Anyway, here’s Vanderwaal.

JVL
almost home

blake kathryn
YOU ARE THE REASON
i don't do bad sauce passes

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
Cosimo Galluzzi
Keni

pixel skylines
sheepfilms
Cosmic Funnies
RMH
TVSTRANGERTHINGS

Andulka

Kiana Khansmith
Xuebing Du
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Game of Thrones Daily

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"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
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@myplaceholderurl
Anyway, here’s Vanderwaal.
Community Appreciation Week 2018 - Day 7: Free choice
↳ [insp.]
Doctor Who, “Heaven Sent” by Steven Moffat // Groundhog Day, “Hope” by Tim Minchin
Keep reading
> Andrew Hussie is a blessed fountain of wisdom and inanity.
I feel that “vehement defense of exploration” bit on a spiritual level
You will know a tree by its fruit.
White Evangelical Christians opposed desegregation tooth and nail. Where pressed, they made cheap, cosmetic compromises, like Billy Graham’s concession to allow black worshipers at his crusades. Graham never made any difficult statements on race, never appeared on stage with his “black friend” Martin Luther King after 1957, and he never marched with King. When King delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech,” Graham responded with this passive-aggressive gem of Southern theology, “Only when Christ comes again will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.” For white Southern evangelicals, justice and compassion belong only to the dead.
https://www.politicalorphans.com/the-article-removed-from-forbes-why-white-evangelicalism-is-so-cruel/
Forbes took it down. Heres a repost
“What today we call “evangelical Christianity,” is the product of centuries of conditioning, in which religious practices were adapted to nurture a slave economy. The calloused insensitivity of modern white evangelicals was shaped by the economic and cultural priorities that forged their theology over centuries.“
The moral theology of The Good Place is so broken. I mean, you have Tahani, who was sentenced to an eternity of torture in the afterlife for not being sufficiently selfless and pure in her motivations in life, despite the fact that she did make an enormous positive impact in the lives of many people and did a lot of good humanitarian work. But then, you also have Chidi, who was sentenced to the same eternity of torture as Tahani for…worrying too much about his motivations and how his actions could do the most pure, selfless good in the world to actually take much action, despite a lifetime spent on trying to better himself as a human being. And on top of that, it canonically has a Medium Place, which you can apparently get into if you’re a cocaine fiend, but heaven help you if you’re insufficiently pure of heart!
The Good Place appears to be run by the unicorns from Gravity Falls and I hope Eleanor and Team Cockroach burn it to the fucking ground.
Somebody reblogged this like ‘yeah Chidi definitely belongs in the Good Place but Eleanor and Jason are totally Bad Place material’ and no. You aren’t getting it. The placing system is fundamentally broken. Also I don’t think ‘being dense to the point of obliviousness’ is evil enough to warrant, again, an eternity of torture, but therein lies my point: whoever is running the Good Place has made the decision that some people ‘deserve’ an eternity of torment with no aid or mercy or chance of change or redemption, and have devised a set of apparently arbitrary and near-impossible standards to skim the cream of the crop, which makes them actually morally inferior to the humanitarians who they presumably selected - if, in fact, anyone was actually selected and the Good Place isn’t an elaborate cosmic scam with no humans in it at all. Even if he had been selected for it, I can’t imagine Chidi being able to sit idly and bask in everything the Good Place might potentially have to offer, if he knew that others were suffering in order for him to be there.
Whoever is running the Good Place is either not actually particularly good themselves, or they’re running the ultimate scam, and all signs point to the characters realising that probably sometime around the end of this season.
Team Cockroach are going to lead a revolution in Heaven, and I hope they kick its sparkly, sanctimonious ass.
Since the beginning of season 2 I’ve been convinced that the real Good Place is empty.
You’ve heard of the Roaring 20s........
now get ready for the Screaming 20s - coming to a decade near you in 2020
is it too early or can we start screaming now
Cultural phenomena like this are not bound to the rules of mere dates! By all means, start screaming now.
Forever indebted to @mostlysignssomeportents for this one.
every Ross i’ve ever met thinks he’s a Chandler
when i asked my girlfriend if this was me, she said “no ross would second guess themselves. only chandlers are concerned they might be rosses”
next time youre about to make an “actually dirk is a sympathetic softboy and vriska is an irredeemable sociopath” post i want you to really close-read homestuck and look deep in your heart of hearts and try to convince yourself that if their places were swapped dirk would not be feeding people to a giant spider
It’s flippant to say that the main bone people have to pick with Vriska is her abuse by Spidermom, though.You could put many people in Vriska’s shoes and they would do the same things as her for their own survival while not being like her. It’s not like Feferi is a controversial character, for instance.
I don’t think Dirk (while not a “sympathetic softboy”) would treat Tavros, among others, in the same way Vriska does. Nor would he engineer Bec Noir’s creation, or meddle with Jade in the same way.
i mean of course nobody has a bone to pick with vriska BECAUSE she was abused, and i don’t think that was the implication of the original post. in fact, people tend to just generally disregard that vriska was very blatantly abused altogether when they criticize her character – which is ridiculous, because characters like eridan and equius are given the benefit of the doubt when they’re infinitely less deserving.
