#it's not just a homogenous “other”

[sciderman]

I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with so much Iranian hate and drama <:[

oh anon. hate to break it to you (a lot of people make this mistake) but iran and iraq are two entirely separate nations.

and also i think reducing it to the words "hate and drama" kind of doesn't cover it, anon.

#i think if people were. just a little bit more informed. then maybe people would see that the people from this region are humans actually. #so anon. please. like... look at a map and do some reading maybe. if you care just a little. #i'm sorry anon but i'm a little bit at a loss for words over this message. like it rendered me speechless for a little. #but it's so common in my life that i've been called iranian and i constantly have to correct people on it. c'mon man. #i mean i have SO many iranian friends even though iraq and iran you know. aren't exactly bedfellows. politically. #but those politics don't really follow me. like in my day to day. iraqis and iranians in the uk of this generation. are again. #pretty divorced. #but it's kind of really frustrating that people Without Fail make this mistake over and over. #it's like how people just refer to “africa” as a whole. instead of recognising there are seperate nations there and. #it's not just a homogenous “other” #please. there are humans there. it's not just “foreign”. #i don't know if you're american anon but i see it a lot that anything outside of america is just “foreign” #and i mean #even as a brit. americans are constantly surprised i'm british because they forget anything exists outside of america. #i think it would be so so so so sexy of you anon to take a look at the globe tonight. give it a spin. #look at the world. it's so full and so beautiful and there are So Many Nations. #i'm going to look at my globe tonight too. i have a really cool old one. it spins so good. #and i'm going to pick some countries i don't know a lot about and do some reading about them. for funsies.

[inchidentally]

https://x.com/MERCL4REN/status/1743286121973555513?s=20

find the difference level impossible :D but seriously, this tweet gave me a stomachache from laughing so hard.

THERE'S MY TWO CREEPY TOO SIMILAR VESTAL VIRGINS THAT MAKE ALL THE MEN ON THE GRID (except lewis) GO HUUUHHHHH???

#the tweet text salgfljasgfhljashfslja truth #but I love how they sometimes turn just wayyy too similar and at a distance the grid is like wait which is.... #and when they drove triumphantly back to the pits those two times fist bumping across the air as they were side by side #the other drivers were like ohhhhh boy I don't like this #if they can weather a bad car the same #and then succeed in a good car almost the same #what will become of us mere men?? #we do not like The Arts we do not like Silent Communication we do not know what they are saying when it is Just The Eyes #we are but men who get angry and dejected alone or celebrate and shout at the top alone or maybe we thump our brothers backs and laugh loud #what are these delicate creatures with hairless cheeks and babysoft heads of hair and adolescent skins #only Lewis stands apart and watches the pair with knowing and gladness that the future will be theirs #the natural rightful heirs to his disruption and inveigling of the most homogeneous sport known to man #Carlos: the Piastri Boy does not like me but he is soft like a woman should I love bomb him or fist bump him what do I do #Charles: I feel as if I should be one of them but The Men want me over here oh but I wish I could Join Them in Silent Beautiful Eeriness #what the FUCK am I saying #inchreplies #vestal virgins au

[un-pearable]

the kyoshi flashback in Avatar Day and the sheer scale of ba sing se in comparison to…. literally everywhere else in the world really has me thinking about the politics that lead to such distinct “nations”. it makes way more sense for a land as vast as the earth kingdom to have once been earth kingdoms with local land disputes between feudal lords - as we see with the conflict kyoshi ended - only for a world-spanning war to have driven first the lords to unite under ba sing se’s banner for protection, and then as the war continued, increasing waves and waves of refugees and oma shu standing as the only remaining hold out due to their unique position (top of a mountain - most other earth kingdom towns we see are in valleys) such would explain how many ruins and ghost towns we see throughout s2 but also the improbability of a land that big to be unified under a single leader for that long

#text✨ #just pondering i don’t want to do research about if they’ve actually spoken about this #hm. i think it’d be very interesting if the beifongs are descended from a former lordship. would explain even folks in ba sing se recognizin #the name and crest….. #anyway i think smthn similar happened to the water tribes . i like the idea that the village we see in the south is only one of many but i #really like the idea that the north only has such a big city bc their miscellaneous tribes banded together #and i’m very interested in the political strife that would result in #different clans with different practices all piled on top of each other… the myth of homogeneity is BORING give me cultural diversity bryke #also…. another layer of tragedy in the loss of regional cultures in both the earth kingdom and northern water tribes as their populations #were condensed into urban environments

[aptericia]

I was looking through the tags in that "are you White" poll, and it was really interesting how many people said they were "technically" half & half but only considered themselves to be White.

