t take a dump on something because it’s “kiddy” (examples: Resistance for the SW fandom, Legacy of Onyx for Halo). Kids are listening to you, you are going to shape their opinion of the thing and, possibly by extension, of themselves.

You don’t have to like the thing, and you can call out harmful elements when you see them, but you also REALLY don’t have to dedicate your time to tearing that thing down. You have no idea what that “annoying” thing might mean for the kid listening to you. Hell, THEY might not have any idea.

They’re just a kid; they’re not going to be able to vocalize “This character helps me cope with the trauma I am currently developing and gives me an outlet to feel these things and explore these emotions without becoming self-destructive.”

All they might be able to articulate is “I like that character” or maybe even “I like that character because they are like me.” And if you, an older person, starts immaculately listing off all the faults or replies to their love every single time with “ugh. he’s awful,” which one are they going to hold onto?

It’s not “cool” to dump on kiddy things just because they don’t fit your particular tastes. It’s actually harmful and can rob a child of their ability to form their own opinions on things and maybe even rob them of their own self-worth. Don’t do it.

[mellebellemethod]

It happens this year folks…

[gattomeows]

[super-metroid]

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

SU Thoughts: Blue Court vs Yellow Court

As I’ve watched SU and thoughts about how the diamond courts function, I’m often left with two interesting contrasts between the twin diamonds’ courts.

Yellow’s Court seems to respect her and feel they are useful. While Blue’s fears her and seems to barely stand her as a person.

Why I think this is interesting, is how it relates to who the diamonds are and how that goes into their leadership style. As well as their ability to function as diamonds.

Yellow Diamond has often been presented as the worse of the two by her behaviour and her actions. But if we look a bit deeper into her character and ideals, she actually very much wants to be the most objective and fair decider and leader. While she has the rank system firmly in place, she doesn’t treat it as a factor of how important gems are. In her rant to Blue in CYM, she outright states that exceptions are not allowed for a reason.

She also notes to Connie that every gem must pull their weight in the empire. Herself and the other diamonds -absolutely- included. The whole argument, though heated, was about ‘Pink’ getting special treatment. Yellow might seem like a brute, but her morals are firm and fair.

It applies to her court as well. When Yellow Pearl says her opinions don’t matter, look at how she says that. It isn’t resigned or monotone, she is proud of it. Because it might be a Yellow Court ideal to be useful without opinions. Yellow listens to Peridot up until Earth-saving comes into the discussion, even after she tries to give Peri multiple chances to back down. Her composure and objectivity matter to her, no matter of her own opinions.

There have also been hints that Yellow’s Courtiers are given assistive technology if they are (acceptably) disabled. Peridot and Doc (the ruby) have ‘glasses’, Peridot has very functional limb enhancers and she had no issue with her status as an Era 2 gem until she was contrasted by gems who could shapeshift.

Keep reading

[somethingmissingthiswaycomes]

This fits into the sleep deprived rant I made a while back about Blue Diamond being a total biatch. I’m so glad someone else saw it: How Blue is so hyper-focused on her own feelings and the righteousness of them that she doesn’t or can’t see others as their own people with valid emotions and opinions, and how Yellow in particular is always willing to listen, no matter how tyrannical she is. This… very much more thoughtful analysis on it and how it affects their positions as rulers is very interesting.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

I have to note that I don’t see Blue as a total bitch. I think she, like Pink, is the result of being ill-fitting for the role of a diamond. Yellow wasn’t.

In CYM, Blue makes it clear that she doesn’t enjoy the enforcing of rules or the system. But she is so beaten down by White that she can’t see any other way but resignation to the fact.

This means the only time she can be herself is in private, like in the bath scene or with Greg on Earth. Given how that isn’t approbed behaviour to a diamond, she has to keep it hidden from White.

Hence why she is so selfish. Her life is about living in a system she did not make nor approve of and the only solace is brief moments in-between. Thus, Blue clings very heavily onto her wants to protect them from the erosion. There is a lot of petty anger in her and it reflects into her court.

She absolutely screwed up her own court and most of her relationships. But she isn’t a bitch, a bitch wouldn’t have admitted fault so quickly after being called out on continuing the cycle of abuse. Blue knows locking Pink into the tower is wrong, so when Steven snapped her out of her anger, she stopped. And tried to fix things for him.