the obvious reason people dislike vriska is because she was abusive and a bully. the bec noir and jade thing i care less about because they’re forgivable, but people genuinely hate her because she hurt tavros. and that’s fair!
but like, every other murder she committed was done because she had no other choice. she was very obviously terrified of her (massive, dangerous) lusus and just as terrified of living life without her lusus. doc scratch even engineered her murder of aradia and manipulated her into acting on his suggestions that she hurt her friends. vriska was a very easy target for a pedophile/child abuser like doc scratch who needed someone with poor social skills, poor impulse control, and pent up anger because of her already abusive situation. abused kids are extremely easy targets for being further abused by adults looking to exploit them.
bringing up feferi in this instance is pointless, because feferi’s situation was nothing like vriska’s. that was the whole point of this post. the only character whose childhood had as much suffering as vriska’s – and in a tangible way that caused them suffering readers can easily understand as being caused by an abusive parent – is dave’s. sure on a surface level feferi’s lusus is a demanding guardian with specific and dangerous needs (much less horrifying than spidermom’s, though) – but this never fell on feferi. eridan helped her. feferi was likable and upbeat and seemed generally well-adjusted compared to the other trolls, far from the neurotic mess vriska was dealing directly with the needs of her guardian alone (and the only person who ever “helped” her (terezi) hated her for good reason, unlike eridan who was thrilled to help feferi). vriska bears the characteristic hallmarks of a child from a broken home and an abusive parent. this is very much intentional and while a lot of people (for whatever reason) never picked up on it, it’s incredibly apparent in the narrative. the comic “vrisky business” was written by hussie himself and actually shows first hand how bad things are for vriska with her lusus and the emotional damage it causes her on a fairly regular basis. not to mention her interactions with (vriska), which show the reader directly that vriska hates herself and – in her own words – has never been happy in her entire life.
there’s no other character you can really compare to vriska beyond dave, who grew up in a society very different than vriska’s. it’s not to say this excuses vriska’s treatment of tavros and her other “friends”, or that people aren’t completely valid for disliking her, it’s that when attempting to compare her to other characters or put other characters in her shoes they fail to understand the scope of her situation or the severity of her abuse, nor do they understand that these were things the reader is SUPPOSED to understand about vriska.
Yes, I read it a bit literally, but that’s what swamp-wizard implies - that just pitting Dirk in the same position as Vriska and making him have to feed Spidermom would make him the same person as Vriska. Dirk and Vriska are different enough that any hypothetical conclusions about whether they would take Spidermon’s abuse the same are tenuous at best - Dirk demonstratively just doesn’t act like the Vriska we know, so, as you suggest, we can’t compare them as swamp-wizard does. I only brought up Feferi as an example of the literal implications of the post. Feferi doesn’t get much flak for being culpable in the deaths of countless trolls at the hands of Eridan to feed Gl’bgolyb. Sure, they’re nothing alike otherwise, but that was the point; that that feature isn’t the only problem with Vriska, given how I was taking the statement a little literal.
You can’t ignore Bec Noir or Jade either, since both of those arcs are telling of how she treats other people. Not as viscerally as Vriska’s abuse of Tavros, but Vriska re-enacting much of what she did to the trolls with John, Rose, Dave and Jade, from lying to them to saying Jade is “useless” and only fit to be a “guinea pig” and manipulating her life, are not easily forgivable in my mind, even if they aren’t literal murder. Yes, Vriska was formed from her abuse by Doc Scratch and Spidermom, and she isn’t culpable for what she did due to them, but this is still the Vriska. The only Vriska that exists, and we can’t compare to anyone else well. She’s still the one who abused Tavros and harmed or manipulated the other characters. That’s the Vriska we have, and she doesn’t do anything to grow beyond what she’s done and break the cycle of abuse that she’s clearly perpetuating.
the implication of the OP wasn’t necessarily that dirk and vriska are exactly the same or would react the same way to being in vriska’s position, but my point in my response is that it’s really difficult to split hairs about how any other character would act in vriska’s position without getting into some heavy handed nature vs. nurture bullshit. there’s evidence of vriska being a wildly different person without the constant pressure of abuse (that’s what (vriska) exists for – and aranea, before anyone even considers her, is not vriska, nor is she an ALTERNATE vriska, and she acts more as vriska’s foil in the narrative than an indicator of vriska’s motivations), which makes it difficult to parse how much of vriska’s behavior is her “true” self. the same is true of dirk and bro – they come from some supposed identical genetic makeup, but by nature of their lived experience they are largely nothing alike.