And thinking about it, most of the mixed White-and-non-White people I know irl (especially White-and-East-Asian people) also identify only as White. My sister looks very similar to me and says she doesn't feel comfortable identifying as PoC, even though I use the term for myself. Although culturally I'm not very Asian, I have had people assume I'm not from the US, assume I can speak other languages, and assume all sorts of Asian stereotypes about me such as that I'm nerdy or care a lot about food. I think White and Asian people alike see me and understand that I am "their race", but also know that I am "other" in some way.

Idk I just find it really interesting and I wonder how common an experience that is... I feel like I've fallen a bit into the trap of thinking that all half-White people (in the US and Canada anyway) have somewhat similar experiences to me, and it's both disorienting and pretty cool to be reminded how incorrect that is.

#I've heard different ideas abt how mixed people are viewed in homogeneous countries too... #there's the “one-drop rule” where anyone who looks a bit different is “othered” and thought of as a less common race #but there's also the “majority wins” rule where anyone who looks a bit like the majority is assumed to be since “outsiders” are so strange #idk i just think this is all super fascinating and I'd really love to talk to other mixed people about it #ramblings #mixed race #aptericia's identity crisis tag #race tag

[isthereintruthnobeauty1968]

fun potential what with so much of the ds9 cast being nonhuman people for worf to mention some relatively obscure human cultural thing offhand and kira/jadzia/quark/odo/etc assuming it's a klingon thing

#p #probably somewhat less fun for him in fact but yknow #relatively obscure as in just not something people often think about (like.. schoolyard games or something) #or as in of a particular place/culture thats not often included in the homogenized starfleet face other planets typically see #ds9 #worf

[deathlessathanasia]

"Detienne, taking as his key the well-known myth that Adonis' pregnant mother Myrrha or Smyrna (both Greek words for myrrh) was metamorphosed into a myrrh tree, from whose trunk the newborn in due time emerged, sees Adonis as essentially the fruit of an aromatic shrub, a perfume, an anti-agricultural product. His method is to find a counter-phenomenon in Attic society, in response to which the Adonia can take their significance: surely the Thesmophoria, the autumn festival in honor of Demeter at which the women of Athens celebrated the growth of food crops. Detienne finds a further, sociological opposition here: the Thesmophoria were celebrated only by the wives of Athenian citizens; the Adonia were notoriously celebrated by prostitutes. He positions Adonis and the data of his cult within various oppositional codes discernible in Greek culture-each illustrated by a diagram-that parallel one another quite precisely, replicating the same meaning in different terms: aromatically, Adonis stands for heady perfume; botanically, for profitless agriculture; socially, for seduction and extramarital pleasure. The Adonia, Detienne declares, were a celebration of infertility and fruitless sex, a spectacular illustration of the dangers of untrammeled female sexuality, serving to balance and emphasize the autumn celebration of fruitfulness and legitimate connubiality in the service of the polis.

But much evidence slips through Detienne's grid. In several versions of the birth of Adonis myrrh has no place: in our earliest his mother is one Alphesiboea ([Hes.], fr. 139 M-W); in another she is one Metharme ([Apollod.], Bibl. 3.14.3). Philostephanus of Cyrene made him the son of Zeus alone (ap. [Probus] on Verg., Ecl. 10.18).22 As for the carnival of whores, the Adoniac festivities in brothels in Diphilus, fr. 42.38-41 PCG and Alciphron 4.14.8 (based on fourth-century comedy), are to be supplemented by Aristophanes, Lys. 391-96, and Menander, Sam. 35-50, in which wives and daughters of citizens celebrate the Adonia. Most surprisingly, Detienne's theory takes only passing account of the ritual lamentation, which ancient sources make the most conspicuous feature of the festival, and in general ignores what the celebrants themselves thought of what they were doing-unless we are to imagine that the women of Athens climbed onto their roofs once a year deliberately to celebrate their own failings to the community. There was probably another reason, one which feminist studies of the cult have begun to seek.

