Unhappy Opinions

[momo-y0te]

A pattern I notice among leftists is that in every type of leftist from every background in every aspect of their life they do this thing where they leave something because it sucks, go somewhere new, and then complain that it’s not the same as the old thing.

The immigrants coming in from third world shitholes with corrupt governments seek America for a better life and then as soon as they get here start bitching that it’s not like their home. People from California flee to the surrounding red states because California notoriously sucks ass and everything is expensive and there’s restrictions on everything and then as soon as they get to the next state immediately start trying to make that state into California. The violent radical pro-pal Jew hating crowd takes a seat at the Nazi table and parrots Nazi rhetoric and then is surprised that there are Nazis at the Nazi table they sat at. The people leaving websites that have started banning and restricting anything that so much as smells a little bit taboo in the interest of staying sanitized and puritan flee to communities founded on staunchly anti-censorship values and then are shocked and disgusted when nothing is censored.

I’ll give them one thing they are nothing if not consistent

[susanoos-wife]

Here in Brazil, we're suffering another wave of censorship from our shitty government with animes having sexual situations with underage characters, wow congratulations, because it is banning mostly of animes and mangas especially the most famous SHONENS. And once again, there's no real childrens getting protected and this is another form of censorship, just like the Felca law that was used to collect tour data or when they wanted to ban discord to "PrOtEcT cHiLdReNs" as if there are not horrible people who will do the same fucked up shit in other social media or any internet platforms in general. Funny is that Western cartoons like Rick and Morty, Big Mouth and South Park have these EXACTLY SAME elements they want to put as "illegal" to arrest innocent people where there are no real victims, but of course the problem is only Japan and not actual issues in real world where childrens under 12 are going into criminal life at such young age, going to parties at night and with little girls sexualizing themselves with makeup and clothes that aren't appropriated for their age making adult dances in platforms like Instagram or TikTok.

Or what we couldn't even forget there are still childrens getting trafficked, exploited at being sent to actual rapists as these same childrens are trying to survive running away from Marajó island. I keep defending the idea that fiction shouldn't be compared to real childrens nor real world situations not only because it dehumanizes actual victims and childrens, but because you can see the example of Australia; another country with a progressive government that bans fictional taboos and sees hentai in general animangas (with underage characters or not) as something "illegal" to consume, but it was the same country that praised that disgusting movie 'Cuties' that exploits real childrens in the camera. But of course since it was made by a woman it is "empowering" and if we accused her of being an actual pedophile we're misogynists, unless it's a man and we can throw rocks and call him one!

Or United Kingdom who did the same thing, but doesn't do any shit about muslim and arab immigrants raping women, childrens and animals and kidnapping because they were silenced in the name of diversity or they would be seen as "IsLaMoPhObIcS and XeNoPhObIcS". It was never about childrens because they don't care, it was all about control and censorship and i sense that we need to go back to pirate websites for animanga or collect CDs again like we did in 2000s.

Censorship, especially of fictional content that by definition doesn't involve any real people, has been on the rise around the world lately. Promising people that you'll get rid of anything and everything that offends them is an age-old parlor trick of the worst politicians in existence and yet people still don't learn anything no matter how many times it happens.

Throwing real life issues under the rug in favor of censoring or banning fictional content is deeply disturbed behavior and it does a massive disservice to everyone in the end. I imagine if current trends continue that pirating media will become widespread again, and it will definitely eat into the profit margins of social media companies and tech corporations as well.

[susanoos-wife]

[diversityland]

"The man who composed and produced the iconic Halo soundtrack speaks out against the race-communism plaguing the US."

[forthoutoffive]

Marty O'Donnell is apparently even cooler than I thought.

[regina-bithyniae]

The simplest and most universal takeaway from the Arday affair is that if you don't enforce standards of good behavior and competence within the ingroup, then eventually you will hand the outgroup a heap of ammunition to enforce those instead, and they will do it in a much less gentle way than you would if you handled things in the first place.

[o-craven-canto]

many are saying

When someone in your Tribe does something that both you and the Enemy find abhorrent – child abuse is a popular one – it’s often tempting to think: this is awful and I can’t condone it, but if the Enemy gets a hint of it, we’ll get it thrown in our face forever. Better deal with it as quietly as possible, and tell any complainer that if they make too much noise they’re assisting the Enemy. But you will NOT be able to keep silence forever; eventually you’ll have to face the original scandal anyway, plus the secondary scandal of having covered up the first. You may think if you don’t suppress news of abuse in the Tribe, you’ll hand the Enemy a powerful weapon. But – mark my words – you’ll hand it a far stronger one if you do.

