Reposted the current no homes posts there, any future ones will go there too. Figured it was a big enough thing I post about to warrant categorization.
Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.
fascinating
Alright, mysterious-cat-official, I'll bite. I don't play many horror games but of the ones that I have, DDLC hit pretty hard, because I was under the impression that it was genuinely just a cute VN. I almost actually quit before noticing anything off because it wasn't really for me, but I had a lot of people recommend it personally.
When a sexual predator is caught, think of how often they're someone who has openly advocated for sexual predators to get the death penalty.
If the death penalty were really a successful deterrent for sexual predators, there wouldn't be so many sexual predators openly advocating for it.
Meanwhile, you rarely see them advocating for something that would actually make it harder to be a predator.
When a wealthy person is a sexual predator, they're rarely someone who advocated for the redistribution of wealth.
When a boss is a sexual predator, they're rarely someone who advocated for workers to have more rights.
When a cop is a sexual predator, they're rarely someone who advocated for cops to have less power.
When a religious leader is a sexual predator, they're rarely someone who advocated for religion to have less influence on society.
When a parent, step parent, or other adult family member is a sexual predator, they're rarely someone who advocated against adult supremacy or against raising children to be obedient.
Sexual predators are rarely people who advocate for believing victims, for teaching consent as basic human decency, or for a society in which people's comfort matters.
The death penalty is performative. It allows people to call for the deaths of anyone they don't like while giving a free pass to themselves, their buddies, or anyone else they believe to be deserving of power. And that's not threatening at all to a sexual predator.
actually as a woman I still think misandry makes you an unpleasant person and if you’re just out there saying shit like “all men should die” or “men’s mental health doesn’t matter” then you’re the type of person I want nothing to do with. also this is not what feminism is about btw, you’re not being a strong girl boss with this ideology, you’re just a bully
I adore it when people say stuff like "are you fucking stupid" in the same breath as they say something that is... kinda stupid. I have seen this sentiment a lot, though, so I'd like to dissect it and talk about why @alchemillaatnight is absolutely right and why we need to stop thinking of feminism as "Empower women; dis-empower men" and start thinking of it as "Fight against the patriarchy, something that hurts everyone".
first, though, to address the response here quickly, "Punching up" is something you do in comedy. The quotes provided in the original post aren't funny, like, at all, they don't apply here. In terms of activism, "Punching up" is almost NEVER the solution, the real solution is to punch the system. Tell me, should any of the people pushing civil rights have been talking about how white people are the problem, overall? How white people are the enemy? Or should they do what they have actually done and talk about racism, about eliminating racism so that everyone can live as equals?
Alright, now the case for feminism. This is going to be split into three main sections, going over what happens if you treat feminism as this men vs women conflict, why anti-feminists would LOVE if you had that reaction, and why it objectively is not a men vs women conflict.
If you let this go on
TERFs.
This is the foundation of "Radfem" ideology. Men are the oppressors, women are the oppressed. This is an essential state of the sexes. Feminism is about fighting men to get women equal power, a zero sum game. Now what about trans people? Someone having the privilege of a "man" who is actually a "woman"? Well that throws a cog in this whole ideology, so clearly they aren't actually women. Now why would trans women do this? Well clearly, they want to get into women's spaces, they're perverts. And trans men? Well, men have more power, so obviously trans men are just women striving for that power, they're just confused about the way the world is, our sisters who haven't realized we need to fight.
This is all a direct result of this way of thinking. Remember, essentialism is cancer, and has no place in truly leftist beliefs. Essentialism is the drug that pulls you into far-right ideology.
You're playing into their hands
I'd like you to think, what is it that anti-feminists always say to try and recruit other anti-feminists? They talk about "man-hating feminists", how feminism is just a ploy to strip men of their rights. How everyone is already equal, the feminists just want an unfair advantage. And look! You have issues too! Look at the rates of male loneliness, see how they don't care about that a bit? It's because it's caused by the feminists, their ideology makes you lonely. You need to fight against them, to fight for traditionalism, where everyone was happy.
The "feminism" @creature-in-a-cornfield here is pushing is exactly what these misogynists want, because it makes it oh so easy to get men to hate feminism, especially when you make posts calling people "fucking stupid" for acknowledging that men have issues and saying all men should die and that those issues exist is bully behaviour.
By claiming that the patriarchy elevates men, you are telling men that the absence of the patriarchy hurts them, that feminism would hurt them. The fact couldn't be further from the truth.
The patriarchy hurts everyone
I have a friend that put it very eloquently, I think. I don't have any exact quotes, but I'll summarize it.
"The patriarchy places men in a desert, and women drowning in the ocean. It tells men to hate women, for they have so much of what he craves, and are yet ungrateful for it. I can understand why you would despise water, being suffocated by it so. But god, what I wouldn't give for a drop of that which you hate so."