[somethingmissingthiswaycomes]

Mmm, fair. She has improved, and I never meant to imply she didn’t have legitimate reasons to be the way she is (I 100% agree with your entire post), but I have personal reasons to be irritated with her specifically. I hope her redemption goes further than it has, because there are elements to her personality that still need some serious character development, imo. (Again: it’s legitimate, and no way is thousands of years of acting a certain way and being treated a certain way going to change in a week like that, so it’s not like I’m disappointed it hasn’t happened yet, just hopeful.)

That said, I don’t hate her as a character, or even a person outside the whole genocide thing. She just… reminds me of someone.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you did.

I mean, Blue is -deeply. flawed and a lot of her behaviour is pretty bad especially in public. I do very much think her Court is beyond salvaging at this point XD I do think her redemption arc will go further, as Blue does clearly want to change things. It might be harder for her, but she has the will. Also, I am sorry you had to deal with someone like that.

[loycos]

Sorry to jump in this discussion but I usually get intrigued by these types of arguments.

Because I dont believe one court is “better off” the other. You absolutely nailed down why Blue’s court is the way that it is and why Yellow’s is the way that it is… but in the grand scheme of things, Yellow’s gems are far less likely to look at themselves as individuals outside of a system (we saw how hard it was for Peridot to break out of this mentality). So yes, they definitely make for better working gems in the HW system, but we know how screwed that system is. So the fact that they fit it so perfectly will make it harder for them to break out. Blue’s pettiness, in a way, gave her gems a sense of self and and an easier way out.

Another thing is Blue’s selfishness. Yes, this gem is selfish. Boy, is she selfish. But I think that a lot of people confuse it with some sort of lack of empathy for some reason. Prior to CYM i mightve heavily supported this claim too- except, its was proven to be false. I think its wrong to say Blue doesnt care about her gems- she just feels helpless. She recognizes their misery, and compares it to her own (yes, this almighty Diamond recognizes feelings on other beings “below” her, and relates that to her own feelings- like she did with Greg all the way back when she was introduced). But that’s where the helplessness comes from- she compares their misery to herself, and realizes that just like her misery is inevitable and unchangeable, so is theirs. She wasnt made to be happy, so are they. She feels she has nothing to do to change it, because in the current system gems like them cannot find peace.

All of this doesnt redeem Blue in the slightest. She knew her gems were in pain and did nothing to change it. She didnt even try, at least not that we know of. I think another thing about Blue (that points to her lack of self awareness) is that she doesnt recognize that she has an active role in making other people miserable. She probably blamed it all on White or the system, and told herself shes only doing what she’s doing because she has to, not because she wants to, and that makes her faultless. That’s probably why she didnt even realized she made Pink so miserable. But we know that isnt true. And just because she didnt want to be a part of this system she still had a huge role in enforcing it. She didn’t choose to be in it, but every day she didn’t reject it she “chose” to participate in it. of course, there are many other factors that made her stay (hint: it wasn’t her free will) but that’s a whole other discussion.

Blue and Yellow are so fascinating because here we have a case of two people who were made into enforces in a system without their choice, who choose very different ways of handling it: one internalized it entirely, to a point she had to actively shove down her own feelings and wants to accept it. The other refused to turn away from her feelings and wants, but ended up stuck in misery she believed she has no way out of. And we can see aspects of these approaches ringing in their gems as well, though to different degrees.

[dying-suffering-french-stalkers]

some buffoon: [character] doesn’t deserve redemption and is horrible and everyone who likes them is also horrible and that’s the tea!!!

me:

[space-finally]

Yo could we all just like collectively stop calling things that are not Stockholm Syndrome “Stockholm Syndrome” just ‘cause it sounds buzzy?

[space-finally]

“She didn’t like him at first, but now she does! That’s Stockholm Syndrome! I am very smart!”

like….no

[yourfavedeserveslove]

Jasper from Steven Universe deserves love! 💛

[hajnarus]

Mah boy, Joseph can’t be fooled so easy!

[blogitalianissimo]

[reylohasmyheart]

Enemies-to-lovers Trope is Fine, says Tumblr, So Long As It’s Not Actually Enemies-to-lovers.