[brazenautomaton]

the assumption here is that "conceal this from the Enemy" is a conscious tactical decision, and I don't think this is the case

[cookingwithroxy]

It's not 'We cannot allow our enemies to learn this sickening truth!', it's 'Only our enemies would believe this so called 'sickening truth', it cannot actually be so'.

In Arday's case, every person who brought up his various lies was called a racist and their claims dismissed, because he was the popular storyteller for his 'tribe' and everyone wanted to believe someone else had vetted his claims and proved them to be true. Because that way they didn't have to.

[tsarina-anadyomene]

The whole Jason Arday chronicle is really quite sad. Many in the know seem to think the evidence of plagiarism is quite strong, but I really think it was bad that this was made such a public spectacle. If this weren't a global news story maybe this guy would still be alive. I am reminded of the online backlash discourse of the 2010s that presents this need for restraint that we're unlikely to get: you should be able to criticize someone for doing something wrong, but tens of thousands of people hounding you with criticism is completely destructive to the psychological well-being of just about anyone. The institutional safeguards should have prevented anything like this from happening and people should have perhaps kept more of their criticism private and let the investigative process go to work. Just a lot of really unfortunate layers of social failure. Really tragic.

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

i think the problem is that many people, at many different points in his career, did bring up the plagiarism and investigations continually cleared him. even after this was surfaced, both his publisher and his university stood by him until the evidence became overwhelming. and this is not some kind of ultra-subtle borderline case - this guy was one of the most blatant examples of a serial plagiarist and fabulist you can find, and his career was that of an academic superstar, not an average professor.

Arday is not blameless in this (lying and stealing the work of others for career advancement is quite bad) but he is not "the villain" here. the fact that institutional safeguards failed so badly, that he was advanced so far, that no form of accountability was provided until the news media made him famous, is staggering. institutions are very good at diffusing responsibility and i doubt Cambridge will ever give us a full autopsy of what happened here, but i feel like they bear a lot more fault than the media.

[brazenautomaton]

I have seen a lot of people saying he faced huge amounts of racist harassment no white person would ever face

But he's a pathological liar, people who get caught love to claim to have received harassment in order to throw out chaff to get people off their case, and he was already caught at least once lying about harassment in a trivially easy to disprove way (he claimed that someone mailed a mutilated pig head to his parents' house to intimidate him and the police already tracked them down. the police had no idea what he was talking about). maybe when the liar tells a story that people love to lie about and that he already got caught lying about once, we don't take him at his word.

and he was an academic superstar. Cambridge was so fucking proud of that guy. youngest black professor ever. incredible, inspiring rags to riches story, that he had a million-dollar deal to publish. also his story was nonsensical and every single person who saw it without going "you fucking made this up what the fuck is wrong with you" should be fired. he claimed to have been mute until age 11, and completely illiterate until age 18. also he ran 30 marathons in 35 days. on a broken leg. his girlfriend saw it. you wouldn't know her, she lives in canada.

the system failed this guy because of his race and because everyone was falling over themselves to cover for him based on his race. people are still falling over themselves to cover for him based on his race. you can't notice what happened because of race! he was first revealed because of some stupid racist who thinks black people are stupid, which means you can't notice that it happened, and definitely doesn't mean "the system was so enraptured by the holiness of his black skin that the evil racist who hates black people was the first fucking person who bothered to check if anything he was saying made sense."

no, the proper lesson to learn from this is definitely "you must be a racist to check if a black person is a pathological liar and serial plagiarist, if you want to make sure that people do not have their position based on race you definitely are a racist and belong to racists and should go talk to them way more since they agree with you."

[cookingwithroxy]

From looking in the notes, if you want to reblog this you probably should do so right now before OP blocks it and tries to erase any further comments not complementary to their narrative.

[artisanjelly]

reminder for all hockey fans:

netflix is making a hockey show called "the sticks" that is based on a very real tragedy that occured in canada in 2018.

the show follows a minnesota high school team after their bus crashes and coming back to hockey afterwards.

in 2018, the humboldt broncos' (a junior A team made up of 18-22 year olds) bus was hit by a tractor trailer on a highway intersection. 16 people (10 players, 2 coaches, and 4 team staff members) were killed, along with 13 other players severely injured.

the memory of the humboldt broncos crash is an incredibly sensitive subject carrying a lot of trauma to both the survivors, their families, and deceased's families. the trajectory of hockey in canada was changed significantly after this tragedy.

despite this, netflix has decided to make a show using the death of young hockey players for profit. they did not consult the survivors, nor the deceased's families. they stole a canadian story for a feel-good cash grab.

i understand wanting to watch shows about hockey, but this is not the show to watch. do not give it attention, as the humboldt broncos' memories deserve to be theirs and theirs alone to share.