Another assumption, however, more fundamentally flaws Detienne's interpretation. While proposing to tease an inherent meaning from Athenian cult practice by identifying the inherent correspondences and oppositions within it, Detienne fails to define a perspective more specific than a homogeneous Greco-Roman society. Adonis, for example, must have meant many things to many people at many times (even different things to the same people at different times), but Detienne's formula assumes that he meant essentially the same thing to everybody, no matter how many borders of nation, culture, language, gender, or time he may have crossed-as if any detail of the myth of Adonis tapped into one immanent meaning and could be adduced for the significance of the Athenian cult. Rhetorical motives are undifferentiated: a line of Sappho is treated equally with a line of Philodemus; the testimony of Aristophanes is put on a par with the testimony of St. Cyril. This method is programmatic and derives from Levi-Strauss, who articulates the principle thus vis-A-vis his interpretation of Oedipus: "[W]e define the myth as consisting of all its versions; or to put it otherwise, a myth remains the same as long as it is felt as such." Combining details from diverse myths of Adonis, regardless of date or provenance, Detienne treats the resulting conglomeration as a single sacred tale holding a precious key to the meaning of the ritual. But for whom does it hold meaning? For Detienne alone. Purportedly context-based, his method actually isolates phenomena from their diverse cultural uses and recontextualizes them into an artificial code that transcends the messy inconsistencies of Greek thought."

- The Sexuality of Adonis by Joseph D. Reed

#adonis #adonia #festivals #ancient greece #greek mythology #structuralism #excerpts #article #and this is why I have such a bad time reading the writings of Detienne and other structuralist classicists #not that they don't write a lot of interesting and insightful stuff #but the homogenizing of all versions of a myth (no matter the date or author or language) into one coherent account #and the extrapolation of meaning from that one ahistorical version that the author has just created #is just not something I care about #and I also feel that the interpretation of the gods from a structuralist perspective can be reductive #and necessitates the ignoring or dismissal of sources that don't fit so neatly into the proposed binary #ex: Poseidon=brute force of nature so he engenders the horse; Athena=civilization and technology so she creates the bridle to tame it #just ignore that in some sources it is Poseidon himself who invents the bridle #I mean yeah the idea does have merit #but ancient Greek mythology and religion are complex and messy and diverse and even contradictory

[macrocosmus]

no words make me more upset than "you live in america, speak english." my great-grandparents were forced to assimilate and now a century later the same bullshit keeps getting pushed on folks... i felt so much joy in high school when all the asian kids across different cultures realized they all never spoke english that much at home, so they didn't need to speak english with their friends either. i feel so much joy when im just out at the grocery store and hear so many different dialects and languages, it's mostly spanish i think, and that's just good. and now im jealous. i wasn't born to be monolingual. im mourning something that was taken from me decades before i was even born. im supposed to know italian, i was supposed to be at least bilingual, and now im stuck monolingual throwing myself at language learning resources as an adult, desperate to try to wrap my brain around something that should have been there since before i spoke my first words. and its a slim chance i'll actually be able to walk along side someone and have a conversation in anything other than english, at least for a long time, because its not just knowing another language that i need, its speaking it, not as an exercise, but in mundanity.

i wasnt supposed to be monolingual, and now im struggling to fix that as an adult

#vent post #this literally brings me to tears #i hate xenophobia i hate assimilation i hate being monolingual #things i should say in therapy instead of on tumblr #if anyone comes into the notes to say ''uhm actually its ableist to say that being monolingual is wrong'' fuck off this isn't about YOU #this is about my language skills and mine alone #im desperately grabbing at something trying to just know one other language it doesn't even need to be italian #okay maybe this is about some weird family trauma i have about knowing some distant heritage that i dont feel like i can connect to #and language being the vector that im expressing that #and how that makes it challenging for me to form an identity without feeling like a dumb white kid whose culture was sterile and homogenous #im supposed to be asleep but instead im crying about some shit my greatgrandfather internalized and repeated from some bigots a century ago #i dont even know if i magically knew italian tomorrow if that would fix these feelings because when would i even get to use it #besides online #its alienating its isolating its just making me feel like crap #okay im going to end the post here goodnight

[slutdge]

I want the white people using sk*nwalkers and w*ndigoag as fodder for their horror youtube channels trend to be over so fucking badly