The Patriarchy. Hurts. Everyone. Within it, it absolutely places men above women in the majority of cases, but it oppresses everyone. It places men above women, and treats women as objects to be admired. But did you catch that? The admiration. It withholds any admiration from men, makes them envious, makes them feel like women are ungrateful for how much they receive. That way, they each perceive the other to be the enemy, men as the oppressors, women as gatekeepers to love, to attention, so nobody dares question the system as a whole.
The goal of feminism is to break that. To fight the patriarchy. Which makes it incompatible with this stupid adherence to its rules, to the belief that men have no issues. They do. Feminism helps them. And we need to start talking about that.
remember that accelerometer data by and large can be accessed by apps without asking for your permission, and is an incredibly accurate way of measuring your location if people nearby to you do share their location, even if you don't.
if you're conscientious about web design you try your best to make your pages accessible, in particular by paying attention to clarity and visual contrast; there have been many resources written to make sure text and interactive elements aren't too small and don't blend into their surroundings too bad.
this is unfortunately at odds with web browser developers, who blithely update their scroll bars to be at most like 5% grayer than their background (chrome) or to make them 3 pixels wide (firefox)
Youth. A funny notion. People spoke of it as if it were liberation, as though a childhood unscarred were anything but a luxury granted to the protected. But youth was never the freedom people pretended it was. January knew it simply meant operating with incomplete information, and fewer tools.
She had been young, once. That was indictment enough.
Fic Summary: January is not one given to reminiscence, though she is always half looking back.
Hi @violant-ink , I have attended upon the role as your match for the @fallenlondonficswap. I ever so hope this writing of January Introspection is to your taste :]
Words: 1.7 k
also on AO3!
There is a quiet that comes before the city stirs. Not the quiet of true darkness and its calling, but the pause before motion - an idling, like a held breath. Without the treachery of the sun, morning remains what it has always truly been, a construct, marked only by activity and by labor. By the changing of shifts. By the distant rumble of machinery beginning again.
It is to that rhythm that January rises, as she once did long ago with the sun. The city moves, and so she does. Hands washed. Water poured, first over one, then the other. The kettle set to boil. A few steady minutes secured, before the day makes its demands.
When she steps outside, mask in hand, the city is only just beginning to stir.
There is work to do. There is always work.
Steam rises from the chimneys of nearby houses, evidence of fires stoked to bat away the cold. A distant rumble can be felt beneath her feet, be it the thunder of railway pistons and the hiss of pressure valves, or the subtle shake of the ground from the tremors beneath. The whole of the city pulses in rhythmic order, in and out, the will of a steady breath.
January had not been certain of the city’s making, for all she had advised in one way or another. But as new buildings rise and scaffolding is set in place, she finds a measure of pride in its organization. It is a form of stability. And stability is a thing one learns to crave, when planning always for what comes next.
She watches where light might try to break through the city’s solidifying dark - watching for fault lines. Growth, she knows, hides danger. It would not do for the city to grow faster than its supports could uphold.
She keeps a considering eye on the city as she walks; Some scaffolding remains where proper supports should stand. some districts are held together by improvised efforts rather than any careful accounting of the future. A city is a structure, yes, but more than that, it is a process. It must withstand misuse. It is always the least prepared who suffer first when the strain comes.
Builders work away at the new construcstions, while those who organize ponder over plans, while others come new to gawk at the city in its cradle. Organization is not the enemy, but every location brings its risks when organizations and hierarchys grow out from within.
A city needs a leader, an organizer, and though she does not aim for defference- someone must hold the shape long enough for it to set . Someday her place here will be uneccesary, her plans far outgrowing is confines. The Great Work, afterall, requires scaffolding too.
It is with a sudden reverbation of a train whistle that shakes January from her thoughts- evidently the morning arrival has set to leave again. She has yet to determine whether the connection of track helps or hinders, but it is here, nontheless.
There is always a stagger to new arrivals. Workers from London, seeking opportunity or merely distance, step forward with hopefulness or trepidation. Others linger at the threshold, uncertain where to place their feet. In time, their places will be found, the city good at absorbing what is given to it.
The group that turns the corner is neither of those sorts.
They move in loose knots, speaking back and forth, pausing where the street opens. They crane their necks to take in the buildings, - gesturing, speculating, occasionally scribbling a note. None of them carry tools.
January recognizes the young, those who have not yet learned the balance between curiosity and caution.
She watches them a moment longer than she ought. She has seen this posture before, over many, many years, the way they look at a place as if it alone is meant to instruct them. As if understanding will be offered, if only the right questions are asked.
It is not their clothes, precisely, though those do little to recommend them to the city. It is the assumption, unspoken but unmistakable, that notebooks and pens will suffice.
Students, then.
Youthful. Untested.
Youth. A funny notion. People spoke of it as if it were liberation, as though a childhood unscarred were anything but a luxury granted to the protected. But youth was never the freedom people pretended it was. January knew it simply meant operating with incomplete information, and fewer tools.
She had been young, once. That was indictment enough.
Though in that youth she had known how to survive inside structures not built for her, even she had once mistaken access for leverage, knowledge for power. When one grows accustomed to toleration, access can feel indistinguishable from progress.