[forustothinkistobealive]

This is how Netflix advertises the show btw… They’re calling it “your new hockey obsession”. It’s disgusting.

[ambroseandmox]

One of the kids on the Broncos lived on my block. A coworker lost her brother in law. This tragedy was widely felt in Canada as a whole - flags at half-mast level.

None of the families even knew about this show until the media started asking how they felt.

It is taking a tragedy and turning it into a cash cow.

This was such a deeply-felt issue that even the truck driver pleaded guilty and has tried to make amends. (And as he is facing deportation after his sentence, some of the families have even started supporting him being allowed to stay in the country.) There is a real story you could be telling about community and resilience that is not just turning one of the worst days for THE NATION into cheap thrills and sensationalism.

Don't watch. Don't tweet. Pretend this show does not exist.

[ambroseandmox]

Netflix’s The Sticks Bashed by Humboldt Bus Tragedy Parents https://share.google/E6EsgKDY0Ft3HXwS1

Netflix’s Hockey Drama ‘The Sticks’ Bashed by Parents Connected to Humboldt Broncos Bus Tragedy

Parents connected to 2018's Humboldt Broncos bus crash are accusing Netflix of sensationalizing the tragedy in its new series 'The Sticks'

[ambroseandmox]

‘Not their story to tell’: Humboldt Broncos families angry over Netflix hockey tragedy series | Globalnews.ca https://share.google/2GGMDxeJSteDwQxhw

‘Not their story to tell’: Humboldt Broncos families angry over Netflix hockey tragedy series | Globalnews.ca

Sixteen people were killed and 13 were injured when a truck driver went through a stop sign and into the path of the junior hockey team's bu

[vriskakinnieaynrand]

[shieldfoss]

Bananas aren't land though.

[samueldays]

A more relevant but less snappy example for land is the wolf territory map.

[shieldfoss]

See I did consider that* comparison, but I think it actually supports the original tweet. By what right do those wolves have that land? Because they're stronger, and have chased off rival claimants? In that case, a state refusing to recognize private land claims is also fully within its right to do so, because it is stronger still.

Or, if it is meant to be the much more defensible statement "defending private land isn't crazy, even wild animals do it" then yes, but they also do murder and rape.

🞯 well, gorilla/banana led me to tiger/hunting-grounds, but same/same yeah?

[barryogg]

In that case, a state refusing to recognize private land claims is also fully within its right to do so, because it is stronger still.

In that case, we should first decide if the state is ✨ just a name for the things we do together✨, or is a state a distinct entity that takes what it can while the people suffer what they must. People who enjoy fantasies of expropriation based on the latter usually at the same time demand deference to the idea of the state based on the former.

[the-davest-of-uncles]

John Kenneth Galbraith got it wrong.

The modern leftist is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for covetousness.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Since they don’t teach gay sex ed in school let me tell gay guys and anyone else that wants to use the back door that douching is bad for you. It will cause long term problems.

Also starving yourself all day will not work because sometimes it can take up to two or three days for something to move through you.

Just eat a bunch of fiber and use the bathroom at least an hour or two before your booty call if you can. If you hate eating fiber just get yourself some fiber pills to take with meals. If you eat enough fiber the section after the colon should remain relatively clean on its own. Just wash the outside part. Not your insides. Those clean themselves.

Also if he shames you for anything that happens by accident in the bedroom and/or refuses to use a condom he’s a jerk-wad and an idiot and you should dump him.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Yes! It dries out your colon and makes you more susceptible to micro-tears in your anal walls and makes it more likely that you’ll get constipated. There’s also a small but real chance that you could get a perforated bowel which is a medical emergency. It also washes away a natural layer of mucus in there which, while gross, is necessary.

Doing it once in a long while is probably fine but it’s not necessary unless you’re doing something super intense that goes up into your colon and you’re not willing to clean up afterwards.

If you absolutely must, use clean douching equipment and lukewarm water with a teaspoon of salt per cup of water dissolved in it. The salt mixed in will keep the water from dehydrating you because yeah, that’s another risk of douching. Your body has a very specific balance of salt it wants and plain water will sap away some of that.

Also remember to use lube, kids! It reduces your risk of getting an STD or a minor injury!

[lasagnacatlady]

Not applicable to me, but I've always been an advocate for inclusive sex education.

Stay safe!

