professional hater

i will post whatever i am hyperfixating on at the moment and nothing else.

[spocktheestallion]

You’ve heard of Catholic guilt, now get ready for the darker and more sinister “Mormon Guilt”! It’s a lot like Catholic guilt except you get a sickening pit in your stomach over the entire state of Utah

[callme-mag]

Altaïr's full face (canon!)

After years of seeing only part of his face...

[tanadrin]

So one of the things that can apparently contribute to kidney issues in cats is if they eat too much dry food and don't drink enough water; cats are adapted to get a lot of their water from their food since they're originally desert animals, and might not get enough water if they don't eat wet food. Unfortunately, Dozy won't eat wet food no matter what; she categorically refuses to touch the stuff. So a few months ago, we were looking for ways to get Dozy more fluids, and my wife noticed at the pet store a cat drink--basically meat broth with some floaty bits in--that was low-protein and meant for cats with kidney issues. So we figured, worth a try, right?

Great news: she loved it. Super tasty apparently. Great success. Along with the kidney-sensitive treats we found, it was a nice way to supplement her diet. Unforseen long-term consequence though: she loved it so much she began demanding it throughout the day. Like, would come up to us and meow, and meow, and meow, and not stop, until we got up, went to the kitchen, and got her some cat drink.

And by doing so on demand, we have unfortunately created a monster: no matter what we are doing at home, Dozy knows that if she sits next to you and meows, 1) you know what she wants, and 2) you know that she will not stop until you get it for her now. And when you do get it, she gets extremely excited. She will bum rush the kitchen door as you enter. She will run around your feet as you open the can. She will let out the creakiest, crunchiest, most nails-on-the-chalkboard meow you've ever heard if she thinks you're not going fast enough.

I do not begrudge her this. It is gratifying to care for a creature whose most ardent desires are so simple that it is this easy to fulfill them. But I am a little sad, because I know in my heart that I have never loved any comestible as much as she loves this cat drink. She has a pleasure of a purity and intensity that I will never know.

[the creacher in question]

[json-derulo]

I'm not gonna articulate this well, but there's this phenomenon I keep seeing on the left that I'll call "bean soup rhetoric," wherein someone fails to understand that they are not the target audience for a particular message, or just can't conceptualize why a speaker would craft their message differently to resonate with a target audience that doesn't already completely agree with them.

"The 'God Made Trans People' billboard is stupid! God didn't make me! I'm an atheist!" Okay. The billboard sits along a major highway in Kansas. We can deduce that the target audience is not you—it's the centrist evangelical Christians driving along that road who could probably be persuaded to become allies as long as we choose our words carefully and don't make them feel attacked for not already knowing everything about trans rights issues. Another one I see a lot is, "We shouldn't be talking about how right-wing legislation catches [privileged in-group] in the crossfire when [marginalized out-group] suffers far more!" I know. I agree with you. Which is why you and I are not the intended audience of this argument!

The entire point of rhetoric is to win over someone who doesn't already fully agree with you. In this case, let's say that someone is Jennifer, the moderate center-right mom in your neighborhood who doesn't really know or care about transgender issues but would be absolutely horrified by the idea of her teenage daughter having to submit to an invasive inspection of her body just to be allowed to play soccer. Tell her, "Banning trans students from sports will inevitably subject all student athletes to invasive gender-policing," or "Legal restrictions on gender-affirming care will make it harder for you to access the hormone replacement therapy you take to treat menopause symptoms," and she is more likely to question her existing beliefs and listen to the rest of what you have to say than if you lead with leftist talking points that she already has a calcified opinion about or which she thinks do not personally affect her.

Tailoring the argument to the things she already cares about does not mean we're forgetting that she has more privilege than most—entirely the opposite, in fact. A privileged ally can be extremely valuable. Jennifer votes in every election. And so do all the other ladies at her book club, and church, and in the PTA, and those folks listen to Jennifer. There's a reason both parties were courting suburban women so hard in the last election cycle! If we can find common ground with her on this, if we can get her calling her representatives and talking to her friends and phone-banking and door-knocking and making a stink, that's how the needle starts to move. If I can convince her to take her support away from the candidates who are actively restricting my rights and throw it toward those who want to restore and expand those rights...then I'm sorry, but Jennifer is a more valuable ally to me than the people who agree that the legal boundaries of gender ought to be abolished altogether but refuse to actually do anything except complain online about how both sides are equally bad because the right is trying to force everyone to drink the cyanide kool-aid while the left keeps serving bean soup and they don't like bean soup

[mingus-archives]

Have we considered that Essek was able to constantly available to help the nein teleport because he was shirking all of his shadowhand responsibilities?