#nothing makes me wanna go full on chimpanzee face-ripping mode than seeing a white person treat these like theyre like bigfoot #or some other cryptid #also stop calling them ''native american'' like were one homogenized culture ffs #anyways im sure this is gonna make somebody mad so please spare me the anon and just unfollow me lol #i dont care to hear about why you think its ok for ypu to do it i dont care #and im especially not publishing your ask if those names are not censored #🌲

[annamariedarkholmes]

the way that adult men working both in the x-men office and “influencer” fan-adjacent spaces always behave so performatively extra about gambit will never stop being weird to me. it’s such a nasty underhanded way to gatekeep his (mostly female lbr) fans under the guise of (repeatedly asserting) mere personal preference

#this isn’t the same as fandom arguments btw bc it’s often unprovoked out of nowhere bashing #gambit #x #he’s not real #but his fans that you keep trying to gatekeep are #this shit isn’t new btw #the office tried to kill him ever since antarctica #i’ve read account of people attending cons in the early aughts #and the x-office men on the panel would pull this shit on the FANS ASKING QUESTIONS #the x-office keeps getting more homogenous the further we get from summer 2020 #i knew it was just corporate pinkwashing and there you go #otherwise then where is vita #where is kelly thompson #why is leah only getting an occasional mini #treating tini howard like their peggy olson ‘superstar’ while culling all other female/nb/non-white writers…. tells you everything #we’re finally getting stephanie williams after how many years of the same yt men #and is she actually getting a book #or just a story included in marvel pride? #i don’t give a shit about what those men like and they don’t have to share my interests #but the fact that they’re actively trying to sabotage everything outside their specific personal preference? #not promoting r&g until presales ended for 1 #while they promoted captain britain and x23 EARLY? #was a very specific choice #i remember this song and dance from long ago #see also ‘you’re not real fans’ levied at girls/women who loved movie rogue and her kinship w wolverine #even though they’re super close in the comics too #i know it’s partly the subset of weirdo kitty pryde fans (including our current x-editor lol) #who think any female character who logan mentors is a ~threat~ but it’s mostly misogyny

[cosmicdreamgrl]

well. that was........everything i expected and yet i'm still massively disappointed

#steph.text #there are a lot of things i could say #it's just odd to come onto your dash and see everyone hyping this album up when in reality it's fine? he could do so much better #and yes i already gathered that this was for the western market and it will do well on that end #but in terms of the music? #it's so mediocre it hurts #there's no urgency or personality or expression in any of these songs #it sounds like you took all ten of them put them in a blender & created a homogenous blob #and that's what most mainstream pop music sounds like today so again to be expected #i'm not shocked i'm just sad #the biggest crime imo? #none of the songs really bring out the beauty of his voice #between the mixing vocal layering/filtering autotune etc. #also keep in mind he uses a lot of air when singing in english #it's okay he doesn't sound bad but in comparison to what his voice fully capable of on other songs & in general? #yeah #i'm gonna go watch the mv #at least that will deliver #also to no one's surprise it's the best song on the album hands down #oh boy

[miyuecakes]

discourse rambling lol i doubt im going to be dropping many hot takes here given my experiences w receiving anon hate for the most tamest of criticisms on this site but im using the tag "disk horse" for anyone who wants to blacklist

i understand that shipping isn’t that serious™ but given hetalia as a source material, i think we need to be more aware about how we frame relationships between characters.

problematic/dark history is unfortunately emblematic to almost all significant bilateral relationships, so that’s something you personally get to reconcile with to an extent — seeing as there’s no workaround with what hetalia fundamentally is.

but can we not use current day pro-imperialism narratives and propaganda as shipping material lol

#disk horse #not art #im sure this is applicable to other pairings but since im east asian im thinking about easian pairings #particularly regarding the us and japan/south korea/taiwan/even hk though thats less of something i see #some of yall are too uncritical of the history behind their allyship and unironically spew pro us presence in the region narratives #its uncomfortable when us presence has caused so much pain not just from a cn perspective but to fellow easians in jp and sk #it's an inherently unequal relationship which ykw. not even an anti. i don't care about shipping discourse #i care about the power of narratives and how they're reproduced in even the most inane and trivial way #btw im not defending proshippers in my third paragraph oh my god please do not misconstrue my words this is NOT shipping discourse #im talking about people from a culture who may ship problematic pairings involving their country of culture. people are not homogenous.