[chantylay]

Douching is also bad for vaginas for anyone on this thread with those. They are self-cleaning as well and putting soap up there can mess with your ph balance and increase your risk of yeast infections. Just take a piss before and after sex to avoid a UTI and let your parts take care of themselves.

[what-even-is-thiss]

It’s when you squirt water up one of your holes to “clean” it. It’s unnecessary and bad for you but unfortunately a lot of people do it.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Hey, gang! This post isn’t a safe space for homophobes, transphobes, or slut shaming! If this info isn’t relevant to you then you can just scroll past it!

[eyeballtank]

Sort of a follow up to this post of mine, but it's weird how when Zoomers accuse some of being a pedophile, they just reply with wacky/silly memes like Spongebob images and say "bruh fr" instead of actually reporting someone to the authorities like people would in real life. A theory could be "because American cops are shitty". True that America has a problem with its police forces around the country but I'm still sure that even the most corrupt cops would still look into a guy accused of being a pedo (Speciall if it's just someone on the internet that's just a random guy: Not like "newgrounds chuds" or a dude into loli are any protected class or anything; Even a popular Youtuber with a vocal fanbase can have cops look into him).

Another theory could be "because of Trump since he was buddies with Epstein". And again:

The shit around him and Epstein was already available for years: Specially around the time rightwingers were the ones obsessed with Epstein and "the elite pedos" while lefties took a while to catch on that because they were busy with shit like harrassing artists on Tumblr or "cancelling people" over dumb shit.

Epstein's guests include both Republicans and Democrats; And also people that hate Trump; And also Noah Chomsky, a guy people listened to because he was seen as a great intellectual

We still have plenty of celebrities and others criticizing Trump, so it's not like the USA is becoming like North Korea

Give if a year or two before Trump dies of a heart attack and the next president is a Democrat who'll try to overcorrect the shit Trump did (Or maybe not given how politics work)

Also, instead of calling the police, a lot of people's alternatives tend to be dumber:

Google Doc files "cancelling" someone can be so fucking long and sometimes mix up genuinely bad things with "he made bad jokes" and shit that's not important.

You have situations like the infamous "WE DID IT REDDIT" moment where before the Bostom Marathon bombing happened, Redditors went after the wrong guy.

You have those "nonce hunters" where it's just a dude recording himself either yelling at a guy or getting his friends to beat him up: Like what's the context with those? Is it staged? Are they after the wrong guy? Will the nonce even learn to stop? They look like circus shows if anything.

And then you have Youtubers making videos on guys like SmartSchoolBoy9, in which their audiences try to go after him and literally screw over the police's investigation on the guy.

Also Chris Hansen once meddled with authorities trying to investigate Onision.

Moral of the story: If you believe someone is a pedophile, that means you believe they might harm or already did harm a child; Therefore the kids' safety is more important than you simply thing "ugh he's weird". The thing that normal people (Actual normal people) do is to simply call the police and report the person in question. You're not a detective, you're not Dexter, you're not the Punisher, you're just someone on the internet.

Or maybe the real reason why people don't bother contacting authorities anymore is in case THEY also have some dirt in them, so they don't wanna risk themselves I guess. After all, we've had multiple incidents of someone mad at loli suddenly caught with something worse.

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

[unhappy-opinions]

I'm starting to think that the kind of people being depicted here treat these issues by the Umbridge Principle. I'm sure there's another term or phrase for it, but I'm using this one. Note: this is not the Umbridge Effect, that's when a nasty person has a cutesy ascetic. The Umbridge Principle is when a lesser villain is hated more than the main villain by virtue of the lesser villain's evil being more "real" to the viewer. Umbridge is more hated than Voldemort because the vast majority of people have never been the victim of Voldemort's kind of crimes while, conversely, the vast majority of people have been the victim of Umbridge's kind of crimes. With that explained:

I think these people hate Charlie Kirk, Trump, etc. more than they do the murderers and rapists who they want saved from the death penalty or given therapy instead of jail because, to them, the crime of saying mean things or using your authority in a way that they don't like is more "real" than the crime of murder or rape because they have far more experience with the former than the latter. They view "crimes" like supposedly saying "it's ok if some people die so long as we get to keep our guns" as a more "real" evil than actually killing someone with a gun because they have had to actually deal with situations where someone says something they disagree with, but which they are unable to counteract by virtue of suffering punishment if they do or just being a spineless coward who will later make up a story and insist that "and then everybody clapped," but they have not had to actually deal with as much (or possibly any) real violence, real murder, real rape, or even real oppression. This extends to other things, such as how they view things like hate speech as worse than hate crimes (see how they treat every instance of supposed antisemitism vs. their response to Hamas and Free Palestine) because they have had to deal with being insulted for their "queerness" far more than they have had to deal with being beaten in the street for it, therefore hate speech is more "real" than hate crimes and therefore the greater evil and deserving of the greater punishment.