[skylersolo]

“um sweatie you’re shipping abuse. Enemies to lovers is actually when two people from two opposing sports teams in high school don’t get along and annoy each other but then end up falling in love. That’s what it is and don’t you get it twisted sweatie.”

[bonkai-diaries]

@itspileofgoodthings tags have me cRYING

[killowave]

[dracfics-deactivated20190918]

“If fiction can’t cause bad things to happen, how did Jaws cause a wave of shark killings?”

1. Jaws tapped into an extant fear of sharks. It was based on four fatal shark attacks in 1916, at a time when Americans were largely ignorant of sharks and weren’t sure whether they could even bite humans. These real-life attacks caused an irrational fear, which Jaws exploited. 

2. Stephen King’s Cujo did not tap into an extant fear of St. Bernards. It was based off real-life events (specifically, a visit King once made to a mechanic, where a St. Bernard growled at him) but Americans did not fear St. Bernards. Culturally, dogs were beloved as family pets, and people could read or watch Cujo without suddenly developing a desire to murder their pets.

Both Jaws and Cujo were bestselling novels with popular, high-grossing film adaptations. If fiction affects reality the way antis claim it does, then Cujo should have caused a wave of dog slayings – especially since Cujo itself was just one book at the tail end of a horror fiction trend for evil dogs (including masterpieces such as Hell Hound, Dog Kill, Rabid, The Pack, The Dogs, The Long Dark Night, The Haven, and Blood Snarl). Weirdly enough, US and UK readers were able to read and enjoy these books without mass slaughtering their Jack Russell terriers.

When you argue that Jaws caused shark killings (instead of acknowledging that America already feared sharks and considered killing them a non-issue), you’re aligning yourself with uneducated parents who blame first-person shooters (or Richard Bachman’s Rage, now out of print) for school shootings. Angry, depressed teens with murderous fantasies will seek out media which seems to align with their fantasies – such as Doom or Marilyn Manson’s music. If they don’t find this media, they kill anyway. If the media they find condemns their fantasies, they kill anyway. Parents blame media because they don’t understand how a teenager can kill other teenagers, so they need a boogeyman to point fingers at (there’s a lot of reading on this topic, but my personal favorite is Why Kids Kill by Dr. Peter Langman). 

So, what does fiction do? Not much, on its own. It’s a tool people can use to explore new ideas (e.g., a closeted gay kid may see Kurt on Glee and use that character to explore the concept that gay people aren’t innately bad) or to reinforce the ideals they already hold. For example, a white person with nascent racist ideals may watch Birth of a Nation (1915) and come away cheerily convinced that racism is perfectly fine; but the same person may also watch Jordan Peele’s Get Out and come away with the same exact cheerful conviction, even though Get Out rather explicitly condemns racism. No matter what the message is, people will twist it to fit their own ideals. 

Any piece of fiction can be used for any purpose. Unfortunately, the same applies to nonfiction. Dr. Amy Hammel-Zabin’s Conversations with a Pedophile is intended to educate parents so they can recognize when their parents are being groomed, but it can also be used by pedophiles as a handbook on how to groom a child. 

The solution isn’t to ban any book that could potentially reinforce a negative value, because every single book ever published has that capacity. Every fanfiction, no matter how fluffy or G-rated, could theoretically convince a pedophile that child molestation is okay – because pedophiles are seeking that confirmation everywhere they go, and when they don’t find it, they’ll twist the source material so that they do. 

Not to dump a South Park meme on you, but…

Don’t know why I still have to say this.

[antis-delete-your-blogs-pls-thx]

Even the most famous school shooters themselves acknowledged their love of violent media wasn’t what caused their own violent impulses. Eric Harris specifically described how he alone was culpable for his actions. And for someone who liked to blame others for isolating him socially, I think that says a lot.

[likeabxrdinflight]

The relationship between fiction and reality is much less causal than people want to make it. A lot of what fiction does is reflect things we already believe. Since fiction is so often taken into a social justice narrative, let’s talk about a type of representation that I know a lot about- mental illness in the media.

A lot of it is bad. You got your serial killer psychopaths, your “haunted” mental hospitals, literally anything that could be compared to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (which is a great movie but suuuuuuper dated), a lot of inaccuracies. Oh and the multiple personalities thing a la Psycho. Lot of yikes.