[yellowocaballero]

related to the previous ask you answered, if you’re up for it - incredibly curious about how you research stuff for your writing. I feel like you’re so good at capturing all these little details of a life with such humour that I’m always going ‘how is yellow meg caballero not x identity’ (which is obviously not true & just the sign of a good writer, etc etc but still). Are you just out here talking to five million different types of people?? And understanding them??

Yes hello hi <3 <-- catching up on ask

I really do have the awful habit of swerving dramatically out of my lane and talking about shit I have no business talking about. I don't even do a lot of research, or at least not as much research as I should. I'm genuinely a terrible person to emulate here. But as for like how it tends to happen.

One half of it is. Patrick Stewart voice Writing fiction.

jaklsjdflksadf the other half is like...yeah, I talk to a lot of people. I like people a lot. I find everybody really interesting, and even if I don't like somebody then it's still interesting to have learned about a new kind of person. Over the internet especially is so much fun - everybody has at least one thing super interesting about them! Everybody has a unique trait or has had an experience totally unfamiliar to me. I also just really have an eclectic knowledge of a shitton of extremely useless stuff, I watch a lot of random-ass YouTube essays, all of it. Baby I got information even I don't care about for days lol.

Some of my characters are based lowkey off people I know. Sometimes they're based off me at different points in my lives, or the kind of person I used to think I was. I think most often they fit into a category of people I've met in my life - for example, for an OC I'm writing right now, she's based off this type of person I know. And in there I look for what I always liked about those people, what I always related to about those people, and how I always interacted with them. They're often kinds of people I don't even necessarily like. You never really want to do "well im writing [marginalized group] so I'll just make them [friend from marginalized group]", but for me once I meet and talk to enough people from that group kind of the experience and perspective that being in that group gives you emerges. The 'why' of the experience stands out, and you can go deep into that.

All that said, I look for the similarities instead of the differences. My MK stuff isn't about being a system (cuz not that.), it's about having a highly stigmatized mental illness, and somebody's relationship with their identity as a mentally ill person, which is something I can understand. Lots of my SW stuff was about...existential dread, lol. I do just know a fuckton of neurodivergent and trans and etc people. And I think we do just project - I'll interpret a character as having my experiences instead of another's, because I'm SUPER loose with characterizations lol. But yeah I'm just constantly talking to people about their experiences and if you do that enough then a bigger, more relatable experience emerges lol. Everybody knows that there's really only like five emotions.

That being said I made a joke in a recent Moon Knight fic about how baby Marc liked baby Steven at first just because he would wake up and his bed would randomly be made. And my sys friend was like "HOW did you know about chore ghost??". So. Lucky accident a lot of the time I think. Thanks for the Q though, I'm happy I succeed at this!

#my writing #when i do run into issues and i dont do things right is when i don't recognize that an experience isn't my own #e.g. i assume that the experience of this group is similar to my own and it rly isn't #ppl be the same but we think really differently sometimes too #for example turns out some christians believe different things than catholics do and it's SUPER FUCKED UP #i feel like ppl can be afraid to write characters of different identities significantly differentiated from each other #like to write a guy mindfully as different from a girl because he's a guy #but i think just kinda homogenizing everything creates that inauthenticity #and more importantly the 'default' 'neutral' is often the majority #idk i dont like ignoring things #for example. when i try writing characters religiously neutral i just make them catholic #and this is sending ME to hell

[sekwar]

on a whim i'm looking through the blogs of everyone i follow and realizing just how important this aspect of tumblr is. it's your space! your own little room in this ever-expanding house! customization is the heart of tumblr. rearrange the furniture and paint the walls whatever colour you like! that's why combing through these blogs and seeing all the themes made me realize how much this site means to me. it's the last place where i can be myself. so if they remove this precious element... i'm outta here.