Following train of "logic" to its logical conclusion, you get people who decry the death penalty and think prisons should be abolished but also celebrate Charlie Kirk's murder and demand that Trump be locked up or assassinated.

[ihatepissvortex]

Communism wins again

[foreskinnty]

That IS a strangely nice and clean Cuban street. Probably the manicured touristy ones in Havana cause the rest are covered in doodoo and piss and rotting dog bodies 💛💛💛

[ihatepissvortex]

Untrue + Even if it was true it’s America’s fault + Ratio + Ask your grandparents why they moved to America

[foreskinnty]

I lived there and emigrated out cause no food but ty for whiteysplaining to me what Cuba is like from your sheltered keyboard you unfunny cunt 💛💛💛

[cookingwithroxy]

OH! I see!

Basically because car imports were (until VERY recently) insanely expensive and very difficult to arrange for private owners, the average Cuban.... Didn't actually own a car, and if they did it was most likely one from before the Revolution.

Which meant that they had to make sure the cars are maintained and properly running or just lose them. It became a car culture thing.

Which is ALSO why all those cars you see? Are Taxis.

That entire row of classic 1950's cars exist ONLY for the purposes of getting money from tourists. Because people pay top dollar to be driven around in these vehicles.

It is, in fact, a glamour shot from the Tourist area specifically to appeal to the foreign tourist market. Which, ironically enough, is the exact kind of exploitation that lead to the Revolution in the first place!

'"The vehicles for sale come from imports and those that conclude their rental period in tourism. The sale prices are formed by market correlation among natural persons, with a margin ranging from 350% to 500%, of which 30% is the commercial margin of the dealer, and the rest forms a special tax. Although this tax is collected in USD or MLC, it is credited in national currency at a rate of 1x24 into a fund managed by the Ministry of Transportation," he explained.'

For Cuba: Government Regulations For Purchasing, Importing A Vehicle. Thus Far In 2024, US$36 Million In Vehicle Exports From United States

From www.cubaheadlines.com   Among the new measures adopted by the Cuban government in the transportation sector is the authorization

This was from two years ago, and things have been changing a LOT in Cuba over the past few months. But it's still fair, considering the original post PREDATES even this article.

[wanderrnest]

'From the river to sea' is a very poetic way of saying jews have no place in this world.

[anxious-ailurophile]

more context from OP in a reblog:

[nonenosome2]

Do not ever let the Left brush 2020 under the rug as "Hehe. Woke 1.0 was craaaaazy."

They got people banned, debanked, and even fired for what they are now trying to laugh off.

[emmaubler]

You don't get to gleefully destroy people's lives and then "Lol we were so random" your way out of responsibility once your actions are politically inexpedient. Especially when they don't really believe they did anything wrong and are not actually sorry for any of it. They still hold the same views and have the same cruel impulses--they just know they can't get away with steamrolling culture they way they used to and are just trying to recalibrate to maintain their power.

[dykepuffs]

There is a really frustrating thing where some kinds of speculative story are hard to write because they will be assumed to be bad (clumsy, harmful, regressive) metaphors for real-world events or people, rather than exploring completely speculative ideas. Like:

"What if a small group of religious extremists, persecuted in their own country, moved to an inhospitable uninhabited island and had to rebuild society there?" - But the Americas and Australia weren't inhospitable and were full of Native nations, why are you perpetuating the idea of Terra Nullius and manifest destiny? - Yes, that's because this isn't a metaphor for the British invading other countries, it's a metaphor for finding out how much of a person's religious practise is rooted in worldly concerns, vs how much they will really stymie themselves for the sake of God.

"What if 1/100 children born was a werewolf?" - But queer people are no danger to straight people, and disabled people don't have predictable patterns to their illnesses, and most people who have uncontrollable rages really CAN control them and are just lying, and no minority group has superpowers... - Yes, but that's all immaterial, because I wanted to talk about a load of other metaphors about the passage of time and responsibility and the relationship between humans and wildlife.

It almost feels like death of the author, like "Death of the most obvious metaphor" - If you couldn't reach for the (tormented) parallel between being an alien species and being stateless, what stories could someone tell? If your changeling-baby was neither disabled nor adopted, what would the story be about? Etc.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I was literally just thinking about this yesterday! It's a trend I've seen a LOT in recent years in lit crit, particularly when discussing fantasy.