[kidrat]

U can watch Star Wars so many times and it doesn’t prepare u for how dumb Star Wars is. For one thing I think we gloss over how kenobi (who has definitely been at the club. Please.) describes the mos eisley cantina as the worst most villainous place ever and then u get inside and it’s a pack of muppets vaping

[shane-actually]

the man who has witnessed a thousand bloody battles saying the airport bar is the worst place he’s been is based, actually

[spocktheestallion]

Babe wake up service top Caleb just got confirmed

[mingus-archives]

Hot boi was going through it (and by it I mean the consequences of his actions)

[unspokensuggestion]

you are allowed to be wrong you are allowed to mess up you are allowed to be embarrassing.

[unspokensuggestion]

you are also allowed to do this.

[evilvillain123456789]

step one: replace entire personality with open, festering wound

step two: contort absolutely all stimuli in my environment to relate to the my wound in some manner, ideally one which justifies random acts of unbridled aggression and vengeance

step three: marry a girl with generational wealth

[sanguine-stigmata]

when looking at the ways dracula as an original text differ with the experience of dracula daily, these letters between mina and lucy is where the differences first arise. if you read the book as published by bram stoker, you finish the johnathan in the castle arc before flashing a bit backwards into the letters to set up the whitby arc. with the dracula daily format, we leave johnathan right as he realizes that he is trapped and actively in danger to see his loved ones completely unaware of the danger he's in. the contrast here, while less straightforward from a plot standpoint, heightens the horror of the castle. there is no one coming to his rescue, and those who know of his absence suspect nothing yet.

[spocktheestallion]

You know that Essek would be a cat person bc the mighty nein blew into his life uninvited as dirty feral murderer hobos, bothered and inconvenienced him all the time, were a general nuisance, constantly fucked up his plans (they were ruined when they got there but still) and he fell in love with them forever and ever anyway.

When I picture him as a cat owner it’s to the scraggliest, scrappiest, most snaggletoothed, one-eyed little menace that yowls like a chainsmoking trucker and doesn’t let anyone but him pet it or pick it up

[theriverbeyond]

i must not get takeout. takeout is the wallet-killer. takeout is the little-death that brings total obliteration. i will face the kitchen, fridge, and pantry. i will make choices about what to cook and then execute them. when hunger is gone there will be nothing. only i will remain.

[liberalsarecool]

Billionaires lie. All the time.

[quakerjoe]

[sandandglass]

The Muppets s01e01

[le-sad-demiurge]

Fozzy getting hit on by lots of twinks

[cheshireinthemiddle]

Happy Pride Month

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

Ten years later, this bit still slaps. They made a great pun and realized they could be nice/inclusive with it too.

[veliseraptor]

on the one hand I get why people don't like the addition (although I'm given to understand that it was potentially there in game, just never brought forward? feel like I read that somewhere) of the whole Deirta thing to Essek's story because of a feeling that it sands off some of the sharp edges or makes for an "excuse" but I personally find it fascinating. (in some ways more-so than what seemed to be previous fandom consensus re: Essek's relationship with Deirta (bad).)

and I also get that it's potentially easy/desirable to divide that piece of animated show canon from actual play canon (ah, the trials and tribulations of fandoms with adaptations), but again I find it fascinating to slide it in there and set it alongside, in particular:

why Essek would continue to collaborate with the Cerberus Assembly after the original motive is moot (I don't like the idea of coercion, I love the idea of that beautiful beautiful sunk cost fallacy/desperation to make something worth it because surely there must be some way of doing so)

why Essek never, as far as we know, says anything about Deirta to anybody

which are both, for me, interesting things to chew on.

and I think it still, as a plotline, retains the fundamental selfishness of Essek's selling the Beacons to the Empire, which is, I think, the important part. there's an appeal to the "pure intellectual hunger for knowledge" motive, for sure, but I also enjoy the concept of a personal motive that is still fundamentally underlain by that same hunger for knowledge. it generates the eternal question of was it really for the potentially more 'justifiable' reason, particularly given that Essek's decision is directly contrary to the wishes/beliefs of the person he is ostensibly doing it for.

and also like. it is compelling to me the idea of Essek at least on some level with clear eyes assessing the possibility of war (likelihood of, he says as much) against the life of one person and going "yeah, worth it."

or maybe this is all just. frantic self-justification for my frankencanoning. who can say.