#sekwar says a thing #tumblr #i'm serious #i've found my alternative to move to if this happens #a backup plan #i just gotta export this blog and take it along with me over there #cohost isn't as customizable as tumblr but it looks much cozier #i mentioned this already in a post but i'm not ready for the withdrawals #plus i've tried managing more than one blog site. it's not easy #it really sucks to see the internet be this homogenous slab #at the same time it's awesome to see these other sites go against the grain and try to combat this! #i'm with the latter #i'll stop here before i go on another internet rant #have a good day everyone

[ambidexedition]

I miss forums but specifically, I miss how forums have specific areas for things. like if you weren't done reading a series yet but you wanted to talk about it, chances were there was a spoiler-free section specifically for the first book. if you just wanted to chat with people about whatever, there was an off-topic section. if you wanted to discourse about vriska, you went to the vriska quarantine threads. now I take one step into a fandom tag and am barraged on all sides by 20 different tangentially-related conversations and arguments that I care nothing about

#I know reddit is still separated by topic but I've also been seeing a shift in reddit #where a lot of subs are becoming more like. homogenous with each other? #I've complained about /r/namenerds before but it used to be a sub to discuss baby name trends and interesting names across the world #but all the time now people post things about how their sister-in-law used the same baby name as them and it's like #okay sure. I GUESS that's barely related to names. but it's not what this sub is supposed to be #every sub on reddit feels like it's slowly slowly morphing into AITA for some reason. like crab evolution #personal ramblings #idk where I'm going with this I've just been lurking the godot forums for gamedev and got nostalgic for the mspa & wc forums

[icewindandboringhorror]

I miss when Hulu used to have a comments section under every video, there was always something interesting (in a human behavior curiosity kind of way) about scrolling down to see usually an absolutely ridiculous collection of people having a rowdy open forum discussion about something you just watched that you had a completely neutral non-reaction to 

#unfortunately - everything still trends toward homogenization #people especially tech comanies can't just have their own fucign unique thing. they have to look and act like every other service #to ''''compete''' apparently (even though like... wouldn't having unique features be instead a NOVEL draw to your specific product? wouldn't #you want to stand out???) #Like OKCupid completely over-simplfying their site into bare bones sleek nothingness and taking away all the features that made it unique #in any way (high customization - various personality ranking scales and a LOT of various visible data/information) .. because oh yeah #actually we have to be tinder and just quick emoji blurb swipe swipe #Hulu trying to be netflix and taking away anything that made it stand out in any posiive way (comments section.. other things that I forget #since I've been using it since like 2009 or something) #Youtube.... everything youtube does.... god....... #All social media sites are exactly the same now with extremely minor differences and even then still frequently implement samey #features to try and close those differences #etc. etc. #ANYWAY . i think also the hulu comments sections were facebook linked - like..one of the ways you could actually verify yourself to #leave a comment was having a facebook login (AT LEAST in like 2010.. I don't remember if they changed this at some point) #so you could also usually (I think..?? again.. if I'm rmembering correclty) you could get to someone's facebook profile #from the comments section sometime. I used to watch stuff and then scroll down to see what The Masses were saying and sometimes #someone's comment would be so strange I'd like.. go investigate them as a person #see what type of posts they make on their personal facebook which was always way too public with none of their information #privated of course lol

[yisanged]

the japanese-korean stuff is always just this weird elephant in the room.... idk. a lot of the times the stuff like in that one orv arc is just really uncalled for but at the same time it doesn't feel right ignoring all the bad blood there just to say oh this is hashtag problematic or whatever. idk it's not a topic i know as much about as i maybe should what with being a usamerican with parents that have made no great efforts to keep me super tied to korean culture other than just like. the food. but it's hard to get good information on it with all the polarized uninformed biased opinions out there. my parents themselves aren't the most impartial sources either. idk idk. whatever

#from what i've seen in general other than maybe one freak or two there's no korean that'd genuinely come after some random japanese person #just for being jpn. a lot of koreans appreciate the culture and are into manga and the music and stuff like that. but it's just when it's #a conversation about politics or something that people start getting heated. i think it's just this cultural thing they've all grown into #living in korea. it's not always accusations either though a lot of the time it's just like... competition? you see it in sports esp a lot #also it's not always only ever towards japan..... for one thing korea. and japan for that matter. have been mostly racially homogenous #and i've seen firsthand that that leads to a lot of general ignorance and like condescending/stereotyping attitudes towards everybody #also korea specifically has historically spent a lot of time getting stepped on by others. both china and japan in particular #so i feel like that contributes to this sort of like sorta competitive touchiness that's there present day #idk though like i said. usamerican. this is all just stuff i've generally observed from my parents and the internet. probably shouldn't tak #it as like super deep commentary with a lot of authority.