I think it particularly comes up the moment an author includes any sort of marginalisation/oppression for their fictional/fantasy world. I've lost count of the times now where I've seen people read a book on, say, the terrible oppression of the Gwyllion, and immediately gone "Oh, so the Gwyllion are a metaphor for the real world X people, either deliberately or accidentally through the author's inherent racism. This is therefore super problematic because the Gwyllion are also described as Y, which means the author is also saying that about X people."

There will always be real world parallels when discussing oppression. Always. But that's because oppression is oppression - precise details may vary, but it follows the same pathways the world over, and that will naturally be copied into fiction as well. This does not mean the author is intentionally telling the exact allegory that you've projected onto it. If that's how you read everything, then yeah, everything becomes super problematic, but also, why are you reading any fiction that isn't solely about real world historical events? It's clearly not for you

And, you know, obviously there are works that are racist/misogynistic/etc, including deliberately so. But I really don't like the way people have started going "I have spotted a PROBLEMATIC ALLEGORY here, I'm ever so smart" and acting like they're the cleverest little critic that ever lived. You have to meet a work on its own terms. Lovecraft was a big ole racist, sure. Someone who has written a book about the oppression of magic users in their fantasy world, however, is rarely writing a story about how queerness lurks in family lines and must be controlled; they are way more commonly writing a story about a world with magic that they then wanted to take seriously, and while there might well be elements of queerness there, those magic users are not a 1:1 replacement.

Sometimes these lines are blurry! But we're going way too far to one end of that spectrum

The post that got me thinking about this yesterday was someone talking about how they'd love to write a vampire story exploring vampirism as a disability (dependence on a substance to manage the condition, blindness/weakness in daytime, can't enter buildings without accommodation, etc). But, they said, they can't, because they don't want to be making the point that disabled people are parasites, and vampires are generally considered parasitic.

And like. What an incredible shame. That we'll lose that, because they're already afraid of the "I have spotted a PROBLEMATIC ALLEGORY" crowd. That would be a great story for exploring disability themes, OR just a great new take on vampires, and either of those things would be so good to read. But there would be so many people who would jump in with "So you think disabled people are draining the life force of the ableds around them?", never stopping to actually think "Vampires are not a 1:1 stand in for real world disability because they are fictional and do not exist."

Anyway sorry I've rambled here, not sure how coherent I'm being. But yes, I was thinking about this just yesterday! Wild.

[faireladypenumbra]

Sometimes as well, people assume that their interpretation of a text is correct/morally valuable because it must be the only way to read that text.

A reminder here that analysis isn't math: there is rarely a definitive authorial answer, or way to 'catch' the author in their interpretative truth. There is usually just varying degrees of creative analysis, and that is super okay.

[unhappy-opinions]

I have to wonder if people who say things like "But the Americas and Australia weren't inhospitable and were full of Native nations, why are you perpetuating the idea of Terra Nullius and manifest destiny?" or that one guy in the comments acting like the only form of colonialism is the pop culture idea of European colonialism (because we all know no Asian nation ever did a colonialism) think the natives of various places just sorta popped out of the ground.

When the "natives" arrived and colonized (yes, colonized, see 1b "to migrate to and settle in (an inhabited or uninhabited area) : to establish a colony in) the Americas or Australia or Asia or, hell, EUROPE, there were, in fact, no other people there. In some cases, yeah, it was a fucking wasteland in the form of either a warm or cold desert, near inhospitable jungle, or a suck-ass swamp, among other options. Where the absolute fuck do these people think the Mongols came from? What the absolute fuck do these people think northern Russia looked like when said Mongols first arrived? Yeah, there's a long history of people from somewhere else coming in and taking stuff from people who already lived there, but there's actually a probably longer history of people going somewhere and no one else being there because it's kind of hard for there to be humans in a location that humans haven't arrived to yet and it's kind of hard for humans to arrive in a location before the first humans who arrived there have arrived yet.

Jesus fucking Christ, read literally any creation story from a Native American tribe and please try and tell me how the people, just to pick one of the dozens of common tropes, traveling through the five worlds to reach the current one is an allegory for pop culture European colonialism. Please, I would fucking love for someone to try and argue how "the Americas ... were full of Native nations" before the Native Americans arrived and how they are "perpetuating the idea of Terra Nullius and manifest destiny" via their creation story because they aren't acknowledging the non-existent people who did not exist before their ancestors arrived in a place that no humans lived in. But then, I'm probably talking about people who would take Genesis from the Bible, a story that (even as a metaphor) can trace itself back to the actual literal birthplace of humanity thanks to it's connection to Judaism and thus the fertile crescent, and try and argue that it's actually about white people (who didn't even fucking exist at the time) colonizing brown people; so the only thing I'd really be surprised about is that such a person would actually be wiling to demonize the Native Americans instead of tie themselves into knots on how that story is fine but the story of Odin and co turning Ymir into a planet isn't and is actually about white supremacy and manifest destiny.