But the thing with these movies is that they don’t change anyone’s opinions on mental illness. All they do is reinforce ideas that already exist, and have existed for a long time, about mental illness. Mentally ill people were being called demons and locked into dungeons a long ass time before Norman Bates ever killed anyone. 

Or perhaps we can talk about a more egregious example of a harmful take on mental illness- Thirteen Reasons Why. There were several copy-cat suicides that took place after this show aired, and there’s no denying that the show had an influence. But the sad reality is that the people who took their lives were most likely already depressed, already predisposed to suicidal ideation, and easily bought into the romanticization of suicide that the show portrays. And while I 100% agree 13RW did a bad job portraying depression and suicide, suicide has been romanticized far beyond the scope of that one show. The show didn’t cause anyone to die by suicide. It only influenced what was already there. 

So is it bad to push for newer, better, more accurate representation of mental illness in the media? Absolutely fucking not. But that push is representative of a slowly shifting culture around mental illness. The changes we’re seeing in our society as scientific understanding of mental illness increases is changing the way we see things. It’s changed the way we see older films like Psycho, and it’s changing the way we depict mental illness in future films. But what’s behind that is really science, is the hard work of activists who’ve fought to end stigma. 

Fiction isn’t a causal variable. It’s a moderator. In statistics, a moderator is a variable that significantly strengthens the relationship between an independent and dependent variable, but it doesn’t explain the relationship nor does it account for all of the variance (meaning the relationship between the independent and dependent variable is still significant without the moderator, it’s just less significant.) This is what fiction is. It strengthens and reinforces ideas we already have, or it can reflect how those ideas are changing. But it doesn’t cause anything. Except, hopefully, for you to think. 

[faelapis]

whenever i see those posts like “it’s ok to like nice characters! you’re not boring, it’s ok to like good people!”, i respect the sentiment, i do, but… is this really an issue? 

there’s a huge culture of praising characters for their good deeds, treating them as if they’re real people and their niceness makes a difference. that’s not necessarily a bad thing, in and of itself… but we all know there’s people getting bothered, or even harassed, for liking characters who aren’t nice. and i don’t just mean your typical Villain - whenever a character does something bad, you’re expected to take a Stance on that action. either defend or Acknowledge their bad deeds. you’re expected to regularly call out your favorites, no matter if you like them for personal comfort or you get where they’re coming from. if you don’t, that’s treated as if you’d condone X Action in real life. 

i personally don’t think this is helpful, even if i understand how this culture came about. it seems like a transfer of celebrity culture. calling out real life celebrities for their behavior is helpful. educating those who have huge followings is a good idea… but criticisms about how that happens aside, i don’t like how it’s translated into fictional characters. at all. their actions don’t. exist. they haven’t actually hurt anyone. 

and yet, you can’t just… like them, which is a luxury you have with focusing on the “good” characters. the “right” characters. the fandom faves, who are Pure and Good and can do no wrong. yeah, real controversial to like those /sarcasm.

there’s also a lack of nuance here, where some try to separate fans of problematic* characters into “good fans” and “bad fans” - Good Fans are constantly falling over themselves to acknowledge how shitty their faves are, their bad deeds and how Evil they are. they usually like them for some small, innocent reason like their voice or design, but wouldn’t complain if they got killed off. Bad Fans will defend everything they say and do, as if they’re unquestionably morally perfect. nothing their fave does is ever an issue and they won’t stand for anyone criticizing them. 

(* (old man voice) in my day, a problematic character was one who was an offensive stereotype - or an otherwise deeply troubling portrayal - not every character who isn’t a goshdarn cinnamon roll. but you get what i mean. )

but there’s not much talk of how Good Fans might put other characters on that pedestal in contrast, and ignore their flaws, which turns into a pretty uncomfortable double standard. or how Bad Fans can be great people who have been through a lot, and maybe like their faves for deeply personal reasons, or that sometimes, there is legitimate reason to defend them. being an antagonist, or even Straight Up Evil, doesn’t mean always being in the wrong.

but really, most fans are a combination of these “types”. most fans will defend them if they feel the character has been unfairly criticized (ie double standards), not criticized period. most of them will, however, not turn a blind eye to everything, but are tired of being expected to Acknowledge the sins of their fave as if they’d hurt someone irl.