swamp-wizard’s point original point was that it’s useless to say dirk – who has most certainly made his fair share of mistakes – can be weighed against vriska, who was dealt pretty much the worst hand imaginable in her life. not that dirk had smooth sailing, but it’s pointless to gauge his behavior against vriska’s when – were he in her shoes – he would probably have been quite a bit like her. many characters probably would. the OP was making a point of how much people disregard the circumstances that made vriska who she was and how fear and suffering built her into the person she ended up being, and the subtle misogyny in assuming a dude character with his fair share of flaws is SO MUCH MORE morally sound than vriska he would somehow Not end up like her, as though her behavior is some intrinsic flaw she was born with and not very obviously built up from a lifetime of abuse starting from a young age. it’s pointless to posture about, and it’s pointless to argue what ifs – putting another character in the same shoes as vriska will never actually happen, and the intricacies of that potential circumstance don’t actually matter. the point is that every time people talk about this stuff they REFUSE to view vriska through the lens of an abused child. through most of the comic she is 13 years old. people are so dogged about how amoral she is, as though a fictional 13 year old abused girl is too reprehensible to ever forgive. again, i GET why people don’t like her. i get it. but what i said still stands.
my point w/ vriska and feferi is that vriska is… coded, i guess, as an abused child, and feferi is not. the similarities in their situations are pointless to argue about because the reader was never privy to seeing feferi have an emotional breakdown, cry, hurt herself, etc. the way we see with vriska. certainly the surface level similarities make sense to compare, but with regards to the narrative and the emotional impact of the comic there’s no way feferi’s arc holds a candle to the complexity of vriska’s, nor do we see even a hint of the suffering we see vriska endure for pages upon pages.
“she hasn’t done anything to break the cycle of abuse” she’s 13, again, when she abuses tavros. that’s fucked up regardless, but it’s bizarre that people really put that weight on a character that is literally canonically 13 years old. like i’m not sure how you can gauge the morality of a barely teenage fictional child abuse victim so concisely. it’s cool not to like her or feel uncomfortable w her character, but there’s some weird staunch moral soundness i’m picking up here i don’t quite understand. she’s meant to be a divisive character. and yeah, when Main Vriska gets to be 16 and isn’t removed at all from her constant duress and continues to live as though she could die at any moment she makes no progress emotionally. interestingly, however, (vriska) becomes remorseful, sensitive, and affectionate; removing abused children from high stress situations completely changes the way they develop. when she is allowed to live in an environment that doesn’t foster her behavior she considers a part of her survival her personality changes drastically, and again, that was WHY (vriska) existed narratively to begin with.
anyways this got even longer, and tbh i don’t think it matters how vriska “treats people” nearly as much as her actually abusing tavros – abuse is damaging. abuse hurts people in ways it’s hard to recover from. jade, john, jake, and rose find vriska insufferable at most and fairly easy to ignore. when it comes to discussions of morality i think it’s pointless to put “is rude, mean, and bossy” on the same level as “she willfully hurt tavros physically and emotionally for her own ends with no regard for his livelihood or well-being”
anyways the whole point of this post was dirk has literally never been in a situation anywhere near what vriska’s was and it’s pointless to say “oh but he isn’t like her at he would never be like THAT” because all that means is you probably don’t understand the magnitude of vriska’s situation nor do you offer her the benefit of the doubt that she’d be a better person if she weren’t viciously abused as a child. nature vs nurture is an argument older than time and we will not settle it arguing about fictional characters just bc some people think vriska is Naturally Evil but dirk was Born Wholesome
sorry for all the haiku bot posts i reblog i just love haikus
sorry for all the haiku bot posts i reblog i just love haikus
^Haiku^bot^0.4. Sometimes I do stupid things (but I have improved with syllables!). Beep-boop!
New rule: ur not aloud to be a goth if youre transphobic
Additional rule: being transphobic is not punk rock
also note: transphobia isn’t metal either
You can’t be counter culture while beholden to the toxic prejudices of the dominant culture that’s not how it works.
Community + text posts (34/?)
The quickest show not tell tip ever.
‘Always show, not tell,’ is a big fat lie. If you always show, you’ll have half a novel of descriptive words and flowy sentences that will be hard to read.
Here is a quick tip:
Show emotion.
Tell feelings.
Don’t tell us ‘she was sad.’ Show us- ‘Her lip trembled, and her eyes burned as she tried to keep her tears at bay.’
Don’t show us ‘her eyelids were heavy- too heavy. Her limbs could barely function and she couldn’t stop yawning.’ Tell us - ‘she felt tired that morning.’
Showing emotion will bring the reader closer to the characters, to understand their reactions better. But I don’t need to read about how slow she was moving due to tiredness.
Likewise, when you do show, keep it to a max three sentences. Two paragraphs of ‘how she was sad,’ with no dialogue or inner thought is just as boring.
Literally every single person on catfish
Nev: Do you have his number? Girl: oh yeah ima give you his new number cause he recently bought the new iphone so he changed the number Max: So you both have an iPhone and you guys never facetimed before? Girl: oh because when he opened the box the phone fell out and his camera got busted and he didn’t get no insurance on it Max: ……… *Nev goes outside and dials the number of the catfish* Nev: Yes hello? So I’m Nev from catfish on MTV and I’m basically asking you to humiliate yourself on television by telling everyone that you secretly like to pretend you’re a model in your spare time. Is that okay? Catfish: oh yeah sure! I have been rejecting the idea of meeting that girl for the past 10 years but since it’s you who called, why not be filmed while doing it? Nev: Cool, cool.