Just. Yeah, modern colonialism exists and just about anywhere you could possibly go on the modern Earth has someone already living there. You know what used to used to exist though? Places that no human had ever seen, let alone set foot on. You know what currently exists? Planets that no human has ever really seen, let alone set foot on. Not every story of going somewhere and finding it empty and building a civilization is about pop culture European colonialism and not every story of such has to draw it's inspiration from that source because there are stories that predate it by literal millennia. "Oh, but such stories can't come form a vacuum--" YEAH, GOOD THING THERE ARE STORIES THAT INVOLVE THOSE TROPES THAT PREDATE OR ARE UNRELATED TO YOUR POP CULTURE IDEA OF COLONIALISM, HUH??? Now, shut the fuck up and stop trying to talk about this shit like you know anything when apparently you can't even be bothered to do the barest amount of research outside of your high school European History class. White people appropriating and selling horribly inaccurate Native American creation stories for their D&D setting books have apparently done more research than you since they at least know those stories exist, and that should fill you with shame.

[dykepuffs]

There is a really frustrating thing where some kinds of speculative story are hard to write because they will be assumed to be bad (clumsy, harmful, regressive) metaphors for real-world events or people, rather than exploring completely speculative ideas. Like:

"What if a small group of religious extremists, persecuted in their own country, moved to an inhospitable uninhabited island and had to rebuild society there?" - But the Americas and Australia weren't inhospitable and were full of Native nations, why are you perpetuating the idea of Terra Nullius and manifest destiny? - Yes, that's because this isn't a metaphor for the British invading other countries, it's a metaphor for finding out how much of a person's religious practise is rooted in worldly concerns, vs how much they will really stymie themselves for the sake of God.

"What if 1/100 children born was a werewolf?" - But queer people are no danger to straight people, and disabled people don't have predictable patterns to their illnesses, and most people who have uncontrollable rages really CAN control them and are just lying, and no minority group has superpowers... - Yes, but that's all immaterial, because I wanted to talk about a load of other metaphors about the passage of time and responsibility and the relationship between humans and wildlife.

It almost feels like death of the author, like "Death of the most obvious metaphor" - If you couldn't reach for the (tormented) parallel between being an alien species and being stateless, what stories could someone tell? If your changeling-baby was neither disabled nor adopted, what would the story be about? Etc.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I was literally just thinking about this yesterday! It's a trend I've seen a LOT in recent years in lit crit, particularly when discussing fantasy.

I think it particularly comes up the moment an author includes any sort of marginalisation/oppression for their fictional/fantasy world. I've lost count of the times now where I've seen people read a book on, say, the terrible oppression of the Gwyllion, and immediately gone "Oh, so the Gwyllion are a metaphor for the real world X people, either deliberately or accidentally through the author's inherent racism. This is therefore super problematic because the Gwyllion are also described as Y, which means the author is also saying that about X people."

There will always be real world parallels when discussing oppression. Always. But that's because oppression is oppression - precise details may vary, but it follows the same pathways the world over, and that will naturally be copied into fiction as well. This does not mean the author is intentionally telling the exact allegory that you've projected onto it. If that's how you read everything, then yeah, everything becomes super problematic, but also, why are you reading any fiction that isn't solely about real world historical events? It's clearly not for you

And, you know, obviously there are works that are racist/misogynistic/etc, including deliberately so. But I really don't like the way people have started going "I have spotted a PROBLEMATIC ALLEGORY here, I'm ever so smart" and acting like they're the cleverest little critic that ever lived. You have to meet a work on its own terms. Lovecraft was a big ole racist, sure. Someone who has written a book about the oppression of magic users in their fantasy world, however, is rarely writing a story about how queerness lurks in family lines and must be controlled; they are way more commonly writing a story about a world with magic that they then wanted to take seriously, and while there might well be elements of queerness there, those magic users are not a 1:1 replacement.

Sometimes these lines are blurry! But we're going way too far to one end of that spectrum

The post that got me thinking about this yesterday was someone talking about how they'd love to write a vampire story exploring vampirism as a disability (dependence on a substance to manage the condition, blindness/weakness in daytime, can't enter buildings without accommodation, etc). But, they said, they can't, because they don't want to be making the point that disabled people are parasites, and vampires are generally considered parasitic.