She had acted under the belief that understanding could compel change- that if injustice were exposed with sufficient clarity, it would be corrected. Knowledge still mattered; it always would. But she had learned that information alone does not shake foundations.
January had been little more than a girl when her family came to London. Before the Fall, and long before she understood the greater structures at play. She was old enough to remember the place they had fled. For all that it had rejected her and her family, there was still grief in leaving it behind. Survival had required flight. Safety, she learned early, was conditional and revocable, and it was often one’s neighbours who decided when it had expired.
London was less dangerous. Which was not the same as safe. Threats and restrictions were everywhere still, the Church’s authority ambient and unquestioned. There was a difference between being permitted to exist in a place, and being allowed to belong.
Naive she was, in the fullness of that distinction, when she too found her way to the university’s doors. Even before the Fall, University College - Benthic, as it would later be renamed - purported an openness that had always been carefully rationed. Its secularity was no small thing, even then, and for men of her faith it had offered a rare foothold.
Even now, Benthic likes to call itself radical. To be congratulated on its breadth of vision, on the narrow doors it has already opened. It never did care to be reminded of the many that remained closed.
When the city fell, rules fell with it. In the confusion, doors opened all at once. January mistook motion for progress - or rather, she mistook that progress for something more durable than it was. When one takes a step forward, one may forget to notice who is being left behind.
But in that chaos, the shifting tides, the ruthless pressure, the unknowns hounding at every corner, she had found her place. Among the books, the studies, the political learnings that fell into her hands.
The institution had been forced to make room among the stones cracked in the falling of the land, and she had found a slot within them. It was there she stayed.
A degree turned into a masters, turned into teaching others instead of being taught. Lectures and debates, corrected, argued. She learned which arguments were welcomed, and which were merely tolerated - and which were noted, and quietly set aside.
There was work to be done, and she did it. That, at least, the institution understood.
Titles accumulated gradually. Responsibilities first, authority later. Committees became councils; councils became offices. She was consulted, then relied upon, then deferred to. She was entrusted with outcomes, though never with direction.
She grew older then, too. In a wiser eye, shifting patterns became clearer. The reality of the world around became a shrouded knoweledge. She learned there was more to the cold then one could first assune.
She met very, very interesting people. Some who's ideals she agreed with. Some less so. Many inbetween. People who spoke fluently about progress. People who believed in change - so long as it arrived slowly, and harmed no one who mattered.
Her aims became more precise.
When she taught, it was with a sharper edge than before, a more deliberate use of the position she had been granted. She believed, then, that position might accomplish what access alone could not. That from within the structure, she could widen its vision, sharpen its conscience. That knowledge, properly distributed, could still compel change.
For a time, this was partially true. She could reach her students , some of them, in ways she had not before. Those who cared to listen sought her out. She spoke where she was permitted to speak, and wrote where her words would circulate. All the while, she worked.
So to did she collect. Evidence. Records. Accounts and items that did not belong in lecture halls, but would one day require their own space. In time, these would one day make way to the Museum of Injustice. Loss, exploitation, erasure - all that had been would be remembered.
The limits of the university did not announce themselves all at once.
Institutions rarely do. Proposals went unanswered. Courses were deferred. Funding narrowed. Meetings were held and adjourned without her presence. Authority receded, quietly, while responsibility remained.
For all its claims of tolerance, an institution remains an institution. And its masters , visible or otherwise, decide which truths may circulate, and which must be stalled until they wither.
It was of no real surprise when the day came she would leave the universities doors but it was with no small bitterness within her. The ivory tower of academia would reign over any progress, seperate from the reality of the world, secluded away in its privlige.
Let them expel the truth of it. Let academia continue its trials in privlige and might. She worked elsewhere to the prevalence of the truth now.
She was Not someone else. She had learned. And she will continue to teach.
The sound of footsteps fading pulled January back into the present, a laugh echoing off stone as the group she had been watching continued on their way.
Perhaps this group will learn from this new, radical city, in all of its limits. As ever, some would learn. Some would not.
The city will teach them either way.
It was a structure - inefficient, yes, compared to the Great Work to come. But structures could educate. And here, there was more freedom to teach than there had ever been before.
She adjusted the mask in her hand, settling it into place with practiced ease.
The city stirred around her. January stepped back into the shadows, and went where she was needed.
also not to post world-event-related propaganda on main but if you're a fallen london player who has the hinterlands unlocked (aka if you've made any progress in the railway storyline) you should totally give all of your crates to the criminals so i can get criminal favors in literally any way besides notability grinding, going to prison, and The Fuckass Box That I Hate
please. the scoundrel has been locked in her room sending missives to slowcake for Months. i need an excuse to go west and actually flip my hinterland cards like a normal person. i need more criminal favor sources. i need to feel Aliveeeee
🫵 do your part. save a scoundrel (and a yin's sanity). go up river and donate to the criminals today. together we can make the twilit smuggler grind 0.5% less torturous
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