And like. What an incredible shame. That we'll lose that, because they're already afraid of the "I have spotted a PROBLEMATIC ALLEGORY" crowd. That would be a great story for exploring disability themes, OR just a great new take on vampires, and either of those things would be so good to read. But there would be so many people who would jump in with "So you think disabled people are draining the life force of the ableds around them?", never stopping to actually think "Vampires are not a 1:1 stand in for real world disability because they are fictional and do not exist."

Anyway sorry I've rambled here, not sure how coherent I'm being. But yes, I was thinking about this just yesterday! Wild.

[faireladypenumbra]

Sometimes as well, people assume that their interpretation of a text is correct/morally valuable because it must be the only way to read that text.

A reminder here that analysis isn't math: there is rarely a definitive authorial answer, or way to 'catch' the author in their interpretative truth. There is usually just varying degrees of creative analysis, and that is super okay.

[siryouarebeingmocked]

"Its like how they make cop shows and movies where the criminals are all Machivellian geniuses to make police seem more competent. "

Many shows and movies are specifically about catching the criminal geniuses that regular cops can't.

And very often (EG CSI, Bones) the criminal is pretty normal, it's just hard to figure out what happened.

House MD doesn't make medicine complicated to make doctors look better. If it's a cop like Harry Bosch, cold cases are complicated by time. Bosch doesn't (just) succeed because he's smart, he succeeds because he's persistent, and often breaks Da Rulez.

Which has gotten himself and others hurt and killed.

Also, who wants to see "oh, the husband was found with the murder weapon in his hand, standing over the body, and he was caught in 4K stabbing his wife. Case closed. "?

What will you fill the other 39 minutes with?

Writers have to complicate the plots to make them entertaining.

There's also plenty of complex mysteries where the investigator is not a cop, or even a private detective, technically. And the real cops will go "drop the case". Several times.

Fincher's "Zodiac" focuses on journalists, and some of their lives get wrecked by the case.

Robert Graysmith lost his wife and the kids. And wasn't even a reporter! He was a cartoonist!

And there are several famous mystery works where the answer turned out to be SIMPLER than the investigators thought.

Very often in mysteries, there's a moment where the investigators realize there was something simple they overlooked the whole time. Maybe they rush to stop the bad guy and barely make it in time.

They can't make the cops hyper-competent without losing drama. Which is always ignored.

Bottom line: This is a stupid claim made up by the sort of people who call everything with cops "copaganda".

[bebe-benzenheimer]

don't mind me, just dropping the recent Ryan Hollinger Zodiac review here

[just-a-cruel-white-man]

The first guy has a point though, my personal conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theories were invented by the CIA to make conspiracy theories sound outlandish. When people hear the word, they immediately think about things like "the moon landing wasn't real" or "the earth is flat and Big Globe is hiding the truth". I'm willing to believe people are idiots up to a certain point, but for something this stupid to be so prevalent, there has to have been something or someone pushing it through.

And when you look at covid, the media called everything a conspiracy theory, usually very successfully. If some information is going around that you don't like, all you have to do is call it a conspiracy theory and most people will have an immediate bias against it and won't pay it any mind. It's as easy as that. Do it a couple more times and you can even label the people themselves "conspiracy theorists".

[siryouarebeingmocked]

>my personal conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theories were invented by the CIA to make conspiracy theories sound outlandish.

Except the actual thing has existed long before there was a formal term for it. Or even before the CIA.

Just look at the things people have spent centuries saying about der Juden.

>I'm willing to believe people are idiots up to a certain point, but for something this stupid to be so prevalent, there has to have been something or someone pushing it through.

That would be called "human stupidity".

It's very...comforting to believe there's some single, centralized enemy weak point that could be attacked to solve the problem.

Also, we have plenty of examples throughout history of large groups of people being extremely stupid in the same way. Up to a national level.

Most of them from, again, before the CIA.

>If some information is going around that you don't like, all you have to do is call it a conspiracy theory and most people will have an immediate bias against it and won't pay it any mind.

Then that's a problem with them, not the term itself.

Thought-terminating cliches aren't limited to that one term. There's also things like "grifter" and others.

Hence the NPC update meme;

People crying wolf doesn't mean wolves don't exist, or that there's some Department des Lupines pumping out wolves to maintain the threat.

And people have, do, and always will look for some easy excuse to ignore the other guy's points, whether those points are actually valid or not.